movie review - Mortal Engines
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a splashy fun flick set in a future where cities are now mobile affairs, roaming the countryside and taking what they need directly. It slowly (and unsteadily) emerges that there's some sort of coordination behind all of this, and that vested powers are indeed quite vested and will have their way. When a trouble-maker or two start asking questions, they soon trigger an all out uprising against it all somehow winds up coming to a head in the skies. There's a heartbreaking sub-plot about the last of a race (or product line?) of cyborgs struggling to protect his charge, a discarded little girl who's grown up and joined the smoking hot multi-racial cast of this movie.
It's a jumbled mess of a motion picture that seems to have gone through the editing process more than a few times. I can't accurately describe the entire plot to you but you know what? It doesn't entirely matter. It misses greatness by a wide margin but the kids seemed to enjoy it and I found it fun enough. I don't know what they thought they were making, but they made the kind of messy fun sci-fi that might end up a cult favorite like The Fifth Element. We have Hugo Weaving as the baddie who gets to say, "I am your father." We have a Road Warrior/steampunk lite vibe throughout. We have one of the cast of "The Umbrella Academy". I'm telling you, it's a sleeper. And it's fun, so why not.
Recommended.