Mortal Engines Review — 10-year-old Winston says, “There are cities eating each other, and it doesn’t make sense, but it’s kind of fun.

Based on the young-adult novel series of the same name, Mortal Engines is set in a dystopian future in which Earth was ravaged by war 1,000 years in the past, and now whole cities on giant wheels are preying on other cities that are smaller than they are.

A young woman (Hera Hilmar) on a mission and her reluctant ally (Robert Sheehan), a historian, escape the “predator city” of London, and flee into the scary outlands. They have numerous adventures while trying to make it back, including running from the unstoppable Terminator-like man-machine Shrike (Stephen Lang), and meeting the awesome outlaw Fang (Jihae).

The intricate production design has an interesting steampunk style. The city of London is futuristic while not being over-fancy.

Characters like Fang and Shrike are really cool. Fang has awesome fighting abilities and pilots a ship with grace. Shrike has a cool voiceand moves in a really neat, kind of scary way.

Mortal Engines has humor, too, especially when it makes connections to the pop culture of “the ancients” (us). Look for Twinkies and Minions.

Even though it’s pretty predictable – you know what will happen next and who the bad guys are right away – Mortal Engines is smarter than lots of movies from “young adult” novels I’ve seen, like Darkest Minds. You have to really suspend your disbelief (they’re moving whole cities around, which obviously doesn’t make sense). But if you do, it’s a fun fantasy with cool action and some interesting parallels to our world.

If this Mortal Engines review inspires you to see it, get times and tickets at Fandango.com.

Rated PG-13

2 Hours 8 minutes

Mortal Engines Review — 10-year-old Winston says, “There are cities eating each other, and it doesn’t make sense, but it’s kind of fun.