f13.net

Holy fucking shit. I had no idea they were making this into a movie.

http://www.mortalengines.com

A thousand years after the apocalypse, cities have been put on wheels and roll around the remains of Europe eating each other. It's a bizarre post apocalyptic steampunk YA masterpiece.

Well

That was certainly something

Ok that's an interesting premise - I'm intrigued

Count me in -  That's quite a premise to explore.

Is the book worthy of being prioritized to the front of my reading list?

I randomly picked it up a little over 10 years ago. The blurb on the back intrigued me and then I couldn’t put it down. Is it worth prioritizing over other stuff you’ve got in your queue? Depends on the stuff. The characterization is solid for the main crew and Reeve doesn’t shy away from conflict where necessary. Still, it IS. a YA novel.

That said, the lore of the world is deep and intriguing.

That's the kind of over the top world building I love.  I'm totally down.

:awesome_for_real:

It says something that my biggest reaction was "ew, Peter Jackson"

I just noticed that this is showing up the road. I hadn't even realised it had released. Any reviews of it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuL5yXsOAIA

It looks mostly like movies I've already seen? If someone sees this and thinks it's really different, I'll think about it.

I think it was Iain that said he saw it and it was terrible in discord.  Hopefully he'll chime in here with more info.

Yeah, it was me. I saw it at the local IMAX the other night. I'm generally down for dystopian dieselpunk and the premise looked pretty cool even if it made no sense at all. It was not a good movie. I'll try and avoid spoilers, there's not much to discuss about the plot tbh which is telegraphed in huge fucking letters from the start. After the first set of action sequences are over, you know precisely what the plot twists are going to be and how the movie will end. That's not always a bad thing, but it is in this case where the film thinks it's being clever about it.

It starts out strong. Hugo Weaving is pretty good as the Strong Leader that London Needs, Who is Clearly Going To Turn Out To Be a Villain. Most of everyone else is bad though. The hero looks like someone who got rejected from a 90s shoegaze band for not being self-aware enough, the heroine is someone who exists in this movie and that's about all you can say about her. A bunch of core characters get introduced too late for you to start caring about them, and then they leave before you even start on that process. A couple of subplots just get lost without any resolution. The action scenes are mostly just some parkour on a red/orange sound stage. They all go on way too long and then they repeat the same thing a few minutes later, except now it's the other character instead.

After the fairly good start, it just falls into a mess of lazy tropes and paper-thin stereotypes. The sort of thing you'd find in a 14 year old's homebrew D&D campaign. I spent a lot of the movie trying hard not to eye-roll whenever they introduced a new one. There's nothing that stands out as being really worth seeing it for. The wide shots are competent but not more than that, the interior stuff is just awkward and feels like it was shot on the set of a mid-80s British sci-fi serial.

Wait for it to hit Netflix, you won't miss anything by skipping it at the cinema.

Thanks Iain. It's a shame as I enjoyed the books. Netflix it is

I've enjoyed the books but I think it's obvious Peter Jackson and company did a fairly heavy rewrite just from the commercials.

So, standard Peter Jackson hackjob then?  That's a shame, the trailer got me interested (not having read the book) but PJ involvement is always cause for suspicion.

I still have the first one sitting in the audible queue. I stopped listening when he met what I assume is the love interest and the typical bully , dream girl, nerdy protagonist love triangle started. First or second chapter I think ? Does it get better after that ? Mild spoilers would be ok if necessary, because I really wanted to like the setting.

If you're referring to:

It gets better. I enjoyed the Trilogy, not so much the other books.

This was trash. Sad, because I loved the books.

Watching this it feels like they had 3 separate movies; we-shall-rise-against-the-fucked-up-society-born-from-apocalypse-hunger-games movie, the this is not a ya novel but kinda is movie, and the steam punk terminator movie.  I think the source material is a lot less typical ya novel than most ya adult novels made now, so the movie doesn't focus on those tropes (if those tropes alone turn you off) so its NOT bad in that way. Its bad because of the 3 movies I mentioned, only 1 of them is actually good. And for all intent and purposes the only reason my wife and I watched it was because of the very first trailer which showed us some steam-punk mad max shit and that's only about 5% of the movie (and my wife refused pay attention to any other trailer). Which is bad because the "this is not your average ya novel but totally is" isn't compelling enough for people who come in wanting to see some steam-punk mad max or dumb enough for the usual ya novel fans who want their love triangles and their hot guys and "you are special message". If this was a netflix series they would have the time for exposition for the lore and the flamboyant characters but they'll also have time to put more ya novel tropes in order to keep an audience, which is something i feel the people behind this movie desperately wanted not to do which shows in the level of craft put into this movie.

It's a small tragedy this one. 

I randomly had a dream about this the other night. It had the cities attacking one another like on the trailer I saw, and then being chased by Gigantic sand-worms a-la Dune.

It was probably more entertaining than the actual movie.