Mortal Engines
Director:
Christian Rivers
Year: 2018
Rating: 6.0
This post-Apocalyptic fantasy film is based on
a series of four books by Philip Reeve. My guess is that there was hope for
a franchise because that is where the money is these days. Well they are
probably out of luck. The film has seemingly bombed badly. $100 million dollar
loss badly. Not a lot of sequels built on the back of that - just ask John
Carter. But after seeing the film I have no idea why. The weirdness of the
market place.
Sure the story is as familiar as your face in the mirror every morning -
a mad man is on the verge of acquiring a weapon that will allow him to take
over what is left of the world and a plucky band of rebels is out to stop
him. It is to be polite a homage to Star Wars but if you are going to borrow,
borrow from the best I say. It even has a father/child revelation at the
end; a pilot who saves the day and a kick ass free spirit who in this case
is an Asian woman. Hell, maybe the filmmakers or author even owe a nod to
the comedic short The Crimson Permanent Assurance (1983) from Terry Gilliam
in which a commercial building unmoors itself and attacks other buildings.
Or throw in Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle. A lot of potential influences
going on here.
All done before and the two main young leads don't exactly generate much
heat. But damn the visuals, imagination, costumes and set designs are glorious.
Cities that move. A city behind a giant wall that Trump would orgasm over.
A scene right out of Luke attacking the Death Ship. A killer robot/human.
All very cool. Perhaps the background could have been fleshed out a bit as
I never really understood what happened to the world and how we ended up
with a mobile London gobbling up resources in the form of smaller mobile
city states - maybe that would have been explained in films - 2 to 4 but
with a look like this it was good enough for me.
