Mortal Engines

This is a mess of a film. The story is generic, the two leads have no chemistry, and the narrative jumps too quickly from one thing to the next. The only good things about this movie are Hugo Weaving, and the visual effects. The trailers made it seem like this was going to be similar to "Mad Max" with  technology/vehicle battle sequences. It was like that for the first 20 minutes, and then it goes in a whole other direction, and from that point loses steam. This seems like it was a case of poor editing, since the story jumps from plotline to plotline, while at the same time not being clear enough. 30 minutes in, I was still not sure who the main protagonist was, what the goal in the story was, or what the stakes were. That all becomes clear towards almost the end of the 2nd act. It was a case of "too little, too late." The visual effects are impressive, though. The machines are creative, and the robot villain was terrifying and had such realistic motion capture. But impressive visual effects alone, do not a good movie make. I did not feel any sort of connection with any of the main characters, and I was confused about the goals and stakes for 85% of the movie.  Now I know why this went to my local discount theater after only 2 weeks, and didn't even survive there, since it was gone from even there 1 week later.
Grade: D       4/10      1/5 stars