I think it’s worth noting that the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is 92% liked it.
IMDB has it at 7.6/10 with 21,798 votes.
I see a lot of critics on RT saying a variation of “too complicated”, which I remember was also a major complaint made of The Matrix.
Went and watched it tonight.
Good movie, the eyes didn’t have the uncanny valley vibe for me. They were a signal, a reminder that she was something different, possibly fundamentally so.
The only complaint I have was the scene where Hugo tells his crew he’s done. Very poorly done and rather jarring. It just didn’t fit with the rest of the movie somehow and it somewhat pulled me out of being immersed in that world and made the rest of the love story plot lame and it did somewhat weaken the last bit of the movie after that.
I just watched it dubbed in Russian and with Russian sub-titles, neither of which I speak, so I missed a lot. What was the deal witg building 33 and Novas blue eyes?
I saw it last night and LOVED it. I’ve seen movies before (who hasn’t?) where I feel like they clearly set it up for a sequel and my feelings on that are “ok, whatever”. But this movie, by the ending I wanted the rest of the story, so I’m amped up for a sequel. There’s a LOT of her backstory that I want to learn about now. I also very much want to see her get up to the sky city and kick Nova’s ass.
I guess I fell in love with Alita, the character. I love strong female characters and I could find no fault with her. I agree the romance was silly and trite. She didn’t need it to be a wonderful character, and it was simply a distraction.
Ugh, critics. I never read critics, especially for sci-fi and fantasy stories, because so many of them seem to need to be spoon fed the plot.
Why in the world did you see it in Russian? Go see it in English and you’ll enjoy it so much more. Whenever Nova (the main villian up in the sky city) was spying on people, he did so through other people’s eyes, thus they turned blue. In the English version you could also tell because the way each character talked and behaved changed - you could tell it was Nova talking through them.
Not a lot of English language movies in the steppes of Kazakhstan. 
Thanks for the clarifications.
There’s no clearer sign that there won’t be a sequel than this: Nova was played by Edward Norton. I don’t think he’s ever been asked back to anything.
JcW, I disagree about the need for the romantic subplot, regardless of how poorly it was depicted. Remember, at the beginning of the movie, she is in essence a blank slate, no memories at all, an infant so to speak, the romance was needed as a part of her personal development. Part of her Hero’s Journey.
And by the same token, one can hardly criticize that she handled the romance immaturely.
Long article on BO performance this weekend (tr;dr: nobody’s popping bottles of champagne.) Sadly, this will probably hurt the prospects of live-action American adaptations of other manga, so don’t plan on seeing ScarJo star in this.
So after seeing the movie, I was curious about the anime, so I watched it today. My gosh it was terrible. No character development whatsoever, to the point where their actions barley make sense. Now I know why the romance was maybe overemphasized in the movie, in the anime Alita and Hugo probably didn’t spend more 5 minutes together. (Yet she was still weirdly obsessed with him). I’m going to assume the anime is an extremely abridged version of, what I would hope, was a vastly Superior manga.
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I quite liked it, except for Hugo. A lot of people have said that was the weakest element of the script; I would differ by saying the casting was the problem there.
I hope it manages to do just well enough to justify a sequel!
Just went into this completely blind (I don’t watch movie trailers, and I haven’t seen this anime or read the manga).
I actually enjoyed it! And found out I find photorealistic people with freakishly big eyes far more attractive than I probably should…
The love story seemed… gratuitous? Unnecessary? But overall, I found the entire experience enjoyable, and hope there is a sequel.
Well said!
Here’s the good news, folks: The film grossed over $404 million worldwide, becoming the ninth highest-grossing film of 2019 and Rodriguez’s most commercially successful film to-date, per Wikipedia.
So the sequels aren’t out of the question yet.