Black Belt – August-September 2019

Alita, Captain Marvel and Furie:

To CGI or Not to CGI, That Is the

Question

This installment of Screen Shots addresses the martial arts action in three heroine films from three different genres: Alita:

Battle Angel, which is mostly CGI; Captain Marvel, which is half CGI; and Furie, which uses no CGI.

BY DR. CRAIG D. REID

Photo Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL

This film, which is written and

produced by James Cameron and

directed by Robert Rodriquez, takes

place in the future gloom of dusty

rusty Iron City, the last remnant of

human society born out of the Fall,

an apocalyptic war that ended the

evolution of technology. A man is

seen rummaging through garbage

that’s raining down from the affluent

sky city Zalem. He picks up and then

stares at a skull. It’s the graveyard

moment when Hamlet pines about

death and humanity to the skull of

a court jester he loved as a wee lad:

“Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well.”

The man is cybersurgeon Ido, and

the skull is a cyborg head he chris-

tens Alita (Rosa Salazar). She subse-

quently grows into a metal-jacketed

fighting machine that will become

more human than most humans and

more android than most androids.

She’s the last hope for planet Earth.

What erupts is a high-octane 3-D

gala of CGI outrageousness that

melds with the heartfelt mission of the

anime-eyed Alita as she strugglers to

fulfill her human potential while flick-

ering between love for a human and

the need to reinvent the deadly cyber-

netic martial art of panzer kunst that’s

hard-wired into her cyberpsyche.

The technology brings to mind one

of the reasons Jet Li declined an offer

to do Matrix: Reloaded (2003): He

was concerned that another actor’s

face could be superimposed on his

body and thus pirate his kung fu —

similar to the way Keanu Reeves’ face

was digitally painted onto his stunt

double’s body.

As Hamlet said, “Ay, there’s the

rub.” The question we face in the 21st

century is, How far will CGI go? I

don’t know, but I do know that Alita

has set a new benchmark.

Months before shooting, Salazar

learned snippets of wushu, muay

Thai and kung fu — in an Alita-

Alita: Battle Angel

32 BLACKBELTMAG.COM § AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2019