That’s how Alita Battle Angel ends – a falling tear is sliced in half by a blade stroke so swift and precise that it bisects the falling drop. It’s a master stroke of storytelling and cinema, to be sure.
Susan and I have enjoyed this Robert Rodriquez movie multiple times since it first debuted in 2019 during the COVID Apocalypse. I wanted to watch it a month ago or so, but I could not find it on any of our streaming services. The fact that I say streaming services pretty much tells you that we have been living the lives of shut-ins for several years. Susan took pity on my miserable existence, and she bought me the Blu-ray version of the movie. I didn’t get around to viewing it until last night when I discovered, to my chagrin, that my living room Blu-ray player could not read the disc. Shit!
I experimented a bit and soon discovered that the player could no longer play any Blu-ray disc. I suspect that the blue laser assembly in that player had died. I searched for solutions and soon decided that I simply had to replace the player. Now, that player is probably five years old, and that’s a long time for consumer electronics. Still, it is much shorter than the life cycle of products that my parents purchased back in the 30s and 40s when a range or a fridge was expected to last twenty or more years. Today’s consumer electronics change by the year if not more often. Video formats change like ladies’ dress hemlines – DVD, Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray, and HD-Blu-ray in rapid-fire succession. I’m not making this shit up.
The Alita that Susan bought me included the Blu-ray version, the 4K video HD Blu-ray version and the 3D version. I have an LG 4K TV, and I decided to replace my now dead Sony Blu-ray player with its more recent 4K Blu-ray sibling. To tell the truth, the fancier new device was actually less expensive than the original DVD/Blu-ray player with 4K upscaling.
I installed it when I got home from Best Buy. It was a trivial install although setting up all the TV parameters was a pain in butt. Tonight, I played the HD Blu-ray version of Alita Battle Angel. The color saturation of the video image was superb. I especially appreciated the vivid colors in a falling tear, invested with love and rage, as it was sliced in half.
It was a worthwhile upgrade.