Alita: Battle Angel is the 306th episode of Screen Junkies comedy series Honest Trailers. It was written by Spencer Gilbert, Joe Starr, Dan Murrell, Danielle Radford and Lon Harris. It was narrated by Jon Bailey as Epic Voice Guy. It parodies the cyberpunk sci-fi movie Alita: Battle Angel. The video is 4 minutes 2 seconds long. It was published on July 30, 2019 to coincide with the film's release on Blu-ray/digital. It has been viewed over 1.3 million times.
Watch Honest Trailers - Alita: Battle Angel on YouTube
"From a studio that didn't even make it through the 21st century [20th Century Fox] comes Hollywood's best adaptation of a manga yet -- which to be fair is a really low bar to clear!" ~ Honest Trailers - Alita: Battle Angel
Script []
From a studio that didn't even make it through the 21st century [20th Century Fox] comes Hollywood's best adaptation of a manga yet -- which to be fair is a really low bar to clear! [shows posters of Death Note, Dragonball Evolution, and Ghost in the Shell]
Alita: Battle Angel
Meet Alita, a cyborg with the eyes of a doll, the softness of a body pillow, and the heart of a MacGuffin. On the surface, she’s the internet’s perfect woman, a sexy killer dumpster baby who’s totally legal, and will kiss you if you give her chocolate; but underneath, she’s got a hidden mission—cram a whole franchise worth of exposition into one short movie. [shows Alita asking a lot of questions] Ugh, we don’t have time for this Alita. Just go watch Alita! It explains everything.
Prepare for a film set in the 2500’s, made with the best technology of the 2010’s, that still plays out like it never left the 90’s. Where everyone‘s really into X Games, as scene after scene of motor ball dominates the runtime, But always feels like a skippable mini-game in a Final Fantasy. Nothing says cutting-edge future world like a roller blade sesh with the boys! [shows rollerblading scenes from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie and D2: The Mighty Ducks, then shows Alita rollerblading] Radudical!
But, it’s not all blades, babes blades, babes made of blades, and Blades to be. There are actually some great human actors in this movie, or at least their disembodied faces. As Jennifer Connelly spends the film being either vaguely menacing or vaguely helpful. Mahershala Ali spends it as a literal mouthpiece for someone else.
Vector: “So, We Finally Meet Alita.”
Alita: “Nova”
and Christoph Waltz do some heavy lifting, by making the phrase Panther Kunz sound cool, and some literal heavy lifting by convincing the audience he could control a giant rocket-powered hammer. Well, that‘s definitely how his assistant lost her arm, isn’t it?
So, gear up for the passion project that was supposed to be James Cameron‘s opus, till he dumped 600 pages of notes of Robert Rodriguez and went off to make Avatar sequels instead, with a final product that blends awesome robot fighting, decades-old cyberpunk tropes and suddenly ending on a shot of Ed Norton, instead of bringing the story to a conclusion.
Starring: Wait, we’re gonna do that too?! Ugh, that’s frustrating!
Starring: Eye Robot [Rosa Salazar as Alita “Ali”/99]; Doc! Hammer Time [Christoph Waltz as Dr. Dyson Ido]; He‘s Just A Skater Boi [Keean Johnson as Hugo]; Pentium For A Dream [Jennifer Connelly as Dr. Chiren]; Droid Rage [Ed Skrein as Zapan]; Optimus Crime [Jackie Earle Haley as Grewishka]; Hidden Figure [Idara Victor as Nurse Gerhad]; Smithers! Release The Saws! [shows saw blades killing people]; and The First Rule of Zalem Is You Do Not Talk About Zalem [Edward Norton as Nova]
The honest title for Alita: Battle Angel was 'Toy Story.' Titles designed by Robert Holtby.
You know, it’s too bad this was the anime James Cameron got obsessed with. I mean, it’s not bad. But, why couldn‘t somebody have slipped him Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure? That’d been awesome.
Trivia[]
Honest Trailers Commentary - Alita- Battle Angel
- In the Honest Trailer Commentary, the writers revealed the original tag for this Honest Trailer was going to be that they wished James Cameron had discovered the anime Yuri on Ice. Writer/producer Joe Starr is a massive fan of Yuri on Ice. However, they decided to change it to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure because it is more recognizable.
- Viewers frequently reference JoJo's Bizarre Adventure in comments on Screen Junkies videos featuring Joe Starr because a character's name is "Joseph Joestar."
- The associated episode of Honest Trailers Commentary is particularly memorable because of the writers' shameless enthusiasm for doing Christoph Waltz impersonations, replete with terrible German-Austrian accents.
- Screen Junkies have also produced some other Honest Trailers about Western adaptations of Japanese IP including Dragonball Evolution, Ghost in the Shell and Godzilla. See list of Honest Trailers for more.
Watch the full episode of Honest Trailers Commentary on YouTube
Reception[]
Honest Trailer - Alita: Battle Angel has a 97.2% approval rating from YouTube viewers. In her write-up on the Honest Trailer, Princess Weekes of The Mary Sue observed "Honest Trailers tackles the fun action-adventure elements of the film, with its sword fights, Xtreme sports, and sci-fi elements, with an audience that also turned Alita into their “cool girl” champion when Captain Marvel rolled around." Brian McGee of Egotastic observed "like many James Cameron projects, it [Alita: Battle Angel] over-explained things rather than trusting the audience to keep up. The film is now getting the Honest Trailer treatment from the folks over at Screen Junkies, and they can't help but bring up this particularly fatal flaw. They're also not terribly hard on the film, which is appropriate considering it's a difficult film to hate due to its earnestness. One area in which they really should have gone for the kill was with Alita's love interest, played by this walking charisma vacuum."
Sandy Schaeffer of Screen Rant noted "As much as the Alita Honest Trailer pokes fun at things like Alita's behavior and the elements of the film (namely, its motorball sequence) that feel oddly reminiscent of '90s pop culture, it also takes the time to highlight the movie's visually spectacular robot battles and familiar, but still fascinating cyberpunk themes. At the same time, however, it mocks the movie's attempts to set the stage for a live-action Alita franchise by essentially having Alita (Rosa Salazar) speak in exposition or ask plot and/or world-building related questions for much of the runtime. And like many a critic before it, the trailer also points out that Alita doesn't have a proper ending so much as it just stops and leaves it to a sequel to bring some actual closure to its story."
Production credits[]
Video thumbnail for Honest Trailers - Alita: Battle Angel.
Epic Voice Guy: Jon Bailey
Title Design by Robert Holtby
Written by Spencer Gilbert, Joe Starr, Dan Murrell, Danielle Radford & Lon Harris
Produced by Spencer Gilbert, Dan Murrell, Joe Starr & Max Dionne
Edited by Kevin Williamsen
External links []
- Alita: Battle Angel Honest Trailer - Awesome Fights Lead to Non-Ending - Screen Rant article
- Honest Trailer Tackles Alita: Battle Angel: A Fun Movie That the Alt-Right Hijacked - The Mary Sue article
- Honest Trailer for Alita: Battle Angel Points Out Every Sci-Fi Trope - EpicStream article
- Honest Trailers Deconstructs “ALITA BATTLE ANGEL” - Hipster Zombie Joint article
- ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ Honest Trailer: A 26th Century Movie That Plays Like It Never Left the 90s - Slash Film article
- Alita: Battle Angel Honest Trailer - The Awesomer article
- ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ Honest Trailer Exposes the Film’s Major League Exposition Problem - Egotastic article
- Honest Trailers Does "Alita: Battle Angel" - Popcornx blog post
- Humor: Honest Trailers Skewers Alita: Battle Angel - Comics 2 Film article
- Honest Trailer For ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, Which Plays Out Like it Never Left The 90s - Geek Tyrant article