Alita: Battle Angel is a 2019 American cyberpunk action film based on Japanese manga artist Yukito Kishiro’s 1990s series Battle Angel Alita and its 1993 original video animation adaptation, Battle Angel. It was directed by Robert Rodriguez, produced by James Cameron and written by Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis. Rosa Salazar stars through performance-capture animation as Alita, a cyborg who awakens in a new body with no memory of her past and sets out to uncover her destiny. Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley and Keean Johnson star in supporting roles.

In the year 2563, 300 years after Earth was devastated by a catastrophic war known as “The Fall”, scientist Dr. Dyson Ido discovers a disembodied female cyborg with an intact human brain while scavenging for parts in the massive scrapyard of Iron City. Ido attaches a new cyborg body to the brain and names her “Alita” after his late daughter. Alita wakes with no memory of her past and quickly befriends Hugo, a young man who dreams of moving to the wealthy sky city of Zalem. She also meets Dr. Chiren, Ido’s estranged ex-wife. Hugo later introduces Alita to Motorball, a Rollerball-like racing sport played by cyborg gladiators. Secretly, Hugo robs cyborgs of their parts for Vector, owner of the Motorball tournament and the ‘de facto’ ruler of the Factory, Iron City’s governing authority.

One night, Alita follows Ido. They are ambushed by a gang of cyborg serial killers led by Grewishka. Ido is injured and Alita instinctively fights using “Panzer-Kunst”, a lost combat art for machine bodies. She kills two of the cyborgs and damages Grewishka who retreats. Ido reveals that he is a Hunter-Warrior, a bounty hunter hired by the Factory. Grewishka goes to Dr. Chiren, who is working for Vector, for help. Despite Alita believing that fighting will help her rediscover her past, Ido discourages her from becoming a Hunter-Warrior. Alita finds a highly advanced cyborg body in a crashed spaceship outside the city. Recognizing that the body belonged to a Berserker —deadly shock troops of the enemy nation United Republic of Mars (URM) from the Fall, of which Alita was a member— Ido refuses to install Alita in it.

Frustrated, Alita registers herself as a Hunter-Warrior. At the Kansas Bar, she and Hugo are unable to recruit other Hunter-Warriors to help her take down Grewishka. Zapan, a cyborg Hunter-Warrior bully, provokes Alita and she severely beats him in a fight, triggering a chaotic bar brawl until Ido arrives to intervene. Suddenly, an upgraded Grewishka appears and challenges Alita to a duel, revealing that he has been sent by Zalem’s technocrat overlord, Nova, to destroy her. Despite her combat skills, Alita’s body is damaged by Grewishka, before Ido, Hugo, and Hunter-Warrior dogmaster McTeague arrive and force Grewishka to retreat. Ido apologizes and transplants Alita into the Berserker body.