In my review of [Michael Bay]()'s [Bad Boys II](/reviews/bad_boys_2_is_michael_bay_s_magnum_opus) I brought up an interesting theory people have about the film. The amount of Bayhem! it holds in could be a direct response to the out-of-the-comfort-zone feel Bay must have had experienced making [Pearl Harbor](/reviews/pearl_harbor_2001_made_me_cry_for_3_hours_straight). Basically, the film was so different from what Bay usually does, he had to crank the next movie's Bayhem! up to 11, to make it feel right again. After [Robert Rodriguez]() directed *Alita: Battle Angel* with an estimated budget of about $200 million, he had to come back to his comfort-zone too. And 3 months later ( that same year in 2019 ) he released *Red 11*. A micro-budgeted horror film made on almost exactly $7,000.

Rodriguez is known for making movies cheaply. His whole persona of a rebellious [trouble-maker](https://www.troublemakerstudios.com/about) is based upon his experience of shooting an action film, on film, in the 90s, for less than $10k of his own money. This translated into the current Rodriguez that basically only makes Sci-fi B-movie action films. Yes, the budgets are not as low. He uses 10s of millions of dollars for his B-movies. But most of this money goes to hire big name actors. This is how he got fucking [Robert DeNiro]() to appear in [Machete](/reviews/machete_2010_is_about_us_politics_of_2025_somehow).

I'd say Rodriguez is a fantastic director. He knows his flow. His editing and pacing is superb. But it seems like the decades of cheap film-making made him unable to use the humongous budget of *Alita: Battle Angel* to the fullest potential. The film has way too many basic, static tripod shots. Even in moments that might require a bit more dynamic camera work. The action scenes are properly dynamic in *Alita*. It seems like Rodriguez knows that an action scene is about to begin, so he switches gears and suddenly uses all of the tools at his disposal. But not with dialogue scenes. Though, you can see that the movie gradually feels more expensive as it goes. In the beginning pretty much 90% of everything is shot on a tripod. But by the end Rodriguez allows himself to use more camera movement in simpler scenes. As if he is learning to let-go the cheap mentality.

The 3D of the film ( it was shot in native 3D because of [James Cameron]() who wrote the script and was one of the producers on the film ) is fantastic. I saw it in cinema when it came out and the quality of the 3D is comparable to the 3D in the last 2 [Avatar]() films. Except of one shot. There is a shot near the end, during the "heart" scene, where the 3D-ness is weirdly too strong. It is like, it is perfectly exact for the entire movie, but this one shot had the cameras a bit too wide. And it stands out. But it's okay. My brain liked the 3D-ness of this one shot. It was not showing anything that must look huge [like in Valerian](/reviews/is_valerian_and_the_city_of_a_thousand_planets_better_than_the_fifth_element_). This one shot was in a dialogue scene. And so I believe it actually helped the scene a bit.

Visual effect are fantastic. I mean come on. It was WETA. The same people who did *Avatar* and *Lord of the Rings* and stuff. So obviously it is fantastic. But it is a bit uncanny. And I'm not taking about [Rosa Salazar]()'s character here. Alita is a robot after all. So her looking a bit weird is kind of intentional. I'm talking about the fact that I am watching a Robert Rodriguez film and the VFX don't suck. What?

**Happy Hacking!!!**