Alita: Battle Angel [2019] (1 disc)

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• This marks the first professional collaboration between James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez. Due to his prior commitments to direct the four sequels to Avatar (2009), Cameron could only serve as the producer and co-screenwriter on this film, with Rodriguez taking the directorial duties. In an interview with Empire magazine on December 8, 2017, Rodriguez said of the collaboration with Cameron, "This just doesn't happen. Guys like ^[?] Quentin Tarantino and Jim only write scripts for themselves to direct. When Avatar becomes the biggest movie of all time, he told me that he's going to spend the rest of his career making Avatars, so I said, 'What happens to Battle Angel then?', because as a fan I was just interested! And he said, 'I don't think I'll ever get to do that. Hey, if you can figure out the script, you can shoot it!' So I took it home, spent all summer working on it, cut it down to 130, 125 pages, without cutting anything that he missed. It was a great gift. We had a blast; anytime I had a question I could just call him or email him and he would send back these hugely detailed answers that were so helpful. He just loves being the producer that he always wants. The guy's just so freakin' smart. Getting to learn from someone like that was the greatest internship ever."
• The manga series is titled "Gunnm" and was released in America as "Battle Angel Alita." In 2010, producer ^[?] Jon Landau commented, "I'm telling people that we have to call it 'Alita: Battle Angel,' because Jim only does T&A movies." Most of James Cameron's movie titles begin with the letter "A" or "T," Aliens (1986), The Terminator (1984), The Abyss (1989), Avatar (2009), True Lies (1994), and Titanic (1997).
• Upon the release of the film's first theatrical trailer, Alita's appearance, especially her big eyes, have provoked strong mixed reactions from audiences. Director Robert Rodriguez, in an interview with Empire magazine on December 8, 2017, explained the decision for the design of Alita's eyes: "It was always Jim [Cameron]'s intention to create a photo-realistic version of the manga eyes that we're so accustomed to seeing. We really wanted to honour that tradition and see that look standing next to any human character. To have the right person to emote behind it was really essential. Her origins are in the film and you understand why she looks that way. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, we have some pretty big windows. You can see a lot going on in there! When it gets to the emotional scenes it's really uncanny and striking. And captivating!"
• ^[?] Quentin Tarantino recommended Christoph Waltz to director Robert Rodriguez. Tarantino directed Waltz to two Oscar wins in Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), and he has been a long-time friend and collaborator of Rodriguez since the early 1990s.
• Four actresses screen tested for the title role: Zendaya, Rosa Salazar, Maika Monroe, and ^[?] Bella Thorne.
• According to the home-release extras, there was more CGI geometry in just one of Alita's eyes than for the entire character of Gollum in 'Lord of the Rings.'
• This is Robert Rodriguez's first PG-13 movie, despite 18 feature film directing credits spanning 27 years. All of his previous films were either R or PG.
• ^[?] Avan Jogia, ^[?] Douglas Booth, ^[?] Jack Lowden and ^[?] Noah Silver were considered for the role of Hugo, but the filmmakers decided on Keean Johnson because they were looking for someone more "ethnically ambiguous."
• The fighting technique of Alita is referred to as "Panzer Kunst". The German word "Panzer" translates to "tank", "tanks" or "armour" and "Kunst" to "art". So "Panzer Kunst" literally translates to "art of tanks" or "art of the armoured".