Their differences are real, but whats less obvious are all that the duo have in common.
I was like: Battle Angel, whats that?
Then Id forgotten about it until I happened to be visiting him.
Credit: Rico Torres/20th Century Fox
I hadnt seen him for a number of years.
Id known him since beforeDesperado.
I was actually leaving I was in the parking lot.
Hes like, Got 15 more minutes?
Im like, Oh s, hes going to show me something!
So it wasntinsanelylong, just too long.Yeah.
[Laughs] So I was like, Send me the notes!
I was like, Dude, what do I have to do to work on this thing?
Thats how [movies in] development a lot times keep going downward.
I looked at his script and realized it doesnt need to be rewritten, its so clean.
He describes [the film] so well it felt like it was already shot.
I really liked it.
I sent it to him and he was like, I cant tell what you cut out.
And that was the goal, to keep the parts that I knew were important to him.
So we took it to Fox.
And youre both also used to having control over everything, too.
So how does that come together?Thats funny.
Its a good point.
Ill tell you what the distinction is.
I met him early on.
I was very inspired byThe Terminator.
You use tricks to make up the difference.
He just kept evolving beyond that.
Id just be happy makingTerminatorsthe rest of my life.
No, no, no, Im still remakingTerminator, youre in the stratosphere.
When I first met him I was going to doDesperadoand I was trying to impress him.
And he said, I bought a Steadicam.
But not to operate it.
Were just mortal men, but he thinks on another plane.
When I was editingDesperado,I was the only editor on the Sony lot that using a computer.
It was so new back then, computer editing, everybody was afraid of it.
I hear you have an AVID in your living room!
And I said, Yeah, Im cuttingDesperado,Dusk Till DawnandFour Roomsall at the same time.
Hes like, Im tired of working with editors.
They didnt want to put Bad to the Bone inTerminator 2when I asked them.
I had to go sneak in at night and do it myself.
They never listen to me.
Im, Oh you should do the editing yourself, you know how to edit.
He said, Im going to do that.
Your distinctions sound pretty correct but I think thats just because he evolved into that.
Were more alike than people realize and we tried to work together several times before.
On [Alita], I knew I would learn so much from his analytic approach to things.
Im like all instinct.
Things take him longer because hes very systematic.
I need some of that discipline and he needs some of the juice of just going and doing it.
The whole story was there.
It felt like the characters could be from all over.
All the actors are from different places.
Its like the last city of civilization.
Like many anime titles, they go on for many epodes.
You cant just go, Lets make one movie and figure out the rest later.
And its different from whats laid out in the books.
So how he crafted this story was pretty amazing.
He told a real story with characters that would work on film that gave you something to latch onto.
Was there anything you were wary about doing this project?I just didnt want to screw it up.
Because I knew he would nail it.
Its the same as when I worked with Quentin [Tarantino] onFrom Dusk Till Dawn.
Because the source material is great.
This had great source material.
I knew he could pull it off.
How do I do it in his stead?
That was always part of Jims script and his artwork.
Youve never seen a photo-real version of that iconic visual image of anime.
That was first and foremost in his mind that we wanted to try as a pre-cursor toAvatar.
But thenAvatars script was ready first and he made that and broke a lot of ground.
Here we get to feed off what he learned fromAvatar.
You literally wrotethe bookon doing big filmmaking on a small budget.
Whats it like going to a $200 million budget?Well, its much less than that.
Jim said, If I did the movie, it would be 300 million!
I said, Well make it for a fraction of that but it will look like that.
We want it to look like a Jim Cameron movie.
We still shoot very efficiently, we still shoot fast.
What it affords you is the level of the effects we have is much higher.
Every shot is an effects shot.
If I did this movie for myself as a lower-budget movie Id have to approach it completely differently.
Im using my tricks to keep it at full-Cameron level but to try and keep it contained.
And you also had to convince Fox to let you do the film here in Austin.Yeah.
Some people dont know what all we have here.
The efficiencies we have here will make up for it.
This is the biggest movie ever done in Texas, for sure.
So it was a well-trained crew who have earned the right to make this movie.
Hes not just a producer on this, he acts like the producer that he would want.
Hes very open to your ideas.
As a fan, this is a movie I want to see from him.
Im trying to think like you!
I like slipping into someones shoes and seeing how they see the world.
Its been a great collaboration.
I love working with people who are so good theres nothing to rub up against.
Alita: Battle Angel opens wide today.
