{"id":725,"date":"2018-12-19T13:55:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T21:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/?p=725"},"modified":"2018-12-19T13:55:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T21:55:09","slug":"mortal-engines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/2018\/12\/19\/mortal-engines\/","title":{"rendered":"Mortal Engines<\/em>: Someone Thought a Feature-Length Video Game Cutscene was a Good Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning: Spoilers aplenty if you click \u201cContinue reading\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I should probably take back that title. I have seen many well-crafted, cinematic cutscenes in video games over the years, and comparing Mortal Engines<\/em> to them is an insult to the video games. The visuals look good, but the movie fails on every single level otherwise. It\u2019s an empty package with a nice wrapper IF you\u2019re still into the steampunk vibe. If you, like me, think steampunk has been played out for a decade, then the visuals might not even hold that much appeal.<\/p>\n

The setup is a standard \u201cnations started a war and blew themselves up\u201d post-apocalyptic dystopia. The twist here is that survivors mounted their cities on gigantic tank treads to make them mobile, leading to a condition of \u201cmunicipal Darwinism\u201d whereby larger cities hunt down smaller communities and consume them for resources. To the east, the members of the Anti-Traction League, who don\u2019t think mounting their cities on treads is a good idea, live in relatively good conditions, protected by an impregnable shield wall. It\u2019s an interesting idea, and so much could have been done with it. Unfortunately, Mortal Engines<\/em> does very little.<\/p>\n

\"London

London in Mortal Engines. IMDb.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

The plot is a formulaic combination of revenge flick and destroy the super-weapon before the bad guy can deploy it. There aren\u2019t any real characters. All the actors are simply given archetypes to blandly play. There are a number of pointless subplots that don\u2019t go anywhere. There\u2019s an insulting number of instances of people being saved at the last second by some person\/thing showing up at precisely the right time. There are a several moments that are clearly intended to be heroic sacrifices or dramatic deaths, but they all fall flat because the audience is never given any reason to care about any of the characters.<\/p>\n

The film constantly and blatantly rips off far better works. There\u2019s a Death Star-like super weapon which a hotshot young and handsome pilot (Robert Sheehan) must disable by flying into the city\u2019s core and blasting away. Kid you not, there\u2019s an \u201cI am your father\u201d moment. To be fair, though, that\u2019s in the source material.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an unkillable zombie cyborg who acts and looks like a Terminator. He pretty much kills anyone who gets in his way and destroys entire towns. When he\u2019s no longer needed by the plot, though, he simply rolls over and dies for no apparent reason. As he dies, what he remembers of his human life flashes before his eyes, and we\u2019re treated to a maudlin montage of memories as sad music plays. It\u2019s a heavy-handed and completely unsuccessful attempt to make us feel sad for this soulless monster.<\/p>\n

\"Mortal

Mortal Engines. IMDb.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

The main protagonist, Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) gets the same treatment as Art3mis\/Samantha from Ready Player One<\/em><\/a>. She\u2019s horribly disfigured in the book, with a big chunk of her face missing. But we can\u2019t have our empowered strong female lead be ugly, now can we, so the movie version of Hester is quite attractive with a couple scars that aren\u2019t all that disfiguring.<\/p>\n

\"Hera

Hera Hilmar in Mortal Engines. IMDb.com.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s almost unfair to comment on the acting because the cast was given so little to work with. Suffice it to say that none of the actors were able to breathe any real life into the 2-dimensional cardboard cutouts that passed for characters in this film. In particular, Hugo Weaving\u2019s talents were completely wasted.<\/p>\n

The only silver lining here is that Mortal Engines<\/em> is currently tanking so hard at the box office that sequels seem mercifully unlikely.<\/p>\n

Overall rating: 3\/10<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Warning: Spoilers aplenty if you click \u201cContinue reading\u201d I should probably take back that title. I have seen many well-crafted, cinematic cutscenes in video games over the years, and comparing Mortal Engines to them is an insult to the video games. The visuals look good, but the movie fails on every single level otherwise. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[321,319,318,322,320],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","tag-hera-hilmar","tag-hugo-weaving","tag-mortal-engines","tag-peter-jackson","tag-robert-sheehan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":733,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drchris.tv\/movies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}