Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
Many thousands of years in the future, Earth’s cities roam the globe on huge wheels, devouring each other in a struggle for ever diminishing resources. On one of these massive traction cities, the old London, Tom Natsworthy has an unexpected encounter with a mysterious young woman from the wastelands who will change the course of his life forever.
Mortal Engines is a visually spectacular production with Peter Jackson's team delivering genuinely impressive world-building and cinematography — the traction cities are rendered with extraordinary scale and detail. However, the film squanders its inventive steampunk dystopian premise on a painfully formulaic YA narrative: bland protagonists, predictable betrayals, and a paint-by-numbers revenge arc drag the story down. Acting is serviceable at best, with leads who lack chemistry and charisma. The ending resolves too neatly and emotionally flatly for a film of such ambition. Novelty sits at average — the source material's concept is genuinely distinctive, but the film's execution hews closely to YA genre conventions rather than pushing the premise into truly singular territory.