Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines, the latest hopeful film franchise based on a popular teen-based fantasy series, is like many of the others that have come before it.  It looks great, and has an attractive young cast, along with a big respected name to play the villain.  It also has no clear goal, other than to set up more movies.  The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic world where massive cities on tank treads roll around the scorched earth, crushing everything in their path.  They roll along, make a lot of noise, and then leave.  The movie kind of does the same thing.  It's a loud, clanging thing that leaves your mind as soon as it's done.

The creative team behind The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) have conceived another grand fantasy vision, but this time around, they have done little to get us involved.  There's not very much set up as to just how the world has become this way, other than there was a "60 Minute War" that wiped out most of civilization long ago, and a nuclear weapon caused the Earth's crust to crack.  Now most of the major cities have become hulking Steampunk-like monstrosities that roll around on wheels or treads, and "devour" smaller towns for their resources.  I've not read the 2001 novel by Philip Reeve, but I'm sure it goes into much more detail than the movie does, which just kind of sets everything up without explaining anything.  It also doesn't really explain the killer robot skeletons that were once human, and have lost most of their memories.  This is the kind of movie that asks you to take a lot of flying leaps of faith when it comes to its storytelling.

That being said, the world that has been created by director Christian Rivers (a visual effects artist who has been working with Peter Jackson for over 20 years, and is making his directorial debut here) and his team of artists is imaginative, and immediately grabs our attention.  The scope of the film is appropriately epic, and when we get our first glimpse of the city of London wheeling down the vast desert wasteland, it's an awesome sight.  However, that's basically where the invention ends.  It's just visuals and effects.  The world has no real set up or stakes to make us care about what's going on.  We admire the obvious work and care that went into creating these mobile cities, but we are not transported into the world itself.  That requires the human element that this film lacks.  The people who inhabit this story have not been given the same care as the impressive effects work that mixes practical work with CG.  So, we're left waiting for the story to be as grand as the images we're seeing.

Take the two young heroes who are at the center of the story, Tom (Robert Sheehan) and Hester (Hera Hilmar).  They are your typical young character types who are forced into working together, and gradually fall in love.  The plot pieces are there, but the characters never come to life, because their relationship seems to be scripted and mired in the ancient traditions of cliches.  Tom starts out as a worker at a museum in London who does not question the order of things.  He simply wants to see the world outside of London.  But then he meets the mysterious Hester, who enters the film making an attempt on the life of Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), an energy tycoon who is trying to lead London to victory by crushing other rival cities.  Turns out Hester has a past with Thaddeus, and Tom gets pulled into their private struggle, and starts to see just how evil Thaddeus really is.  The two join up with a rebel alliance, and start to grow closer together as they attempt to halt London's progress in creating an ultimate weapon that can wipe out the less advanced cities.

Like I said, pretty standard stuff for the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre.  But Mortal Engines never gives us more than what's necessary.  We don't feel the growing connection between Tom and Hester, so we kind of have to take the movie's word, and just go with it.  We also don't feel any connection to the rebels, or to the subplot concerning Thaddeus' daughter (Leila George) slowly turning against her father and his efforts.  These are all true and tested elements that come with the territory, but they have no impact here, because all the attention clearly went to the effects.  All the characters, storytelling and world building that you would expect were cast to the wayside, and it shows in just about every frame.

Clearly there was a grand vision here, but that vision was only applied to half of the production.  The filmmakers have given us a setting that sparks the imagination, but forgot to have anything worthwhile happen within it.  I would say maybe the sequels could improve on this, but given that the movie is already being written off as a failure for the studio, I don't think that's going to happen.  Shame, really.  There was a lot of promise.

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