Review of Mortal Engines (2018) by Kevin S — 18 Dec 2018

Spectacular visuals and worldbuilding. It's such an absurd premise, but they manage to make it believable.

The story's pretty standard genre fiction fare. Hero's journey, avenge my parents, stop the Death Star. It's simple and fairly predictable, but it worked well enough to keep my interest and move things along to the next imaginative location or setpiece.

The writing sometimes fell a bit flat, but the actors were good enough to make it work for the most part. I liked the characters enough for their payoffs to work for me - though admittedly, I don't know how much that might have been skewed by the fact that I've read the books, so I was already familiar with these characters.

My expectations were low going in due to the trailers, reviews, and general track record of movies based on YA genre fiction, but I wound up enjoying it enough to see it twice. It's basically steampunk Star Wars. And by that, I mean the very first Star Wars, Episode IV. Simple story and iffy writing, but overall enjoyable, and establishes a fantastic and imaginative world for more interesting stories in the future. Except, you know, the part where we won't get those more interesting stories because it bombed... but oh well. At least it works fine as a standalone story, and they didn't leave a bunch of loose ends or throw in sequel bait at the end.

Go see it in theaters so you can say you were a fan before it became a cult classic.