Mortal Engines (2018)

December is often the month to look out for one of Peter Jackson's fantasy spectacles since he and his writing partners Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh revived the genre 17 years ago with The Fellowship of the Ring. He has since treated us to two superior sequels, a pretty solid King Kong remake, and an underestimated Hobbit trilogy. A year ago we already saw teaser trailers for Mortal Engines, which did what teasers should do: they make us hungry. And of course, it had Jackson's name proudly displayed all over it. But don't let that fool you, because he didn't direct this one.

That is no problem in itself, because Jackson on the producer's seat gave us the masterful District 9 (another underrated gem worth watching) and The Adventures of Tintin (technically a Spielberg movie, but still). However, in this case, his script contribution and Christian Rivers on the director's chair are by far the biggest problems of the movie.

A world where huge cities are turned into moving vehicles sounds like something that could be very cinematic, and indeed, it looks great on screen. Especially the parts where a huge predator city swallows and recycles a smaller one is exactly the kind of imagery that the makers must have envisioned. There are more beautiful locations in the film, like a city in the air, some good ideas and action scenes, and the film sells these things well enough for me not to question the logic of it. But this is as far as good worldbuilding goes, because the (back)story and characters are used in a most uninspired fashion.

A good director knows how to balance exposition with advancing the narrative, but Rivers clearly lacks such talent. The first 15 minutes are a barrage of expository conversations with clearly no other purpose than bringing the audience up to speed. Afterwards, the characters remain nothing more than one-dimensional archetypes throughout the movie (the silent heroin, the young hero with an unfulfilled talent, the hammy villain with world-domination ideas, the brown-nosing creep), and some even disappear from the film without any narrative consequence, which says something about the quality of the script (more about that later).

A cast full of fresh faces is usually a good thing compared to miscast band of A-listers, but most of the bit players get too little screentime or act too badly to make a good impression. A band of racially diverse heroes is introduced very late in the story, which is a mistake because the movie doesn't emotionally invest in them, so we couldn't care less about their fate. Not that the actor's direction is of any help, by the way. Hera Hilmar is downright boring and unbelievable as the tough protagonist, and Hugo Weaving does a uninspired bad guy act that fails to generate any sympathy. Robert Sheehan as Tom seems to be the only one having some fun with his role.

There is not much joy to get from the storytelling part either, as the by-the-numbers plot clearly took a backseat to the visuals here. Most dystopian sci-fi movies make grateful use of their universe's mythology, and the beginning is promising. But the backstory is quickly used as an excuse to have the villains search for a very powerful item, with the heroes drawn in to stop them through way too many badly written coincidences. If this sounds like a cheap version of The One Ring, you're not wrong.

To spice up the heroine's motivations, they invented a dead-end subplot featuring some sort of green Terminator, but like lots of ot

Fmovies: I had high hopes for this movie, I really wanted to like it, I absolutely love the fantasy setting, CGI looks great. I didn't know the movie was based on a book series, but early on in the movie I thought to my self, this movie feels like it is based on a book story of which they are leaving a lot of important stuff out. And what do you know... I'm not even going to go I'm detail about everything I didn't like, it just felt lazy written and filled with dumb clichés.

I've seen a lot movies like this, so I think this movie is not for me - it's for the newcomers. Great visuals, CGI looks good also the cinematography but the story has some flaws and the characters are flat and annoying. Useless sub plots, I don't think it's necessary and lame.

Zero empathy for characters, wasted talent of Hugo Weaving - the only reason why I want to watch this movie. Although the first scene of the movie looks promising.

Another thing that I hate about this movie, there's some line in this movie like "I don't want to tell you." then they looking at each other, and then "5 years ago..." and I'm like.. w-what.. the hell...

Mortal Engines fmovies. In all honesty, I wasn't expecting much from Mortal Engines.

A film that feels like it's come out too late in the dystopian piece, this Peter Jackson produced blockbuster has had a tough time convincing audiences that they should spend their hard earned dollars on catching it while it plays in cinemas but despite my low expectations and willingness to be pleasantly surprised, Engines left me cold, empty and rather disappointed in that it failed so miserably in giving its world a chance to succeed.

So many elements of debut director Christian Rivers cinematic tale feel underutilised, under-cooked and under-developed, as we are quickly introduced to a future world landscape where humans have decided to build moving cities and roam the planet searching for resources, after a cataclysmic event wiped out a large portion of Earth's population and civilisations.

Before you have much of chance to blink, we're introduced to a moving London, Hugo Weaving's scheming Thaddeus Valentine, Robert Sheehan's kind-hearted history buff Tom Natsworthy and Hera Hilmar's main protagonist Hester Shaw, who seeks vengeance against Valentine for past wrongs but in around all these introductions and numerous by the numbers action scenes, there's carefully little time spent on making any of it matter, disallowing us an audience to ever feel even slightly invested in what occurrences take place.

Its all seriously frustrating, as this steampunk world seems like one that's open for exploration and the film often looks visually stunning thanks to the VFX work and set design, but it's a cold and far to basically developed universe to feel lived in and alive.

Rivers struggles to explain why humanity decided its best option was to develop a collection of moving cities, there's almost no talk of what happened before these cities took shape and who on earth are the ancient ones and why does a Terminator named Shrike decide to adopt a human child?

These are just some of the questions and thoughts that for some reason the team behind Engines decided not to answer and you can't help but escape the feeling that a first time director wasn't the storyteller required to bring Philip Reeve's novel to the big screen, with trite dialogue, awkward pacing and bad performances a staple of this film that could've been.

You can sense the actors struggling with the material and while the only recognisable faces in the piece in the forms of Weaving and a motion captured Stephan Lang try their best gruff guy takes, relative newcomers Hilmar and Sheehan fail to inspire, while Asian megastar Jihae comes in too late in the piece to add any real spark to the piece as her rebellious pilot Anna Fang.

Final Say -

At its best a half-baked attempt to create a unique new movie universe, that's only saving graces are some neat visual flourishes, Mortal Engines is close to an entirely charmless and lifeless exercise in big budget filmmaking that appears destined to be one of the growing number of high profile failures of 2018.

2 Minions out of 5

I loved the idea, cities eating each other, but it hardly happens, the idea is introduced and then forgotten. The concept was great but I think Peter Jackson has lost the ability to adapt books. Lord of the Rings worked because the kept to the story and adapted it for screen, the Hobbit didn't work because they extended it into a bloated monster for screen and Mortal Engines fails because they have changed the story so much to make a their movie version. I didn't mind it when I first saw it, it's an ok film with great ideas that it doesn't really capitalise on but then I read the book.....

The nuanced villain has become almost comic book, despite Hugo Weaving's best efforts and the changes to make the Star Wars like ending took the tragedy from the finale. Hester seems hollow and her affection for Tom seems forced. Tom doesn't get to be our unwitting hero, with all his bravery that breaks down Hester removed and the tragic end is turned into an explosive pyrotechnic fest. Even Shrike's story is broken for no good reason, just to make Valentine even more evil and Tom less heroic. What a shame.

So, if you've not read the book, give it a go - there are far worse films - if you have, beware.

The effects of the movie are quite excellent. The atmosphere and the place took for film was quite spectacular and amazing. The movie continues the plot quite quick , not much conversation break during the show with a lot of action. Some plot of the movie are not too reasonable but still acceptable. For me, this is one of the worth watching movie in 2018.