Mortal Engines

The first time I saw a skyscraper-sized London cresting a hill on massive tank treads, I felt a genuine, childlike sense of "How on earth are they going to pull this off?" It’s a ridiculous image. It’s the kind of high-concept madness that usually stays trapped in the pages of a novel because the physics of it would give a structural engineer a permanent facial tic. But Peter Jackson—the man who spent a decade convincing us that New Zealand was actually Middle-earth—saw Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines and decided that what the world really needed was a Victorian-era metropolis playing a high-stakes game of Pac-Man across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

I actually watched this for the second time last Tuesday while wearing a pair of fuzzy wool socks that had a giant hole in the left big toe. There’s something strangely appropriate about watching a movie about a decaying, patched-together future while your own wardrobe is literally falling apart at the seams.

A Masterclass in "Too Muchness"

Directed by Christian Rivers, a long-time Jackson collaborator who started as a storyboard artist on Deadly Pleasures and won an Oscar for the visual effects in King Kong, the film is a feast for the eyes and a bit of a starvation diet for the soul. The concept of "Municipal Darwinism"—where big cities eat smaller cities for parts and fuel—is handled with such visual panache that you almost forget how little sense it makes.

The opening chase sequence is easily the highlight. Seeing Salthook, a tiny mining town, desperately trying to outrun the predatory behemoth of London is a sequence that demands the biggest screen possible. It’s loud, it’s crunchy, and it feels like a high-octane screensaver with a script written on a napkin. You can tell Rivers spent his career in the art department; every inch of London, from the British Museum to the soot-stained underbelly, feels lived-in and oily.

But then the characters start talking. We follow Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar), a masked assassin with a grudge, and Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan), a nerdy historian who looks like he got lost on his way to a Doctor Who audition. Hera Hilmar does a lot of heavy lifting with just her eyes, which is lucky because her character’s backstory is doled out in clunky chunks of exposition. Then there’s Thaddeus Valentine, played by Hugo Weaving, who is essentially doing a "Greatest Hits" tour of his previous villainous roles. He’s suave, he’s menacing, and he’s clearly the only person who knows exactly what kind of movie he’s in.

The Shrike Factor and the Missing Franchise

The real surprise of the film isn't the walking cities; it's a terrifying undead cyborg named Shrike, played via performance capture by Stephen Lang (Avatar). Shrike is a "Resurrected"—a corpse reanimated with machinery—and his pursuit of Hester provides the only genuine emotional friction in the entire 128-minute runtime. There is a weird, gothic tragedy to their relationship that feels like it belongs in a much darker, more daring film.

In the era of "franchise or bust," Mortal Engines feels like a victim of its own timing. Released in 2018, it arrived just as audiences were starting to feel the heavy weight of "IP fatigue." It was marketed as the next big YA saga, but it lacked the cultural footprint of The Hunger Games. Interestingly, it’s gained a bit of a cult following among the "visual-first" crowd. If you look at the concept art communities or steampunk forums, this movie is treated like a holy text. Apparently, the production team actually built a 1:1 scale section of London’s "Gut," and you can see that physical heft on screen. They also hid two very famous yellow henchmen in the museum scene; if you look closely at the "ancient deities," you’ll spot statues of Minions from Despicable Me. It’s a cheeky nod to the fact that our modern trash is the future's treasure.

Why It Stalled

The film’s biggest hurdle was the gap between its $100 million budget and its $83 million box office return. In our current streaming-dominated world, Mortal Engines probably would have been a massive hit as a high-budget limited series on Netflix or Apple TV+. The world-building is too dense for a single movie. We zip through the Airhaven—a floating city that looks like a dream—and meet the legendary resistance leader Anna Fang (Jihae) only to leave them behind before we can even learn their favorite color.

One of the most debated points among book fans was Hester’s scar. In the novels, she is described as being quite disfigured, but the film opted for a much more "Hollywood" version—a single, relatively clean line across her face. I get it; studios are terrified of "unmarketable" leads, but toning down her trauma felt like a missed opportunity to lean into the film's gritty, rust-covered aesthetic.

Despite the flaws, I find myself defending this movie more than I probably should. It has an earnestness that’s missing from a lot of modern blockbusters. It isn't winking at the camera or making "well, that just happened" jokes every five minutes. It takes its absurd premise entirely seriously. It’s a gorgeous, clunky, over-engineered machine that runs out of gas just before the finish line, but man, those first few miles are spectacular.

Ultimately, Mortal Engines is a film caught between two worlds. It’s too weird to be a mainstream hit and too expensive to be a scrappy underdog. If you’re a fan of production design or just want to see what happens when you give a VFX genius a mountain of cash and a dream about mobile architecture, it’s well worth a look. Just don't expect the story to be as sturdy as the treads on London’s wheels. It’s a beautiful wreck, and sometimes, that’s more interesting than a polished bore.