So, hot on the heels of Comic-Con, probably realizing the vacuum left by a lack of industry hype around the upcoming movie slate, 20th Century Fox dropped a brand-new trailer for the James Cameron-produced, Robert Rodriguez-directed Alita: Battle Angel. If you’ve seen the first one, well, there’s not much here for you that you didn’t see last time, and Fox is hoping that you don’t remember that one well enough, because everybody freaked out about Rose Salazar’s eyes. The reaction was so bad, in fact, that they pushed it out of its original summer release date to the end of the year, and this new preview acts as something of a course-correction, meant to sway new viewers. Will it work?
Find out for yourself:
So, uh, this looks interesting.
Cameron’s been threatening to make Alita for longer than some of our readership has been alive, as word hit the street that he was interested in the project back in the late-’90s, but we didn’t think he’d outsource such a passion project to a director as unpredictable as Rodriguez. The results look to be, oddly but expectedly, the product of two clashing ideas and styles — the aesthetic feels very Cameron (futuristic, bold choices), but the execution of said aesthetic feels pure Rodriguez (cheap, underdeveloped). And those goddamn eyes are such a stupid sticking point for people to get hung up about with regards to this project, especially amongst the Film Twitter world, where Valerian passes as spectacular entertainment, but they’re off-putting, especially given how cool everything but the heroine looks.
Whatever the case, it’s not like Fox has a ton of faith in it. Alita: Battle Angel hits theaters on December 21, alongside Aquaman, Mary Poppins Returns, Bumblebee, Welcome to Marwen, and Holmes and Watson. Christ.
Featured image via 20th Century Fox.