Day 31 - 01/31/2019

  Post-apocalyptic dystopian steampunk movies are not common by any means, especially by the mainstream of Hollywood. Mortal Engines combines the director and writers of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens respectively, with the adapted novel by Philip Reeve and lastly directed by Christian Rivers, from the art department of the previous cited films. Though the influences from their previous works are quite glaring on this specific film, especially from the personality of the protagonist, it's interesting how different the transfer is from what they're known for, a classic fantasy story, to a "terrestrial Star Wars, Hunger Games survival of old weapons on humongous technologically advanced machines".

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  London is a locomotive city, atop of a humongous killing machine on wheels. At this same city there is a huge society lead by Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), a man that has the support of the people but every once in a while someone like Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) goes on a mission to assassin him. Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan), a man that admires Valentine ends up getting involved the situation, where everything goes downhill and he ends up being indirectly formed to Hester.  

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  The fact that after a few minutes of a hard pill to swallow premise of this steampunk society goes from ridiculous to acceptable is what makes Mortal Engines so great. A few of the storylines, most notably Shrike's (Stephen Lang), are touching to the point that all the extreme visual effects are ignored for just a second. The buildup of the characters are nice, that despite predictable, are enjoyable, and in general even the dirty places are pretty in a weird way. 

 

  Despite the premise being quite ambitious, it's not what keeps the film back. After the "mortal engines" are accepted, the movie still falls short in the overall shallowness, predictability and ludicrous villain's master plan. As a common trend of most mediocre stories, the last act is formulaic, supposedly grandiose final battle and over the top motivations for conflict. The subtleties disappear and finally, something that was gradually well-crafted initially becomes sloppy.

 

  Mortal Engines is not forgettable, by any means, but it's not necessarily good either. The paradoxical idea of a crazy story carried out so ordinarily is what keeps it from being a huge hit or miss, making it a barely above average with 5.5 stones out of 10.