Jim Henson: Idea Man

I'm Your Puppet

or

Having a Hand in Everything

 

When I was growing up, I fixated on several things to the point of obsession. One was the comic-strip Peanuts. One was America's Space Program. Howdy Doody. Looney Tunes cartoons. J.P. Patches (if you know, you know).

 

Puppets. I think I watched everything that Paul Winchell did. Kukla, Fran and Ollie, Shari Lewis.

 

And Jim Henson. This was before he became the creator of "The Muppets," and was an up-and-coming skit contributor—he'd appear on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and other variety venues, and he had a regular "gig" on "The Jimmy Dean Show" with Rowlf the Dog.

 

But, Henson did things differently. His "bits" would be his bizarre looking puppets (including one which would become well-known as "Kermit the Frog") lip-syncing to some popular record and the bit would usually end with some 90° turn, sometimes violently. They were hilarious and seemed to erupt from some fertile ground of imagination that none of the other entertainers on "The Tube" seemed to have access

.

Henson hadn't intended to become a pioneering puppeteer. He just wanted to get into television, a medium that fascinated him. Although he'd been introduced to puppetry watching the tube, he wasn't personally involved with the art until his last year at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, continuing to study it at The University of Maryland, College Park, where he met his "Muppets" partner and future wife, Jane Nebel.

With wife Jane, Henson devised the skits and bits that the Muppets performed on local and national television shows, as well as doing commercials. On weekends, he began experimenting with film projects, exploring stop-motion animation, rhythmic editing, and juxtaposed cross-cutting. His first, Time Piece, was Oscar-nominated for "Best Live Action Short" in 1965 (it's presented in its entirety below).

Kermit's origins began from the discarded green coat of Henson's mother.

The rest you no doubt know, from Henson's work on Sesame Street—also directing many short avant-garde films for various "numbers" segments—with its vast array of puppets and full-size figures to walk on-set, "The Muppets Show" and movies, "Fraggle Rock," a brief recurring stint on the first season of "Saturday Night"—the percursor title for "SNL," the films The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. Hundreds of hours of content for movies and television. Plus innovations in puppet-performing, animatronics, special effects, and film-making...not to mention overseeing the construction and manufacturing of building imaginative creatures.

Painted halved ping-pong balls for eyes...

Now, Ron Howard just made a documentary about Henson—Jim Henson: Idea Man—and has been the case for Howard's product lately, it didn't get a theatrical release, but went straight to Disney+ for streaming (except for an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival) on May 31, 2024. So, what was it doing as an ABC special this past Sunday? Disney+, being notoriously stingy with their streaming product, put it on broadcast television within 3 months of its premiere...that's a bit unprecedented. But, follow the logic: Henson's Muppet properties (except those wholly owned by Henson) are owned by Disney. Disney also owns the ABC network, and the night it premiered NBC was airing the closing ceremonies of a much-storied Olympic Games. ABC needed to put something special up rather than roll over and die in the ratings. It's as simple as ABC. Or ABC/Disney.

The fledgling Muppet crew

Howard, who has had an illustrious career as a director—aside from his acting career—has turned in another "safe" documentary. Chapter headings, talking heads (good ones!), a smorgasbord of clips that would even please The Swedish Chef, and a design sense based on things Henson himself had innovated. It's by-the-numbers, like a Ken Burns documentary without that director's eye towards the breath-taking shot, the spurious but telling anecdote and the impeccable eye towards getting the most out of a photograph. Howard colors inside the lines.

Howard is no innovator. His films have no mystery, they never haunt, and they never linger in the mind with deeper implications. He tells the story, simply, effectively, and gets out leaving no after-image. Where a recent documentary on Fred Rogers by a great documentarian like Morgan Neville will leave you in contemplation, Howard makes you feel like you've heard the story enough to feel satisfied. It's like a bed-time story told by a competent nanny. Henson would have never done an auto-biographical film, but he would have made it a thrill-ride with thrills, near-spills and a bit of danger to it.

Those elements are best inhabited by the words of Henson's co-workers, kids, ships that passed, and stars that shined for him. Like Frank Oz, who joined Henson as a high-schooler and under his tutelage became a brilliant puppeteer, actor, personality and director and in his interview seems to share a weight of gratitude. Rita Moreno talks about guesting on "The Muppet Show" and blowing take after take because she couldn't stop laughing until the last take where she barely holds it together...and they used it! "The nostril-flares tell you I'm about to lose it." Jennifer Connelly talks about being a 14 year old on a Henson set...co-starring with David Bowie and feeling like the place was a playground.

 

And in a way, it was, one that we all had access to and could play in. We couldn't see the dollars spent, the hours of prep, the uncomfortable positions (try holding your arm up for 10 minutes!), nor could we see the actual performers, merely their avatars, hidden behind desks, tables, props, out of sight and, rather miraculously, out of mind—even to the people they were performing with. We saw the tip of the ice-berg of creativity, that by the time it appeared on-screen had been honed to a science, made easy to laugh at, without having to consider the men (and women) behind the curtain. 

 

Like Oz.

Henson never played it safe. Maybe, someday, there will be a documentary that will take his same radical tack at looking at this man perpetually behind the curtain while simultaneously so on-stage and call the man what he was: a magical genius.

 

Little Children

Written around the time of the film's release. Field's most recent film—after an extended hiatus—was Tár, which received lots and lots of attention.

Little Children (Todd Field, 2006) One I've been wanting to see but avoiding. Again, bad decision. 

 

Todd Field has the spirit of Kubrick in him. Field, as an actor, worked on Eyes Wide Shut and Kubrick subjected him to "the drill" about his first film, In the Bedroom—"Why do you want to make that? What can you bring to it? How can you tell your story more compellingly? Is it worth doing, though?" 

 

But Field is a far looser director, and with a much more sure sense of humor, though that was missing in Bedroom. That razor-like humor helps in this story of a neighborhood not coping well with a convicted sex offender in their midst (he's a flasher). Everyone in the Boston suburb is on the critical edge of everyday panic and with an aversion to complacency combined with a complacent lethargy—sure, everyone is a hypocrite about something—so everyone seems determined to see how far they can push the envelope before things come crashing around their ears. 

But the film focuses on a quartet in the neighborhood: retired cop Larry (Noah Emmerich) is a retired cop on disability, who misses the job and finds some solace in harrassing the sex offender Ronnie (Jackie Earle Haley), who wants to live a normal life—like his Mother (Phyllis Somerville) whom he lives with wants for him—but his past is a constant deterrence.

Larry is friends with Brad (Patrick Wilson), who is studying for the Massachusetts bar (at least he should be), but has chosen to be a househusband and raise his son Aaron (Ty Simpkins) while his wife Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) is consumed with her PBS documentary career.

Brad spends many a lazy afternoon taking Aaron to the park, giving the gaggle of stay-at-home Moms there a chance to observe appreciatively and speculate about him. One of those gaggle is Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet), who was working on her doctorate, but gave up on it when she married her now-estranged husband. All of this talk of Brad makes Sarah curious, and—as her husband is more interested in internet porn than her—they gradually "it's-only-platonic" themselves into having an affair. An affair that ultimately leads them to want to leave their respective spouses and run away together.

Every film is a bit of a "bubble-world," limited in scope to the characters featured prominently in the story. And it's the chief complaint by people who don't like particular films that they depend too much on the limited cast-members to sell the coincidences that make up a story. Little Children is one of those films. Pull out any of the plot-threads and it'll tumble like a Jenga tower.

But, that argument is so much blinkerdly cherry-picking. One of my favorite episodes of the podcast "This American Life" the author Lisa See tells of the Chinese proverb "No coincidence, no story" and the entire show curates stories from listeners with the most amazing coincidences. One is hard-pressed to think of a film...or a book where the confluence of incidences didn't create some narrative thrust. No coincidence, No story...even if it's only that these people are locked under some circumstance...if only by coincidence. 

So it is with Little Children. There is an air of clinical observation to the film that is cruel and humorous, though, for the characters portrayed, everything is of deadly earnest and has complex consequences. And its use of Will Lyman (the voice of "Frontline" as well as "Last Week Tonight") as narrator is brilliant. 

Uniformly the cast is excellent with Kate Winslet, Patrick Wilson (he had the least showy role in HBO's "Angels in America" as the closeted conservative), Jennifer Connelly (restrained and never better), and particularly Jackie Earle Haley as the flasher. Absent from movies for years, Haley now has a cadaverous look like he's being consumed from the inside, and his beady-eyed pressurized work keeps you on pins and needles. He and Winslet received the lion's share of accolades at awards-time last year, but the film itself should have received more attention...certainly more than The Departed did. 

 

Todd Field is a guy to watch.

Top Gun: Maverick

Almost There. Al-most Theeere....

or 

"What Were You THINKING?" "But, You TOLD Me Not To Think!!" 

Controversial yet factual opinion: Anthony Edwards is hotter than Tom Cruise in Top Gun. First of all, the mustache? WORKS. Second of all, he's fun! Third of all, Maverick is such a desperate, narcissistic, posturing, alienating, twerpy little prince that I find myself disorientingly at odds with a former self who long ago considered Tom Cruise to be attractive. Who was she? That woman who could look at a picture of young Tom and not flash immediately to this jittery rat terrier with a barely contained rage problem, a monomaniacal fixation on personal glory at the expense of the safety of everyone around him, and an approach to women that can charitably be described as Biff-esque? I don't know her.* Fourth of all, Maverick's hair is bad! It needs to be EITHER SHORTER OR LONGER.

Maverick is the villain of Top Gun.

 

* Paradoxically, I do think that Tom Cruise is an excellent movie star, and I also enjoy his movies!

Lindy West

"I'd Prefer a Highway Away from the Danger Zone, but Okay"

"Shit, Actually"

copyright 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

I can see why there would be a sequel to Top Gun thirty six years after the first film, beyond economic gains. The original was a recruitment poster for the military, and right now there is a shortage of airline pilots creating disruptions of flights. What is interesting about that shortage is that it is due to a changing military. Airline pilots usually came from a military flying background. But, there are less of those pilots being trained now because we're training more drone pilots than military pilots.

 

Plus, Tom Cruise needs a hit. His two big franchises that bring in money are Mission: Impossible and Top Gun—probably his biggest hit. Nobody went to see The Mummy (killing Universal's proposed "Monsterverse" series) and American Made. Jack Reacher is now a streaming TV series. Tom needs a hit.

But, as Lindy West pointed out in her idiosyncratic review of the first film, Tom Cruise's Pete Mitchell was, if anything, the villain of Top Gun. Narcissistic, cocky, heedless, and anti-authoritarian, Mitchell was the military's nightmare—the hot-head not broken by basic training. His actions killed his wing-man, "Goose" and 

I've thought—not very often—that if Mitchell wasn't killed in subsequent flying, he would have become the protagonist of American Made, a pilot for nefarious purposes. I mean, rules are made to be broken, right?

So, this is the guy the Navy wants to train fighter pilots?

Apparently so. Well, not precisely. The Navy doesn't want him. An Admiral in the Navy wants him, that Admiral being Tom "Iceman" Kazansky (Val Kilmer), from the first film. It's easy to get movie-sentimental about that, but it made me think that it was because of an Old Boys Network that got this flame-out back in the cock-pit with any kind of authority. This is wrong thinking. In fact, Top Gun: Maverick doesn't want me to think...at all.

That got me into trouble immediately with this sequel that repeats the first movie's opening minutes with Harold Faltermeyer's theme starting over the same opening text from the first film, then transitions into Kenny Loggin's "Danger Zone" over a "thumbs-up and launch" montage, which reminds people that there are aircraft carriers and take-offs from the flight-deck and that the Navy—for their cooperation in helping make the movie—needed some footage that involved them and not Tom Cruise.

Cruise's Pete Mitchell has been shopping himself out as a test-pilot to an aerospace firm—a very small one, it seems—that has a contract with the navy to supply a hyper-sonic fighter and today is the test to push it to Mach 9. The thing is the Navy brass (in the form of Ed Harris) want the thing to perform at Mach 10. So, what does Maverick do? First, he takes the thing out early—even before Harris' Admiral (who also showed up earlier than scheduled)—and buzzes the guy before taking it to Mach 9. But, no, that's not good enough: Maverick takes it to Mach 10. Okay. Then, he takes it Mach 10.3 before the plane breaks up from the stress and disintegrates.

At this point, I believe, Top Gun: Maverick continues as a dream sequence because...no. No way does Mitchell walk away from this. But, he does in the movie. It's a bit of a mis-step because the flying sequences are CGI (the plane prototype does not exist) and it kind of undercuts the impressive in-camera work done by the flyers and actors in the later F/A-18 sequences. But, it also shows the Maverick hasn't changed that much, pushing everything to the limit until he breaks something, leaving his employers with going back to the drawing board. He's admonished by Harris' Admiral, but then informed that he's been picked to train a class in the Top Gun school for a seemingly impossible mission.

That mission is to take four F/A-18 Super Hornets into forbidden air-space—in a safely-unidentified country, but it probably ends with an "A-N"—flying under any sort of radar detection that would launch SAM attacks, fly up a steep escarpment, take out a uranium enrichment plant nestled in the valley then climb an even steeper escarpment (with heavy G-force consequences) where they may be met by "fifth generation" fighters, if they haven't already been neutralized by the two F/A-18's trailing them to destroy a nearby air-base. 

So, it's basically, the Star Wars "Death Star" trench run (which, admittedly, is a crowd-pleaser) but Star Wars wasn't a two hour film about training for it. Here, the complications are: one of the pilots-in-training is "Rooster" (Miles Teller) Bradshaw, son of "Goose" (from the earlier film), which places Maverick in a position of responsibility and guilt, a re-kindled romance with an Admiral's daughter (Jennifer Connelly) "from the old days"—it's like nothing happened between the first film and this one (No attachments? No kids? Is there some psychological "thing" about this guy?), and the mystery of why Kazansky picked Maverick—of all people—to do this job.

That scene—with Kilmer unable to talk due to his battle with throat cancer—is (apart from the the admittedly well-executed flight scenes) the highlight of the film. Kilmer doesn't have to do much to eke out any audience sympathy, but there's an old sageness to his performance (done with just knowing looks) that's hard to resist, and Cruise pulls off one of those moments where he stops being a movie star and crumples into acting. Nice to see, and that, more than anything, made me want to salute.

The acting is all good. From the by-the-book sourness of Harris, Jon Hamm and Charles Parnell to Connelly's "sure-it's-a-'Girlfriend'-role-but I'm-still-gonna-'Girlfriend'-this-guy-right-off-the-screen" spunkiness. But, ultimately it comes down to that mission—top secret because it isn't sanctioned and probably illegal under international law—where two "miracles" have to happen to pull it off (I counted six) and where the best advice Maverick can offer is "don't think...DO." It is this mantra that saturates and permeates the entire movie, further embedding it in Star Wars mythos, right down to evoking a spirit for guidance at a critical time. At least they had the grace to make a joke about the inanity of that advice and its genuinely funny and well-played.

But, oh boy, it sure apples to this movie. Yeah, it's a good time, and 'gung-ho' and propels itself along at a good clip and the shots in the cock-pits are so amazing, it doesn't matter that the actors are in the back-seats. It delivers the payload and gets away clean without having to answer for anything just like the mission parameters.

 

As long as you don't think about it.

The Daze After The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day The Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) Iconic sci-fi pic that managed to be just strange enough to be spiritual without having to explain itself. Edmund H. North's script (adapted from the 1940 Harry Bates story "Farewell to the Master") just assumed that any advanced civilization's technology would seem like magic to us (ala Clarke's Third Law). It's anti-nuke theme was somewhat off-set by it's Christ allegory under-pinnings: a human-appearing being from above comes to Earth with a "message," is killed and resurrected to give mankind a lesson in humility. That the alien--Klaatu (Michael Rennie)--walks among us under the guise of a "Mr. Carpenter" just nails the significance home.

Right from the get-go, The Day The Earth Stood Still announces its intention with a "spooky" theremin-laced score (by the brilliant Bernard Herrmann), quite at odds with its message of peace. Wise shows a global humanity surrounded by its current technology (radio, television, radar) spreading the news of an invader from space, which lands in the Mall area of a tourist-clogged Washington D.C. in Spring. 

Phalanxed by a wall of tanks and military might (with a larger crowd of tourists behind it) the alien presence reveals itself and is shot by a panicky soldier for its trouble. Before you can say "Kent State," the alien is taken to Walter Reed to be treated, observed and questioned, and the formal Klaatu--patient, curious, but with a hint of passive condescension--does his own analysis, escaping from the hospital and blending with the populace as "Mr. Carpenter"--taking a room at a boarding house, becoming involved with a widowed secretary (Patricia Neal)--it IS the '50's, after all--and her son, with the intent of seeing humanity first-hand.

Meanwhile, his Enforcer, Gort, a lumbering, laser-cyclopsed, soft-metal robot stands guard over the saucer, turning his evil eye on any hint of aggression, without any regard to how much of the GNP was flushed to make those tanks. If Gort could laugh when he turned on his eye-light, he'd probably do it with glee.

There are so many small details that delight: Patricia Neal's uncommonly common working Mom, with a wary eye towards Mr. Carpenter--there's not even the hint of romance there; Sam Jaffe's cameo as Einstein stand-in Dr. Barnhardt, looking at his business-suited stranger visitor from another planet with eyes of dazzled wonder; the whole design of the thing that has so permeated our culture with sleek silver surfaces that fold in and out of each other seamlessly; "Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto!" which, indicative of the race's parsimoniousness, roughly translates to: "Robot, take Klaatu's body back to the space-ship and repair whatever damage has been done to it, bring him back to life, and oh! while you're at it, don't turn me into a smoking pile of ash, thank you very much*"--talk about "Three Little Words!"; Robert Wise's unerring sense of staging and for putting the camera in the exact, most effective place without making you aware that it's the most effective place. Wise is always given short-shrift as a director, implying a yeomanlike sensibility rather than an artistic one, but the Man Who Edited Citizen Kane also conceived beautiful, eerie, creepy shots like this:

Thanks to Glenn Kenny of "Some Came Running," who reminded me **

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a classic film—a time-capsule, of a kind—from a different time and place and space that reminds, yes, with great power comes great responsibility--but there's always someone more powerful, who might take yours away, and make you stop and smell the fall-out.

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Written at the time of the film's release...

"Everything New (Testament) is Old Again"
or
"Yeah. I'm Thinkin' I'm Back!"

So why remake it? Well, it's a question that Klaatu's United Planets couldn't negotiate--and Gort's Galactic Police Force would probably give you the eye. But the agent of Keanu Reeves saw a poster of the original and dollar signs swam into his head and here, we have it. And Scott Derrickson (who put a different head-spin on The Exorcism of Emily Rose) thought he could turn it into a warning about global warming, and Reeves thought that, though the original Klaatu preached peace, he did so threatening force, which he found "fascist."

Sigh.

That sounds noble in thought (if a tad simplistic). On-screen, it's a different matter entirely.

Because it's a "re-imagining" (rather than "a remake"), there is no "flying saucer," but a cloudy, spacy "orb" (all the better to remind you of the planet, but I kept wondering what kept it in place), and rather than the military, scientists are in the front line (with Princeton astro-biologist Helen Benson, played by Jennifer Connelly, as the point-person). The military is back-up.***

The scenario starts the same: Land-Bang-End up in Hospital. And there things start to change. The original Klaatu had no special powers. Gort was the "muscle" (and here, the robot is 20 feet tall, gun-metal gray in color, and a completely CG construct--it's actually simplified from the original's design--and, as with the first Gort, its unreadability makes it a genuinely creepy sight). Keanu Reeves' Klaatu has a nasty way with bio-feedback that does damage. So much for pacifism. But, this Klaatu isn't Christ-in-a-business-suit. This one goes back a few chapters, back to the Old Testament. Particularly those parts dealing with Noah and Moses. The threat is environmental, rather than nuclear, and to sustain one of "the handful of planets that can support life," Keanu-Klaatu's United Planets are thinking of a little Silent Spring Cleaning of the life-form doing the most damage. Good thing he doesn't carry around a cook-book!

The following section is SPOILER material, so if you want to be surprised how it ends—if you care—don't highlight the next paragraph which, like the Earth, gets blacked out:

That scouring consists of billions of nanite-sized metal locusts (why they have to specifically look like insects, I have no idea, but I'd guess it has something to do with why Klaatu's named "Mr. Carpenter" in the first one). So, this "plague" starts doing its damage, devouring metal of all kinds, sports-arenas and such, and one can only hope that it can distinguish "green" technology, like solar panels and wind-generators, from the other kinds, but I suspect not--that might involve thinking! Keatu, or Klaanu, or whatever you want to call him, decides at the last minute that because humans have the capacity for change, they maybe, just maybe, could save their environment, so he sacrifices himself sabotaging the plague, leaving humans with no electricity, no technology, and presumably the resolve to stop the global warming crisis with, as a much wiser alien once inventoried, "stone knives and bear-skins." Thanks, Kleatu or Kono, or whatever your name is, thanks a lot. Who's gonna pick up these continents of dead nanites corrupting the soil, Mr. "Ecology?" And they thought the first one gave off mixed signals?

Keanu Reeves has the most limited range of any actor who hasn't suffered a stroke, but he does have two specialties at which he excels: endearingly stupid, or robotic. The latter serves him well, as in Speed, the portions of The Matrix when he was portrayed by pixels, and this film. His strange visitor from another planet is a nice piece of craft, slightly more human than Jeff Bridges' Starman, and extremely efficient in his movements--when he turns his head to look you right in the eye, you'd better take him seriously. He's quite effective in the role. Jennifer Connelly delivers the techno-babble expertly (as she did in Hulk), but she really doesn't have much more to do than Patricia Neal did, as the role is basically reduced to "concerned mother." As the child she's concerned about, Jaden Smith at least doesn't fall into the "predictable child" category. He finds different ways of doing things than the "stock-child" role. Kathy Bates is too good for her role of Secretary of Defense, Jon Hamm, of "Mad Men," doesn't really separate himself from the pack, but Robert Knepper does a fine job as a Colonel in charge of trying to stop a tidal wave with a tea-cup. It's always great to see cameo's by James Hong, and John Cleese, who plays Prof. Barnhardt in this version.****

But, ultimately, there wasn't much point in doing this, other than to give people jobs, and give some Hollywood-types more "green" cred. The production was carbon-neutral (wouldn't that have been ironic?), which means they presumably paid carbon credits used to destroy old-growth forests for eucalyptus plantations.

"The Universe wastes nothing," Keatu says at one point.

He's never been to Hollywood.

* I hope there's a "please" in there, somewhere!

** Kenny has a wonderful illustrated tribute to director Robert Mulligan. It's far better than anything I could contribute.

*** There is one amusing bit--when Benson is shanghaied to participate in the landing investigation by the military, it's set-up and photographed exactly as it was done in The Andromeda Strain...directed by original TDTESS director Robert Wise. Coincidence? Nothing's a coincidence in a "re-imagining."

**** I hate playing the "If only..." game—it smacks of frustrated screenwriters—but, as they had an Albert Einstein-clone in the original, it would have been interesting to have a Stephen Hawking in this one—brilliant, but crippled, talking through a voice-box. If Klaatu wanted inspiration from the human race, who better? Then, imagine this scenario: the group leaves, but Klaatu hangs back, turning to look at the wheelchair-bound pysicist. "I could cure you..." Pause. The voice-box rasps: "Save...the...world."

But, they didn't.

Alita: Battle Angel

Spare Parts
or
Little Orphan Gally (Sappiness is a Warm Gunnm)

It is the year 2563 and the separation between the have's and have-not's is evident at all times. Floating above "Iron City" is the pleasure-dome of Zalem, and the city in disrepair below it is, literally, its dumping ground. It is where Dr. Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), a brilliant cyber-surgeon of limited means, finds an angel...or part of one, anyway. 

Doc has been living in a self-imposed exile in Iron City, repairing its citizens, providing them with replacement parts for whatever has been ripped from them in the rough world of Iron City. Money is not a concern—he will take a bag or oranges for fixing a busted cyber-arm, if it will do the most good. He could have made good money creating freaks and cyber-monsters for the Moneyball tournaments that serve as bread and circuses for the disadvantaged to take their minds off being disadvantaged ("better football than revolution, right?")

Hunting for spare parts to use in his work, he finds the head and torso of an android female and looks at it and takes it home. using the discarded android body he had designed for his paralyzed daughter—murdered when a cyber-ruffian burst into his lab looking for drugs—Ido puts the little android together and calls her "Alita,"(Rosa Salazar, motion capped) his daughter's name. He doesn't know her background, doesn't know her history or function. But, he takes on the role of father-mentor and protector in a world where "people do terrible things."

Alita: Battle Angel went through "development hell" for many years, acquired by James Cameron after being introduced to the manga and its video by Guillermo del Toro, some time after he'd made Titanic. Cameron tinkered with a script, developed technologies, and ultimately used them to make Avatar and its (how many are anticipated?) sequels. Alita was put on a very back-burner until Cameron approached Robert Rodriguez, a director with a great sense of economy, but often not the vision to try and make something out of the property, or at least get it back on track. Rodriguez's first job was to try and fashion a script out of the many begun by Cameron that never seemed to gel. But, Rodriguez managed to squeeze into his script the first four books to the satisfaction of Cameron and producer Jon Landau, and the movie got made to the tune of 170 million dollars, Rodriguez's biggest budget by many factors.

The film that is cobbled together from the first four "Gunnm"/"Gally" books has the establishment of the Zalem-Iron city dichotomy, the murder of some women "Jack the Ripper"-style (which briefly makes Ido himself a suspect-perp), Alita's relationship with a street-punk named "Yugo" ("Hugo" in the film, played by Keean Johnson), and her emergence as a star-participant in a vicious roller derby game thoroughly based on the one in Rollerball; it's called "Moneyball" because...lawyers.

Frankly, they could have done without the "Ripper" sub-plot, even though it establishes a strata of Iron-ites as "hunter-warriors"—vigilante/bounty hunters who dis-assemble the most predatory of the cyber-human hybrids, who all seem to be associated with the Moneyball games, if only tangentially, through the person of one of the many bad-guys, Vector (Mahershala Ali*), who seems to be the Iron City mega-promoter of the games and its chief supplier of cyber-enhancements to keep the games...interesting.

There wasn't a need to make a third version of Rollerball. The movie wasn't a success in 1975 (nor was its 2002 re-boot), either financially or artistically, when Norman Jewison made it, and its same point about distracting an oppressed populace can be made, far more directly and relevantly, by making a football film. There is virtually no difference between Alita's "Moneyball" games and the "rollerball" concept right through to the no-holds-barred playing strategies or the "jam-the-ball-in-the-hole" concept of what constitutes a goal. Rollerball had motorcycles involved, but that's about it.

Alita rivets together Rollerball with "Tinocchio" and "Chromeo and Screwliet" with some seams showing through the solder, as they try to crunch four of the "Gally" stories into one movie. It gives short-shrift to Ido's development (which may be why Waltz gives one of his "uncommitted" performances) as there's never a point where he changes attitude from paternalistic protectiveness to his eventual "show 'em what you're made of" boosterism when she decides to enter a rigged Moneyball championship.

Rodriguez gets the spectacle down cold, but some of his futurism is a bit weird—the one wheeled motorcycles that pop up seem ludicrously stabilized for their design. Alita—the character—has big Disney-princess-eyes (the only one who does, curiously) to reflect its manga origins, but the movie is very Anglicized, with touches of Rodriguez's latino roots thrown in, more than its Japanese origins. Some of the editing is very rough with those continuity flaws "they" love to throw in IMDB's "Goofs" sections, and I'm still trying to figure out how Alita got her feet back after Ido replaces them with some nifty plug-in skates for the tournament. I'm sure some of it can be explained that it messed up the pacing, but given the other things, I think it was done "because they had to." "It's only a movie, Ingrid."

However, some of the work is stellar, especially when Rodriguez and his technicians stop reaching for photo-realism and make the thing move with an almost Chuck Jones-cartoon precision. As, below:

Now...let's wade hip-deep into Alita: Battle Angel and its place in the current political climate. Of course, it doesn't need to be and is a false flag in any political discussion because Alita is hardly political, making its point in sociological terms, merely. 

But...a certain sub-strata of internet commentators have chosen to make it political by bitching that Alita is a better representation of a female character than a "woke" "social warrior" movie (in their view) than say, Captain Marvel. This is not true. That sub-set just "feels" that way because Alita—to them—is a better representation of women, with her big eyes and her doll-like proportions (would that be more structurally sound for a robot rather than being heftier?) because it adheres more to the concept they prefer, which can be described as "the kind men like." Even if Alita wasn't petite and reminded one of a emaciated gymnast, she is also emotionally naive...in the way men like.

The second Alita story-line involves her becoming emotionally drawn to a street-tough named Hugo, whose dream is to live in Zalem, is working for Vector, makes his livelihood by dismembering hybrids for their spare parts and even sets up Alita for being demolished in the Moneyball tournament. Alita knows nothing of this—save for his Zalem upward-mobility—but even when she learns that he has worked against her, she loves him so much, she still forgives him and wants to be with him, despite it all.

What jerk wouldn't be attracted to that concept? Alita's devotion is unconditional, while his is based purely for his benefit. It doesn't matter that he's a scumbag, she Capital-♥ loves him, no matter what crap—or cyber spine—he pulls. This does not compute, and makes sense only in a male fantasy of uneven relationships and warped power dynamics.

At one point (and I started giggling uproariously while watching this, upsetting some in the theater) Alita offers Hugo her heart—her mechanical heart, pulling it right out of her chest and holds it out to him. One wonders how seriously this was taken by the film-makers: is it "on the nose" what they meant to represent, or was it meant to be a satirical joke because, hey, she's a robot. I chose to think of it a third way...as ridiculous. 

Personally, I would have liked her to grab him by his mullet and say, "Ya wanna get to Zalem, meat-monkey? Let's see how far I can THROW ya!" I think that would have been far more cathartic than Alita playing weak and deferential to her inferior-in-all-ways man-child.

But, I'm sure it played well for the boys still playing with girl-toys.

"It's only a movie, Ingrid"

* This is the first performance by this wonderful actor (two Oscars?) where he seems a bit lost and so, takes the role slowly, while still managing to differentiate between the character when normal and when "possessed"—never actually explained how (or why he doesn't do it to everybody) by the Big Heavy "Mabuse"-like Zalem kingpin named Nova (played by Edward Norton—and where has he been outside of Wes Anderson movies?) who runs the games like an overlord.