Tag: fantasy

The Witch Files

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★★★
“The Breakfast Coven.”

If John Hughes directed a film about witchcraft, it’d probably end up like this. For you have five stereotypical high-school girls in detention: Brooke the rich bitch (Ziolkoski); Greta the jock (Adrienne Rose-White); M.J. the timid mouse (Robinson); Jules the goth (Flatmo); and Claire the nerd (Taylor), who isn’t actually in detention, just doing a report on it for the school TV channel. [90% of the film is the ‘found footage’ she shoots of subsequent events, a conceit for which I usually don’t have much time… and here is no different, occasionally requiring pretzel-like contrivance.] Jules mysteriously triggers the fire-alarm to get them all out early. After she reveals this no big thing was part of her witchy skills, the other four enthusiastically agree to take part in a ceremony binding them together, into a coven.

At first, it’s remarkably easy: they basically just chant whatever they want, and it shows up. Life becomes a bowl of free designer clothes and undeserved ‘A’ grades. But, inevitably, there’s a price to pay, and the young women start to find that minor physical ailments are accelerating at a highly disturbing rate. [This is nicely tied into the historical portrayal of witches as wizened crones, explained as a result of the magical energy expended] While some of the girls want to stop their dabbling in occult practices, others have become addicted to their new-found powers and refuse to stop. Given the previous binding, this is a problem. Additionally, the town’s past offers a long association with witchcraft, and a recurring pattern of strange events, taking place every seventeen years. As in almost every American high-school horror film since Carrie, this builds to a showdown at a school party.

This over-familiarity is likely the main problem, with both characters and story-line coming over decidedly as nothing you haven’t seen before. Even if you never watched Charmed or The Craft (or Swedish take on the same, The Circle), the tropes in question will be entirely recognizable, and the film offers few if any surprises. Credit is due to the actresses, however, who take their two-dimensional characters and do a good job of bringing them to life. This keeps the film rolling along, when on occasion it threatens to stall out completely. Ziolkoski probably does best, helping the audience understand the allure of mystical power, though the entire ensemble gel together nicely.

In the end though, there isn’t sufficient here to set it apart from those which have gone before. It doesn’t help that the magical battles in the final third are well beyond the capacity of the budget to depict. The optical/digital effects unfortunately mostly feel like they were copy-pasted in from an eighties Full Moon Features project. There is one nice bit of vehicular mayhem, though even there, Final Destination did it better. If you haven’t ever seen a film about teenage girls and witchcraft, you could certainly do a lot worse. But there can’t be many of you out there.

Dir: Kyle Rankin
Star: Britt Flatmo, Holly Taylor, Alice Ziolkoski, Tara Robinson

Miraculous Flower

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★★★
“Flower power”

Another solid Pearl Chang movie – despite being mis-labelled as Wolf Devil Woman 3, it is in now way related to that super weird entry. This is closer to The Invincible Swordswoman, though is not without its strange aspects. Pearl plays May, who gets an annoyingly cryptic mission from her dying mother – I mean, if I was about to shuffle off, my last words would be considerably less vague than, and I quote, “I’ve put a very important thing in a box… You will find out about a great, great secret. From that, you will see the task that you have to perform.” She then drags said sick parent round the countryside for a bit, not even noticing for a while that she’s now pulling a corpse [like I said: not without its strange aspects].

She befriends a roaming scholar (Tsung), who has a secret identity as a vigilante, and after helping fend off a home invasion, is adopted by his family. The whole “mission given by her dying mother” thing appears largely forgotten by May at this point. Eventually – and it could be weeks, months or years, since time-frames are not this movie’s strong suit – she remembers about it, and heads out on the road again. Suddenly stricken with guilt, she’s about to fling herself into a gorge when she’s stopped by the Happy Fairy (Gua), so named because her grin achieves Joker-like levels of permanence.

She increases May’s stock of skills, adding to those picked up from the vigilante scholar, though her training methods involve literally spit-roasting May, as well as turning her into a living snow-woman [again: strange aspects]. It all makes sense after the Fairy tells her a story about a bloody massacre from which there was only one survivor. May inexplicably fails to grasp the deeply-personal connection this anecdote has, well after the audience has figured it out. But this sets in motion the final act, where she turns into the Miraculous Flower – yeah, I was wondering when that was going to become relevant, too. She sets about obtaining her revenge, leaving a white blossom on the scene as her calling-card. Though it’s not as straightforward as that (let’s face facts: it never is), with the secateurs of May’s justice ending up cutting perilously close to her life before becoming the vengeful flora.

Not much is known about the director of this, but he seems to have had a serious thing for heights. The movie certainly makes the most out of Taiwan’s mountainous scenery: as well as the gorge mentioned above, we get battles on the sides of mountains and a particularly memorable one on a waterfall. The story isn’t more than a series of cliches, and definitely tries to stuff too much into its 86 minutes, while the lifting of the theme from The Twilight Zone is particularly blatant. Yet, I’d rather have a movie with too much imagination, rather than not enough: and you’d certainly be hard pushed to claim this fell into the latter category. I was more than adequately entertained.

Dir: Fong Ho
Star: Pearl Ling Chang, Tsung Hua, Gua Ah Leh, Wang Hsieh
a.k.a. Phoenix the Ninja

Blades of Magic by Terah Edun

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Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

Seventeen-year-old Sarah Fairchild and her family have become persona non grata after her father’s execution by the Algardis Empire. He was a renowned fighter and commander, so his alleged desertion makes no sense to Sarah. Regardless, his wife and daughter are now pariahs to the local community. Even with Sarah’s unparalleled fighting skills, both natural and magical, her employment opportunities are limited, to say the least.

Which is how she ends up acting as the guard at a warehouse full of shady artifacts, owned by the even shadier Cormar. There, she meets the scholarly Ezekiel Crane, who helps Sarah as she begins to search for the truth about her father’s fate – facts which someone is keen to cover-up, at savage cost to our heroine. Finding out what happened requires her to join the Mercenaries’ Guild, and head with them into the teeth of a ferocious battle being waged by Algardis against a rebel group, led by eight high-powered mages.

I suspect the problems here are mostly related to reading this as a one-off. For example, the entire first half of the book, with Sarah working for Cormar, serves absolutely no purpose except to introduce her to Ezekiel. Now, I’m thinking it’s quite likely there is a payoff further into the series, with the artifacts he collects eventually proving to be useful in the battle against the mages. But for the purpose of this book, it’s a complete dead-end. If a story is going to be crippled in this way by dividing it into four parts, maybe it shouldn’t be divided into four parts? It certainly does nothing to encourage me to pick up the three subsequent volumes.

When Sarah enlists, in order to find the man she believes holds the key to her father’s death, it does improve. There’s a nice dynamic at play between her abilities, which are almost at the superhero level, and her need to remain below the radar. I was impressed by the final battle, though it’s less a battle, than a rout, with the enemy wizards using the magical equivalent of drone strikes against the mercenaries. And I also liked the “sun mage” Sarah encounters: she is basically the occult equivalent of a nuclear weapon, and may be even more bad-ass.

At the end though, I was left unsatisfied. I appreciate it’s a difficult balancing act, when you offer a cheap introduction to a series, because you need to lure people in to buy the next part. Although not alone in this, Edun doesn’t apparently realize that the best way to accomplish this is simply to give the reader the best book you can. Baiting them with set-ups left unrealized and a story that just ends, rather than coming to a natural finish, is more likely to lead to a sense of unfulfilled dissatisfaction. And that’s no way to get anyone to fork over more money.

Author: Terah Edun
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Crown Service series.

Killing Joan

  By

★★
“Eating crow.”

Joan Butler (Bernadette) is an enforcer for mob boss Frank (Foster), with a zero-tolerance policy for those who disrespect her – whether they are on her side or not. When this eventually causes some of her gang to turn on Joan, she’s brutally beaten to a pulp, and apparently killed. However, she rises from the dead, now a figure who lives in the darkness, and one who has acquired the power to manipulate shadows. She sets about her mission of revenge against Frank and those who killed her. This is much to the distress of her on/off boyfriend Anthony (Celigo), a social worker. But her feelings for him and desire to protect the unfortunates with whom he works, puts them all at risk, when Frank realizes they represent her weak spot.

There are worse films to rip-off than The Crow, and Bartoo is far from the first person to have gone down this route, even in the girls-with-guns genre: see also Mohawk and .357: Six Bullets for Revenge, for examples of the vengeful resurrectee. The problem is, taking as your inspiration a film which is widely regarded as a cult classic: what you produce is, almost inevitably, going to suffer in comparison. That’s certainly the case here, with most of the flaws coming from a script which can’t be bothered to offer any more than the halfest-assed of explanations for her resurrection. It also provides no internal consistency. At times, the reborn Joan is returned to ethereal form by light; at others, not so much. Even the shadow tendrils which are her power, are inexplicably absent in the film’s opening scene, a flash-forward of things to come.

It’s a bit of a shame, since the version of Joan with a pulse is actually a somewhat interesting character, who takes no guff from anyone – especially men. This comes off as a natural trait, probably essential for survival in her line of work. Yet the sense of sisterhood hinted at in the early scenes is rapidly abandoned, in preference for a series of eyebrow-raising twists, where we discover half the people in the film have mystical powers. It builds instead to a disappointing battle against Frank’s sidekick, Donna (Katarina Waters, who wrestled in WWE as Katie Lea Burchill), which is more a showcase for mediocre visual effects and poor fight choreography than anything. Then we get a crappy “love conquers all” finale, that the film singularly fails to pull off – The Heroic Trio, this definitely is not.

Bernadette is probably the best thing about this, and is certainly the only performance to make any impression. Though thanks to the writing, even she can only move the needle from irredeemably tedious to largely uninteresting. Amusingly, she seems to be making a career out of revenge-seeking vigilantes, since the actress can also be seen in the recent sequel, I Spit On Your Grave: Deja Vu, playing the daughter of original victim Jennifer Hills.

Dir: Todd Bartoo
Star: Jamie Bernadette, Teo Celigo, Erik Aude, David Carey Foster

Forgotten Gods by S. T. Branton

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Literary rating: ★★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

Vic Stratton is a woman on a mission. She’s seeking out Rocco Durant, the New York mobster who was responsible for the deaths of her parents five years ago. With the cops unable to do much, she turns vigilante, and is finally on the brink of taking her vengeance when…Well, things get cosmically weird: specifically, “something both large and seemingly on fire blotted out the whole skyline across the river with its brightness.” She ends up fishing a man out of the river, who was carrying a glowing sword which makes fast work of Durant’s henchmen. Turns out, the man, Marcus, is a former Roman legionary: centuries ago, he became a guard in Carcerum, a realm to which a selection of unpleasant deities were banished by King Kronin.

Now, Kronin is dead, killed by his oldest ally, Lorcan, and Marcus needs to find a hero, worthy of carrying the Gladius Solis, the only weapon capable of keeping the gods in check. However, they are beginning to make their presence felt on Earth, and Vic isn’t the only person to have made a new friend following their dockside encounter. Durant has become an underling to Lorcan, and has picked up some disturbing new talents and character traits. For Lorcan is planning to put together an army of the undead, and is using Durant and his contacts to further that end, creating a “vampire factory.” Durant is vampire #1.

I enjoyed this. It doesn’t hold any surprises in terms of where the first volume ends – the cover pretty much gives that away! But the ‘odd couple’ relationship pairing of Vic and Marcus works well, and is occasionally surprisingly poignant. Vic’s original misgivings seem justified, when Marcus is unable to grasp the concept of an “actor”, but the two end up needing each other more than it initially seems. He needs her as a guide through the very different modern world. While as well as learning the art of fighting, she needs him to break opens the scar-tissue of deep cynicism, with which she has increasingly been affected since her parents were killed.

I’d call this first volume mostly set-up, and it’s only at the end where Vic comes into her own. In particular, she kicks into high gear when she has to rescue Marcus from a truly hellish situation in the vampire factory. The resulting sequence, involving a pit of vampires in production, is messy, to put it mildly. It demonstrates Vic’s take no prisoners attitude: she has had that since the beginning, and when combined with Marcus’s training and the Gladius Solis, eventually make for a powerful heroine. The journey there is entertaining though, and this was very much one I “watched” as much as read, the story playing out in my mental cinema. [The ‘gangster turned vampire’ aspect reminded me of Innocent Blood] Further volumes in the series have been marked for potential purchase.

Author: S. T. Branton
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Forgotten Gods series.

Sword of Order, by S. Mays

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

Book 0 in the series? It seems a little odd, as this obviously leads in to the “first” book – Curse of Souls, published in September 2017 – yet Sword came out just three months later. Reading the synopsis, it seems as if Curse may be focused on a different character: college student Sverre Walker, who encounters Jessica Luvkrafft, warrior for the Order of Mankind. Sword is the story of how Jessica became that warrior.

The Order is a massive, ancient, extremely well-funded and completely covert religious organization which, more less, fights for humanity against things that go bump in the night. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, elementals… They’re all real, and the Order is in the front-line of making sure the threat they pose does not overwhelm the human race. As Jessica’s father Jake puts it, “We are the Sword of God. We were put here to eliminate the evils and abominations that seek to overrun our world.” To do so, the Order uses all the technology they can, much of which is developed in house, and not available even to the military.

Jake is a former field operative who now does R&D at one of the Order’s bases. His wife, Abigail, was killed on a mission, leaving him to take care of their daughter Jessica, who is aged 12 when the book starts, and in training. What’s supposed to be a simple mission ends up in the death of the Order member in charge (he was, to put it mildly, a bit of a dick). Even though Jessica was culpable in the fatality, by order of the Council of Overseers, she is fast-tracked to be his replacement. Getting there will require her overcoming her guilt, undergoing some brutal training, and passing a test where the price of failure is both death and her immortal soul.

That’s just the start, and it does feel a bit of a weakness that the book tries to cram in an entire decade’s worth of action. By the end, as mentioned above, Jessica is old enough to go undercover at college and there are a couple of points where it seems multiple years are skipped over with the wave of a paragraph. It also lacks a proper antagonist, with no-one showing up to fit that role until 70% of the way through. On the positive side, it’s a world with almost infinite potential, and I liked the way religion is incorporated into the book in a non-judgmental way.

It does end at a satisfactory point, with Jessica being given the mission that will form Book 1. If it didn’t appear that she’s a co-star at best in that, I’d be more inclined to read it. Despite the flaws and jerky pacing (as well as a cover that’s rather… different to the techno-warrioress we actually get!), Mays has laid the groundwork for a decent heroine in Jessica, and the prospect of her eventually going up against Countess Bathory is an intriguing one.

Author: S. Mays
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 0 of 2 in the Warrior of Souls series.

Tidelands

  By

★★★
“Attack of the killer cartel mermaids.”

Cal McTeer (Best) has just got out of prison after serving a 12-year sentence for arson leading to murder, a crime she committed as a teenager. Returning to her home town of Orphelin Bay, she finds her brother, Augie (Jakubenko), now working as a conduit for drugs, with the connivance of at least some local cops, and supplied by the mysterious Adrielle Cuthbert (Pataky). She oversees a commune near town called L’Attente with a zero-tolerance policy for dissent, and uses the proceeds of her narco-aquatics to fund a worldwide search for mysterious fragments of pottery. Turns out she is queen of the Tidelanders: the offspring of humanity and legendary sirens who inhabit the ocean. Though Cal doesn’t know it initially, a near-death experience shows that she is of similar stock. Adrielle doesn’t like the competition. And neither does local gangster Gregori Stolin (Koman), who is intent on muscling in on Augie’s business, and cutting out the middleman, to work directly with Adrielle.

It’s part Banshee, part True Blood, and part its own strange creation. It could well have been just a crime drama with familial overtones, an antipodean take on Sons of Anarchy: Cal’s father was lost at sea, and her mother spent what should have been the resulting inheritance on buying the local bar. Yet the makers opted to add fantastical creatures into it, though the sirens themselves are only ever glimpsed in cameo, at least for the first series. It is refreshingly gynocentric: Cal vs. Adrielle is the dynamic at the core, and considerably more interesting than Augie vs. Gregori, with neither woman prepared to give an inch of ground.  There’s no doubt who’s in charge, Adrielle dealing ruthlessly with any challenges to her authority, helped by the seer she keeps chained up in the basement.

It doesn’t end in any meaningful way, and I presume this first Netflix original series to come from Australia will be returning to expand further on the mythology set up in its debut run. For example, I was intrigued by the brief depiction of an apparent anti-siren secret society, run by local women who lost their men (one way or another) to the creatures, and maybe this will be developed further next season.  There’s something of a soap-opera feel to it as well, in that almost everyone is uniformly attractive, and seem to be having copious amount of sex – whether for pleasure or power. The sunny seaside setting also lends itself to plenty of cheesecake for both sexes, whether it’s shirtless beach bods, or Adrielle’s apparent aversion to bras.

Best makes for a solid heroine though, who takes no shit from anyone and, as is clearly demonstrated from her opening scene, is more than capable of taking care of herself – in or out of the water. She and the better-known Pataky are always worth watching in their scenes. While I’m not quite as convinced by anyone else, there was still enough to get us through these eight episodes, and leave us hungry for some more fish tales.

Creators: Stephen M. Irwin and Leigh McGrath
Star: Charlotte Best, Elsa Pataky, Aaron Jakubenko, Jacek Koman

Hollywood Warrioress

  By

★
“Just because you can make a film…”

The IMDb says this is a 2016 movie. The copyright in the end credits says 2014. But shooting was apparently going on for this at least as far back as 2011, according to Internet reports. I suspect a lengthy production, shot on weekends, when the participants have some spare time, which may well explain the presence of five credited directors and eight cinematographers. Which in turns helps explains the wretched awfulness of this. Clearly a passion project for Dutch, who is its star, (one-fifth) director, (one-third) writer and executive producer, this proves that passion by itself is not sufficient.

She pulls double duty, playing both the goddess Athena, and Deborah, her chosen vessel on earth. Deb is tasked with stopping the evil machinations of multimedia mogul Girard Devereau (Young), who is kidnapping teens around Los Angeles for some malevolent purpose [a news broadcast early on puts the number of victims at 500; at the end, the number Debbie actually releases, can be counted on the fingers of one hand]. To this end, the Deborator is given ill-defined special powers, which she largely fails to use, while traipsing around Hollywood, looking for her niece, wannabe singer Anna (Andrews). She has been kidnapped by Morgana (D), one of Devereau’s minions who moonlights as a therapist. Or maybe it’s just to stop Anna from singing – in which case, we’re firmly on Team Morgana.

The best thing which can be said, is that Dutch looks good in her battle bikini. About the only genuine laugh I got from this, was when she was hit on by a pimp, who thought she might “appeal to the ‘warrior princess’ crowd”. Otherwise… Well, I initially thought it was an interesting stylistic choice to have all the fights in slow-motion. Then I realized that was actually the speed at which the “combatants” were moving. Welp. Right from the start, the digital effects are similarly inadequate. It would be charitable to say that they might have passed muster 25 years ago. At this point, you’d probably be able to match them on a mid-level iPhone.

Maybe we should nickname her Deborah “One Take” Dutch, given the occasion on which an actor obviously flubbed their line, yet the take was still used? More damning than all the technical flaws, are a storyline which has no sense of escalation or urgency to it at all. I’m not even certain I could state with confidence what Devereau’s end-game is supposed to be here. Rule #1 of movie villains: Have a clear purpose. Actually, it goes for heroes, too, and the Deb-meister is no better. Sure, she’s trying to recover her niece. Yet for someone supposedly blessed by Athena with special powers… her methods are largely indistinguishable from those of any normal person, worried about a missing relative: contact known associates and the cops. By all accounts, Dutch seems really nice, so it pains me to be so harsh, but there’s unfortunately very little of merit – or even acceptable quality – to be found here by a neutral observer.

Dir: Christine Dupree, Deborah Dutch, Chad Hawks, James Panetta and Rusty Pietrzak
Star: Deborah Dutch, Edward X. Young, Angelica Drum Andrews, Debbie D

Mortal Engines

  By

Dieter: ★★★½
Jim: ★★★

“Meals on Wheels.”

Note from Jim: A slightly different approach here, with Dieter and myself collaborating on this review, so it’s going to be more of a back-and-forth, and also rather longer than our usual reviews! So get a cup of coffee… And a sandwich. :)

Top of the Flops?

Mortal Engines did, indeed, prove very mortal. Variety estimated it would possibly lose $125 million. The film failed to make back even its $100 million budget worldwide, never mind marketing costs, closing out at a mere $82 million. Let’s start by discussing cinematic failure in general.

Dieter: Sometimes it seems a film’s fate is decided before anyone has actually seen it, or before countless movie reviewers copy what other movie reviewers already wrote. It becomes a meme, repeated by everyone and spreading like a virus, until it becomes a reality and the respective movie then really flops or becomes a great success. A couple of years ago, when the first trailer for the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ adaptation John Carter came out, people saw the fight between the hero and the giant white gorillas in the trailer and decided it was a Star Wars rip-off, John Carter was done. Not even I watched it in the cinema. I regretted that later when discovering the movie on DVD and found it to be a sympathetic, enjoyable SF-actioner.

My theory is this: A potential cinemagoer sees a trailer and immediately decides whether or not they will like a movie – or at least give it a chance. And it’s usually not a rational choice, just a gut feeling, a kind of “I like it, that looks good / funny / exciting,” or “Nah, that’s nonsense / stupid / don’t like that actor / actress”, etc. Afterwards people try to rationalize why, and come up with a lot of different reasons that – when looked more closely at – are not that logical at all. I think this also is true for a lot of reviewers.

I do remember that in the 80s, we used to go into a movie without prior knowledge other than maybe a poster or trailer. We either liked it or not, and that was it. Now – and I’m as guilty as anyone – we read and watch countless reviews, look at sites like rottentomatoes and try to “nitpick”. If there is a single little thing we don’t like or consider as flawed, it increases exponentially in size for us compared to other aspects, and we end up discounting a movie entirely, due to this one element. This may be why it feels we have a tougher time just enjoying movies today.

Jim: There are times when it does feel almost pre-determined that a film will bomb: it’s rare for a “surprise flop”. I think marketing has become much more of an exact science these days, to the point that a film’s opening weekend can usually be projected fairly accurately beforehand. John Carter is a good example of a film which was dead on arrival. There’s no apparent logic to it, in terms of quality. I mean Cutthroat Island is not great, but it’s decent enough. I could name half a dozen worse movies, without leaving Michael Bay’s filmography.

Yet, not all flops are equal, it seems. Browse Wikpedia’s list of box-office bombs for the last couple of years. Notorious, well-known bombs like Valerian, The Mummy and Geostorm. But potentially worse than any of those was… A Wrinkle In Time? They kept that a bit quieter – the paranoid in me suspects because it went against the multicultural narrative being pushed with the success of Black Panther. But even there, it was not a surprise, least of all to Disney.

But specifically, where did Engines break down?

Mortally wounded

Dieter: When the first trailers for this Young Adult Sci-Fi/Steampunk book adaptation with franchise ambitions came out, a majority of online reviewers reacted with “Cities on wheels that devour other cities? Nah, that’s stupid nonsense – much too fantastical!”. Insert a rant from me how audiences are able to accept many other VERY fantastical and nonsensical concepts. They clearly didn’t have this problem with Into the Spider-verse or Aquaman. Still, something didn’t “click” with them and that may have been the death knell for this movie, regardless of its qualities or failings. That’s kind of regrettable, I think. Despite the movie’s undoubted flaws, it actually offers an interesting new concept.

Maybe audiences don’t really want something new. They want something that feels fresh and new – but essentially is still the same. It’s a strange kind of contradiction that is difficult for film studios to deal with. For all its shortcomings, The Last Jedi tried to do something new, and split the fandom (I didn’t like this movie either, by the way!). On the other hand, James Bond is a series that has obviously managed to re-invent itself again and again, yet still maintains most of its core audience. So count me among the people who don’t think that cities on wheels is too bonkers a premise!

Jim: It wasn’t helped by an almost complete lack of star power. Beyond Hugo Weaving, it has a guy who gets killed early in Resident Evil and Balon Greyjoy. [I’m excluding Stephen Lang, whose role is…limited, shall we say] This is also a difficult concept to get over quickly, in a way that (as Dieter notes) doesn’t sound silly, and that’s what films need to do in order to create momentum. ‘From the producers of Lord of the Rings’ doesn’t hold nearly as much weight as it did, considering it’s now 15 years since the end of that trilogy.

And live-action fantasy generally has had a rough go of it lately. The Dark Tower. Seventh Son. Pan. The BFG. All based from reasonably popular literature with a built-in audience. All released since the start of 2015. All bombs. Counter-examples of commercial success over the same time are hard to find, save Harry Potter prequels and Disney’s live-action efforts such as Beauty and the Beast. If people want fantasy, these days it seems as if they turn on Game of Thrones instead.

The play’s the thing…

Thousands of years in the future, after something called “The 60-minute war”, the knowledge of our world today has been lost. But new technology has enabled mankind to put their cities on wheels. These predators now roll over the wasted earth and “devour” other cities, to get the resources necessary to function, in what is called “municipal Darwinism”.

In one such hunt, Hester Shaw (Hilmar) boards London. A mysterious woman with a red scarf over her face – strangely, no one ever seems to find that suspicious! – she attacks Thaddeus Valentine (Weaving), Head of the Guild of Historians, in a failed assassination attempt. She escapes by dropping into an exit shaft, shortly followed by historian assistant Tom Natsworthy (Sheehan), pushed in by Valentine after overhearing Hester’s claims he killed her mother.

Together the mismatched pair try to get back to London, and stop Valentine, who is trying to put together an old superweapon in order to destroy the “Great Wall” in the East. Beyond it, the so-called “anti-tractionists” still have static conurbations, which would offer great food for London. Meanwhile, on Hester’s trail is Shrike, a re-animated cyborg who wants to punish her for for not keeping a promise to join him in cyborgness.

Been there, seen that…

Dieter: You can already predict how this will develop – and that’s one of the big shortcomings: We know this plot and many of its tropes too well, leaving too little of any element of surprise. For some people that’s already enough to discard the movie; though I understand that, I’d always argue it’s not the best reason. Still, there are elements reminding me directly of Hayao Miyazaki classics Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Howl’s Moving Castle; the Mad Max-movies; a Terminator-like character; a female rebel who’d probably feel at home in The Matrix, and a little bit of Terry Gilliam for seasoning. Heck, we even get a classic slave-trading market scene I immediately associated with those beloved old pirate movies from HW’s golden era!

Then there’s the second half of the movie, stealing directly from the Star Wars franchise, though one could argue it’s an age-old plot. But the similarities here are obvious, including the exit via shaft at the beginning, as in The Empire Strikes Back, and a floating city between the clouds. In particular, the superweapon destroyed by a group of courageous rebels has already become such a cliche, it has even started to bore Star Wars fans. And the final revelation about the – oh, gosh – “surprising” special relationship between the heroine and the uber-villain? That has a much longer beard than Hugo Weaving! Though, it has to be said, these things were already in the book – perhaps original author Philip Reeve should be the target of some criticism?

Jim: Holy Miyazaki. Holy Castle in the Sky, especially. Let’s review, shall we?

  • Orphan boy and girl brought together
  • The villain seeks to use ancient technology for military purposes
  • The pair are rescued by sky pirates, operating under the command of a woman
  • A literal flying city
  • Girl has a jewelry heirloom that’s key to stopping the villain
  • She’s also pursued by a large, lethal robot.

I’m sure there’s more, but it has been a good 20 years since I saw Castle. Then we have Howl’s Moving Castle, perhaps the most obvious touchstone for nomadic structures. Now, the book of Mortal Engines did come out before Miyazaki’s film… except the latter was a Studio Ghibli adaptation. The book by Diana Wynne Jones was published in 1984, well before Reeve’s story.

In the second half, as Dieter mentions, it turns into Star Wars, and isn’t subtle about it either. In particular, you have to wonder about the ‘special relationship’, not least because – unlike in the Star Wars universe – it doesn’t go anywhere. It adds nothing, and is almost cringe-inducingly staged here, as if deliberately trying to evoke its predecessor. It’s like having a horror movie where someone is stabbed to death with a carving knife in the shower. There’s inspiration, homage… and then there’s being blatantly obvious.  

Adapting to change

Dieter: An online reviewer got it right when he said this movie feels like the third or fourth movie in a series – the triumphant finale and an ultimate big bang. Unfortunately, without any build-up, you’re left to wonder why you should care, when a just introduced character bites the dust. It’s kind of a waste and I absolutely understand viewer frustration. But then again: It’s really not the screenwriters’ fault. This is how it was in the book. Maybe those in charge should not have stuck to it so closely? But they already took some liberties with the original, removing characters and story-arcs.

As late screenwriting legend William Goldman once wrote: “There is nothing worse than adapting a book for the big screen.” A book has time to develop characters – you don’t usually read a book in two hours – a luxury denied to movies. Inevitably, the question comes up of what to leave out. It really can’t be easy to adapt a book, especially one where a lot happens, as is the case here. For example, largely gone is the secondary couple, Valentine’s daughter Katherine (Leila George) and Bevis Pod (Ronan Raftery), a worker from the lower decks. In the book, chapters alternated between their story, and Hester + Tom, with occasional asides involving Valentine and Shrike). In the movie, we don’t get to see the slowly developing love story between Katherine and Bevis.

Mortal Engines offers a lot of spectacle and fascinating images over its runtime. But, like one of its big cities, the story moves relentlessly from set-piece to set-piece, and from action scene to action scene, hardly ever giving the audience time to take a breath. While we expect blockbusters today to move faster than in previous eras, it has become almost a forgotten art to construct a story or screenplay that allows for quiet. Those moments where you take the time to develop characters, their relationships to each other, have them explain themselves and their attitudes, or where they can expose themselves emotionally.

A good screenplay needs a rhythm: Ups and downs, moments of excitement and relaxation to make the journey enjoyable, like a well-timed roller-coaster ride. These moments are important for audiences – and even if they may not be aware of the need, they definitely miss them when they are not there. Unfortunately, Mortal Engines lacks these; maybe 3-4 times in the entire film, characters are allowed to be emotional and offer some insight into themselves. The rest of the time it’s “bang”, “rudder-rudder”, “peow” and “aawww”, perpetually accompanied by the adequate soundtrack of Junkie XL. I think a good movie should also have some scenes where the makers don’t feel the need to underlay them with music.

Jim: Having not read the book, I’m not qualified to offer much opinion in this area. But I do agree that this didn’t feel like the first entry. It literally begins with cities on wheels, hunting each other. Wait, what? I was thoroughly distracted, trying to figure out how the world got to that point. I get there was a war ‘n’ stuff. It still seems… a bit of a leap, shall we say. This kind of thing is easier to get away with in a book, where there’s not quite the same expectation that everything will necessarily “make sense” on page 1. If you lose your audience in a film, it’s almost impossible to get them back.

More generally, there’s no doubt about the problems adapting from the page to the screen. They are two different media entirely, and what works in one won’t necessarily in the other. Knowing that is essential, and why I don’t have much time for fans of, say, the Resident Evil games complaining about the movies being “different”. No kidding. If they weren’t, the films probably wouldn’t have become the successful franchise they did. But this is why buying the movie rights to a successful book is a minefield. Yes, it comes with a built-in audience. On the other hand, it comes with a built-in audience of critics!

Indirect direction

Dieter: The film was directed by Christopher Rivers, mainly known for his work in special effects, and a protégé of Peter Jackson, Maybe Jackson wanted to help get his career as a director going? Or perhaps Jackson didn’t feel so eager to direct, considering the stress and problems he had with his two Middle Earth trilogies. Despite an underwhelming response to the Hobbit series, the studio prefered to advertise the movie with his name. A stained reputation is better than no reputation at all, I guess, and virtually no one had ever heard of Rivers.

I saw interviews with a very tired looking Jackson, which could probably generate hardly any less enthusiasm in a potentially interested viewer. Little more than, “I liked the book, so I made a film out of it. If enough of you watch it, the studio may order another one. Thank you!” How could these clips be approved by the marketing department?  

I also noticed how everyone involved has been avoiding the “S-word”:  “Steampunk”. It’s very much in that genre but even Jackson said something like “It’s not really steampunk. It may have elements of steampunk, but it’s not a steampunk movie.” My feeling is “steampunk” has a poor reputation among movie studios, as too many movies of that genre have flopped hard in the past. Need I say more than Wild Wild West? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and, to some extent, The Golden Compass, also show why studios distance themselves from this word.

I wonder if there might have been some studio meddling here, since this would probably have benefitted from being an hour or 30 minutes longer. More time to develop the characters and build a stronger emotional connection to them. But a 2-hour movie means more showings per day. A business decision, not necessary one that supported the storytelling!

Jim: Personally, I wonder when Peter Jackson is going to get to direct a narrative feature he wants to do? Rather than one forced on him by Guillermo Del Toro bailing, as with The Hobbit. His last such was The Lovely Bones, and that was a decade ago. I wonder if he’s “broken,” having gone over to documentaries, first about World War I and, next, The Beatles. Maybe he’s turning into Werner Herzog…

Anyway, Rivers’ background in effects seems obvious here, as the film feels a good deal more confident and on a former footing with the technical aspects than when the actors. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: James Cameron, to this day, seems to be the same, and he’s done very well for himself. However, Cameron’s first feature didn’t go down in history as one of the biggest flops of the year, and Piranha II: The Spawning also cost considerably less money than Mortal Engines. Is this the biggest loss in a directorial debut? I can’t think of many rivals.

However, unlike Dieter, I didn’t feel the pace of the film was too much of a problem, and think Rivers did a good job of keeping the various balls in the air. Would it have benefited from a greater running time? Perhaps, though I’m not sure economics plays much of a part, since two-hour movies seems to be the norm – going longer does not appear to pose any economic problems.. If you look at the top US box-office hits last year, the shortest in the top six was The Incredibles, and it still ran 118 minutes. The average was 133 minutes. I can’t honestly say that having one fewer screening of Engines per day feels like it would have made much difference.

Acting up

Hera Hilmar (what a name!) is much better as Hester Shaw than feared. The character could have become a parody of itself; my personal worry was that Hilmar would be too soft for the role. But that’s not the case: she gives a tragic character enough depth to be interesting, without overdoing it. The problem is a change from the book. There, her scar goes through half of her face, Hester having lost an eye and her nose is a mere stump. The disfigurement is why she constantly hides much of her face behind a red scarf. She has the scarf in the movie… but why? Film-Hester’s scars are hardly worth mentioning and don’t detract from Hilmar’s natural attractiveness. It’s kind of disrespectful to the original character and the audience.

On the other hand, Robert Sheehan, as Tom Natsworthy, seems to have been chosen mainly due to his big puppy dog eyes and general cuteness: I can easily see teen-girls going gaga over him. But, honestly, he appears a bit bland. Then it has to be said, the character was never especially interesting in the book to begin with, so once again criticism has to go back to the original author. The cyborg Shrike is played by Stephen Lang. While we rarely if ever see Lang’s “real” face, he is probably the most emotionally touching character in the movie. And he’s gone before we know it. Oh, movie, movie… what are you doing?

Weaving delivers his usual good villain performance here. However, the script has again decided to simplify things. In the book, Valentine is doing the bidding of his master, Mayor Magnus Chrome (played here by Patrick Malahide). Valentine is driven by fear he may lose the status he has carefully built as an outsider, and wants to secure his daughter Katherine’s safety. This gives the character at least some understandable motivations for his actions. Unfortunately, the movie ignores this completely: Valentine’s motivation appears to be little more than to show everyone he has the biggest gun of them all! Being evil for evil’s sake: it’s so passé…

Of particular interest to this site is cool Asian action-chick Anna Fang, played by stylish Korean actress/musician Jihae. She frees Tom and Hester from the slave traders and has a nice, almost classic duel with Weaving at the end. Fang comes across like the Steampunk-action-girl you’d like to find out more about… The film, however, has other plans. Though Philip Reeve’s new book in the universe, Night Flights, will fill that need, if you’re interested.

Jim: There’s no doubt, Hilmar is the engine which powers the film. Sheehan is blandness personified at an almost Twilight-like level, and there are almost no moments at which you are made to care for Tom. Indeed, he could have been excised from the film entirely, and it would have made little or no difference: this is Hester’s story, and she has a genuine character arc, something the “hero” isn’t given. The makers seem to realize this when it comes to the finale, as Tom is left on the sidelines, while Hester and Anna taking over. Perhaps they are the ones who should have been teamed up from the start?

I’d seen Jihae before, playing twin sisters in the Mars mini-series, but she makes for an excellent supporting character here. A spin-off franchise of her adventures and derring-do beckons. Er, or perhaps did beckon, before the main feature crashed and burned. However, I think in general actors tend to escape from bombs much better than those behind the camera. Even Tom Cruise has had his share of flops. Hopefully Hilmar will also be able to move on; Dieter will perhaps fight me over this, but I got a little Noomi Rapace vibe from her. Maybe it’s just the “Scandinavian actress” thing. That’s impressive enough in itself, considering English is not her first language.

I liked Weaving, though will always find it hard to see him without muttering “Mr. Anderson….” under my breath, ever time he speaks [which made parts of Lord of the Rings tricky to watch!]. I did understand Valentine’s motivations for what he does: he wants to ensure the survival of London, by any means necessary, and if that involves taking from others, so be it. I guess whether that inevitably makes him the “bad guy” may depend on your philosophical perspective, since has been (and continues to be) the basis of Western civilization. Which brings us nicely to…

A partly political broadcast

Dieter: There’s a degree of politically correct representation going on, with the “anti-tractionists” being multi-ethnic and diverse, while London – differently from today – being mainly Caucasian, with the exception of Colin Salmon as museum director Pomeroy. While I personally don’t mind that, it was quite obvious, but thankfully without directly blurting out some social justice message. And then – I think I’m starting to sound like a broken record – it’s the way it was in the book.

Jim. In contrast – perhaps due to not having read the book – I felt the film did contain unsubtle attempts at political commentary, with the West literally the bad guy here. It’s not just Thaddeus Valentine: when his weapon causes carnage in the East’s multicultural society and blasts a hole in the wall, the population of London is shown cheering wildly. It’s as subtle as showing 9/11 footage, then cutting to Muslims dancing in the streets. I also noted an odd announcement as the residents of Salzhaken are embarking into London: “Be aware, children may be temporarily separated from parents.” Hmm, Trump reference much? Yet ironically, the film works as an excellent advertisement for the merits of a good, strong wall, keeping out the foreign hordes who are seeking to plunder your region’s wealth. Oops…

In the end…

Jim: I’m reminded of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Kerry Conran’s 2004 film. Both were debuts, effects-heavy action fantasies with an aerial bias… and both proved box-office failures. You could even draw a line between Angelina Jolie’s Commander Franky Cook as an ancestor of Anna Fang. Sky Captain has become something of a cult item, so perhaps there’s hope for Engines. Though not as groundbreaking in terms of its FX, it does still have a strong sense of visual style. Rivers keeps the camera almost in perpetual motion, swooping around and through the scenes and characters.

It’s this aspect which is the most successful, the kind of film I can see myself picking up on Blu-Ray eventually (albeit at the $5.99 level!), for the spectacle. While the setting needs more explanation, as a physical entity, there are no such shortcomings, and it does work nicely as cinematic eye-candy. However, there are too many problems elsewhere, from a poor choice of hero through a forgettable soundtrack [really, techno for steampunk?], for this to be regarded as an all-round success. That said, nor did it deserve to fail so spectacularly, and deserves praise for at least offering something different in style and setting – if not story.

Dieter: As a large-budget entertainment blockbuster, this delivers the required spectacle, visuals and big bangs, and there’s hardly anything technical you could complain about. The problem is a script which freely copies well-known tropes, elements and plots that we have seen far too often in similar blockbusters. This is indeed a negative, unless you are a teen, haven’t seen many of these movies and don’t know Star Wars! The screenplay also wasn’t able to adapt the book intelligently enough. While it managed to capture the basic plot adequately, not leaving anything essential out, I must say a lot of the decisions didn’t just simplify the story, they dumbed it down. I’m sorry to say, the team that brought us Lord of the Rings could have used a hand there.

The actors mostly give competent to good performances. It’s not their fault if the characters are bland, and some dialogue is as flat as if a rolling city drove over it!  I particularly “bought” Hera Hilmar in her role. It’s only her second big film, after Inferno, and I would like to see her, as well as Jihae, again. Sadly, maybe that chance has gone. Certainly, steampunk still awaits its magnum opus. This could have been it. While it isn’t, Mortal Engines is still much better than previous attempts in this specific sub-genre.

This rolling city epic disappoints, because I feel it could have been and should have been better. However, if you are just here for some big colourful loud screen spectacle you could fare much worse. But then, better, too. At least Hester had a very realistic view on life at the end of the book: “You aren’t a hero, and I’m not beautiful, and we probably won’t live happily ever after. But we’re alive, and together, and we’re going to be all right.”

Dir: Christian Rivers
Star: Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Hugo Weaving, Jihae

Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve

  By

Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Spoiler warning. I will be discussing parts of the novel’s story as well as things that may – or may not – go on in the movie adaptation.

Background & backstory

When former illustrator Philip Reeve’s first book, Mortal Engines, was released in 2001, he couldn’t have known it would be that successful. Coming out amidst the Harry Potter craze and Lord of the Rings movies, the book market had started to focus on young adult novels, very often with fantasy or SF-themed plots, resulting in a sharp increase in their sales. For a time that worked very well: I like to see how these genres, usually only occupying a little niche in bookshops, were getting their own big areas, shelf over shelf filled with books of this sort. However, I also saw traditional books for boys and girls, well-liked evergreen children’s classics for decades like Pippi Longstocking, The Robber Hotzenplotz and the books of Michael Ende, more and more pushed out by the Harry Potter type. That personally hurt me a bit as I grew up with all these classics.

But things have changed. Traditional book shops seem to have become a thing of the past, with more and more people seeming to order books online. Books themselves seem to have become an oddity, with every second person reading e-books on their Kindle and the young adult genre seems to be dead now. Few of the many authors walking in Joanne K. Rowling’s footsteps were able to compete with her enormous success. Though the YA genre would enjoy other successes such as The Hunger Games or Twilight, this genre really seems to have seen its day. Even in the cinemas, many attempts flopped. Percy Jackson never became a franchise; Divergent ended before its final part; and did anyone really watch the last movie in the Maze Runner series?

While some numbers give cause for concern, such as a drop in book sales in  the last four years, there is also positive news as classic children books seem to have made a comeback, in film form. German cinemas enjoyed new movies based on The Little Witch and The Little Ghost (Otfried Preußler), Hannie & Nanni and the Famous Five (Enid Blyton), The Boys from Castle Horror Rock (Oliver Hassencamp) and Jim Knopf (Michael Ende). A new Robber Hotzenplotz book has also come out, 45 years after the last one – and 4 years after author Otfried Preußler’s death!

But I digress. ;-)

Reeve’s book came out in the midst of the YA craze and was received very well. It obviously proved popular enough that the author would follow this success with 3 sequels, 4 prequel novels, an illustrated guide and a short novella. Film-maker Peter Jackson had been interested in the series since 2008. But the idea of enormous cities rolling overland was not translatable to the big screen with then-available CGI. Add his own sudden involvement with the Hobbit movies (originally to be directed by Guillermo del Toro), and the idea stalled. Now, it seems these hurdles have been cleared, and though Jackson left directing to his prodigy and co-worker for 26 years, Christian Rivers, we finally saw a movie version of the first book in December.

But what are these books – specifically, the first – about?

Summary

Reeve invented in his first book a rich colourful world which plays far, far in the future but feels definitely retro. Aficionados know this kind of genre which often is labelled “steampunk” – or in this case even “dieselpunk”. But Reeve, as well as Jackson and Rivers in recent interviews, stress it’s not quite that, but rather incorporates elements of steampunk as well as of post-apocalyptic science-fiction with the Young Adult approach of something like let’s say… Harry Potter. It should be also noted that the idea of “cities on wheels” had already been used before in Edgar Rice Burrough’s “John Carter of Mars” series.

In the book, the world has been devastated by a terrible conflict, called the “Sixty Minute War”, thousands of years ago. It destroyed most of the ecology of the earth: earthquakes and volcano eruptions were caused by the aftermath of that war. Traditional knowledge about our world, our history and our technology has been lost. New knowledge has replaced it, that has changed the way people live in this post-apocalyptic world.

In order to survive, people have found a way to put entire cities and towns on wheels. These now roll over land and through dried-out seas, in order to capture and “devour” other cities, whose parts and elements are used to fuel their own city and replenish resources. The captured inhabitants of those cities may be integrated into their captor’s society or be sold as slaves. Transport to or discovery of other cities is managed via fast airships.

The story revolves around young orphan Tom Natsworthy, third assistant in the Guild of Historians, who works in a museum. Things seem to be going fine for Tom and his dreams of a better life, as he meets Thaddeus Valentine, a key figure in the city of London. Valentine seems very positive towards Tom, and his daughter Katherine seems to take a liking to him. At least, until a girl with a scarf across her disfigured face tries to kill Valentine. Her attempt is thwarted by Tom, though he can’t prevent her from falling into a waste chute during the subsequent chase. She had just revealed her name to him as Hester Shaw, information which proves so embarrassing for Valentine, he throws Tom right behind her.

That is just the beginning. Out of need, Tom joins the young woman in order to get back to London. They experience a series of adventures on their journey involving a city in the air, pirates, cool aviatrix Anna Fang, a big city not on wheels but hiding behind a big wall, and a forgotten weapon of mass destruction called “Medusa” from the Sixty Minute War. Shocking revelations are… ahem… revealed to the characters and readers, resulting in a finale that leaves no eye dry, and with a death toll that would have Game of Thrones nodding in approval.

I don’t think Reeve planned this book to become the first in a series, or he wouldn’t have written such a definitive ending. I suspect book two, which I haven’t read, will probably have to kind of “re-start” the series. But it’s perhaps fortunate he did, for as we say in Germany, it means he’s really making “nails with heads”. That means he’s not above making tough decisions, which readers may not expect (or even approve of, had they known beforehand). As far as I’ve heard that’s something that he stays true to, for the remainder of the series.

Style & themes

Reeve writes in a very fluent and “readable” style. He gives descriptions where they are needed but doesn’t exaggerate them. It’s definitely the writing style you expect in a YA novel (this is not meant to be negative at all). Very often, he lets you into what his characters are feeling or thinking, without the characters articulating their thoughts or emotions directly. Sometimes I wish he would be a bit more direct, but then I think Reeve believes in the old “actions speak louder than words” approach, and has his characters give verbal explanations only where he deems them necessary.

The story is told from different perspectives, Mainly it alternates between Tom and Katherine, so that one chapter describes Tom’s and Hester’s exploits and the next reveals what Katherine and her tame wolf  discover. These are interspersed with chapters from other perspectives and sometimes longer descriptive passages, mostly about the cities. A nice trick Reeve plays, is often having a chapter end with a little climax or “Aha!”-moment. It leaves the reader wanting to know what happens next – only to have another person’s story in the next chapter. This is an effective storytelling technique to keep your reader’s interest awake.

Principally, my feeling is that in this first book Reeve is still “trying”, but the rich- and inventiveness of his fictive world is already there. He seems to be “finding his voice,” and according to others who have read his follow-up books he has succeeded better in these. The basic idea of cities on wheels that “eat” other cities is intriguing, and that image must probably also have been what may have captured Peter Jackson’s imagination.

Whether there is a deeper meaning behind the book’s story is left to the reader’s own interpretation. Though without much effort I can see a couple of possibilities. Isn’t there right now a “culture war” happening, with different cultures battling it out over dominating each other? And aren’t many employees forced, day in and out, to travel to locations far from their respective homes for work? Where is your real home if you are constantly being asked to be “flexible”?

A couple of years ago, I was in Brighton where people explained to me that this is actually “Brighton & Hove” but the two united into one over time. While for the tourist it presents itself as one city, the inhabitants still can tell you exactly where Brighton ends and Hove begins – a very good example of a “real” city “devouring” another city. I’m not saying Reeve may have intended any of these associations. Maybe he just saw The Spy Who Loved Me with a big ship swallowing submarines! Interestingly, the main villain is London’s Lord Mayor Magnus Crome, and his last words are: “I just wanted to make London strong!” I couldn’t help reading the line as “I just wanted to make London great again!” While that’s my own mind playing practical jokes, considering the book was written 17 years ago, maybe it has acquired contemporary resonance?

A recurring motif of the novel seems to be that things don’t necessarily turn out as planned. In the beginning, Tom dreams of making a career, and in his day-dreams experiences an adventure with him as the hero and a beautiful girl at his side. Instead, he finds himself literally tossed out of his comfort zone by his almost-mentor, his hopes having dissolved into dust within a moment. He’s stranded in the outside world with a disfigured girl on his side, who is far from being nice or friendly (at least at first).

Similarly, Thaddeus has big plans and understandable motivations, having made a career after acquiring devastating ancient technology by killing Hester’s parents. He ends up pressured by Crome, and all of his hopes go down the drain at the end of the story. Valentine may be a villain but he’s more a fallen hero – Reeves wins extra points with me for not falling into the trap of creating simple “good” and “evil” characters. You may even feel some pity for Valentine as Hester does at the end when she decides to spare his life. We’ll see how the movie will handle these aspects of the novel!

Again and again, Tom and Hester have to counter new problems and challenges on their way back to London. Reeve may be saying that you can make a difference and change things for the better, despite being in an unfortunate position, by working hard to overcome one’s personal hurdles. To me, it’s a very positive message that reminds me of the basic tenor in my preferred YA series The Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney.

The girls

I almost forgot about the girls – though I’m not really sure if I would call this a GWG book, since the main protagonist in this volume is definitely male. First, there’s Hester Shaw, the young, disfigured woman out for revenge. Though she may be the most prominent overall character of the series, she isn’t so in this book: it’s Tom. I’ve heard that the second book is told from her perspective, with her being center-stage, while book 3 and 4 are focused on her and Tom’s daughter, Wren. This reminds me of some other literary characters: for example, Lisbeth Salander was a supporting character in the first Millenium novel, as was Hannibal Lector in Red Dragon.

Here she’s mainly a supporting character. After her initial attack on Valentine, which she survives badly wounded, Hester doesn’t do much for the next 100 pages and is mainly half-carried around by Tom. He has the biggest character development, finally deciding to help the “anti-tractionist”, those who are against the moving cities and live behind the walls of Batmunkh Gompa. Still, it’s a strange, unique character Reeve has created: Hester isn’t really sympathetic at first sight and not a beauty on any sight, but the reader slowly warms up to her. Her life-story hasn’t been a beautiful one, she has similarly “fallen out of paradise” like Tom, but doesn’t show much empathy for him.

Her disfigured face leaves her far from a beauty queen; maybe this was Reeve’s intention, to point at the fact that we too often judge just by that what we see on the surface than what’s inside. In contrast, Valentine who comes across as likable at first and is described as an honorable, remarkable man – only to try to murder Tom moments later. What I find strange is that obviously in the promotion of the movie, Hester is in the front of the marketing material (as in the movie tie-in version of the book above), and the powers that be have definitely dialed back on her ugliness. This makes little sense. The original idea seems to have been it was this hideous scar which made Hester the tough, harsh character she is. In the trailer, the actress playing her is a very beautiful young woman with two eyes, an unharmed nose and some, well… let’s call them scratches on her face which do not really require to be hidden. It feels a betrayal of the original intent for this character.

Maybe it’s enough that the villain killed your Mom. But why, then, put a scarf around that girl’s face and advertise it with, “Some scars never heal”? Some fans have already voiced their disapproval of what’s typical for Hollywood. Remember how Brienne of Tarth was so much more “eye-friendly” in the Game of Thrones TV series than the books? They see that disfigurement making a huge statement: not every female character has to be a typical beauty to be a heroine (although Hester probably falls more in the category of anti-heroine) and there even existed an online petition with the intention to change it. This worked as well as the one to replace Ben Affleck as Batman before the production of Batman vs. Superman.

I personally think it takes quite a bit away, from a character who always wears that red scarf when depicted on a book cover. There are also fan drawings and paintings online that show how Hester could have looked with her terrible scar, without appearing downright nightmarish. I can’t help but suspect the studio (maybe Jackson, Rivers or the make-up department) realized that they have a very cool character on their hands – then lacked the conviction to go with it, and watered the character’s appearance down. Just my 2 cents.

Another important character is Katherine Valentine. She is a good person, regrets the presumed death of Tom whom she liked, and with the help of a young engineer and her own tame wolf “Dog”, slowly discovers the big secret of her father’s and Magnus Crome’s secret plans. She definitely plays a bigger, more active role in this book than Hester. Actually, I’m astonished that she is not the poster-girl for the up-coming movie, or even obviously in the trailer, as she does really much more than Hester Shaw, though the fails in the end.

Finally, there is Asian aviatrix Anna Fang (known as “Feng Hua” to her air collegues). She is working for the “anti-traction league” and helps Tom and Hester more than once. She has a nice sword fight with Valentine at the end, but unfortunately loses to him. Obviously Reeves regretted that decision later. I read that when he met the actress who plays Fang in the movie Korean singer Jihae), it inspired him to write a book of short stories all about her character, published under the title Mortal Engines 05: Night Flights.

Conclusion

Mortal Engines is a very readable YA novel, which can also be read by grown-ups without any problems. It’s fast, action-paced and never gets boring, though it could have had some more work done in the character depiction of Hester. Reeve creates a rich, fascinating and colourful fantasy world with some good surprising “A-ha!”-moments and doesn’t make life easy for his protagonists. He doesn’t flincg from describing grisly situations, physical battles or blood, and surprises his readers with outcomes for his characters you wouldn’t necessarily expect. I never regretted having bought this book, without any specific expectations. I might even be interested in buying book 2, which some people – including Peter Jackson – claim to be better than the first.

Author: Philip Reeves
Publisher: Scholastic Inc., available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 4 in the Mortal Engines series.