Mortal Engines

Following the requisite opening narration (no, seriously, this isn’t some terrible CinemaSins thing here, sometimes narration actually is incredibly helpful in setting up a brand new situation), we see a small mining town fall under attack by London.  The mining town hurriedly packs itself up and flees.  Yes, the entire town.  Did I not mention these cities are pretty much entirely mobile, stalking the land like mighty ships of yore?  Sorry, I meant to.  So, anyway, London is piloted by some clearly evil folks, foreheads permanently pursed in scowls and grins dripping with haughty malice.  Despite a frenetic chase, the small town just isn’t a match for the metropolis, and it’s dragged aboard London to basically be scrapped and assimilated.  But, wait, what’s this?  We have a mysterious woman, a denizen of the mining town, her face half-draped with a scarf, and she’s got an evil eye pointed at London.

This is how Mortal Engines begins, a clamber of effects-heavy action that careens straight into some of the most broad, bland, lifeless, uninspired characterization and storytelling I have ever seen.

Yup, credit where credit’s due, this film has some spectacular visual effects, some the best that have graced the silver screen in recent years.  In contrast to the Bay-hem that comprised the Transformers series, all of the engaging and highly mobile action set pieces are able to be followed and remembered when you get home.  There’s a lot going on in these scenes, but things are kept comprehensible and recognizable.  Probably the only issue I had with these scenes – aside from the fact they didn’t take up the entire runtime, saving us from the immense inanity of the rest of it – is that spatial geography often gets muddled: you might be able to follow and understand what’s going on conceptually and whatnot, but you just might get lost in the busy landscape after the ninety-third hairpin turn or other change of direction.

But that’s a minor grievance compared to just about everything else.  The main issue with this film is the tired, hacky script, which is not only based on a book series aimed at the younger crowd but if surely feels like it.  (Requisite disclaimer stating I haven’t read the books and don’t plan to, so I’m just going by the movie right now kaythanks.)  All of the characters are cut-outs with basically one setting we’re gonna liberally call a character trait that spout the most trite, obvious dialogue drenched in that trait, all while engaging in the most obvious and overly-appropriate actions befitting said trait.  This wouldn’t necessarily be such a negative were the context exceptionally unique or interesting, but, alas, we’ve got the same post-apocalyptic garbage we tend to get from the YA scene: evil and corrupt powers-that-be actively exploit an underclass while giggling about it in their ivory towers, but, hey look, a resistance pops up against them.  Rinse and fucking repeat, and here we’re on the eighty-eighth or so iteration of that formula.  The politics spouted by every character is exactly in line with what you’d expect them to say in their situations, to the point that I was calling out dialogue ahead of time during many scenes – and this became my sole source of fun as time wore on.  There are attempts at cute humor, like with the British Museum collecting household appliances as ancient artifacts, but these are instantly trite, and they get quickly obnoxious:  Maybe it’s just my background as an historian, but wrongly bitching that no one writes anything down anymore, thus leading future generations to assume we’d forgotten how to read and write, is an old-ass joke that has never been funny and ignores the reality of both historical preservation and the fact that people still use fucking post-It notes.  This script lends itself only to the broadest and stalest of performances, and some decent actors are dragged to the depths by it.  It surprises me that things have sunk this low, considering that this is the same team that penned the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but sometimes the truth hurts.

Once it sets in that this is the script we’re running with – and that’s pretty damned early on – things get really hard to get into.  I think my brain just skipped much of the middle, ’cause it’s starting to get pretty hazy already.  Hopefully the major studios, and producer/co-writer/puppet master Peter Jackson in particular, learn from this film’s dismal box office returns that heavy use of visual effects doesn’t make up for a bland-as-wet-cardboard script and a palpable lack of identity.  (That’s saying a lot, considering this is a Mad Max style movie where the cars are whole goddamn cities!)  But I’m wary, as usual, if for no other reason than Jackson didn’t learn this same lesson from the similarly-promising Lovely Bones adaptation or the horrendous Hobbit trilogy.  One can hope, though, right?

Anyway, skip this thing, unless you just wanna rent it in a few months, put in on mute, and enjoy the visual spectacle portions with some treats.