Even though it came out last year, there’s been some recent buzz around Alita: Battle Angel thanks to it being back in theaters for a limited run.

Alita is one of those movies you wish had done better at the box office if only to guarantee the sequel the story deserves (which I wrote about in October). Unfortunately, as is often the case with James Cameron’s projects, it proved to be a bit too ahead of its time. It was also an issue of bad timing, with most people waiting for Captain Marvel to hit theaters just three weeks after Alita to get their fix of superpowered women fighting bad guys.

You have to give credit to Cameron and director Robert Rodriguez for the scope of their ambition, though. Alita’s oversized eyes and anime-like visage may have creeped a good number of moviegoers out, but the technology behind them was groundbreaking. Lucky for us, famed VFX workshop Weta Digital decided to release a number of behind-the-scenes videos showing how they tackled creating Alita and her world.

First off, we’ve gotta talk about Alita’s face. At the time, Weta had to do a complete redesign of its motion capture technology in order to capture the tiny nuances and muscle twitches in actress Rosa Salazar’s performance. Once they did, here’s how they translated it into making Alita seem as human as possible.

But it wasn’t just important to get her face right. Alita isn’t a china doll set up on a shelf, but a living, breathing A.I. construct with emotions and free will. That meant she had to react to and interact with other live-action characters and the world around her. This is how they did it:

Speaking of that world, it was as important that the look of Iron City be as distinct and tangible as Alita herself. Various locations in the city became part of the story itself, setting the tone, mood, and pace of the story. Weta constructed a giant, two-story set on a Texas backlot and went from there.

But your mocap and CGI and set design are only as good as your cinematography. Without the proper approach to camerawork, fight scenes would have looked flat, rather than popping like they do in the original manga. Without dynamic lighting, Alita wouldn’t have fit into the surroundings as seamlessly as she did, looking like a CG construct instead of a real person.

Moviemaking technology is amazing, isn’t it? It’s always fascinating to see how creative and brilliant people get when solving on-set and post-production challenges.

Maybe one day, we’ll get that Alita sequel. But for now, you can catch it in theaters one more time.

Get Alita: Battle Angel tickets.