Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
An angel falls. A warrior rises.
When Alita awakens with no memory of who she is in a future world she does not recognize, she is taken in by Ido, a compassionate doctor who realizes that somewhere in this abandoned cyborg shell is the heart and soul of a young woman with an extraordinary past.
In Alita: Battle Angel, consciousness is carried by machines — a plane of “cyberpunk scrapyard”. The story fights on E8/E9/E10 of the E0–E14 reality ladder, compressing prejudice, class, identity, technology, power.
Same rung, same subject
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
Same subject, different rung
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)E7/E12 · rare rung · power, technology
Ultraviolet (2006)E4/E11 · rare rung · power, prejudice
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)E11/E14 · rare rung · class, power
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021)E6/E11 · rare rung · power, technology
Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds (2010)E6/E11 · rare rung · identity, power
King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962)E6/E12 · rare rung · power, technologyAlso hides consciousness here
Other films that move a human interior onto the same kind of thing.
Appleseed (2004)consciousness in machines · technocratic city-state
Wreck-It Ralph (2012)consciousness in machines · arcade‑verse
Blade Runner (1982)consciousness in machines · future corporate dystopia
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)consciousness in machines · replicant dystopia
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)consciousness in machines · android longing
Space Sweepers (2021)consciousness in machines · space junk economySame subject, different mask
The same preoccupations carried by a different kind of thing — grief told through the dead, an animal, a machine.
Shrek 2 (2004)consciousness in animals · class, identity
The Boxtrolls (2014)consciousness in monsters · class, identity
The Prince and the Pauper (1990)consciousness in animals · class, identity
The Legend of Hei (2019)consciousness in monsters · identity, power
Captain Marvel (2019)consciousness in aliens · identity, power
Aladdin (1992)consciousness carried elsewhere · class, identity
