Peter Jackson's Mortal Engines

[MagnarTheGreat]

I had a slightly above average 6/10 time. I had a much better time than one year ago when I saw a certain space fantasy movie in December.

It's part of the type of genre I like - very imaginative fantasy - that's often in the types of video games I play.* I didn't hate that The Golden Compass movie as much as other people seemed to. Jupiter Ascending I put below these.

The visuals look like concept art. A lot of CGI but it would be impractical and expensive to do all those practically. I enjoyed the score as well.

I knew a few major spoilers going into it and it didn't bother me in the movie one bit.

Hester was a somewhat cool character driven by revenge (similar story but not quite as ragey or as cool a characterization as Velvet Crowe's* but more practically attired), and Tom was pretty decent as well. Valentine was all right, I feel like I understood him less.

The two most prominent character sets in the structure are Hester and Tom, and then Valentine and Katherine.

There's plenty of cliches and tropes we've seen before but I'm gonna torpedo a movie just because it didn't 'subvert expectations' or barrage 'gotcha' moments like nonsense movie defenses.

I haven't read the books but I understand changes get made in trying to adapt them into movies for various reasons.

It's not that surprising it didn't open well to say the least - the YA craze declined quite a while ago and this isn't as popular a book as The Golden Compass - and December decreases movie openings and boosts how movies perform after.

* Tales of Berseria

 

[THORin]

I saw Mortal Engines yesterday and loved it! There were some noticeable flaws -

Spoiler

Hester needed to be a bit more violent and rage-driven, I thought, Kate and Pod were like completely wasted and most of Kate's story went to Hester in a way that somehow didn't really add anything to Hester's character, and Valentine's death was nowhere near as powerful as in the book.

But Jihae and Sheehan, and Weaving I thought, did a great job. I loved Shrike, and

Spoiler

cried hard at his death

. There were some surprising changes from the book. Most noticeably, of course,

Spoiler

the entire ending. In the book, it has a unique end where everybody dies, and only Hester and Tom are left alive, drifting over the burning wreckage of London in the Jenny Haniver. It might have been too tragic to include in the movie, maybe - instead, the end of the movie has MEDUSA shut down by Hester, and Valentine crushed to death under London's wheels; in the book, MEDUSA gets shut down by Kate, who accidentally falls over the computer when Valentine stabs her, trying to hit Hester, the machine self-destructs, blowing up London, and Valentine dies cradling his dead daughter in his arms. So...yeah, that would have been cheerful. Kate's dog also gets shot in the book (he wasn't even in the movie), and Pod burns to death, hit by a falling airship.

But despite those changes, and more, I still really enjoyed the movie and thought it was very well done, the acting was very solid, the CGI was impressive, the music was okay, and the pacing was nice and tight. I loved Anna Fang so much so - there's one scene where she's in a tank-top, and I was so here for it.

 

[Blitzkrieg]

Just finished watching Mortal Engines and it was disappointing. The steampunk aesthetics were neat and the acting from leads while rough around the edges, does hold the movie together somewhat. But I was expecting much more from Hugo Weaving and the action scenes leave a lot to be desired.

It does cap off with a nice skybeam flourish which happens to be favorite kind of blockbuster movie ending and it has a satisfying conclusion that Alita sorely lacked.

 

[Schlosser85]

Just finished watching Mortal Engines and it was disappointing. The steampunk aesthetics were neat and the acting from leads while rough around the edges, does hold the movie together somewhat. But I was expecting much more from Hugo Weaving and the action scenes leave a lot to be desired.

It does cap off with a nice skybeam flourish which happens to be favorite kind of blockbuster movie ending and it has a satisfying conclusion that Alita sorely lacked.

Yea Weaving was disappointingly just kind of going through the motions. The best characters to me were Anna Fang and Shrike. Shrike especially was kind of fascinating but disappointingly felt like he wrapped up right when he was getting going.

 

[Thome216]

It was a good movie. I never read the books, but I liked the two leads and they played well off of each other. The visuals were outstanding. Weaving can do a really good villain, but here he was more low-key even though he was no less deadly.

It could have used more Shrike, esp to give his death more impact. It was good otherwise though.

I liked the ending. As mentioned above, it tied it up as a complete story rather than the lead-in that Alita 'ended' with. But, after browsing through wiki about the books, I'm kind of glad it ended there.

And, am I bad for being thankful she wasn't as scarred up in the movie as she was in the books? Hera Hilmar was rocking that scar!

 

[Dr.]

Just caught this on the movie channel. It was okay. I thought the first half had a good setup and world building. The latter part was more paint-by-numbers - with an action climax that kinda followed the “Luke and the Rebels vs. the Death Star” template. Also, the Shrike character and subplot - from protector/savoir to vicious killer and then back to protector/savoir - struck me as awkward. It might have worked better if Shrike’s status as a “misunderstood monster” had been introduced earlier. Perhaps, then, he could have been an ally of Hester in the final battle and died a more heroic death.