Mortal Engines is not Mad Max, it's just mad, Max.

Friday, August 7, 2020
Did you enjoy the new Mad Max movie teaser that came out last week?

It had a giant city chasing a smaller, traction city?

The new one directed by Christian Rivers?

Well, according to so many people on Twitter, the new Mortal Engines is a bit like Mad Max 3.

And therefore is 'discount Mad Max' or 'it literally looks like such a rip of mad max'.

I presume this in in reference to Fury Road, which was a fabulous movie and a sumptuous CGI delight of trucks and cars trying to crush one another.

That said:

The Mad Max I know is a biker gang terrorizing Max's family.

The Mad Max I know is a gang led by a flamboyant gentleman called Humongous.

The Mad Max I know is all about a pig killer.

The Mad Max I know is about a one armed truck driver who can kick it with the worst of them.

These are great movies, all visionary in various ways.

They are not about giant cities that roam the Earth looking for resources.

And they certainly do not look like what we saw in the Mortal Engines teaser trailer.

But so many people seem to have commented that it is.

We honestly wonder why this is?

If they are referring to Mad Max Fury Road, this is Mad Max Fury Road:


Which frankly reminds me of this guy from Rogue One:


Sure there's a big chase going in Fury Road and there's one going on in Mortal Engines, so that must be it right?

Well if anything, that teaser is basically a remix mix of the opening 2 minutes of one of the greatest scientific films of all time, Star Wars.

You recall how that goes right? A giant massive Star Destroyer rolls down the screen and it takes what seems like forever to show the scale of the thing. We then see it is actually chasing a small ship. Which it eventually captures and draws into itself.

Which is basically the teaser!

So instead of saying Mortal Engines looks like Max Max, would it be better to bitch and gripe that it rips off the start of Star Wars?

The truth is that for most people of a certain age (young twitter users who comment on movie trailers) Mad Max Fury Road is possibly their only reference point to a post-apocalyptic event movie.

I'd wager most of them have not seen the original Max Max trilogy for a start. They've probably never scene, The Road, The Postman, THX 1138, The Book of Eli, Water World, Escape from New York, 12 Monkeys, The Quiet Earth, Zardoz, Cherry 2000, Judge Dredd (Stallone version) or Planet of the Apes.

One could argue that Mortal Engines looks a lot like some of those movies. 

Or Not.

I passed comment on Twitter about this matter as any rapid fan boy that is hugely protective of THEIR story is wont to do so:.

And none other than the writer of the novels, Philip Reeve chipped in with his views.



We still don't see but hey, if the book's author gets it, maybe I should just chill out and get back to over-thinking the fact that Hester Shaw has two eyes... or wondering about Howl's Moving Castle.....

We hope the movie is more 'Helm's Deep on wheels'.....

Anyways Christian Rivers has specifically said "We didn't want it to be post-apocalyptic dystopia," director Rivers told us. "So, we didn't want it to be 'Mad Max.' We didn't want it to be 'Hunger Games' or 'Divergent.' That's kind of a bleak, dystopian sort of film, you know? It needed to tie to our world."

And if you want to read without a sense of irony (?) Philip Reeve actually wrote up a review of Mad Max: Fury Road !!

We're also amused to see that Junkie XL, who did the Mad Max score, is composing the same for ME.

1 comment:

  1. "Fury Road, which was a fabulous movie and a sumptuous CGI delight of trucks and cars trying to crush one another". Except all Fury Road vehicles were real and CGI was kept to the bare minimum. Opinion discarded, as this lazy and dishonest attempt to put a children's book adaptation on par with a movie so grim it got banned for years and so influencal it spawned a whole genre craze.
    Also yes, the first teaser was actually very reminescent of Fury Road: same bright-yellow wasteland, emphasis on mechanical monsters, same soundtrack, same "violence spiral" theme. The official trailer has been a lot more honest in showing the typical "your parents were very special and you'll be a savior" Harry Potter recipe the books followed, with the exception of the quote "it's survival of the fastest" which sound ridiculously out of place compared to how Mad Max-inspired it is.

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