Directed by Christian Rivers

Screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson

Starring: Hera Hilmar, Hugo Weaving, Jihae, Stephen Lang

So Mortal Engines is pretty bad. It has the outline and phony push of being the next big epic but instead crashes from a weak and troubled production. There’s a reason the marketing campaign shied away from standard trailers. The only glimpses I caught of this movie were from scrolling through my facebook feed and occasionally seeing “Peter Jackson’s Mortal Engines”, coupled with that imagine of the girl with the red bandana over her mouth, and maybe two solitary shots of moving cities. For about a year now, I thought this movie was some kind of joke. What was being kept under wraps? Basically I think we weren’t supposed to know how bad this movie was. Cause the marketing team sure as hell did.

To clear things up, Peter Jackson did not direct this. He served as co-writer along with old LOTR team of Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. And he produced as well. Directing fell into first timer Christian Rivers. Not good.

It is evident from the movie’s opening that this was a troubled production. Almost every single line has been recorded in post, and horribly dubbed over in obvious ADR. The editing attempts to painfully obscure this by cutting a lot of the times actor’s initially had finished their lines, to hide the plentiful exposition tacked on in post. What’s nice (at least) is that the opening sequence does feature bright and wonderful colors for the action scene. It’s nothing special, but at least it looked kinda cool. This is important for later when I bash the ending.

The plot? Who cares. No one working on this movie seemed to care. Something about the world having been ended in 60 minutes, and now a futuristic post-apocalyptic one with rolling cities is day to day life. The Minions stand in old museums, cited as “the deities”. Up to you if you want to laugh at that. And then later, a shot of cracked smartphones over the line “Maybe they forgot how to read and write” to explain why so much history is missing. Mildly interesting.

The actors. Pretty forgettable. I could imagine maybe any other person playing each role. Hugo Weaving of course is great, but he ain’t given much as the bad guy. Hera Hilmar plays Hester Shaw, the feral human lead, raised by some undead zombie like mechanism. She wants to kill Weaving for having killed her mom. She’s not a very good actress. I hated her for most of the movie, but maybe at the end I could see some talent in her. Perhaps another genre would suit her, or not such a failed project.

The main dude? Whatever. Weaving’s daughter? Whatever. Other actors. Everyone seems to have a British accent. Maybe cause the rolling city is new London? I think? I don’t remember anything. I’m not sure if I ever knew.

A couple good things. Jihae plays an outlaw named Anna Fang, with some high bounty on her head. In the brief marketing, I assumed she would be the absolute worst part of this movie. Especially from, “I’m not so subtle”. But I ended up liking her, even if this movie didn’t. I think Jihae is too good for such a role, one that could have been truly interesting, but instead offers almost nothing. I liked her delivery and energy. She’s got onscreen spunk.

The undead zombie who raised Hester is named Strike, and he is the best thing about this useless film. I love stories that hint at some captured and hidden away threat, and the way the movie talks about and shows him contained in that metal box was about as cool as they could have hoped for. Cool convo between him and Weaving too. Though in later dialogue the audience laughed out loud at Strike. Not unwarranted.

But here is the problem. Here is all the problems. A good number of characters and I only care about the sparse outlaw and a green metal zombie. And the movie shows some silly flashbacks as lazy progression of relationships. And then it truly ends itself in a boring siege at night and you can barely tell what’s going on. Worse is you just do not care. No one will care.

I didn’t hate Mortal Engines until it’s final act. This is where the movie gives up everything (not that it had much) to force a conclusion to an epic we have never seen. And guess what Weaving is building in the Church. And when are we really shown much of that wall? And the movie has Weaving’s daughter disappear for almost an hour, only to randomly show up to confront him. And shame on Jackson and Walsh and Boyens for ripping off their own legendary writing in LOTR. In many scenes, the single worst of which is Weaving grabbing his daughter and saying “Trust me as you once did”. How dare you put a Gandalf quote in this mess. But Weaving says it fast, so the audience won’t notice! But we all did. Fuck you guys. Seriously. That was one of the most offensive things I’ve seen all year in theaters. Shame on you Jackson. Shame on u.

This movie is already a failure. A reported $100 million budget, and an agonizing $7 million opening. That’s bad for cheap indies sometimes, they’ve really destroyed themselves with this one. I’m not sure what was going through their minds. Nor am I sure if this could have been saved. I think maybe there is a movie, buried deep in this boring mess. And I think perhaps Jackson and his team should have played no part in it.

Before my screening, a little kid raised his hand to ask the usher, “Is this based on the book?” ( I didn’t know there was a book). The usher paused, then said “Yes”. “My man!”, the kid shouted happily. Then the movie started. And then it ended. And I wonder if the usher should have said, “Don’t know” and left.

I’d have said Don’t know.