Note: Contains spoilers for Alita: Battle Angel

Lurking in the background of Alita: Battle Angel's warring cyborgs and Motorball battles is the mysterious Nova, a shady being pulling strings from his home in the floating city Zalem.

We catch a few glimpses of the bespectacled, white-haired man throughout the film, but he only speaks through the people of Iron City who he occasionally possesses.

In the final scenes of the film, he removes his goggles to reveal that he is played by…

20th Century Fox

…Fight Club legend Edward Norton!

To be honest, we thought that he was a dead ringer for the movie's writer-producer James Cameron, and we weren't the only ones.

"They have a very similar nose," director Robert Rodriguez told Digital Spy. "But also because of the white hair. Because without the white hair, Ed Norton looks like Ed Norton.

"I tried to find somebody who had a real intelligence to them. We went through a list of people that we could find who were worth bothering to do this, because there's no dialogue or anything. It's really for the setup of, if there was a sequel. We want to put someone here who we would want in a sequel. So it's kind of tough casting to do.

Paul Bruinooge Getty Images

"We both knew Ed. Neither of us had worked with Ed. But Ed's really smart. Like Jim, he's very, very smart. I've known him for a number of years.

"I always thought of him as being similar – not looking so much like Jim, but similar. I can see why they were friends. I can just see them geeking out. So when you put the white hair on, it was like, 'Yeah, he kind of looks like Jim. I think that looks good.' That was pretty funny."

Michael Tran Getty Images

Cameron himself was having none of it.

"They didn't capture my hair at all," he told us. "It doesn't bouffant out quite that way."

Alita: Battle Angel is out now.

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