When the trailer for the Peter Jackson-produced Mortal Engines showed up online last year, I was intrigued. The post-apocalyptic setting was a departure from what we have seen before in the genre. And with WETA handling the special effects it seemed like it would be a moderately entertaining movie going experience.
I was wrong.
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The official synopsis from Universal Pictures:
Hundreds of years after civilization was destroyed by a cataclysmic event, a mysterious young woman, Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), emerges as the only one who can stop London — now a giant, predator city on wheels — from devouring everything in its path. Feral, and fiercely driven by the memory of her mother, Hester joins forces with Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan), an outcast from London, along with Anna Fang (Jihae), a dangerous outlaw with a bounty on her head.
I spooled up Mortal Engines last night and I was very confused from about the 15 minute mark. The initial set piece is thrilling (and was seen in the teaser trailer), with the Traction City of London chasing down a small mining city to chew up its resources Unicron style. It’s fairly intense and includes a very random Minions reference because … corporate synergy?
I won’t get your dragged into the plot (which I didn’t really understand) but one of the early set pieces involves our heroes getting sold off as slaves in a swampy version of Bartertown. The auctioneer makes it seem as though that once sold they were going to turned into human sausage by the crowd of cannibal buyers.
This is where the questions really started to fill my brain.
- This is PG-13 right?
- Angsty tweens read the series of books this movies is based on? Do they know what cannibalism is?
- Who is the audience for this movie?
- Oh wait now there’s a Terminator who wants to kill everyone?
- I am an hour into this movie and I don’t really know any of the character’s names.
- There is so much world building in the first 25 minutes and I feel like I missed a ton of exposition. Should I have read the books?
- Oh shit was I watching this with my wife the entire time? She’s going to hate me.
If you watched the full 2 hours and 8 minutes of Mortal Engines, I salute you and thank you for your service.
