The 2018 Mortal Engines the film was seemingly destined to pave the way for a full-fledged franchise, but many factors prevented the film from achieving critical and commercial success. Almost a decade before hitting the big screen, Peter Jackson already had his eye on Philip Reeve’s novel Mortal Engines and began production. The film’s development wheels really started moving in 2016, when Christian Rivers came on board to make his feature film directorial debut, while Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens worked on the film’s script.
Although the film experienced some normal production setbacks, filming was completed within four months. With a very hefty production budget of $100 to 150 million, the film was ready to make its mark at the global box office and set the stage for many more installments. However, many issues involving Mortal Engines‘The development eventually became evident when it finally debuted on big screens around the world. What was destined to become a huge success ended up being one of the biggest commercial and critical disappointments of 2018.
Mortal Engines Seemed Destined to Become a Big Hit
The 2018 film had a lot going for it
Philip Reeve Mortal Engines boasts an impressive 3.76-star score on Goodreads and even won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the 2003 Blue Peter Book Award. The book’s popularity and acclaim proved that the film was adapted from solid source material and had the opportunity to bring a rich and compelling fantasy drama to the big screen. Peter Jackson, best known for directing, writing and producing the Lord of the Rings films, was also among the main forces behind the project.
As Jackson had already managed to adapt JRR Tolkien’s rich tradition of Lord of the Rings novels, his involvement with Mortal Engines almost confirmed that the film would honor its source material and satisfy book readers around the world. The film also had a hefty production budget of US$100-150 million. and renowned producers like Zane Weiner and Amanda Walker were also among the pioneers in its production. A lot of work was also done on the film’s CGI.
The soundtrack for Mortal Engines was also done by Tom Holkenborg, who has composed music for several renowned films, such as Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Divergent, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dead Pooland Tomb raider.
New Zealand-based digital animation and visual effects company Weta Digital built the film’s moving cities to full-scale CG and built complete layout “puppets” for each city layer. The soundtrack for Mortal Engines was also done by Tom Holkenborg, who has composed music for several renowned films, such as Zack Snyder’s Justice League, Divergent, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dead Pooland Tomb raider. However, despite having everything going for it, Mortal Engines ended up proving to be a box office disaster.
Mortal Engines faced stiff competition at the box office
It was released alongside Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and the Mule
Mortal Engines raised US$83.7 million and lost an estimated amount of US$175 million. This made the film one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. One of the biggest reasons behind its failure was the timing of its release. The film hit theaters next Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The mule. While the animated superhero film dominated the box office and became Sony Pictures Animation’s highest-grossing film domestically, the Clint Eastwood film The mule it easily broke even by earning $173.6 million against a $50 million production budget.
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Mortal Engines Key Facts Analysis |
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Directed by |
Christian Rivers |
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Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score |
25% |
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Rotten Tomatoes audience score |
48% |
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Box office |
US$83.7 million |
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Budget |
US$100–150 million |
Due to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The mulestrong box office performance, Mortal Engines was overshadowed during its release window. The film’s box office prospects became even more underwhelming during its second week, when it faced stiff competition from other big-budget franchise projects such as Aquaman, Mary Poppins Returnsand Bee. If Mortal Engines Had it premiered on a different release date, its box office performance could have been significantly better.
Mortal Engines’ limited runtime is bloated with story development
The film exposes the audience to a little too much information
Viewers and critics were dissatisfied with many aspects of the Mortal Engines‘ history. However, a common criticism was that the film tried to cover too much ground in its limited running time of just over two hours. From its opening moments, the film struggles to follow the narrative’s golden rule of show and don’t tell, presenting the audience with a lot of exposition surrounding the origins of its world and the philosophy of “municipal Darwinism” on which it is based. Mortal Engines It’s visually stunning due to the amount of work that went into its CGI.
However, its visuals seem to overshadow the narrative, preventing the film from being as memorable as other adaptations of successful fantasy books, such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Hunger Gamesand Dune, that serve on almost all fronts. Mortal Engines could have easily avoided this mistake by focusing on just one arc from the original book and leaving the remaining story development to sequels. Like Denis Villeneuve Dune films, could have gradually unfolded the tapestry surrounding factions and power dynamics in its rich world construction.
In its initial moments, Mortal Engines features an epic chase scene, which perfectly gives an idea of how larger cities relentlessly “ingest” smaller ones into their world. However, the further it goes, the more it becomes apparent that it should have been a longer 3 hour film or TV show. Perhaps, in the future, Mortal Engines will receive a better television treatment that captures the epic scope of his ideas. This seems unlikely since the IP isn’t popular enough.
Mortal Engines’ marketing didn’t effectively sell what it had to offer
Better marketing could have increased box office numbers
Mortal EnginesThe plot is driven by a bizarre and new concept where mobile cities roam a post-apocalyptic Earth and consume other smaller or stationary establishments to sustain themselves. The film’s source material is well known, but not as popular as other mainstream fantasy novels. Due to this, Mortal EnginesMarketing was supposed to sell what the film offered with its intriguing ideas and philosophical underpinnings. However, marketing failed to streamline the ideas behind the film and sell it to the public. This again significantly diluted Mortal Engines‘box office numbers.