This was better than Captain Marvel yet it was bashed by critics

It portrayed a woman as having emotions and being at times vulnerable, and also she was attracted to a male. Terribly sexist. Worst of all, none of the male characters were portrayed as being incompetent bumbling idiots. How can you make a female character look good without making all of the male characters idiots?? Disgraceful.

I think it's a complex formula that determines how audiences and critics react to a film. I maintain that we barely remember (culturally, generally-speaking) Timothy Dalton as James Bond is because he was about two decades off to having a "gritty Bond" be revered (Daniel Craig).

These days, perception of wokeness determines some of these reactions and Captain Marvel was a very "progressive" film, and from the way it was marketed to the way it was spoken of, pre-release, it was couched firmly in that camp. This was a movie for people who wanted to wave a Feminist flag. Alita didn't do that.

Now, this doesn't automatically translate into audience hate or critic love, but Captain Marvel probably got some critic love for that. Alita didn't wave that flag, so it didn't have that force field. Of course, we could just as easily say that Marvel or Disney had the critics in their grip. Or, just as likely, the critics had a lot of fun going to see the latest Marvel movie, and like a large chunk of the population, they were keyed-up and excited for the next spoonful. They were, thus, in a good mood and prepared to like a paint-by-numbers action movie. When viewing Alita, they were going, "What is this? Anime? What?" and with no pre-generation of goodwill and fun, they weren't about to let a paint-by-numbers action/sci-fi movie off the hook.

In short: I'm not sure it's as simple as, "Critics say, 'woke good'."

I enjoyed it.

And I don't like most of the "superhero" crap, especially now that it's loaded with woke messaging / preaching.

I agree this was better than CM but come on, anime is generally a niche market in America (let alone a live action movie) while CM was part of a long running franchise so it had the built-in advantage. Do people really forget how popular the MCU was before COVID?