Summary
A visually spectacular adaptation of a YA classic devours its cinematic references whole and is every bit the epic you would imagine from this creative team.
Peter Jackson may not have directed MORTAL ENGINES but his fingerprints are all over it. It has been on the cards at his WingNut Films since 2009, but the planned production of The Dambusters and The Hobbit trilogy pushed it back on the agenda. Having worked with Jackson since 1992’s Braindead, director Christian Rivers steps out of the second unit to deliver something that’s on par with the scale of his mentor’s work.
Based on the first novel by Philip Reeve, the Lord of the Rings screenwriting team of Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson do their thing by taking the solid bones of its structure expanding the world and placing it all in context. Eons after the 60-Minute War, the Earth is a wasteland. Massive traction cities roam the globe, literally ingesting smaller cities for survival in a philosophy called ‘Municipal Darwinism.’
Young Tom (Robert Sheehan) is low-class apprentice historian who has only ever lived in the travelling city of London. A burgeoning friendship with elite citizen Katherine Valentine (Lila George) is cut short when an assassination attempt is made on her father Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving). Tom and assassin Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) soon find themselves on the run in the remnants of the Earth searching for a McGuffin.
Fans of Reeve’s original quartet and prequel series will find a fair bit of joy in seeing the author’s creative vision come to life in such an impressive way, and there will be times when you’re swept away with the spectacle of it all. It’s just that it’s also such a mish-mash of ideas and references to other films and tropes that you are always conscious that you are watching a movie. An early appearance of Universal’s ubiquitous Minions leaves a taste in our mouths as bad as the millennia-old Twinkies that show up sometime later.
Which isn’t to say there’s no fun to be had: it’s visually stunning, and Rivers/Jackson know how to stage a film in a grand arena. An early chase through a town as it’s being dissected by London is as inventive as it is thrilling. The bright-red resistance airship flown by fan-favourite Anna Fang (Jihae) is the Millennium Falcon of the picture, and becomes a character in itself. It all builds to a massive battle sequence that looks like a high-tech version of something out of The Two Towers or The Battle of the Five Armies.
It’s a shame then that the principal leads of Hilmar and Sheehan have virtually no chemistry. It would have been far more interesting to follow the sub-plot about Katherine and the completely undeveloped Bevis Pod (Ronan Raftery), who were the true stars of this vehicle. The appearance of Shrike (Stephen Lang), an undead cyborg hunting Hester, feels like one plot line too many, although the writing team at least manage to imbue him with a modicum of empathy. Hugo Weaving doesn’t encounter a piece of scenery he doesn’t find delicious, and even gets his own Darth Vader moment in the climax.
So if Municipal Darwinism is the act of cities eating other cities, then MORTAL ENGINES has swallowed other films whole and recycled them for parts. At the same time, it also feels like a final package: and if there are to be sequels, the film doesn’t necessarily point the way there. There’s a solid adventure story at the centre of this adaptation, but it spends so much time swirling around its own gutsy innards that it’s sometimes hard to digest.
