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How did this truly dreadful film come to be made? I’ve come up with a hypothesis. Co-producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who once had the ability to put together a motion picture that was engaging, coherent, entertaining, and even genuinely dazzling, looked at a bag of money that Universal and various other sources of capital had left on their table and asked themselves, “Can we whiff as badly as the Wachowskis did with ‘Jupiter Ascending,’ only leaving out the fun pansexual campy parts?” They couldn’t answer that question. And the answer is, without a doubt!
“Mortal Engines” is a science fiction film co-written by Jackson and Walsh (you may remember them from “Heavenly Creatures” and a couple of Tolkien adaptations) with frequent collaborator Philippa Boyens, adapted from a sorta-I-guess-must-have-been YA novel (it was published by Scholastic in the States, I see) by Phillip Reeve. The film opens with the usual voiceover informing us how “
What this means in terms of visual representation is that entire world cities, or at least portions of them, are now mobile, moving around on giant tank treads. The question of how this engineering feat was accomplished is not addressed. Anyway, London, which we still think of as genteel, is bringing in the heavy equipment and hunkering down on a much smaller “Romanian mining town,” hoping to steal its salt supply in order to survive. The town’s inhabitant is Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), a teenage girl out for vengeance against Thaddeus Valentine, a power engineer (or something) who murdered her mother and is based in London. Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan), a young historian from London who is amassing a collection of “the Ancients'” weaponry (the Ancients, in case you missed it, were us) in order to dispose of it so that war can no longer be studied, is initially a fan of Thaddeus. But when Tom gets too close to Hester’s secret, he is forced to flee down London’s garbage chute, where he meets and falls in love with the feisty, reticent Hester, who becomes his partner in adventure. In addition to granting Thaddeus access to the weapons storehouse, this action will also aid him in the development of a Brand New Superweapon.
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Hester, on the other hand, doesn’t have much to be reticent about. When she was a young orphan, she was taken in by a member of something known as “The Lazarus Brigade,” a group of undead robots with high-level superpowers who always seem to get what they desire. Shrike, played by Stephen Lang with a significant amount of computer-generated imagery, was moved by her promise that she would allow him to transform her into a similar robot (because it sounds like such a good deal, doesn’t it?). Hester, on the other hand, refused to seek vengeance against Thaddeus, and Shrike became apeshit, or whatever the equivalent of apeshit is for super-powered undead robots. Thaddeus frees the very insistent and very destructive Shrike from a floating prison in order to keep Hester at bay, and then sets off to collect on Hester’s promise, which he has forgotten. Thaddeus devastates everything in his path, and it is a wonder that Hester’s many newfound friends even bother to keep her around. But it is fortunate that they do, because it turns out she holds the key to dismantling Thaddeus’ super weapon. Those types of unexpected plot developments are commonplace throughout this narrative.
Mortal Engines Quiz
The various components of said story are introduced in such a haphazard manner that they can’t help but elicit titters; however, even if they were introduced in a different manner, Shrike, intended as a poignant reminder of What It Is To Be Human, is a terrible idea that is terribly executed. I understand that Lang has probably been cooling his heels in Australia while waiting for the “Avatar” sequels to begin filming for a long enough period of time that he’s grown antsy, but I wish he’d found a more productive way to pass the time. Even by the lower standards of children’s entertainment, this film is ludicrously ominous and kitschy, and it only gets worse as the film progresses, thanks to the heavy-handed introduction of the ethnically diverse rebel flyer team and the Dalai Lama lookalike leader of the Asian territory Thaddeus intends to bulldoze, among other things.
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However, it appears to be in excellent condition. No, not at all. The overall look, directed by Christian Rivers, a long-time art director for Jackson, asks the question, “Are you sick of Steampunk yet?” and for me, the answer is a resounding yes. Never mind that the entire concept of the film is akin to someone deciding to take Terry Gilliam’s “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” far more seriously than it was ever intended to be taken in the first place. My favorite part of the movie was the nearly cavernous tread tracks that Hester and Tom had to run around in on their journey to love.
For more personality quizzes check this: Chappaquiddick Quiz.
