Netflix’s global Top 10 now features sci-fi film Alita: Battle Angel (Picture: Twentieth Century Fox)
A sci-fi action film produced and co-written by James Cameron that was slammed by some critics on release is now a streaming hit.
The movie from 2019 has recently been added to Netflix, where it immediately soared into the platform’s global Top 10 list of most-viewed titles and has been watched 10,100,000 times already.
Alita: Battle Angel was added on November 8, and with just 10 days of viewing figures available has racked up 20.7million hours watched.
It is currently behind hunky snowman Christmas movie Hot Frosty on the chart, in the number one spot with 16m views, as well as fellow festive fave Meet Me Next Christmas.
The cyber-punk action film set in the year 2563, directed by Robert Rodriguez, starred Rosa Salazar in a motion-capture performance as the titular CG-rendered cyborg, who wakes up in a new body with no memory of her past, which she sets out to uncover.
Based on Yukito Kishiro’s manga series Gunnm, the movie was first announced in 2003 with Titanic filmmaker James Cameron slated to direct but faced numerous delays owing to his commitments with the Avatar franchise.
The movie, based on the manga series Gunnm, did well with fans when it was released but was a big disappointment for critics (Picture: Twentieth Century Fox via AP)
Rosa Salazar used motion-capture in her performance as the titular CG character (Picture: Allstar/20th Century Fox)
Eventually cameras started rolling in 2016 with Rodriguez at the helm instead.
Alita: Battle Angel also starred Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Rebel Moon’s Ed Skrein, Jackie Eearle Haley and Keean Johnson.
Upon release, the film saw some success, managing to gross $405m worldwide on a reported budget of $170m, largely thanks to its international fanbase.
However, critics were less than kind to it upon release, calling it ‘frustrating’, a ‘massive misfire’ and ‘total codswallop’, as well as branding its motion-capture main character ‘undeniably creepy’.
Alita: Battle Angel boasts an impressive supporting cast, including Jennifer Connelly and Christoph Waltz (Picture: 20th Century Fox Licensing/Merchandising/Everett/Rex/Shutterstock)
The film has accrued over 10 million views in 10 days on Netflix (Picture: 20th Century Fox Licensing/Merchandising/Everett/Rex/Shutterstock)
‘Screenwriter James Cameron and director Robert Rodriquez’s long-in-the-making adaptation of a popular manga feels wobbly, worked-over and way past its sell-by date,’ wrote Peter Travers for Rolling Stone. ‘It looks ready to rock, but there’s no life left in the party.’
Metro’s two-star review of the ‘half-baked’ film observed: ‘While the visuals are top notch, the story is a hodgepodge of science fiction tropes thrown together, promising a big story for the sequels but not giving us a reason to care right now.’
It also called Alita: Battle Angel ‘a franchise starter that looks nice but lacks humanity’.
The movie has managed to scrape a 61% score on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes from critics, but it has fared far better among fans, with a huge 91% rating.
Some of the movie’s critics didn’t care for the CG design, calling it ‘undeniably creepy’ (Picture: Twentieth Century Fox)
Producer and co-writer James Cameron is already working on at least one sequel (Picture: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for Disney)
Cameron has also acknowledged he is working on Alita sequels previously, during a July 2023 article with Forbes.
It focused on the sale of his costal ranch in California, with the 70-year-old director explaining his family’s decision to put their home on the market.
‘On Avatar, I’m working in Wellington and Los Angeles. And on the new Alita: Battle Angel films, I’ll be working in Austin, so it just didn’t make sense for us anymore.’
Alita: Battle Angel is streaming on Netflix in the UK now.
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