ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL Trailer: Robert Rodriguez Braves the Uncanny Valley for James Cameron

Like some kind of fever dream from my teenaged years, visionary filmmakers James Cameron (Aliens, Avatar) and Robert Rodriguez (Sin City) have joined forces like Voltron to create a groundbreaking new science fiction vision in Alita: Battle Angel.

Like Cameron's own Avatar, movie geeks have been hearing about his intention to adapt Alita for many years until it was revealed that Rodriguez would take the reign under his eye as producer. The results, as we can see, are a film that promises to be as emotional as it is stunning to look at. It also appears that Rodriquez has opted for a mo-cap heroine in order to manage her high-flying feats rather than a mixed FX approach like Garland had success with in Ex Machina, the results of which seem to put us squarely in the uncanny valley.

Based on the wildly popular "Battle Angel Alita" manga by Yukito Kishiro, the film adaptation is set several centuries in the future where the abandoned Alita (Rosa Salazar) is found in the scrapyard of Iron City by Ido (Christoph Waltz), a compassionate cyber-doctor who takes the unconscious cyborg Alita to his clinic. When Alita awakens she has no memory of who she is, nor does she have any recognition of the world she finds herself in. Everything is new to Alita, every experience a first. When Alita discovers she has extraordinary fighting abilities that could be used to save the friends and family she's grown to love she becomes deterimed to uncover the truth behind her origin and sets out on a journey that will lead her to take on the injustices of this dark, corrupt world.

Alita: Battle Angel hits cinemas July 20, 2018.