Much of Alita: Battle Angel focuses on Alita (Rosa Salazar) coming to terms with and understanding her very existence. In a junkyard, cyborg scientist Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz) finds the husk of Alita’s cyborg body and brings her back to life. Ido becomes a surrogate father figure for Alita and as she lives her life, she falls in love with a boy named Hugo (Keean Johnson), slowly recalls memories of her past, and further gains humanity. Alita finds herself in combat with a Hunter-Warrior assassin, Grewishka (Jackie Earle Haley) who overwhelms her and destroys her body in combat. This leads to Ido apprehensively installing Alita in the powerful, but dangerous, Berserker body. Alita uses her new strength to excel in Motorball, Iron City’s murder-iffic sanctioned sport, but she doesn’t realize that Vector (Mahershala Ali) is pulling the strings and has turned the game into a convenient means to eliminate her. The film’s tailend pulls the rug out from under the audience and reveals that Desty Nova is actually the film’s major antagonist. Nova is a powerful scientist from Zalem who’s been the major puppet master through all of Alita’s trial and tribulations. He’s also able to transfer his consciousness into other bodies, which allows him to temporarily threaten Alita through Vector and Grewishka’s bodies. Alita eventually loses Hugo (twice) and vows revenge on Nova. Nova is a major presence in the original Battle Angel Alita text, although he doesn’t appear until much later. The decision to include Nova at all clearly shows that Alita: Battle Angel is already looking at the bigger picture with the story that they’re telling. It’s still too early to tell if Rodriguez, Cameron, and company will get the opportunity to continue the Alita: Battle Angel saga and venture to Zalem, but clearly they are not done with this universe. This film establishes and humanizes Alita, but now she’s ready to fight back and seize her destiny. The question is are we done with her and her world?
