Mortal Engines (Spoilers)

[Lost Soal]

So, just got back from seeing Mortal Engines which I was quite looking forward to, and it was...
Ugghhhh.
I decided to read the book a month ago so now I'm trying to decide if my problems are with the adaptation or that it's really just a meh film,
The opening of the film erases the mystery of the book and tells you what Madusa is, introduces a killswitch which didn't exist and a huge stock of weapons grade tech which Tom had managed to hide away, somehow.
There are an awful lot of conveniances that are thrown in, characters and motivations changed, two characters which were important are now made utterly pointless and the tragic elements which did exist in Thaddeus Valentine are now gone.
The final battle against London bares some striking similarities to Star Wars except someone decided they wanted a happy ending so the population of London now survive and are welcomed with open arms into shan guo.

So yeah, didn't like it. It is possible I concentrated too hard on the changes from the source but I don't think it would sour me as much as it has.

[LadyTevar]

If you HAVEN'T read the book... how is it?

[Sea Skimmer]

A shame but not unexpected given how downright incoherent the trailers are. Sounds like someone decided blowing up the population of London was too pro terrorism even though the whole place is literally a weapon of war in this universe and literally depicted as part of a food chain. Steampunk source material is like 9 times out of 10 all about the brutal destruction of whole cultures and ideas that are already bent on destroying each other with WMDs, just like colonialism was, if you don't want to make a movie about that maybe don't make a steampunk film? Too bad but I'm really surprised this ever became a movie, I had thought the movie industry flirtation with steampunk was dead for the time being.

I might still go see it anyway because I want people to at least try to make movies like this. I wasn't astounded by the source material so I can accept changes in general.

Shame nobody will ever make a movie about The Angel of the Revolution because it contains far too many blatant racial themes to be easily edited out, if ones which are entirely pro Anglosaxon nationalism rather then say, purely simplistic white power based nonsense, and the basic plot is about how much the Tsar sucks and how revolution will come out of Russia. That book is pretty epic in its level of 1893 air power crazy and grandiose themes from an author who was working at the height of yellow journalism.

[Lost Soal]

Leaving aside the adaptation, this still has problems.
In the opening 5 minutes we're told about Madusa and the killswitch to shut it down, shortly after we're told that something is being built in St Pauls Cathedral. Towards the end when the protagonists piecwe together whats happening it's done side by side with Katherine and Bevis seeing Madusa be eactivated and it's treated as some grand revelation, except everyone in the audiance knows what it is, and has done for over an hour. At this point Bevis just disappears,never to be seen or mentioned again.

There are silly referance jokes such as statues of the Minions being in the museum and referred to as American gods, and there is an Ebay reference. In a time when no one could have even heard of Ebay.

The visuals are really good and the actors all do fine jobs. Some decent action scenes which aren't destroyed by lots of cuts. It's a passible movie but not worth paying cinema prices for.

[Vendetta]

There are silly referance jokes such as statues of the Minions being in the museum and referred to as American gods,

That, at least, was in the book.

Except it was a thinly veiled reference to Mickey Mouse.

But y'know, Illumination are a subsidiary of Universal.



Oh well, I'm hearing Into the Spider-Verse is good, so I'll go see that instead.

[FaxModem1]

Just saw this at the Dollar theater. On one level, I really like the visuals of this film, with the steampunk aesthetics, the gorgeous scenery and costumes, and of course, the airships. On the other, this film is stupid. Keep in mind, I have not ready the book, and can only judge this by what I saw.

So, a thousand years in the future, after a nuclear war(or something worse with Medusa warheads), Europe is now comprised of mobile cities who fight each other for resources. Okay, fine, sounds wacky, but whatever. I'm glad the film at least realizes that the rest of the world would say 'Nope' to this, and cuts off Europe to be left to their own wacky devices as they kill each other until they either smarten up and build a sustainable world, or starve.

Since this is a spoiler thread, I'll go ahead and get into this. Valentine now has a Medusa weapon to power the city of London, and use it's offensive capability to strike the wall preventing mobile cities. Well, maybe this is just me having more braincells than them, but since they now have pretty much infinite power from the Medusa, couldn't they use that to, say, power the city, and not just become constant raiders on the rest of the world, and making enough defenses to ensure any other traction cities fuck off with their big mega-cannon? They also wouldn't have to worry about feeding engines anymore, which would mean better possible recycling and reuse of other materials.

Though, I guess them having that as a philosophy is supposed to be a metaphor for unsustainable expansion without forethought to the future, so whatever. I guess this is supposed to be like how wasteful Panem was in the Hunger Games, with how the technology they use to make their games could easily make most of the needs of the Districts met.

I wonder if it was intentional how aside from the teenagers, all the good guys were primarily from all sorts of different races, and all the bad guys were white. It seemed like a big critique on Western society, and the differences between Western and Eastern civilizations.

The best part of the film though, was Shrike. Really neat villain, a relic from a long dead era, who just wants it's own version of a family, and will destroy entire civilizations to do so.

[Lost Soal]

Madusa isn't a power source, its just a weapon. Where the power FOR Madusa comes from, I'm not so sure.

[FaxModem1]

Madusa isn't a power source, its just a weapon. Where the power FOR Madusa comes from, I'm not so sure.

They state in the movie that Medusa is some sort of quantum energy weapon. Considering that the mayor of London is very worried about running out of power prior to them activating Medusa, and the tech Tom collected finishes it, it's probably not the city itself, but whatever they took from Tom's office that powers it, or whatever else was collected by Valentine over the years.

Either way, it didn't appear to be London powering the weapon, as the weapon was also online while the city was fully lit up.