The Mortal Engines

This big-scale young-adult fantasy epic feels a little squished at a little over two hours, but it does the job in combining a distinctly odd premise (a post apocalyptic future where cities-on-wheels roam the land devouring other cities) with a familiar personal story of one girl’s quest for revenge on the man who killed her mother. If this suffers a little from lore-overload (the characters have a tendency to recite backstory if even slightly prodded), there are a couple of subplots and minor characters where it feels like a larger subplot has been chopped down to meet running times (a couple of characters seem to exist largely to get plot from A to B rather than really getting much time of their own to develop), it’s still an intriguing examination of a rich fantasy world. The relationship between the two leads does smack a little of “well, our two leads are opposite genders, so therefore there’s going to be a love plot here regardless of chemistry”, and only Hugo Weaving and Stephen Lang as two of the villains really get much to sink their teeth into acting wise, but the storytelling is constantly propulsive as the leads are constantly on the run and in jeopardy, either chasing or being chased. The distinctly steampunk aesthetic means that there’s always a lot to look at, even if the overall arc is somewhat familiar.