The live-action Alita movie is pretty bad in ways fairly common to Anime adaptations: Spontaneous romance, questionable character behavior, and suspect plot developments. Then it decides to throw in some of the more eye-rolling tropes from superhero origin stories (“I know kung-fu!“, only worse) as a bonus. The action scenes at least are engaging for the most part, though that’s certainly not enough to outweigh the cringe-worthy performances (Zapan‘s is the only decent one, and even he goes to shit at the end) and face-palming events.
Captain Marvel is an actually competently constructed adaptation comparatively. Though not without problems (most notably any scene designed to evoke sadness/sympathy) it’s a consistently entertaining mixture of action, comedy, 90’s references, and self-discovery with even the most minor characters getting a brief chance to shine. One aspect which could be taken either way is how events progress/develop at a brisk pace over a short timeframe; on the one hand this keeps you engaged with what’s happening, but on the other it makes the close Danvers-Fury friendship come across as pretty unnatural.
The take-away here is that I’m definitely not watching any potential Alita sequels in the theater (where skipping through painfully awkward scenes isn’t an option), while I just might end up going to see Avengers: Endgame (which ties directly into Marvel‘s post-credits scene).
