Mortal Engines, the missed opportunity
Feb. 7th, 2019 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lovingbothThe book series is truly wonderful. Rewritten from an unpublished original to be 'young adult', it is highly recommended for adults too.
The film isn't.
Fortunately, I'd been warned about that but have just seen a copy (it never made it to the local cinema, sparing me the dilemma of whether or not to pay to see it there) what goes wrong is that it attempts to do a reverse Hobbit and chop an awful lot out to make it one film (whereas the Hobbit was padded to the point of tedium to make it a trilogy...)
The opening twenty minutes is very good, with London chasing a town, and the introduction of most of the main characters.
It starts going wrong with the second chase, inside London. Another problem with Hobbit was shown in the second film, with the barrel escape. We know - thanks to the curse of prequels - that several major characters are going to survive, but we don't need to have one of them leaping around on wildly moving barrels like a ballerina while hitting everything they can see (and several things they can't). There is no tension.
And in the twentieth minute here, just after they opt out of showing one of the lead characters properly - she's got a scar, but "Her mouth was wrenched sideways in a permanent sneer, her nose was a smashed stump and her single eye.." is all ignored - we get a CGI'd impossible chase and it doesn't really improve from that point.
The design work is very good, even if they get some things very wrong (airship with serious jet engines - but nowhere for a fuel supply - moved into a very non-aero position although canonically the secret of heavier than air flight is as lost as the secret of pot noodles...)
But argh, the cuts and just plain wrong changes - almost all of the moral ambiguity has gone - in the script.
As with A Series of Unfortunate Events, it would work a lot better as a TV series. Let's hope someone does it.
The film isn't.
Fortunately, I'd been warned about that but have just seen a copy (it never made it to the local cinema, sparing me the dilemma of whether or not to pay to see it there) what goes wrong is that it attempts to do a reverse Hobbit and chop an awful lot out to make it one film (whereas the Hobbit was padded to the point of tedium to make it a trilogy...)
The opening twenty minutes is very good, with London chasing a town, and the introduction of most of the main characters.
It starts going wrong with the second chase, inside London. Another problem with Hobbit was shown in the second film, with the barrel escape. We know - thanks to the curse of prequels - that several major characters are going to survive, but we don't need to have one of them leaping around on wildly moving barrels like a ballerina while hitting everything they can see (and several things they can't). There is no tension.
And in the twentieth minute here, just after they opt out of showing one of the lead characters properly - she's got a scar, but "Her mouth was wrenched sideways in a permanent sneer, her nose was a smashed stump and her single eye.." is all ignored - we get a CGI'd impossible chase and it doesn't really improve from that point.
The design work is very good, even if they get some things very wrong (airship with serious jet engines - but nowhere for a fuel supply - moved into a very non-aero position although canonically the secret of heavier than air flight is as lost as the secret of pot noodles...)
But argh, the cuts and just plain wrong changes - almost all of the moral ambiguity has gone - in the script.
As with A Series of Unfortunate Events, it would work a lot better as a TV series. Let's hope someone does it.
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Date: 2019-02-07 08:32 pm (UTC)It could be like Awesome if <>Here Lies Arthur was ever a telly seris ...
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Date: 2019-02-09 12:32 pm (UTC)From like the "Sailors' French" pidgin for Mon petit/ma petite. It's like a thing that stayed in our family even after Grandfather-who-was-a-sailor died. But like maybe it's like mostly a Channel Coast thing?
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Date: 2019-02-13 05:24 pm (UTC)