Alita Battle Angel: James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez unveil the secrets of adaptation of cult manga

Keean Johnson, Jon Landau, Rosa Salazar, David Valdes and Robert Rodriguez at Comic-con
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© Eric Charbonneau

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James Cameron has long been considering adapting to the big screen "Gunnm" ( "Battle Angel Alita" in the Anglo-Saxon countries), famous manga born from the pen of Yukito Kishiro at the beginning of the 1990s. But because of a job of the time too busy (especially compared to the Avatar suites), he finally chose to entrust the realization of Alita: Battle Angel Robert Rodriguez, atypical director with a particular style, to whom we must Desperado, A night in hell or the lucrative saga Spy Kids.

A MANGA AS DARK AS CULT

Originally, "Gunnm" is a manga written and drawn by Yukito Kishiro and comprises nine volumes of about 220 pages each. These were published for the first time between 1990 and 1995 in the Business Jump magazine. The first French version was released between 1995 and 1998 by Glénat. The particularity of this manga, related to the cyberpunk genre, lies in its extreme violence and its very dark vision of humanity, which does not prevent some characters to have very deep feelings, contrasting radically with their environment .

"Gunnm" takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in the twenty-sixth century, which is divided into two main parts: on one side the dump, a filthy and ultra-violent city populated mainly cyborgs with a human brain (beggars, criminals, bounty hunters, etc.). And on the other side Zalem, a city floating several thousand meters above the dump whose inhabitants are humans living in an idyllic environment. These are two places in perfect opposition and well defined by impbadable boundaries.

Most of the manga's action takes place in the landfill. In this world governed by the law of the strongest, a scientist, Dr. Dyson, discovers the carcbad of a young abandoned cyborg. After having repaired it, and thus brought back to life, he baptizes it Alita ("Gally" in the manga). Having no memory of her past but showing impressive combative skills, she will try to unravel the mystery of her origins and better apprehend the post-apocalyptic world in which she evolves. This is to protect those she loves from terrifying enemies who are on their heels.

THE COLLABORATION CAMERON / RODRIGUEZ

When James Cameron and his producer Jon Landau met Robert Rodriguez, they began by showing him impressive videos and storyboards testifying to the visual as well as screenwriting potential of Alita: Battle Angel. The filmmaker of Desperado was immediately conquered and asked if he could reduce the size of the basic script. "I removed some scenes and rewrote others, but in the purest" Cameron style ". If the Rodriguez was impressed by the visual beginnings he saw, it is also the human aspect of the story, especially via the amnesic cyborg Alita, which made him want to take up this challenge: "James had a great story of characters, and that's what he does best: great show, action, things you've never seen before, but along with the characters and There was a great love story in Alita: Battle Angel, a father-daughter story, and I'm a father myself, I tried to make sure everything was present in the version that I made it. "

Alita: Battle Angel also allowed a fruitful collaboration between Cameron and Rodriguez, especially between Lightstorm, the company of the first based in Los Angeles, and the own cinematographic unit of the second in Texas . Many of Lightstorm's special effects designers have paused in their work on the Avatar sequels to devote themselves to Alita.

Rosa Salazar in Alita

RECONSTRUCTING IRON CITY, "THE DISCHARGE"

To create Iron City, Alita's characters: Battle Angel, Rodriguez transformed his Austin studios like he had never done before. His teams have designed a set that can be used to film the entire city. The famous company Weta Digital is responsible for adding the necessary via special effects. It has also created Zalem, the famous inaccessible space city anchored to the Earth by a gigantic elevator that supplies and sends waste (that's why Iron City is called, in the manga, "the discharge"). Most of the film's shots have been retouched with special effects. A necessity since Alita herself and many other inhabitants of Iron City are more or less cybernetic.

ROSA SALAZAR IN THE SKIN OF ALITA

After considering Zendaya, Maika Monroe and Bella Thorne, James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez finally set their sights on Rosa Salazar to slip into the skin of the young Cyborg with bulging eyes, a real killing machine but with great sensitivity. The actress, noted in the sagas Divergente and The Labyrinth, explains about her character: "Alita is a normal girl who consists of cybernetic parties and has a personal story both traumatic and crazy.Alita is like me. She has a whole range of emotions, she is not sure of herself, she is brave, she is strong, she is curious and she is defiant, she is powerful and weak, she has a true soul and I think she discovers it throughout the movie. " Rosa Salazar also trained in martial arts for several months and 2 hours a day 5 days a week. She also told to have colored manga images during the shooting!

About the character, Robert Rodriguez had said that Alita is a warrior who discovers her humanity throughout the feature film, especially through her love for Hugo, a young man from the dump obsessed with the idea of ​​living on Zalem. The character thus operates an opposite evolution compared to the other heroines of James Cameron, like the Aliens Ripley the return which reveals little by little its warrior instinct.

The remainder of the cast is taken, among others, by Christoph Waltz as Dr. Dyson; Keean Johnson in Hugo; Ed Skrein en Zapan, a cruel bounty hunter; Jackie Earle Haley in Desty Nova, a mad scientist as brilliant as dangerous; or Mahershala Ali, a vile organ trafficker. Jennifer Connelly and Michelle Rodriguez complete the cast of this cyberpunk work whose theatrical release is planned in France on December 26, 2018.