Alita: Battle Angel – Preliminary social commentary. And that BDD-thing.

Upcoming:
Alita dysmorphia?

I don't love it.

First of all – these subject-changing imagefilters used on Instagram, Snapchat and probably many other apps: I don't love it – maybe it's the graphic designer in me screaming word-art, but I'm not loving it. They look silly – when did a girl become cuter by adding dog-ears and a snout? Apparently recently. But apart from the obviously "just for fun" filters like animal ears, sparkly stars, odd spectacles and floating graphics, the filters can make your eyes bigger, skin smoother, teeth whiter and all the other beauty-enhancing corrections one might, traditionally, make in apps like Photoshop.

First comes 'filter-filia'. Next comes the mental disorders. Apparently this became a problem for some people, recently. Now that people can change their appearance on their social media profiles, they wanna look the same way in real life. But it's not just what make-up and work-outs can achieve – apparently the trains runs of the rails once you wan't to surgically alter your physical appearance to resemble the image-filters. Some call this Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Here's a reference, if you want to know exactly what that is. But Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a much broader term – Dr Tijion Esho came up with the great label "Snapchat Dysmorphia" – which describes the disorder of seeking drastic means to look like ones selfie-filters. You can read more about Snapchat Disorder and read a few comments from Dr Tijion Esho in this article by The Independent.

I mentioned a movie title?

Alita: Battle Angel is coming out early 2019, and it has nothing to do with the above mentioned mental disorders. Except that the main CGI-character is the embodiment of Snapchat Dysmorphia come to life on the big screen.

First of all – it looks hella cool – as evident from the trailer. And I'm really looking forward to seeing it. Have a look at Alita: Battle Angel on imdb. Robert Rodriguez (Sin City, El Mariachi (90s kids will remember that one)) and James Cameron (Avatar, Terminator, Titanic) joining forces with a few other writers and a great looking cast. Anything Christoph Waltz is starring in is worth watching, in my opinion – if for nothing else his soul-soothing speech. I don't know if it's just an accent or he has a speech impediment of some kind, but I love it.

Good or bad for the snapchat dysmorphic generation?

It'll be interesting to see if movies like this, where CGI and human actors interact so seamlessly, will have any impact on the generel beauty-ideals. Back when CGI-characters started popping up in real movies, they looked enough fake to have a distinct CGI-feel (Except for Space Jam of course) – but now that the technology is at a level where the CGI only look fake because they're deliberately trying to make it look different from the human actors, some viewers may be getting confused about how people should look when they face the mirror (just as, apparently, filter-images on SoMe are doing).

I, being the eternally optimalistic optimist I am, hope they see this movie, and movies like it, and get a feeling of:

"Damn, that CGI-character looks really out of place..."

Instead of:

"Damn, those actors have really weird, small eyes..."

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Or we could just forget about it and go see a hopefully great movie on february 14. I know I'll just go and watch it for the Cristoph Waltz of it all...