I Watch Films: Mortal Engines
London is a mobile predatory city that practices municipal Darwinism, hunting and capturing other cities. Tom Natsworthy is an apprentice historian who gets caught up in a feud between scientist Thaddeus Valentine and Hester Shaw, leading to him and Shaw leaving the city and having adventures in various cool locations out in the post-apocalyptic landscape.
Meanwhile Katherine Valentine, Thaddeus’ daughter, slowly learns about Thaddeus' plans which involve resurrecting technology from the 60 minute war. Eventually this all comes together in a spectacular final battle.
There’s a lot of stuff packed in here that I presume came from the book – sketchingly introduced, made to appear very cool, then after doing their thing making an exit. Anna Fang and the anti-traction league suffer from this a bit – who are they? What are they doing? Also Shrike the undead cyborg stalker step-father appears from nowhere in the second act, dominates it and then drops out. Bevis Pod, apprentice engineer and friend of Tom, helps Katherine, having an uptown-downtown relationship, only for Pod to go missing in the finale.
This is probably just as well, the explanations would just cause me to ask more questions. The film presents them with the calm assumption that we should know these people are important and cool. That I am familiar with them.
Watch This: If you want a fun family adventure film with ridiculous and cool vehicles.
Don’t Watch This: If you want everything nailed down and explained.
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