Movie Thoughts: Mortal Engines (2018)

• Released: 14 December 2018
• Directed by: Christian Rivers
• Running time: 2 h 8 min
• Rating 4.5/5

Synopsis

In a post-apocalyptic world where cities have become mobile, a young man and woman must find a way to stop a super weapon.

My Thoughts

I like the Mortal Engines book. I read all four of them, but the first book is the one I love by far the most. Things go downhill from there, if you ask me. So when a movie was announced, of course I was excited. Heck, the screenplay is by the same people that did the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So that's gotta count for something, right?

First things first: is it accurate to the book? No, not that much. The main plotline of the story and characters are mostly the same, but there's also some notable differences. It's been a while since I read the book, so I cannot list a lot, but I know that, when I first watched it with the book fresh in my mind, I picked up on these. Examples are Katherine surviving in the movie and Hester looking different.

That's one thing I'm not too fond of. In the book, Hester is shown to have only one eye, with a scar that stretches across her face and a missing nose. In the movie, her scar just runs from her cheek across her mouth to her chin. It's generally a thing of Hollywood to choose more good looking actors for the roles (think about the Harry Potter movies, for example), but this just feels kind of wrong to me. Not every protagonist of your movie has to look like a supermodel, you know. It would be good representation if Hester had looked book-accurate. They definitely have the technology and makeup skills to pull it off. But I guess they just didn't bother. 

That said, the rest of this movie I absolutely adore. Yes, it's not completely book-accurate, but honestly, if I still can completely enjoy the movie without that, it's still a good movie in my book. I love the main characters, with unsure Tom and strong Hester, as well as Anna Fang and our main villain Valentine. I even liked Bevis and Katherine a lot. They're all so strong and have memorable personalities and presences. My favorite character is (of course) Hester,  it's so good to see her slowly grow to care about others after she's had such a hard life. 

Another favorite of mine is Shrike, a reanimated corpse who is sent to hunt down Hester, only for it to turn out that he was a father figure of sorts to her in her childhood. His death was one I was surprisingly emotional over. Of course, had we gotten move adaptations of future books, he'd have been re-reanimated in movie three I believe, but since it appears we won't be getting any Mortal Engines adaptations soon, he does have a great presence and sendoff. I don't think him relieving Hester of her promise was in the book, but it definitely humanizes him a bit more. I always thought he was supposed to be 90% machine with a tiny bit of humanity left in him, so it was good that that really showed here.

The traction cities are designed amazingly. I always had a bit of trouble imagining how these things would look in the books other than what was shown on the covers, but the movie absolutely did them justice, from the small ramshackle towns to the giant that is London itself. Of course, the looks of the airships were great as well, and the city of Airhaven looked pretty dang great too. I even liked the design of the prison on legs we got, although its appearance was very brief. 

The action scenes had me constantly on the edge of my seat. You always just wanted to see these play out and they were so varied, from the chase on the inside of London to the attack on Airhaven to the climax in Shan Guo and Saint Paul's cathedral. 

Is this a perfect movie? No, I don't think so, but my personal enjoyment will easily grant it four and a half stars. It's definitely up there with some of my favorites, though not in my top five. I'd say, check it out, just as long as you're not a book purist.