By Ben Travis, Nick De Semlyen | Posted 27 Nov 2018

From the jungles of Pandora to the dystopian post-Judgment Day future of the Terminator movies, James Cameron is a master world builder. And in the upcoming Alita: Battle Angel, produced by Cameron and directed by Robert Rodriguez, we’re getting a whole new vision of the future to explore – a post-post-apocalypse in the aftermath of a technological fall, where mechanical upgrades are the norm and the entire shape of civilisation has changed. And into that world comes Alita herself – a disembodied ‘core’, awakened and given a new body by Christoph Waltz’s Dr. Ido, who’s destined to find out that she’s someone pretty special.

But the titular character is far from the only cyborg on the block – along the way she’ll be facing off against a bunch of hard-wired adversaries. We’ve got two exclusive new images, as seen in the upcoming January 2019 issue of Empire, showing off two of those formidable foes. First up is Ed Skrein as Zapan – James Cameron’s personal favourite piece of design in the film.

And then there’s the hulking Grewishka, turning Jackie Earle Haley into a nine-foot-tall killing machine. “He’s got brute strength, but he’s also empowered by these cyber-doctors,” Haley tells Empire. “One of his skills is that he’s got these talon-like fingers that can shoot across the room, pierce just about anything and snap back just as fast.”

Read plenty more about Alita: Battle Angel in the cover feature of this month’s Empire, hitting shelves on Thursday 29 November. Also inside the issue, we kick off Empire 30 – our 30th anniversary celebrations – with an exclusive personal essay from James Cameron, and a reader Q&A with the man himself.

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