Help Us Give An Amputee A Hand

A sscreenshot from Open Bionics’s website

Disclaimer: “The Alita Army” is not officially affiliated with either Open Bionics, Tilly Lockey, or the makers of Alita: Battle Angel.

Some background: As fans of Alita: Battle Angel, we started a campaign to show how passionate we are as a fan base and to give the film studios faith that an Alita sequel will be successful. We wanted to fly a banner with “#AlitaSequel #AlitaArmy” over the red carpet at the Academy Awards. The quote we had for the banner to fly was $1,810. Our deadline to pay that was Wednesday, January 29, 2020. We’ve funded that thanks to your generous donations. Every donation that we now receive will go to charity. The fundraiser will remain open until February 19, 2020.

Where the donations are going: With the banner flight paid for, every donation from this point on is going towards giving someone a bionic arm through Open Bionics. Open Bionics develops affordable prosthetic limbs for amputees.  Their mission is “to make beautiful bionic limbs more accessible.” They will receive the donations, and even if we don’t raise enough money to cover the whole cost of an arm, we can substantially decrease the cost of one for someone.

TARGET: According to the Open Bionics Twitter account manager: “The entire process includes paying a clinical team, this is the only way to fit a hand, so at the moment the entire process including clinical costs totals £10,000.” With this information, we have set the final target to $15,000: That’s $13,000 for the entire process of providing a complete Hero Arm, the $1,810 we already paid, and a small addition to cover payment processing fees. (GoFundMe charges no platform fees, but WePay, PayPal, and the other payment processors charge 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction)

Why we chose Open Bionics: When thinking of a good cause to work for, we remembered the partnership that the Alita: Battle Angel movie design team had made with Open Bionics. Together, they designed an affordable Alita: Battle Angel themed cover for prosthetic arms. One of these designs were modeled by Tilly Lockey at the premier of the Alita film where she met lead actress Rosa Salazar, whom she took many photos with.

This was our first exposure to both Tilly Lockey and Open Bionics. Her story warmed our hearts and we became fans of not just Alita, but also of Tilly who in an inspirational way we see as a real “battle angel”.

See Tilly Lockey’s story in the following video:

Alita: Battle Angel | Tilly’s Miracle – Open Bionics | 20th Century FOX

We would love to help other young people like Tilly be able to receive cool prosthetic arms. So we have decided to give all funds beyond what we need to fly the banner to Open Bionics so that they can bring some much needed assistance and joy to the world.

Thank you very much for your support!

Tilly Lockey is a double amputee and an ambassador for Open Bionics

UPDATE (APRIL 28, 2022): The Alita Army gifts a young boy a bionic arm

Alita: Battle Angel Snubbed By The 92nd Oscars

It seems inconceivable that a film that pushed techniques for creating CG characters in a live-action setting to the next level would be overlooked by the Oscars in favor of films using the same old de-aging effects and CG characters that don’t get nearly as much screen time as Alita. But alas, here we are.

Visit The Washington Post’s article below:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/01/13/oscar-nominations-2020/%3foutputType=amp

Banner Campaign – Open Bionics Charity Update

by Max D, Team Member

Continued thanks for all your support! We’re closing in on $6,000 now and everything beyond the flight and banner goes to Open Bionics to give bionic limbs to amputees.

Please continue to share the campaign. By the time all costs are considered a bionic limb costs £10,000 per limb (US$13,000) so we can still use every dollar donated! We can substantially offset or perhaps cover even the entire cost of a Hero Arm depending on how much we raise.

Visit the following link for more information on the campaign and how to donate:

Media Coverage of the #AlitaSequel Banner Campaign Begins

CinemaBlend, SausageRoll, and Bounding Into Comics are just the first of – hopefully – many media sites to give the “#AlitaSequel Banner over the Oscars” campaign some publicity. Even if the worst-case-scenario happens (bad weather grounds the plane towing the banner), we are still raising money for a good cause, so it won’t be a total loss. Here is some of what CinemaBlend had to say:

“While there’s a pretty vocal fanbase dedicated to getting Warner Bros to #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, another fan base has been keeping pace with the devotion of that Justice League focused group of concerned citizens: The Alita Army.

Those inspired fans of director Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel have just started raising funds to take a page out of the DC Comics’ loyalists, and fly a banner over this year’s Oscars ceremony to inspire the folks at Disney to make a sequel. Not only have their efforts met their original metrics of success, but they’ve been pursuing another goal of more philanthropic means.”

For more information on the campaign and on how to donate, follow the link below:

#AlitaSequel Banner Campaign Update

by Max D, #AlitaSequel Banner Campaign Team Member

A lot has happened in the last 20 hours!

We launched yesterday around 7PM EST. About three hours later (around 10:00PM EST) we had already raised $2,366 blowing past our goal to fund a banner to fly #AlitaSequel #AlitaArmy over the Oscars, and well into our stretch goal of assisting amputees get Hero Arms from Open Bionics.

Just shy of 12 hours after we went public, we hit our stretch goal of $4000! (and still climbing—all funds beyond the plane and banner go to Open Bionics so the more we raise, the more we can help!)

We are stunned with gratitude and thanks for your support and will be providing additional updates on the progress of the banner and more about Open Bionics.

Rotten Tomatoes predicts Alita: Battle Angel will get an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects

Rotten Tomatoes Editorial: “For our selections… we leant into the most groundbreaking technical achievements for visual effects in 2019… with Alita: Battle Angel serving as our choice for a surprise nomination.” https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/rotten-tomatoes-predicts-the-2020-oscar-nominations/

Rotten Tomatoes hasn’t been keen on acknowledging Alita: Battle Angel all year, much less admitting that it’s a good movie. Perhaps we should take this as another sign that the tide truly is turning in Alita’s favor.

#AlitaSequel Banner Over the 92nd Oscars / Charity Drive

Please read carefully: To show how passionate the Alita: Battle Angel fan base is and to give the film studios faith that an Alita sequel will be successful, we want to fly a banner with “#AlitaSequel #AlitaArmy” over the red carpet at the Academy Awards for three hours. The quote we have for the banner to fly is $1,810. Our deadline is Wednesday, January 29, 2020.

But we don’t want to stop there. We also want to raise money that will benefit amputees. Our stretch goal is $4,000.  Money funded over $1,810 will be donated to Open Bionics.  If we fail to meet our first financial goal of $1,810, all of the donations that we received will be given to Open Bionics. Open Bionics develops affordable prosthetic limbs for amputees.  Their mission is “to make beautiful bionic limbs more accessible.”

Why we chose Open Bionics: When thinking of a good cause to work for, we remembered the partnership that the Alita: Battle Angel movie design team had made with Open Bionics. Together, they designed an affordable Alita: Battle Angel themed cover for prosthetic arms. One of these designs were modeled by Tilly Lockey at the premier of the Alita film where she met lead actress Rosa Salazar, whom she took many photos with.

This was our first exposure to both Tilly Lockey and Open Bionics. Her story warmed our hearts and we became fans of not just Alita, but also of Tilly who in an inspirational way we see as a real “battle angel”.

See Tilly Lockey’s story in the following video:

Alita: Battle Angel | Tilly’s Miracle – Open Bionics | 20th Century FOX

We would love to help other young people like Tilly be able to receive cool prosthetic arms. So we have decided to give all funds beyond what we need to fly the banner to Open Bionics so that they can bring some much needed assistance and joy to the world.


Update: The plane on it’s way to the Oscars and Disney HQ: