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The hair is entirely
CGI, as Salazar’s
head was totally
covered by her suitThe eyes are key to
the performance –
even the corners
are fully animatedIt took Salazar 90
mins a day to don
her performance
capture suithe first thing you notice
about Alita: Battle Angel,
the live-action adaptation
of the manga by Yukito
Kishiro, is the titular
character’s eyes. The film’s
CGI cyborg protagonist
Alita, played by Rosa
Salazar via a head-to-
toe performance capture
suit, looks human – except
for her eyes, which are
unsettlingly large, like an
anime character made real.
When they were first
unveiled in a trailer at
the end of 2017, audience
reaction was split. Some
were unner ved by the
“uncanny valley” effect.
“It’s just something we’ve
never seen before,” says
director Robert Rodriguez.
“ We’ve been seeing anime
and manga eyes since
Astro Boy in the 50s, but
never photo-real.”
Rodriguez, who inherited
the Alita project from
producer James Cameron,
was initially concerned that
Cameron would pressure
him to tone the character
down. “But Jim didn’t even
blink an eye,” he says. “In
fact, he even said, ‘I think
the eyes need to be bigger.
The iris has to be bigger
in order to make it more
emotive, more relatable.’”
Cameron once intended
to direc t himself, being
fascinated by the idea
of bringing Alita – a
deadly cyborg rebuilt by
a scientist (Christoph
Waltz) – to life through
performance capture. But
he became preoccupied
with something equallyFrom Avatar to Alita:
how CGI got hyper real
ambitious. “It came down
to: the Alita script wasn’t
ready and the Avatar script
was,” Rodriguez says.
It was a blessing. Avatar
became a stepping stone to
getting the performance-
capture technology ready.
“It wasn’t even there when
we started shooting – we
had to fine-tune it over two
years,” says Rodriguez.
As for the mixed response
to her new face, Salazar
says she would have been
disappointed if people
hadn’t reacted strongly.
“The worst thing would
have been people going,
‘ Yes, I’ve seen that be fore,
I know what that is.’”
Stephen Kelly Alita: Battle
Angel opens on February 6