When I saw the first teaser to this movie, I was like "What the hell is this? Something Peter Jackson created, that looks this fantastic? I need to watch this, even though the CGI did not look that good (yet?)". The first trailer wasn't that interesting anymore as it spoiled a lot. Still, Peter Jackson, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Lang... that could still be a good movie?

But first of all: The marketing - at least in Germany - was irritating. Peter Jackson _wanted_ to do this movie, he held the rights to making this movie for over 8 years but couldn't get around and therefore decided to pass it on to one of his protegees: Christian Rivers, who has worked as storyboard artist and visual effects supervisor in 11 of Jackson's movies, has his directorial debut - Peter Jackson only contributed his first draft, and of course the rights and budget - which by the way is 150 million dollars - not bad for a debut. But does money equal quality?

Let's take a short look at the plot:

In a dystopian future the few survivors of a global catastrophe gathered together to form mobile predator cities and live in an world order called "Municipal Darwinism", i.e. in the great hunting ground larger cities hunt smaller cities for their resources, to enslave the people, etc. In this steampunk setting London is known as one of the most predatory cities - but the free young woman Hester Shaw wants to travel to exactly this city, because she is hoping to settle a score with one of the leaders of the city.

Peter Jackson has already proven that he has the ability to create new, unseen and absolutely fantastic worlds, and at first glance it seems like with Mortal Engines this applies as well, even though this is not really Peter Jackson. But: It's just the first glance. Yes, the world is cool, it has a lot of beautiful and interesting original ideas that we get to see. The CGI at first glance looks good - but unfortunately only at first glance. Different to Lord of the Rings, where you see a number of details, that are filmed in long slow moving camera to make sure the viewer has the ability to actually see, discover and experience all the details, in Mortal Engine you always have very fast tracking shots, so in the end, everything is blurry giving the movie makers the ability to mask the missing level of detail, as well as often also the physical plausibility of things. And that was something that really bothered me. How do the cities actually transform, or rake up to bigger cities? This happens so fast that you don't actually know - because there is no clever way they do fit together. And what are all the details in London? You don't get to see anything - there are 2-3 spots that are shown in detail - the rest is principally just a hill with a number of glowing spots, that blur due to the fast camera pace. Same with the wall. Why don't show how the people behind the wall actually live? They live a totally different life, why not celebrate it, like e.g. Lord of the Rings celebrated the introduction of Rohan? Because these details actually don't exist.

And at least to me, a movie of this caliber, with this budget and playing in such a world needs to be presented, needs to stun me. And we don't get anything.

But it's not only the graphics and setting - this is probably still the best part of the movie. Talking about the story, this movie is even worse. First, this movie is so packed, that you start to ask: Why did they not make a 2-part movie? Peter Jackson made 3 movies out of the hobbit which is a small to medium sized single children's book. But here, due to packing so much into one movie and not getting rid of certain aspects you feel like a lot of things are touched but not really explained. And this is really sad, as the story has a number of interesting parts. I would have loved to learn something about Anna Fang. Why is she hunted? What is her motivation as leader of an resistance movement? What is that resistance movements motivation? We get nothing - Anna is seen in the wanted poster in the beginning and all of a sudden she is there. The whole backstory with Shrike could have also been interesting, but is also just touched. Same with our antagonist. What is his motivation? No idea. Why does he - all of a sudden - decide to destroy something? No one will know. There are also hardly any quite moments to establish the characters, and this leads not only to the characters being really shallow, but also not rally having time to interact with each other and in the end there is absolutely no chemistry between the characters. All could die, and no one would care. And also the story telling is absolutely minimal. Most of the time is spend in an concatenation of action sequences: I feel that more than 80% was just action, and these action orgies where extremely CGI dominated, so they don't even get that exciting - and to me, after the first 2-3 action sequences I got fatigued.

In the end the actors are not challenged at all and fall far beyond what they are probably capable of, and there is not much else that the movie has to offer - I was bored after the first third of the movie, and it did not get any better till the end. A really great disappointment, I had high hopes :(

I have to say that I liked this movie a lot. It is kind of fantasy, science fiction (emphasis on fiction here) and steam punk (or perhaps I should say diesel punk) mixed together.

The world is a fairly dark post apocalyptic world where moving predator cities prays on each other. The entire concept is really quite ridiculous of course but it makes for some really fantastic and spectacular special effects and I am a sucker for spectacular special effects.

In addition the overall story holds together fairly well. That is, in the context of the ludicrous world that is the background of this story in the first place of course. It is quite straightforward without too much annoying social or green preaching that plagues so many movies nowadays. Somewhat predictable but overall a good vehicle for the plentiful action.

I also liked most of the characters. Both the bad guy and the good guys had decent charisma with the exception of Tom who was a bit of a naive whiner although he got it together towards the end.

There where few flaws. Nothing really major except that, in one scene at the end, the city of London was shown against the wall and it was bloody tiny compared to the wall. The main bad guy’s last resort was to pummel London against the wall and was expected to break it down. Before in the movie London was depicted as really huge. That scene really screwed that and made him delusional.

Apart from that, end Tom’s whining and naivety, I really liked this movie. It was the kind of over the top, fantasy/fiction movie with a big budget that you do not see every day. Of course the dickwads, a.ka “critics”) at Rotten Tomatoes and other mainstream media assholes did their best to tell everyone how bad it was. As usual that’s just the stuff that comes out of the south end of a north bound bull.

Such an interesting premise deserved a better movie (or two).

The idea of moving cities is so intriguing and I feel that the film kinda missed that. More battles between these mastodontic machines would have definitely improved the experience. In fact, the opening sequence, with the small town hunted by the gigantic London, is probably the most memorable out of the whole film.

The CGI is well done. Nothing crazy, but it looks good today and will look good 10 years from now. I love the steampunk-ish vibe that permeates everything.

The acting was ok. Weaving was good, and the others were ok. I think the script is more at fault than the actors.

That brings us to the weak point of the movie, the story. The best word I can think to describe it, is "clichéd". [spoiler] Are they dead after that crazy fall or are they alive? Of course they are alive. Will they fall in love or not? Of course they will. Will they stop the weapon with only a second left or not? Of course they will. [/spoiler] Cliché are not bad in and of themselves, but when you abuse them, the whole film suffers. I felt like I already knew how the movie was gonna end.
Also, the film felt a bit rushed. It was action scene after action scene, with very little world building. Which is a shame, because that was the most interesting part. The character suffered a bit too, especially the secondary ones. How am I supposed to root for them if I don't know their ideals and motives?

In the end, this movie deserved a better script, with less cheesy one-liners (seriously, some of them were atrocious). I think that two movies, or a three hour runtime à la Lord of the Rings, would have created a much more compelling story. What it is now, is a fun movie that won't bore you, but that you also won't remember very long.
Missed opportunity.

6.5/10

P.S.: Anna Fang felt like a Trinity (from The Matrix) wannabe

Shocking nobody, _Mortal Engines_ was not very good. Trying to jam way too much into two hours than is reasonable, it instead delivers on zero things. I guess I was **kind of** interested in the character of Shrike, but that was really the whole of my positive experience with _Mortal Engines_. Maybe if this thing had come out about eight years ago in the **height** of the bizarre Steam Punk obsession that gripped the globe (even if it was a weird sort of obsession where everybody called everything they like, and themselves Steam Punk but it really wasn't required to have any relation to actual Steam Punk) then the movie could have at least done well financially, but there's no world wherein this version of _Mortal Engines_ is a consumate film.

_Final rating:★★ - Had some things that appeal to me, but a poor finished product._

Good attempt. Different, unique, and the sets are great. Yeah, it has some weak points, and some of the writing/editing could have been better. But this is a refreshing change in the usual sci-fi stuff that has been coming out. Marvel and DC are flooding the market with their super heroes (not all bad, just too much) I detest all these vampire/werewolf/zombie crap (all of it) This is a nice change, and I enjoyed it!
I did not know what to expect when I started to watch this, but I was pleasantly surprised. Ignore the negative reviews. Those are probably written by zombies/vampires/werewolves....