Netflix's Top 2 Movie Is James Cameron's Sci-Fi Masterpiece With 91% on RT

At the beginning of the century, James Cameron had the idea to adapt the Gunnm manga, better known as Battle Angel Alita – a simple but colorful story about a cyborg girl in a dark and cruel post-apocalyptic future.

Battle Angel Alita Adaptation Was James Cameron's Dream

Many years passed, Cameron finally became the main man of the world box office, and the live-action version of Alita remained his unfinished goal.

Realizing in time that he would not get out of his Avatar franchise for another ten years, Cameron decided to tear Battle Angel Alita out of his heart and give it to someone else to take care of, himself looking after the project from the comfortable producer and screenwriter's chair.

The easiest thing to do, of course, would have been to hire JJ Abrams or a director like him – a skilled person who could adapt to someone else's vision. But Cameron chose Robert Rodriguez. An unlikely candidate, to say the least.

What Is Alita: Battle Angel About?

While digging in a local garbage dump, cybernetic doctor Ido finds the upper half of a cyborg girl with big eyes and, as it turns out, an equally big heart.

The doctor repairs the girl and brings her back to life: now she must experience the bitterness and joys of a post-apocalyptic world, find love, and face a deadly threat.

Serious people from a sky city want Alita – or rather, the long-lost technology that underlies her cybernetic organism.

Alita: Battle Angel Has a Consistent and Dynamic Plot

Cameron's most important achievement was the screenplay, which was able to eliminate the episodic nature of Yukito Kishiro's manga and combine several plots together, thereby setting a general vector for the story's development, but preserving the multi-layered narrative.

In his work, Kishiro focused on the growing up of the main character and introduced other characters out of nowhere, gradually revealing the universe of Alita. Cameron and Rodriguez managed to combine the unrelated characters of the original into a single plot.

Alita: Battle Angel Is a Unique Mix of Japanese & Western Cultures

As a result, Rodriguez got a very solid western that kept the Japanese flavor of the original. There is even a bar fight scene in which the director made a reference to his hit From Dusk Till Dawn.

And in 2019, it didn't matter how Alita would perform commercially (and it did well, earning $404 million), it will definitely receive the status of a great movie – if not today, then in a few years. And interest in the film continues – it is now in the Top 2 most watched movies on Netflix.