Mortal Engines Review: 3 Ups & 7 Downs

4. It's Full Of Embarrassing, Terrible Dialogue

Hoo boy, this film is filled with some of 2018's most agonisingly clunky, robotic dialogue, and most of it doesn't even come from the single robot character.

As is again a common issue with this genre of film, Mortal Engines features literally countless scenes where characters vomit up their expository backstories, sometimes accompanied by a goofy flashback, in order to bring the audience up to speed as efficiently (yet artlessly) as possible.

Similarly, characters constantly talk about how they're feeling in a way that feels inorganic and pandering to the most brainless breed of audience members.

Elsewhere there's also plenty of hackneyed, boilerplate dialogue, like Weaving's baddie delivering a mild variation on the cliched "We're not so different, you and I" while talking to protagonist Hester (Hera Hilmar).

That this script was signed-off by Jackson and co. despite fundamentally reading like a rough first draft is absolutely baffling.