Mortal Engines

t barely takes a few seconds to associate Mortal Engines with screenwriter-producer Peter Jackson’s best-known works. A grim, gravelly voice fills us in on the story as the studio logos fade in. After the world is obliterated by wars, humanity survives by constructing motorised cities that live off of whatever scraps of resource they find. Bigger cities, like the rumbling behemoth London ruled by an authoritarian class system, literally eat the smaller cities; to the rich, this hunt is a sport.

When the voice-over ends, one feels right in the middle of Mordor; as if that weren’t enough, Junkie XL’s aping of Oscar-winner Howard Shore’s score clinches the deal. Jackson’s influence is domineering on debuting director Christian Rivers — maybe because Rivers has been his storyboard collaborator since Braindead (1992). (Rivers also has a Visual Effects Oscar for directing a scene in Jackson’s King Kong).

Because of his closeness with Jackson and fellow screenwriters Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens, Rivers’ direction might feel too The Lord of the Rings-y. A string of sweeping shots fly over gargantuan sets as our fleeing heroes — Hera Hilmar and Robert Sheehan — run away from London’s despot ruler played by Hugo Weaving. Obviously, the leads have a worthy-enough cause, and London’s ruler has dastardly plans.

Despite the familiar visual authority, the storytelling is top-notch but chances are you won’t notice this until the second or third viewing on television or an online streaming platform.

Adapted from Philip Reeves’ young adult steampunk novels (a risky science fiction sub-genre whose only other famous title is 2004’s Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy), Mortal Engines appears far profounder than its origins.

At times it is apparent Jackson and co-writers want to stuff every bit of the novel into the film so that the film doesn’t spread into future parts. Even the unoriginal bits are crammed in (one notices two Star Wars-inspired moments where a character literally goes: ‘I am your father’; later another protagonist mimics Luke’s big X-Wing crack-shot moment from A New Hope (1978)).

Nevertheless, detailed visual effects, striking production design, an unending succession of small cuts in fast-moving action and crisp shot-to-shot editing elevate the production’s overall cinematic grandness.

But to take this all in, one has to give the film a fighting chance. In a world exclusively consisting of bombastic superheroes, I fear there is little chance of that happening.

The Peter Jackson-produced Mortal Engines is far profounder than its origins while director Wan’s Aquaman is flatter than a pancake

Aquaman

A good hour after Nicole Kidman (playing Aquaman’s mother Atlanta) is rescued by a surface-dweller, falls in love with him, bears a child, and kills super-powered soldiers who break through their humble abode’s walls, we find ourselves in the undersea kingdom of Atlantis — a land straight from Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Here, Aquaman (Jason Mamoa), a hero from DC Comics, is in the middle of a winner-takes-all fight to claim his mantle as king. Waiting for him to win is this kingdom’s stand-in for Ariel: Mara (Amber Heard) — Aquaman’s red-haired future-wife dressed in a pink dress, like a Disney princess. As if Mara weren’t Ariel-y enough, an octopus is briefly seen playing drums with its tentacles. However, before a crab started singing Under the Sea, director James Wan takes us back to reality. It would have been better if he had gone ahead with the crab.

Wan’s Aquaman, which takes place after the events of Justice League (2017), has something or the other to do with our extensively-tattooed sea-hero finding a fabled trident, thwarting his half-brother’s plan to start a war with the surface world, and eventually reclaiming his throne.

Most of the stuff Wan and writers David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick and Will Beall throw at the audience is brighter and chirpier than DC’s previous films; it is also as unnecessarily uber-expensive. Everything is fake, from indoor sets, to glowing sunsets, to the Sahara desert, the rooftops of Sicily (which get redecorated to rubble in a fight), to the “majestic” undersea kingdoms, its denizens and their constantly waving hair because of the underwater current. The battles are explosive as expected, given the action’s necessity to punch the teeny story up. The brawling’s actual need, however, is as warranted as the crick in the neck one gets after trying to stay-up through the unending barrage.

Wan shoots this movie flatter than a pancake — or in our geography’s case, a roti without the puff (the kind you get when NOT finished on the direct fire). One intermittently feels a nagging sensation that the producers only stumbled on to a streamlined narrative after extensively shuffling the scenes in the editing room. Bits and pieces, such as actor Willem Dafoe’s flashback, feel awkward and forced (Dafoe plays his mentor, if you were wondering); but then again, so does this entire movie.

Published in Dawn, ICON, December 16th, 2018