Double Trouble #10: Mortal Engines vs Mary Poppins Returns

Welcome everyone to the 10th Double Trouble Segment here at You Can’t Unwatch It. I viewed Mortal Engines and Mary Poppins Returns. In this crowded Holiday release season, I could only afford to see two and those were the ones. Let’s see how they were.

Mortal Engines (2018)

Movies are in a sad state right now. Unless independent films (most of them anyway) touch upon any topic with a left-wing slant or does something else in the area of provocation, chances are it won’t get a lot of attention from the press and won’t get into that coveted award season hype. And as far as more mainstream blockbusters go nowadays, if it’s not a Superhero movie or a Disney remake of one of their animated films, it very likely won’t get made and if it does it usually bombs. Mortal Engines is one of those unfortunate bombs and it only signals that we won’t get anything unique like it and only receive more stale superhero films and Disney fodder ad nauseum year after year.

Mortal Engines is far from perfect as I will elaborate further on but at least it was fun and gave me and others who went to see it a unique steampunk-like setting that brings to mind, for me at least, Howl’s Moving Castle combined with Last Exile (if you haven’t seen that one check it out. It kick ass). The idea of municipal Darwinism with the bigger cities ingesting smaller ones for fuel or other means lends itself to awesome action sequences. They were genuinely exciting and didn’t really wear me out which is what tends to happen a lot of sci-fi/fantasy films. Even in the ones I love.

I also love the way they presented life in the various cities be they mobile or stationary. They don’t follow the Mad Max formula with these kind of post-apocalypse stories where absolutely everything completely fell apart and only barbarism and complete poverty thrives. It’s cool to see historians in big cities like London do various kinds of research into the past and see how they interpret the various old technologies we use now and take for granted, how they view people of the past, the destructive tech employed and why it was used to completely F up the Earth beyond repair and even see how food is processed when seemingly everything else has been exhausted.

The characters may not be the most deeply nuanced (of course they wouldn’t be at this time since this is just the first in a hopeful continued series) but they are endearing and it was great to see where they come from and how they got to the positions that they are in. There is a clear romance developing between the scarred protagonist Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) and London historian Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) but its not overblown and while it does seem like it progresses a bit too quickly, they never get to the point where they directly or indirectly profess their love. I was happy about that. Hugo Weaving does a fine job as villainous Thaddeus Valentine and seems to have fun with the role. I do wish a bit more was done with Valentine’s daughter (Leila George) and would like to have known a bit more about Anna Fang but we can’t have everything.

As fun and as interesting as I found it, Mortal Engines is by no means perfect. Some of the dialogue gets a bit too exposition heavy and at times cheesy, there’s no real explanation of how wanted criminal Anna Fang (Jihae) or even Hester’s adopted parent/resurrected corpse Shrike (Stephen Lang) found Hester when she and Tom are captured and about to be sold as either slaves or food. I’m sure with a fair amount of mental gymnastics you could find an answer but I’m not in the mood for that right now.

As a result of having to make one film to see how that one pans out before making others (in fact, this one has a clear beginning, middle and end and doesn’t sequel bait so kudos to the filmmakers for that) some key moments in the film felt undercooked and thus didn’t have quite the gut-wrenching impact they could have had. The best example is, the history between Hester and Shrike. It is a fascinating one and while I have no idea how it played out in the books, it needed more time to stew on film in order for the emotional payoff to be truly effective. It is effective on screen but with more time it could have been more so.

Finally, this film has been all too smugly compared to the original Star Wars. Yes, there are many similarities between the two but at least Mortal Engines features a different setting, set of circumstances and is more visually imaginative than that glorified nostalgic greatest hits collection called The Force Awakens. Let me get this straight. When movies like Mortal Engines do the original Star Wars style plot, critics and online nerds start crying “boo” and throw tomatoes at it but when a new film does it in the Star Wars franchise, one which already has a vast expanded fictional universe with tons of possibilities, decides to do that very thing even when doing that very thing is creatively regressive for a long lasting franchise like Star Wars, they lavish it with undeserved praise as well as $2 billion in ticket sales? What double standard?

It is clear that I saw a different movie than what many of the critics and even online nerds saw. It is perfectly possible that a lot of them did watch the film on its own terms and still didn’t enjoy it. Fair enough. But I have seen plenty that have reviewed the film based on their past disappointment with producer/co-writer Peter Jackson with his productions like King Kong (2005), The Lovely Bones (2009) and especially The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014) which apparently “betrayed and destroyed” the essence of Tolkien…whatever. One could argue that he already did that when he made Lord of the Rings but that is another debate for another time (I love both trilogies by the way).

Filmmakers such as Peter Jackson who release groundbreaking films that are loved by millions around the world can’t help how they are perceived by fans and critics and whether it is fair or not, their subsequent work usually never rises above their most beloved work that gained them adoration. To say that certain filmmakers or artists become lazy, become hacks or have somehow sold out in anyway just because they didn’t make the film you wanted or didn’t live up to the legend built up around them is not only unfair but frankly pathetic. For a filmmaker to create something that disappoints a certain audience or create something that really is just flat out bad (such as John Boorman making Exorcist II or John McTiernan re-making Rollerball) isn’t an unforgivable sin, it's just something unfortunate that happens. In the eyes of the disappointed, they could very well come back and deliver something spectacular later, so it isn’t wise to write them off as being a fallen artist or whatever as it makes one forget that filmmakers are only human and like humans the films created by them are hardly ever perfect even when tremendous steps are taken to make them as immaculate as possible.

As far as the blockbusters go, I’m not really sure what the best solution for getting a proper balance of what kind is released. I don’t mind remakes as I do like a few here and there but that is when there is a passion for the original work and a drive to make the work their own as well as unique in its own way. The way Disney and others are approaching remakes today makes one wonder why they even do them at all since they seem to be cranked out on an assembly line with little passion. And yes, I enjoy some superhero films but nowadays with the advent of the whole cinematic universe craze they are becoming repetitive, stale and feel far too much like television (where movies are treated as episodes of a long running series) as opposed to cinematic experiences.

I guess I bemoan the fact superhero films and remakes are increasingly becoming the only option for mass cinematic entertainment and it chokes out other possibilities since they no longer become viable options for productions. For crying out loud, between now and 2021-2022, the are close to 30 comic book superhero films due for release. This is suffocating! I know they are only giving the customer what it wants and I’m not suggesting they kill off superhero films but I would personally love it if they were spaced out more and not release so many a year. I would love to see adaptations of Jodorowsky’s The Incal, Katsuhiro Otomo’s Domu or live action R rated adaptations based on his Akira graphic novels, Frank Miller’s Ronin and many others. But if characters don’t wear an elaborate costume with capes or high-tech gadgets, spew one liners or fight a villain of the week that they will definitely defeat, audiences won’t turn up.

Sorry about that incredibly long tangent but I suppose I need to get that off my chest. Again, Mortal Engines isn’t close to perfection, but I just don’t feel it deserved the critical lashing or the beating at the box office. I loved the world set up and would have liked to see what the future holds cinematically for the characters. Of all the films based on YA novels, this one actually did grab my attention. Hmmm…maybe I should give the Philip Reeve books a chance. I suppose the film did something else right if it gets me to do that.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

There’s not much to say about this one. I mentioned earlier about how Disney is remaking their old properties and Mary Poppins Returns is essentially a remake of the 1964 classic without actually remaking it. It essentially follows the same beats. You have the Mary Poppins (this time played by Emily Blunt who is actually fine in the role) who comes from the sky to help the Banks children, more specifically the children of Michael Banks (Ben Winshaw) and, yes, even Michael and his sister Jane (Emily Mortimer). Like the last film, a major conflict in the film centers on the bank (the one his father worked at in the previous film) but this time Michael must repay a loan he took out or he and his family will lose the home to the evil bank manager played by Colin Firth.

Apart from the bath time/ocean adventure with Mary and the kids, every other sequence in the film is remarkably similar to the first film. A whole animated sequence in a porcelain bowl as opposed to Burt’s picture in the original, a sequence with Mary’s Eastern European cousin (played by Meryl Streep because…of course she’s in this movie) whose house turns upside down every other Wednesday leading to wacky hijinks which harkens back to Uncle Albert floating in air due to uncontrollable laughter, there is a whole portion of the film that has the Banks children leaving the bank following an embarrassing incident which leads to them getting lost. This leads to a dance and song number with the lamplighters of London who help the kids and Mary get home…which is just like the part of the original film with the chimney sweeps. This is a Mary Poppins remake as far as I’m concerned.

The songs are forgettable and irritating and absolutely none of them stuck with me in a good way after the screening. The performances from the rest of the cast are fine (well I didn’t take to Lin Manuel Miranda’s British accent and wanted him to shut up the minute he opened his mouth…no he’s not British. Why do you ask?). You have the point brought up over and over with Jane being a labor activist (just as the mother in the first film was a suffragette) which doesn’t go anywhere, any experienced moviegoer can spot the plot MacGuffin (bank shares that can save the home) even when it isn’t in plain sight…

This was one of the most forgettable films I have even seen in theaters and among the most boring I’ve ever seen. It ends exactly how you think it would where they save the house and have a final bright, colorful and excessively cheerful musical number in the sky that would give me diabetes if I watched it again at any point ever again.

I won’t tell you how to spend your money as there are plenty of choices this Holiday season. But between the two, I would tell you to see Mortal Engines. That’s just me. If you see Mary Poppins Returns you would probably enjoy it, but you couldn’t pay me to see that one again. I doubt this will happen, but I hope that an extended cut of Mortal Engines comes out. Why not? I want more. We’ll never get a sequel after all.

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