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NEWS: Alita: Battle Angel Film Earns US$19.8 Million on Opening Day in China




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Escaflowne2001



Joined: 29 Jul 2006
Posts: 468
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 6:15 am Reply with quote
I liked the movie but when a film like Battle Angel Alita needs to make $400-500 Million to make a profit. Something has gone horrible wrong.
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yu_samson



Joined: 19 Apr 2010
Posts: 49
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 8:53 am Reply with quote
Escaflowne2001 wrote:
I liked the movie but when a film like Battle Angel Alita needs to make $400-500 Million to make a profit. Something has gone horrible wrong.


Not necessarily.
It is not uncommon for a big budget Hollywood film with a $200 million production budget to have an equally large marketing budget. There's been advertising everywhere for this film...on the Internet, TV, and physical posters everywhere. I'm not surprised. Hopefully it pays off, as it would be great to see more new stories on the big screen instead of another sequel film or reboot of an existing film.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4858
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 12:30 pm Reply with quote
Escaflowne2001 wrote:
I liked the movie but when a film like Battle Angel Alita needs to make $400-500 Million to make a profit. Something has gone horrible wrong.
What has "gone wrong" is Alita happened to come out at the same time as a Chinese sci-fi movie, The Wandering Earth. This movie is huge in China so everyone seems to be going to see it instead of Alita. Even though the decision may have made sense at the time, it may have been a mistake after all to delay the film this late. I think it could have done reasonably well if it came out in it's original summer release date. All the big blockbusters were already out by the time Alita was supposed to come out in late summer so I don't think there would have been all that much competition going on. But I think for casual moviegoers who aren't familiar with the source material, delaying a movie twice I think gives a bad impression even if it was actually a good movie.
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walw6pK4Alo



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Posts: 9322
PostPosted: Sat Feb 23, 2019 3:15 pm Reply with quote
Escaflowne2001 wrote:
I liked the movie but when a film like Battle Angel Alita needs to make $400-500 Million to make a profit. Something has gone horrible wrong.

This is how every single big budget film works. The usual number us laymen can go by is twice the production budget to know whether or not the film broke even after ALL unreported expenses are accounted for. For some films, they need more like 2.5 or 3 times the original production budget, because they fired the original directors and reshot the majority of the movie: Solo.

Still, word of mouth for the Asian markets is excellent. I have no idea why the Rotten Tomatoes critic community seems opposed to it, the story explains everything clearly and the action is just as clear, so you can't blame it as "meandering" or "impenetrable" like say for BR2049.
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AmpersandsUnited



Joined: 22 Mar 2012
Posts: 633
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:24 am Reply with quote
walw6pK4Alo wrote:
Still, word of mouth for the Asian markets is excellent. I have no idea why the Rotten Tomatoes critic community seems opposed to it, the story explains everything clearly and the action is just as clear, so you can't blame it as "meandering" or "impenetrable" like say for BR2049.


I believe it's because it's "competing" with Captain Marvel in the eyes of a lot of critics. There have been numerous hit pieces from movie reviewers against Alita: Battle Angel dismissing it as a wish-fulfillment male fantasy and criticizing her overtly-sexual design. These same critics are the ones who are propping up Captain Marvel as being a groundbreaking landmark for female lead movies. Unfortunately for Alita, it came out on the cusp of a politically charged, big budget MCU film.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4858
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:33 am Reply with quote
I don't think it has anything to do with politics or Captain Marvel which isn't even out yet but even a lot of people who really like Alita agree the plot is overstuffed and the acting was mediocre which film critics are more likely to be harsher on.
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v1cious



Joined: 31 Dec 2002
Posts: 6203
Location: Houston, TX
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 3:58 pm Reply with quote
This sounds about right. I don't know what those crazy people were thinking who said it would blow up in Asia. It's possible Japan will deliver, but unlikely.
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shabu shabu



Joined: 25 Jan 2019
Posts: 79
Location: Tokyo
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 5:24 pm Reply with quote
v1cious wrote:
This sounds about right. I don't know what those crazy people were thinking who said it would blow up in Asia. It's possible Japan will deliver, but unlikely.


Sometimes I wonder if Americans think Asian countries should feel honored they make movies based on their works, and Japan is suppose to thank them by going to see them, but American versions of Japanese works never do well in Japan because they are not that interesting to audiences here.
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jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 2007
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 5:28 pm Reply with quote
There has been some amusing competition between Alita and Marvel, even with many people turned off by the politics surrounding Marvel to recommend going to watch Alita instead.

But I also agree with the critics that Alita has big problems, especially with acting and dialogue and a lot of overall hamminess and lazy expediency for the sake of moving the plot along.

Alita is still enjoyable, it's certainly not terrible, but it's not a well made movie by any metric other than production design and VFX.

I doubt it'll get a sequel given it's likely not going to recover its overall budget.

But I kinda do hope it sparks an anime revival, and we get a new anime adaptation. There's plenty of material, and the prequel Mars Chronicle is pretty awesome.
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4858
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 9:18 pm Reply with quote
Captain Marvel doesn't come out for another week and it's an entirely different genre of film from Alita so I don't know why people are trying to make a fake rivalry between them. Can't people just enjoy movies?
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5957
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 11:06 pm Reply with quote
AmpersandsUnited wrote:


I believe it's because it's "competing" with Captain Marvel in the eyes of a lot of critics. There have been numerous hit pieces from movie reviewers against Alita: Battle Angel dismissing it as a wish-fulfillment male fantasy and criticizing her overtly-sexual design. These same critics are the ones who are propping up Captain Marvel as being a groundbreaking landmark for female lead movies. Unfortunately for Alita, it came out on the cusp of a politically charged, big budget MCU film.


A movie that's also getting review bombed.

Cardcaptor Takato wrote:
Can't people just enjoy movies?


No especially if it's based on a existing property.


Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Sun Feb 24, 2019 11:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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TexZero



Joined: 25 Oct 2017
Posts: 584
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 11:11 pm Reply with quote
Cardcaptor Takato wrote:
Captain Marvel doesn't come out for another week and it's an entirely different genre of film from Alita so I don't know why people are trying to make a fake rivalry between them. Can't people just enjoy movies?


Not in today's society.

In today's climate everything has a purpose and must compete for attention even where there is none.
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El Hermano



Joined: 24 Feb 2019
Posts: 450
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Sun Feb 24, 2019 11:53 pm Reply with quote
It's more than likely they get compared because they're both female led action movies, and it becomes hard to keep the narrative that audiences only dislike Captain Marvel because they hate women when they're praising Alita and it's audience score is at 94%. So I guess the only way to counter that is by saying Alita is sexist and appeals to nerd fantasy so it doesn't count. Which sucks because at least Alita's director has shown he respects and likes the source material so it just gets dragged into some culture war thing.
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