*Originally written December 10th, 2018*
For better or worse, Mortal Engines is both better than I expected and exactly what I expected it to be. If that makes sense? It's just another overblown, over-budget entry in the quickly dying young-adult genre that is clearly made to start a franchise, but it's just not gonna happen. I guess what's most disappointing is that this is from Peter Jackson to an extent, a man who has crafted one of the best and most creative trilogies of all-time and is now seem to hit a point of CGI heavy and soulless blockbusters. Which is a great shame.
This certainly had its potential. I'd never read the books, but the idea of a post-apocalyptic steampunk world where giant cities devour each other in a wasteland has certain shades of Mad Max to it, so I was interested. Sadly, it rarely lives up to its original premise, the world-building and ins and outs of this concept are rarely explored in favour of a bland "Chosen one" YA story that we've seen countless times. There was so much potential to explore here and they just wasted it.
That's not to say the film doesn't look great, they definitely made the most of that risky $100 million budget. The world is impressive, ugly and some of the action has its moments, but it really lacking in any sort of creative punch. I did love the look of the movies cities, especially the giant main one, There's nothing visually horrible by any means, it all just feels competent, but completely flavourless.
What really didn't help is how dull and uninteresting the characters are. Hera Hilmar isn't an actress I'd ever heard of before this, but it's hard to tell if she's a good actress when the character she's playing is this boring. She's just another Chosen One in a dystopian future as she tries to avenge the murder of her mother. The closest thing to interesting was the relationship between her and Stephen Lang's Shrike, an undead soldier who takes in Hilmar and raises her after the death of her mother.
I must say I was actually surprised by how freaky and unsettling that look of Shrike was, the design clearly has shades of the White Walkers from Game of Thrones, but with a clockwork, steampunk aesthetic that reminded of the Dishonoured series. In fact, quite a lot here reminded me of Dishonoured, given this is also a steampunk portrayal of London.
I also don't know what Hugo Weaving was doing here. He's doing a villain we've seen countless of times before, a power-hungry bad guy with connections to the lead character (With a mind blowingly obvious twist). I was reminded far too much of Christoph Waltz and Ben Mendelsohn's recent villain performances that are just extremely by the numbers and forgettable.
There's also just really weird humour shoved in here. Somehow they manage to shove in a visual gag to Minions (I shit you not), it was just pretty brutal and unfunny. The only genuine laughs I got out of this were at some of the insanely poor and on the nose dialogue that comes out the script. It did this annoying thing where the characters spell something out for you and you understand what they're talking about or feeling, then they felt the need to just blatantly say it rather than let the actors portray it, it got a little frustrating.
Then I laughed out loud at some of the character deaths towards the end where they do that thing that I just love. You know when a character they have barely given us enough to work with to care about them, but then to proceed to kill them off like it's a huge deal and we should care? Brace yourself for that....
Mortal Engines is another failed YA adaptation that will fail to kick-start a franchise and will most likely just go down in history as one of the biggest box-office bombs of recent years. It's a shame too, as there is a really interesting world here of giant cities eating each other, but it's just so wasted with a bland story we've seen countless times before.
5/10 Dans
Mortal Engines is out now in cinemas in the UK
Watch the trailer below:
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Letterboxd: Dan
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