Mortal Engines landed in theatres with a thud last month. The movie, based on the popular Phillip Reeves book series, was directed by Lord of the Rings art director Christian Rivers.
Its screenplay came from a committee of former Lord of the Rings writers, including Peter Jackson, who directed of the series.
Mortal Engines is a tale of moving cities and heroism and way too many characters. And, some vague stuff that, despite a lot of people explaining it, still doesn’t make sense.
Chief among them is a vague plot device in which a moving City of London threatens the state of the world. It transforms the moving city into a lethal weapon, capable of firing blasts of computer-generated purple that can level towns.But a troupe of plucky pilots, led by Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmer) turn against London and we get a predictable third act.
It was a super okay by-the-numbers film, but admittedly not the hot trash mess it is being made out to be on the internet.
The villain, Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), is the definite highlight of the movie—and of course, it’s Weaving because this is a Hollywood fantasy or Sci-Fi movie.
Speaking of a world of high fantasy, let’s imagine a world without toxic fandom killing every modern movie franchises. Now that’s an imaginative reality worthy of Steven Spielberg. Maybe we could get him to direct a story taking place in this fictional fandom free world.
It could star a child actor, give us a John Williams score, some long one takes and a sentimental yet predictable third act.
Because a world without fans tearing apart every movie and judging every film as either terrible or genius, with no in-between, can only exist as a fictional movie.
The internet is a place where everyone gets to freely express their opinions. Mortal Engines is an interesting piece of metadata in the modern film landscape because it has been a horrible box office failure.
With websites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB so freely giving out information online, reviews snowball on themselves, these days. Once the response is negative by consensus, it feels like professional and amateur critics fall all over themselves to join the party, regardless of what they actually think of a film.
This is film criticism post-truth era. Nobody discusses craft of film. In this area, Mortal Engines is impressive and well done. It’s a glossy film with storytelling issues and a few good set pieces, like almost every other movie release in the last decade.
What is so wrong with this movie? Why is Bumblebee, a movie about a toy franchise that changes between being a giant alien robot and a Volkswagen beetle, being better received?
The main criticism of Mortal Engines in these dark corners of the internet is that it’s predictable and borrows too heavily from common film tropes.
Predictable like the four modern iterations of Spiderman predictable, the most recent of which is on pace to make a billion dollars, that kind of predictable?
Okay, so, Mortal Engines borrows. But, Star Wars borrows, Dr. Strange borrows, Iron Man borrows—all movies do, all fiction does. There are only so many takes on the hero’s journey.
As mentioned before Spielberg copies himself, Christopher Nolan does, Hitchcock and Kubrick did—get over it.
Mortal Engines isn’t Mission Impossible Six or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s something new…ish. While it’s not Citizen Kane, it’s not trying to be and it’s also not a garbage fire.
Go watch it and please, criticize the film on your own objective opinion of the storytelling, cinematography, score, editing and non-diegetic elements instead of hopping on whatever bandwagon the rest of the internet is rolling with.
