Alita: Battle Angel just dropped a brand new trailer, and it’s provided the fullest look at the film yet. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten brand new footage, and this time around fans have noticed something different about the titular Alita.
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While Alita’s “anime eyes” were a point of contention when the first teaser dropped, fans have noticed a distinguishable makeover making Alita’s face far less uncanny.
I feel like I’ve gone full conspiracy theorist here, but here’s a screenshot of what appears to be the same shot from the Alita December teaser and today’s trailer
December on left, July on right pic.twitter.com/JNqI3D9vmS
— Rollin Bishop (@rollinbishop) July 23, 2018
Fans originally had mixed reactions to Alita‘s eyes in the first trailer. James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez confirmed back then that they decided to depict Alita’s eyes as “anime like” to further push her into uncanny territory, but with this facial overhaul Alita’s looking less uncanny.
In this tweet from ComicBook’s Rollin Bishop, fans can see the differences from the first teaser trailer released last December and the newest one. But what are those differences exactly?
Reaching out to other members of the ComicBook staff yielded different results. Bishop notes that Alita’s face seems “less squat; longer and less wide,” while ComicBook and PopCulture Editor-in-Chief Dallas Jackson notes that it’s more than just a rework of her eyes with the lightning on her face, and the background, completely changing from before.
Senior Writer and Anime Lead Megan Peters attended the premiere of the new trailer at San Diego-Comic Con and mentioned how fans in the audience generally agreed that these changes were for the better as Alita is now less in the uncanny valley.
Senior Writer Kofi Outlaw explains the shift away from the uncanny valley best by noting that the new Alita has “narrowed…eye sockets so that the pupils fill the whole space” and that means there is less “creepy white space under the eyes.” Calling it the “Doll Effect,” this could explain how Alita’s been made less to look like a doll since the debut trailer. But while fans have had mixed reactions to Alita: Battle Angel initially, its original creator Yukito Kishiro has remained optimistic about its future noting that a Hollywood adaptation is like a “dream come true” for him.
Alita: Battle Angel had been struck with production delays for several years before finally debuting its first trailer. Alita: Battle Angel will be directed by Robert Rodriguez, produced by James Cameron and Jon Landau, stars Rosa Salazar (as the titular Alita), Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, and will hit theaters December 21.
For those unfamiliar with Battle Angel Alita (GUNNM in Japan), the series was originally created by Yukito Kishiro. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic future and follows Alita, a cyborg who is found in a garbage heap by a doctor and rebuilt. Completely devoid of her memory, all she has to cling to is a legendary cyborg martial art known as Panzer Kunst. With this knowledge, Alita decides to become a bounty hunter. Originally published in Shueisha’s Weekly Business Jump in 1990, it was collected into nine volumes and licensed for an English language release by Viz Media.
