Upon first glance, Alita looks like any regular teenager just trying to play Motorball in the streets of Iron City. But take a closer look, and it’s hard to deny that Alita's eyes are maybe a little bit big for the average human face. That’s the first indication that Alita’s not your normal everyday teenager, and taking a closer look, yeah, Alita’s not even real at all. While she’s played by a real actress in Alita, motion capture has been fused with CGI to create a hyper-real performance, that seamlessly blends into the world. It looks incredibly real, and that’s the point. Alita: Battle Angel uses a lot of CGI , and not just for its titular star. Many characters in the movie are a mix of real and not real, whether it’s because they’ve got a robotic arm, a robotic body, or they’re entirely a robot themselves. Alita falls into this latter category, because even though Alita is played by Rosa Salazar , the actress never fully appears in the film. The cyborg hero is a creation all her own.