Frankly, I think we should let her.
Speaking recently at the TCA, Rosa Salazar addressed her role as Alita in Alita: Battle Angel and her penchant for playing hybrid animated/live-action characters. As reported by Comic Book Resources, she said of her role as Alita, “I would play Alita ‘til my last breath, I would, and thanks to the performance capture technology, I probably could.”
As for her getting her wish, though, it’s complicated. “Yeah, I mean, they had a crazy merger,” she said. “People are gaining jobs, people are losing jobs. The whole Disney/Fox acquisition is so involved, this isn’t the right time to call Alan Horn and be like, ‘Hey, bro, I know you got a lotta stuff going on, but like what about Alita 2?’”
Alita: Battle Angel was a controversial movie, and didn’t review fantastically, but it’s garnered a cult following and a lot of people I know were big fans of it. And Salazar’s performance, no matter what you think of the CGI eyes, was incredible. Salazar has a real talent for playing characters like this, that straddle the line between physical performance and digital effect.
https://gizmodo.com/watch-weta-transform-rosa-salazar-into-alita-battle-an-1832260368
“What I’m really excited about right now, in my own career, is this sort of new thing I’ve tapped into where I get to fully lose myself in a character because I’m animated,” she said, about her role as Alita but also her upcoming work in the rotoscoped show Undone. “These characters, Alita and Alma [from Undone] are almost their own people because they are in their own dimension. So I get to completely transform not with prosthetics, not necessarily with makeup or hair, but through this other animation project.”
Alita: Battle Angel was a strange but compelling adaptation of a great manga, and I’m glad to know that at least one other person is with me in hoping for a sequel.
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