Film
Mortal Engines
- Director
- Christian Rivers
- Certificate
- 12A
- Running Time
- 128 mins
Developed in New Zealand by Peter Jackson, using plenty of the talent he deployed on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit flicks (including co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens), this post-apocalyptic steampunk romp is adapted from the first in a series of novels by Philip Reeve.
In this world, cities have been turned into giant perambulating Howl’s Moving Castle-style mobile fortresses that wage war on one another. The story centres on twentysomething Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan), who finds his feet touching land for the first time after foiling disfigured would-be assassin Hester Shaw’s (Hira Hilmar) attempt to bump off powerful historian Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving). It’s the directorial debut of storyboard artist Christian Rivers, whose collaborations with Jackson go all the way back to the 1992 zombie comedy Braindead.
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