Alita: Battle Angel

Year of Release:  2019
Director:  Robert Rodriguez
Screenplay:  James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis, based on the manga series Gunnm (aka Battle Angel Alita) by Yukito Kishiro
Starring:  Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Keean Johnson
Running Time:  122 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction, action, cyberpunk

The year is 2563, three hundred years after a catastrophic war known as "The Fall" decimated Earth. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Earth live in huge decaying metropolises, such as Iron City, while the chosen few ascend to the wealthy floating city of Zalem.  While scouting an Iron City junkyard, cyborg scientist Dr. Dyson Ido (Waltz) discovers a dismembered humanoid cyborg (Salazar).  Ido is able to rebuild and reactivate the cyborg who he dubs "Alita", and who has advanced combat skills but no memory of her true identity or previous life.  As she tries to recover her memories and identity, Alita has to survive in the deadly Iron City, particularly when she discovers that powerful people will stop at nothing to see her dead.

The Japanese manga series Gunnm (known in the West as Battle Angel Alita) was first published in 1990, and had already produced several spin-offs and animated adaptations.  Writer, director and producer James Cameron had been a long time fan of the manga series, and after a long period in development, handed the reins to director Robert Rodriguez. 
I have never read the manga or seen any of the previous adaptations, so I cannot speak to how faithful or not the film is.  It is visually stunning, creating a grimly beautiful new world in Iron City, and incredible, cyborg creatures.  The action is frenetic, spectacular, genuinely exciting, and surprisingly violent.  Despite sometimes cliched dialogue, and a lack of a conclusive ending (it's almost bound to lead to sequels), this is a beguiling and fascinating new world, and Rosa Salazar is brilliant in the title role, being both heartrendingly vulnerable and a ruthlessly efficient warrior.

Rosa Salazar is Alita:  Battle Angel
       

"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson

Year of Publication:  1992
Number of Pages:  440 pages
Genre:  Science-fiction, cyberpunk, thriller

The book is set in a futuristic Los Angeles.  The United States Government no longer exists, having ceded most of it's power to private companies and entrepreneurs.  LA is now divided up among numerous franchises and syndicates.  People escape from their everyday lives into the computer-generated reality of the Metaverse, where you can be anyone and do anything, providing you have the necessary money, technology and coding skills.  A new drug called Snow Crash, is spreading through the Metaverse.  In reality, though Snow Crash is a deadly new kind of computer virus, which doesn't just infect the system, it infects the operator. 
Sword-wielding, pizza-delivering super-hacker Hiro Protagonist, and loud-mouthed, teenage, skater punk courier Y.T.  soon stumble upon the shadowy conspiracy behind Snow Crash, who are seeking to bring about a worldwide information apocalypse.

This is one of the most influential science-fiction novels of the 1990s, most notably popularising the term "avatar" for a computer representation of a person (although it wasn't the first to use the term in that context).  The book takes in linguistics, archeology, mythology, religion, computer science and politics, and ranges from surreal, punning humour, to hard-edged action.  Tonally it is all over the place, and it does get bogged down in the middle with long exposition. Plot elements are picked up and dropped without explanation, but when it works, it works brilliantly.  It is funny, it is exciting and and  an intriguing, involving thriller.  If you are a fan of Ghost in the Shell or Akira then you'll probably really enjoy it.

            

Strange Days

Year of Release:  1995
Director:  Kathryn Bigelow
Screenplay:  James Cameron and Jay Cocks, from a story by James Cameron
Starring:  Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Vincent D'Onofrio, Michael Wincott
Running Time:  145 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction, thriller

Set during the last two days of 1999, in a nightmarish Los Angeles on the verge of all-out war, the film tells the story of Lenny (Fiennes), an ex-cop turned black market distributor of illegal virtual reality recordings (known as "SQUIDS") which allow the user to relive the memories and experiences of the recorder.  When Lenny stumbles upon a recording of a murder, he and his friend Mace (Bassett) find themselves the targets of a high-level conspiracy.

Watched now, this film feels like a dry-run for Bigleow's Detroit (2017), dealing with similar themes of racial tension and police corruption albeit in a science-fiction setting.  The film is visually stylish, and Bigelow is an excellent action director ensuring that the set-pieces are well-staged, and she creates a real apocalyptic feel to the whole thing.  However the film feels stretched and strangely dated, inevitably due to the setting and the technology, and it never quite escapes it's mid 1990s roots, also Fiennes is too clean-cut for the scuzzy Lenny.  Angela Bassett is impressive, though, as the ass-kicking limo driver, Mace.        

To be fair, it's not really a bad film, and cyberpunk fans should enjoy it, but it's certainly not spectacular. 

Ralph Fiennes and Angel Bassett in Strange Days

Ghost in the Shell

Year of Release:  2017
Director:  Rupert Sanders
Screenplay:  Jamie Moss, William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger, based on the manga The Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
Starring:  Scarlett Johansson, Takeshi Kitano, Michael Pitt, Pilou Asbaek, Chin Han, Juliette Binoche
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  Science-fiction, action, cyberpunk

In the future, cybernetic enhancements to humans are commonplace.  Major Mira Killian (Johansson) is the first of a new breed, a human brain placed in a synthetic body.  She works for the elite anti-terrorist bureau Section Nine, on the trail of a new type of cyber-criminal who uses people's implants to hack into their minds and souls (or "ghosts") to control them.  As she pursues this mysterious figure, the Major begins to uncover disturbing secrets about her past.

The 1989 manga series The Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, has already inspired several animated movies and TV shows in it's native Japan, most notably the groundbreaking 1995 anime classic.  All remakes tend to provoke controversy among fans of the originals, and this was especially true for this film, an American remake of a distinctly Japanese story, and the casting of Scarlett Johansson provoked furore, with accusations of whitewashing.  I am not going to go into the argument here, because I am not best placed to discuss it.
The film is an exciting science-fiction action, that has the feel of a very 1980s or 90s cyberpunk thriller.  The action is exciting and the visual effects are stunning, creating an eye-popping city of the future.  It's the visuals that really impresses here, and it needs to be seen on the biggest screen possible, if you can, try and see it in IMAX.  For all the criticism, Scarlett Johansson gives a fine performance, as the Major.  Her distinctive statuesque beauty is perfect for a robot.  Fans of the original should be warned that a lot of the plot details are altered, much of the philosophical and spiritual elements have been excised, and a new conspiracy mystery has been added.          
Fans of futuristic action-adventures will probably find plenty to enjoy here, but aside from all the visual wonder, it just feels kind of ordinary, without the depth and richness of the original.

   Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell

Akira

Year of Release:  1988
Director:  Katsuhiro Otomo
Screenplay:  Katsuhiro Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on the manga Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo
Starring:  Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, Taro Ishida, Mizuho Suzuki, Tetshusho Genda
Running Time:  125 minutes
Genre:  animation, anime, science-fiction, action, cyberpunk

In 2019, the metropolis of Neo-Tokyo has been built over the ashes of Tokyo, which was destroyed in World War III.  Neo-Tokyo is under martial law riddled with violent anti-government terrorists, and religious cults, while the streets are owned by vicious teenage biker gangs.  After an encounter with a strange, wizened child, biker gang member Tetsuo Shima (Sasaki) finds his own psychic ability awakened.  With his devastating powers increasing exponentially, Tetsuo's ability awakens dormant superbeing Akira.  Meanwhile Tetsuo's best friend Kaneda (Iwata) and resistance-fighter Kei (Koyama) fight to stop him before it's too late.

Akira is possibly one of the most important anime films ever made, and one of the films most responsible for introducing anime to western audiences.  In fact, it is probably one of the most important science-fiction films of the 1980s, with it's influence being felt in numerous films and TV shows since then.  Co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, based on his own epic-length manga series which ran in Young Magazine from 1982 until 1990, this is an eye-popping visual spectacle, with practically every frame bursting with colour, detail and incident.  If you ever get the chance to see it in a theatre, then do so, because the film loses so much when the image is shrunk down to TV-size.  The film races along at a breakneck pace, and it has aged surprisingly well.  It maintains a real apocalyptic vibe.  It does suffer from incoherence at times (Otomo once commented that it had not occurred to him that people would see the film who had not already read the manga), and the pacing is sometimes clunky,  however, this remains an overwhelming experience, and a must-see.

 

    

 

"Akira" by Katsuhiro Otomo

Year of Publication: 1982 - 1990, originally serialised in Young Magazine
Number of Pages: 2182 pages, published over six volumes.

Summary: December 1992: An apparent new type of bomb explodes over Tokyo, decimating the city, and triggering World War III. By 2030, a new city named Neo-Tokyo has been built, around the ruins of the old one. Neo-Tokyo is due to hold the Olympic Games the following year, but is gripped by political strife, violent anti-government fighters, strange religious cults and warring teenage biker gangs. Tetsuo Shima, a member of one of the gangs, is badly injured when he encounters a strange child with an aged, wizened appearance and devastating psychic powers. The child turns out to be one of three similarly wizened children who are being kept as part of a government experiment. Each has a number tattooed on the palm of their hand (25, 26 and 27). After Tetsuo's encounter, he begins to develop psychic powers of his own, which quickly grow beyond his ability to control them, causing him to violently lash out at both friends and enemies, turning his best friend, Kaneda (who also happens to be the leader of the gang), against him. However Kaneda is also preoccupied by a mysterious and beautiful girl named Kei, who is part of the resitance movement against the government. As the government scientists in charge of the psychic project, under the charge of the formidable Colonel, try to get control of Tetsuo and his power, it becomes apparent that there is a still greater power awakening in Neo-Tokyo. A mysterious super-being, known only as Akira, stored at a temperature of Absolute Zero in a top-secret facility beneath the city's Olympic stadium is beginning to respond to Tetsuo's power, and the consequences could mean far more than the end of the world.

Opinions: This is probably one of the most famous examples of Japanese "manga" (comics). The story is long and complex and yet still moves at a break-neck pace. The artwork is primarily in black-and-white and is extraordinarily detailed and full of genuinely startling imagery. The story is on an epic scale. It is just one story told over a total of 2,182 pages. At times, the story is bogged down by the multitude of characters and sub-plots and also the dialogue at times seems mostly to consist of characters shouting each other's names. However the sum total is a genuinely spectacular piece of work. The story deals with themes of teenage alienation and angst, political corruption as well as social and historical themes such as the bombing of Japan in World War II. Throughout the series Otomo gleefully destroys several times and the books are full of apocalyptic imagery. Otomo's artwork is very powerful and in the series frequent dialogue-free pages, the way he does faces and expressions, as well as the stylised look of some of the panels and drawings, helps to create a powerful emotional response. Particularly in the second half of the series, Otomo creates a bleak and striking science-fiction world.
Of course, most people know of Akira through the 1988 animated film version which Otomo wrote and directed and was a huge cult hit worldwide and was one of the main things that helped to popularise Japanese manga and "anime" (animation) in the West. The film, while good in it's own right, is famously incoherent (apparently, given the manga's huge popularity in Japan, it never occured to Otomo that people would watch the movie who had not read the manga) and differs hugely from the series. A lot of the film's weirdness is explained in the comic, although it does have it's fair share of weirdness in the comic too.
The comic belongs very much to the "cyberpunk" genre of science-fiction and features many images and concepts that will be familiar to fans of the genre.
Bleak, violent, frequently humorous and often strangely moving, this is a must read for science-fiction and comic fans.

"Neuromancer" by William Gibson

Year of Publication: 1984
Number of Pages: 317 pages
Genre: Science-fiction, cyberpunk, thriller,

Summary: The novel is set in an unidentified future Earth where people live in vast crowded cities and floating space-stations. In this future, biological and technological modifications of the human body are common and life is dominated by "the matrix" a vast computer network which links together every computer network on Earth and which the user accesses by plugging in his or her nervous system and experiences as a three dimensional landscape known as "cyberspace" with information appearing as a physical form. The plot revolves around Case, a "console cowboy" (a computer hacker who is paid to enter the matrix and steal information from companies and individuals), however after double-crossing his employers, they maim his nervous sytem rendering him unable to access the matrix. Addicted to the experience of accessing cyberspace, Case is left broke by his fruitless search for a cure for his condition, and ekes out an existence in the violent criminal underworld of Chiba City, Japan.
His prospects change when he is contacted by beautiful and deadly Molly, a "razorgirl" who has had her instincts and reflexes artifiicially augmented, has artificial lenses permanently grafted over her eyes and retractable razorblades concealed under her fingernails. Molly's employer has a cure for Case's condition and is willing to allow Case to stay cured under one condition: That he returns to the matrix to steal from one of the most powerful and dangerous networks on Earth.

Opinions: This book is almost certainly one of the most important and influential science-fiction works of the past thirty years. It popularized the sub-genre known as cyberpunk and stands as pretty much the definitive cyberpunk text. It also popularized the term "cyberspace" (which was coined by Gibson in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome"). Storywise, the book is a noir-style pulp fiction thriller in futuristic guise. It's written in the language of the future world which can be quite overwhelming and demands a lot of attention form the reader and packed with dense and surreal imagery. The main problem with the book is that it can be very difficult to follow in places but it is worth making the effort because the event-packed plot moves at a breakneck speed and is told with striking language which approaches hard-boiled poetry. Interestingly, despite the fact that the book deals with computer technology which is a field which obviously has made vast advances since 1984 it has aged pretty well and doesn't really appear all that dated, the only thing that really shows it's age are the descriptions of cyberspace itself, which would probably be a lot more crowded if it were written today.
The book was followed by two sequels: Count Zero (published in 1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (published in 1988) together they make up "The Sprawl Trilogy" ("The Sprawl" is a location in the three books and refers to the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (BAMA) a massive urban sprawl which covers pretty much the whole East Coast of the United States)

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"
- William Gibson, Neuromancer