Mortal Engines review

Back in December 2017, we were introduced to a teaser for this movie. It was simply a couple of cities on wheels, one huge one was chasing down another one and simply capturing it and devouring it, it was produced by Peter Jackson and that was it, I was intrigued, but my desire to see this really grew when I saw the next trailer which debuted in June of this year, and I was hyped and really thought that this would be the next big franchise that would blow everyone’s minds, this trailer had amazing visuals and it just looked awesome.

Forward to when I saw this, and I still hope that if a sequel happens to occur that they will be able to fix the problems with this. So lets start with the good, the visuals. The design of this world was cool, the idea was very intriguing and cool to look at. Someone made the mention that it kind of reminded them of Howls Moving Castle, and while I was watching this world, I couldn’t help but think of elements of a world that would be designed by Miyazaki himself, the scope just felt amazing. The first third of the movie was very engaging, especially at the beginning of the movie when London chases down one of the smaller cities, how it was edited together, I was just blown away, and at first I was thinking why were people panning this movie.

As the movie started to progress through the second half, I was starting to see the problems with the movie that everyone mentioned, how the dialogue had issues and how there were issues with pacing and the construction of the story. Keep in mind, I didn’t hate the story, or the script or the pacing, I recognized why they were problematic here. I was still able to enjoy this movie and had a fun time watching it, but I will admit by the time the third act of the movie was occurring, it was starting to lose steam and it wasn’t as entertaining as the first and second act of the movie were.

So the next question would be how are the characters in the movie. They were alright I guess, I felt they had potential, there was one character that was super awesome, Anna Fang. I thought the characters had a good set up at the beginning and had potential to have really great arcs, but then it just seemed like with everything else it started to lose steam. This movie had a great premise and a great set up that I think if they took more time to work out the kinks in the story and characters, I really think this could have been an amazing movie.

Overall, I am very glad I saw this on the big screen. If you go in recognizing that this movie has big flaws and are here for the visual feast, then I do think you can go into this movie and have a great time, but don’t go in expecting a story that will blow you away, just expect the visuals to do that, and they did and I was satisfied for that reason.