Having seen more trailers for this film than I’d have liked to, I went in expecting big things out of James Cameron’s latest pet project. Alita: Battle Angel triumphantly delivers both in spectacle and soul, striking a masterful balance between the more tame character development story beats, and the explosive, dynamic combat sequences. As an adaptation, Alita: Battle Angel diverges from the manga in several non-critical story details, but manages to stay surprisingly faithful to the spirit and feel of the source material. The setting, a post-apocalyptic scrapyard city set below an inaccessible, suspended metropolis, is rendered in beautiful cyberpunk aesthetic detail that warrants an IMAX viewing. Nods to the manga are plentiful and will be caught by the well-initiated, but this will not at all serve as a prerequisite or a barrier to your enjoyment or understanding of the film. Overall, Alita succeeds as a film, and after my near-empty opening day screening, I can only hope that it succeeds well enough financially in the hopes of us getting more.