When I was in high school, I tried to write my own fantasy
series. It was a cliched, incoherent hodgepodge of every piece of media that I
was consuming at the time, and aside from a sketchbook full of character drawings,
world maps and a list of made up fantasy names, all evidence of that little
embarrassing chapter of my life have thankfully been lost to the sands of time. A big reason it was so bad was because I spent so much time on worldbuilding
and fine-tuning superfluous details that I neglected to develop any of the
important things like plot or characters. So, I did what every junior hack
does: rip pages from the Joseph Campbell playbook until I just ended up with a
reskinned Star Wars. I bring this up
because Mortal Engines feels like the
end result of what my story would’ve looked like if it somehow got made into a
movie.
After a cataclysmic event called the 60-Minute War turned the
world into an environmentally devastated wasteland, the remnants of humanity
gather in these large “traction cities” that roam the land on wheels. The most
feared of them all is London, a gigantic mechanical behemoth that bulldozes
everything in its path and sustains itself by consuming smaller cities. A scar-faced young woman named Hester
Shaw (Hera Hilmar) infiltrates the
city, tries to murder its leader, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving). When a young historian named Tom Natsworthy (Robert
Sheehan) witnesses the assassination attempt, he tries to catch her but she makes
her escape down an exhaust chute. Valentine finds out that Tom overheard that
he murdered Hester’s mother, so he pushes Tom down the chute as well. Now Tom
and Hester must work together to survive in the wasteland, discover the truth
behind Valentine’s plans for London, join a resistance group and are you seeing
a pattern here?
Okay, so maybe comparing Mortal
Engines to the glorified fanfic I wrote when I was a teenager is a bit harsh.
For one, this is already based on the first in a popular YA novel series by
Phillip Reeve. I haven’t read the books myself, but this has all the hallmarks
of a sprawling narrative that was so condensed that crucial details got lost in
adaptation. Incidentally, the team behind this is also the team behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy, including
Peter Jackson as producer. His directing chops are something that a film of
this scale could’ve greatly benefitted from. Instead, the reins have been
handed to special effects artist Christian Rivers, and it really shows. The
movie’s greatest strength is its sense of scale. There’s not much explanation
given as to why humanity decided that moving cities was the solution to
surviving in the wasteland, but they take this bonkers premise and roll with
it. In fact, the first thirty minutes show a ton of promise with a chase scene
where London runs down a smaller settlement that transforms and breaks off into
smaller segments, or a tour through a museum full of salvaged tech like
toasters and iPhones are treated like priceless artifacts.
But then the plot starts moving and the characters open
their mouths.
While the filmmakers were so preoccupied with the spectacle,
the story feels sorely neglected. The plot is cookie cutter to the point that
the final climax is essentially a mashup of both the original Star Wars AND The Empire Strikes Back, the characters are one-dimensional
cardboard cutouts with nothing but clichés for dialogue, our two leads even go
through the old “I act like I hate you but I actually really care about you”
dance we’ve seen a million times before. Occasionally it will flirt with some
cool ideas, but never does much with them. Halfway through Tom and Hester are
rescued from slavers by the roguish sky pirate Anna Fang (Jihae), who has a
cool design and aircraft, but not much else. Something that’s given way more
attention is the weird relationship between Hester and the undead cyborg (Stephen
Lang) who raised her (just go with it) that feels like it was transplanted from
a completely different movie, and probably felt more naturally implemented in
the book but here feels crowbarred in. I’ve never jived with the whole idea
that adaptations have to be 100% loyal to the source material (in fact, one
of the first things I wrote for this blog was all about why that’s bullshit),
but I’m glad I didn’t because seeing something with this much promise ran
through the gristle mill probably would’ve had me infuriated if it didn’t bore
me to death first.
Bottom line, Mortal
Engines is a lumbering, rusty pile of wasted potential. I wanted to like this
movie, I really did. It could've been good, great even, had this been workshopped a bit more, given more time to
flesh itself out, or bit the bullet and be adapted as a TV show instead, but as
it is, it’s a swing and a miss. It clearly takes inspiration from the likes of
early Miyazaki (Nausicaä of the Valley of
the Wind and Castle in the Sky especially)
and Mad Max: Fury Road, but instead
falls into the camp of overly ambitious crap like Jupiter Ascending and
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, but with none of the camp. Somehow, they made a steampunk epic with moving cities, sky pirates and undead Terminators
boring. How the hell does that happen?
5/10
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