Alita: Battle Angel - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[gerald]

The hunter warriors congregate in a bar called Kansas. According to Volume 8 of the Manga, the scrapyard (Iron City) is located in the land formerly Kansas City, Missouri.

[melinda]

The movie features two actors who won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor twice within three years: Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), and Mahershala Ali for Moonlight (2016) and Green Book (2018).

[ruby]

Avan Jogia, Douglas Booth, Jack Lowden and Noah Silver were considered for the role of Hugo, but the filmmakers decided on Keean Johnson because they were looking for someone more "ethnically ambiguous."

[kenneth]

Even though the film is live-action, the main character is done with CG animation and was shot in 3-D, using the stereo imaging system that James Cameron had been developing for his documentaries.

[eli]

Some of the world's top-inline skaters performed as the Motorball competitors, among them Chris Haffey, Franky Morales and Dave Lang. 2003 X-Games competitor Katie Ketchum doubled for Rosa Salazar during these sequences, while Salazar was skating off the side capturing facial expressions for the reference cameras. Both Ketchum and Salazar's performances were combined in post-production.

[frances]

This is the first film Robert Rodriguez has directed since Spy Kids (2001) in which he wasn't also the film editor, director of photography, camera operator, steadicam operator, composer, production designer, visual effects supervisor, and sound editor.

[camila]

James Cameron confirmed in an interview that this is a combination of the first four books in Yukito Kishiro's series of manga books ("Motorball" from books 3 and 4, and the story from books 1 and 2). In another interview, Cameron also said that should this film be successful, he hopes to make another two "Battle Angel" films.

[chris]

Quentin Tarantino recommended Christoph Waltz to director Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino directed Waltz to two Oscar wins in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), and he has been a long-time friend and collaborator of Rodriguez since the early 1990s.

[bernard]

James Cameron had wanted to direct and produce a feature film adaptation of Yukito Kishiro's "Battle Angel Alita" manga since 1995, but the project stalled for two reasons: (1) prior commitment and his own interest to direct Titanic (1997); and (2) the technology, at the time, had not caught up with the story and vision he needed to present to do justice to Kishiro's world of Alita.

[chris]

The final film from 20th Century Fox as a standalone production company and a distributor.

[jim]

The film is based on the nine-volume Japanese manga "Gunnm," released in North America as "Battle Angel Alita." Written and illustrated by Yukito Kishiro, the comic book ran from 1990 to 1995. It was followed by the 19-volume sequel "Battle Angel Alita: Last Order," which ran from 2000 to 2014, and later by "Gunnm: Mars Chronicle," which began in 2014.

[jeffrey]

The movie opening scene is similar to the opening sequence of Gunnm (1993), many scenes in this movie are taken almost frame by frame from scenes from Gunnm (1993).