Rent Mortal Engines (2018)

Great visuals, shame about everything else - Mortal Engines review by LC

This film looks a million dollars (well, several million), and on high-definition format on a big TV it's just about worth watching for the visuals alone. Unfortunately, despite the interesting concept of mobile cities preying on each other, the characters and and storyline here are nothing but obvious genre cliché and the dialogue is frequently ripe with cheese. Would recommend for children, who are too young or innocent to spot the clichés piling up (and apparently this is based on a Young Adult novel, so maybe a 'kids' film' is all it was ever intended to be) - anyone else, and you're just going to have to try to switch your brain off and enjoy the pretty pictures.

Not as clever or original as it seem to think it is! - Mortal Engines review by CS

Mortal Instruments: This film tries to portray itself as something totally new and original and that the author has created a totally unique fantasy world that no-one else ever thought of, in fact in the bonus features, they actually quite blatantly claim that no-one has ever seen a moving city before! If you're a Sci-Fi buff and familiar with vintage tales, you'll know that the concept of a moving city eating everything in it's path is at least as old as the 1920's. If you look at Sci-Fi from the 1920's, right through to the 1970's, you'll see this theme constantly repeated in the worlds of authors such as Jules Verne, HG Wells, HP Lovecraft and Isaac Asimov, and also in the classic artworks of artists such as Roger Dean and Dave Greenslade. Disney's 'John Carter' based upon the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, even has a moving City also! So whilst Mortal Engines is nothing new and definitely not an original storyline, it is quite a good film to watch with some interesting imagery, but it has all been done before. It's like a modern day Cyberpunk mash up of Mad Max, Terminator, Waterworld, Star Wars and oh so many others! It reminded me so much of some of the classic Japanese Anime such as 'Howls Moving Castle', which it echoes very strongly. Hugo Weaving as usual gives a very strong performance as the baddy in all of this, but the rest of the cast really are quite limp in their parts and of course we are given the obligatory but totally unnecessary love angle to boot! So a good Sunday afternoon teen movie and I'm sure teens will probably think it's great and highly original, simply because the producers tell us it is, but an older audience will simply have seen it all done before and so much better!

Mortal Engines - Mortal Engines review by PIljamFlix

I'm too old (61) to be watching this kind of film with an open mind. Seemed dated and childish and poorly acted and plotted.

Shame. I was liking forward to it. 

Great concept, tedious story - Mortal Engines review by JD

I loved the universe and the visuals. The film was also big on sound. So for me it was well worth watching.

But the story was tedious and by the numbers. Straight out the 5 steps to writing your first story guide.

It was one of those films where i really wanted team bad to win. They didnt actually seem that bad and the bad back story sounded like some guardian propaganda.

None of the characters were remotely interesting or likeable.

So poor film, but probably worth a watch if you are running a cinema style setup.

Surprisingly good! - Mortal Engines review by PO

My son and I read the book years ago but I confess that the film really brought it to light in ways that I couldn't visualise! Well put together as you'd expect and it kept us interested to the end. Some larger-than-life characters and a bit tongue-in-cheek in places but better than the critics would suggest.

Average post apocalypse film - Mortal Engines review by CP Customer

It is obvious why this did not do well at the time of release. Despite some amazing visuals the book was butchered into a scilly story that made little sense.

cgi-heavy steampunk bore - Mortal Engines review by Alphaville

Visually stunning cgi tries to enliven this derivative, empty-headed young adult steampunk effort. More like steambunk. It opens with a London-on-wheels chasing a smaller town on wheels for its resources (yes, really – blame the book on which the film is based). Then it’s all downhill with loads of exposition and shots of our earnest young heroes running around just managing to escape being killed. There are air battles as boring as anything in Star Wars, and the bomb-countdown climax has been old-hat ever since Goldfinger used it in the 1960s. All this is naturally played out to the usual irritating bombast of a score.

On the plus side, the sets are imaginative and well-realised, Resurrected Man Strike has a single poignant moment, chief baddie Hugo Weaving adds a touch of class and chief heroine Hear Hilmar has star quality. Otherwise, unless your brain isn’t yet fully developed, you’ll be glad when it stops.