Mortal Engines (2018)

Written by Per Gunnar Jonsson on April 19, 2019

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.