We postponed movie night from Friday to Saturday due to a party -- social life is gradually returning. It wasn't worth the wait. Mortal Engines (2018) has the most ridiculous premise I have ever heard, plus a story that's combines the worst cliches from Star Wars and The Road Warrior, The only thing that made it remotely watchable was a profusion of cute guys, but every one of them had a girlfriend. Heterosexism rules!
The premise: A thousand years after an apocalyptic event that moved the Earth's crust around, so China is now next to Germany, resources are scarce, so most people live in cities on wheels, roaming around to look for supplies.
Ridiculous. No way would you have the power to move an entire city on wheels, and besides, why would you ever? Our ancestors discovered thousands of years ago that sedentary life is much more efficient than being hunter-gatherers. And if you still must scavage for supplies after a thousand years, send small expeditions out.
London has become a super-city on wheels, with St. Paul's Cathedral, Parliament House, and the British Museum, plus parks, residential neighborhoods, cars, and a subway! It travels around, eating smaller cities to absorb their energy, and assimilate their residents.
Uber-ridiculous. If resources are scarce, why would you want to assimilate hundreds of new people?
The plot: Robert Sheehan, who plays a gay character in The Umbrella Academy, but without the sleazy long hair and goatee, so he looks rather hot (top photo), plays Tom. a "you're late for work again" scalawag who sorts through ancient artifacts at the British Museum. He chums up with the Beautiful Daughter of head scientist Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaver, who played a drag queen in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, only now with a beard that makes him look rather hot, like Captain Nemo.
Things go wrong when a lady assassin sneaks in and stabs Valentine. Tom chases her through some fiery factory sets, where she explains "He killed my mother" before jumping into a whirlpool thing. Tom doesn't believe her for a second, but Valentine pushes him into the whirlpool thing anyway, just to be on the safe side.
I guess he took a short cut? And being stabbed does not affect your ability to run?
Turns out that Valentine did kill Assassin's Mom, because she had uncovered an ancient part that he (and his girlfriend) want to use to recreate the Death Star...um, I mean the ancient weapon that caused the Apocalypse (so, thousand-year old buried, decayed, fused parts will still work?).
Beautiful Daughter and her boyfriend Bevis (Ronan Raftery, who has never starred in Beavis and Butt-Head) sleuth out Valentine's diabolical plot.
Meanwhile, Tom and Assassin survive, and must make their way through the wilderness. She takes off her mask, which apparently she wasn't using to hide her identity; she was self-conscious about a scar.
They fight slavers disguised as a ridiculous "have a cuppa" English village couple, and eventually reach a cloud city big enough to have fancy and ordinary restaurants, all suspended by giant balloons (presumably they're filled with helium, but the way they explode later, it could be hydrogen).
Lando Calrissian isn't around, but there's a nice substitute, Captain Khora (Rege-Jean Page of Bridgerton, who "wants to break down gay/ straight labels."). His girlfriend is Yasmina Rashid, an anti-mobile city activist or something. They want to meet Tom because he has insider knowledge of the layout of mobile London or something.
By this point I was barely paying attention. I know that there's a Luke Skywalker flying a spaceship moment, a "Luke, I am your father" moment, an exploding cloud city, and some more explosions. The Londoners move to China. And it's boy-girl couples all the way to the fade-out-kiss. Let's just see the remaining beefcake.
Colin Salmon (of The Arrow) as the Deputy Historian of London, who helps Beautiful Daughter and her boyfriend research the evil scheme.
Kahn West of the teen-sleuth series Terry Teo as Toa Heke. I actually don't remember him from the film, but isn't he cute?
Andrew Lees, seen here nude in the short-lived Your Family or Mine, as Tom's supervisor/bully at the British Museum.
How about if he moves the box of granola away, and we just look at him naked for two hours instead of watching this heterosexist behemoth?
The movie was an expensive box office bomb for a reason
ReplyDeleteArrow? I thought we all agreed it was Green Bat-Titans.
ReplyDeleteSo, London preys on cities around the world. Checks out,
I like how they basically take the way the map changes in Final Fantasy 6. (Sabin is as close to gay as you could get on the SNES, by the way: He's a bodybuilder, self-identifies as a bear, and has no female love interest or other overt display of heterosexuality: Locke has a whole quest to resurrect a dead girlfriend, Edgar is a lech, Setzer wants to kidnap an opera singer, Cyan has a wife a and son fridged shortly after we meet him when Kefka commits his first genocide, and Shadow is Relm's father, leaving two other main human male characters, one 13 and the other in his 70s, with no love interest or biological offspring.)
When I first saw the trailers for this I assumed it was a comedy. A take off from the opening sequence of "Monty Python's The meaning of life."
ReplyDelete