How the Mortal Engines movie is different from the book

How the Mortal Engines film is different from the novel

To get a movie of a book made and onto the silver screen, the narrative of the plot more often than not needs to be changed.

This is for reasons of time, storytelling and pacing.

Because let's face it books and films are very different mediums and while people can get really upset that their favorite parts of their most favorite books don't get included in the movie, the reality is most changes are necessary.

Some characters get cut out of the script completely (Think Tom Bombadil in Lord of the Rings ) or two or more characters get morphed into one. Even whole endings can change, such as the Watchmen's Giant Squid ending being changed to Doctor Manhattan taking the fall.

Scriptwriters Philipa Boyens, Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson, having won an Oscar for their adaptation of The Return of the King, know a thing or two about taking original works and getting them up on the silver screen.

For instance, the character of Faramir in The Two Towers had to be altered.

Here's what Boyens had to say about it:

"If you're trying to up the tension, you don't have your main characters captured by someone who sort of interrogates them, but, not really, who then offers them a cup of tea and says, 'I'll do anything I can to help you.' It's death on film. And it's not just the effect that the character out of the book has on Frodo and Sam's journey, it's the effect that character has on the Ring.

You've just been desperately trying to establish that this is the most evil thing ever created, it's tearing apart the mind of your main character, it's reduced this other character to this miserable creature Gollum, and now you come along someone who says, 'I would not touch this thing if it lay on the highway.' You've just stripped the Ring of all its power."

Which should demonstrate she knows what she's doing.

The movie, of course, retains plenty of similarities with the book and indeed we're sure that many an English teacher will ask her students to do an essay which compares and contrasts the two mediums. Hey kids!

And so it is with Mortal Engines that the movie had to change a few things in the book.

Here's a few of the key changes and why they were necessary.

Hester's facial scar change

Let's start with the most 'cosmetic' change.

Hester Shaw is not ugly!

In the book she is described as "" whereas the movie softens this dramatically. Yes, Hera Hilmar sports a scar but it's nothing so horrid as one can imagine that Hester wears.

She even has two working eyes!

Anna Fang

Anna Fang’s (played by Jihae) introduction is considerably more action-packed than the novel. She has considerably more on screen time in terms of her 'book pages' time and she is more involved in the final stages of the film - she even dies on London.

Tunbridge Wheels

To help streamline the story into a cogent 2 hour film the pirate town and what happens to Hester and Tom is cut from the film.

Dog

Katherine Valentine's dog called DOG is not in the film.

Of gods and banana?

Look carefully for modern artifacts in the Museum and keep an eye out for the Minions! They are in a section called "Deities of Lost America".

In the novel the humans have mistaken Mickey Mouse for a god. Due to ownership rights, the Minions have been subbed in.

The characters are older than portrayed in the novel

What's that saying about making movies, never work with kids and animals? This big budget movie needs to appeal to a broad audience, and while the novel is Young Adult, Christian Rivers needed to make his movie appealing to a mass audience. So while Tom and Hester are young, the actors playing them are not.

Jackson said of this change "We've changed the book a bit in places. We've aged it up. The book is written for quite a young audience, to some degree, you know? And I just don't think anybody wants to see another teenage dystopian movie any time soon. So, it's one of the reasons why we've aged it sort of up, and we cast it a bit older. Tom and Hester in the book are younger... We had made it a little bit more adult."

Captain Khora and Nils Lindstrom, Yasmina 

The book has small roles for these two friends of Anna Fang yet they have been fleshed out in the movie to give Shrike more time to beat them up!

Magnus and Thaddeus

In the novel Magnus Chrome is the overarching bad guy where Valentine does his dirty work. It would seem that Hugo Weaving's character looms larger of the film than Magnus Chrome.

In the film, Valentine seizes control of London by killing Chrome. In the novel, they both die in the same room as London explodes.

Airships

Airships now have jet propulsion, because it makes for a better spectacle. 

Guild symbols

It would seem the movie characters do not have their respective guild symbols permanently attached on their foreheads like they do in the novel. Instead it appears they show their demarcations by use of symbols on their clothing.

The Ending

A vastly changed ending for the movie which works well.

Tom does not kill Shrike, He's effectively taken down by the Anti-Traction League and a few well placed shots by Anna Fang flying the Jenny Hanniver. This serves as an opportunity for Shrike to forgive Hester for leaving him, freeing him from her promise (the concept of him turning her into a Stalker was still at play from the novel).

Valentine is not killed on London, he is killed by London after he crashes on the 13th Floor Elevator which was shot down by Tom. The wheels of London crush him just as he thinks he's survived his final clash with Hester.

Anna still dies at the hands of Valentine but it is on London.

Katherine Valentine - well played as a character but went simply nowhere in terms of plot, like you could cut the character (and Bevis) and have no consequence to the ending of the movie, which is completely different to the ending of the novel. In the novel, Katherine dies, in the book, she leads the people of London to the shield wall.

Other points of difference

• Salthook was renamed Saltzhaken
• Anna Fang does not have red teeth
• The books are not obviously a play by play from the Star Wars plot.
• Just be glad the adaptation was not as bad as the novel Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.

Leave a Comment fran walsh, lord of the rings, novel to movie, peter jackson, phillipa boyens

Will there be a Mortal Engines movie sequel?

Is there going to be a Predator's Gold sequel to Mortal Engines?

While Peter Jackson and company are keen on doing Mortal Engines sequels and the movie has had a fair bit of praise, there has been no formal announcement of sequel plans. 

Star Wars on the other hand...

Making a Hollywood movie blockbuster is no mean feat. Just ask the quotable Sith Lord Darth Vader.

If it were easy to do so, every good story about space aliens driving trains would be turned into a film. So, to convince a studio executive to plump up some cash for an untested 'Intellectual Property' is a mission and a half.

It's why sequels are so popular, they are cash cows with less risk than something untested. Look at Marvel's Ironman, it's had like 169 sequels already...

So, when it comes to the Philip Reeve novel, Mortal Engines, no studio exec is going to take a punt on a book about giant cities driving around eating each other.

Unless Peter Jackson is attached to write and produce it.

So, that's the angle the studios are taking. Jackson and his NAME have been tasked to get Mortal Engines across the line.

Given the novel has three sequels and three prequels, there's a mapped out path that a movie sequel can take (Predator's Gold etc) but will ME get one?

Film producer Peter Jackson said:

“As for whether we go ahead or not with the others, it’s not in our hands,” said Jackson. All we can do is to make the very best film for Mortal Engines that we can. And I’m certainly confident that we’ve done that. I don’t know how we could made anything better than to be made to be honest, you know, based on that book. So we’ve done our job and now it’s really a case of making the film and seeing the audiences show up.”

SO GO SEE IT AGAIN ;)

Oscar-winning scriptwriter and longtime Jackson associate, Philippa Boyens had this to say when asked about the possibility of a second film:

"I certainly never sat down and I know Pete did sat down and thought of this in terms of a sequel–you know, sequels. I mean, we’re just, like, get this thing working first. And then think about what may happen."

"But, mostly, this has to work as a film. This may be the only one. Who knows? I hope not because I think it’s a–I think the story just keeps getting better and better. And I want to see the other traction engines now that I’ve seen in this one.

I want to see Panzerstadt. I want to see Arkangel. I want to see these ones that are bigger and meaner."

Boyen's 'has to work' as a film comment is telling and I think it almost has a double meaning. Obviously, ME needs to be a good film, one that viewers enjoy watching. But it also has to work for it's success. It needs to perform at the box office.

Big time.

I don't think ME will get a second sequel if it just does OK. It will need to perform all around the world, especially and obviously in the United States. Shame it has bombed and not covered costs.

So will Mortal Engines be a success and earn a sequel? This author is personally worried.

While we gave it a fairly enthusiastic review, some critics have savaged the film. Honestly, it makes me cry into my pH tested kombucha.

If you've seen the film and read the book, you'll know that a key plot point of the final book will have to be resolved in a clever way, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and hope we get to see the Predator's Gold novel developed for the big screen.

The Netflix Option for Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines is such a sprawling saga, there is no reason why it cannot be turned into a television series that is featured on a medium such as Netflix. There's plenty of ways to scale back the CGI and make it more of a story about the people rather than a CGI gorefest.

Having the Mortal Engines show on Netflix would allow for the story to develop at a longer pace, offer more room for character development and allow for many side stories as well.

You could even start with a prequel show about Anna Fang, yes, that would be excellent - you could base the character arc on the story points in the novels and the Night Flights short story collection.

If we are lucky, Thunder City will be adapted into a stand-alone film.

-

The glorious concept art above is by the talented Nik Henderson.

5 comments airhaven, movie production, netflix, phillipa boyens, sequel

Calum Gittens is playing the Chief Navigator of London

Kiwi actor Calum Gittens has a role in Mortal Engines as the 'Chief Navigator'.

We presume Chief Navigator refers to a job piloting London Traction City.

Gittens is the son of popular New Zealand actor Paul Gittens and a fairlywell-knownn scriptwriter called Phillipa Boyens.

That name should ring a bell....

Gittens made a name for himself on the Kiwi soap opera Shortland Street and a few parts in LOTR (He features as the young lad on The Wall in The Two Towers) and The Hobbit.

Another notable screen credit was a turn in The King's Speech.

Leave a Comment calum gittens, phillipa boyens

Who wrote the Mortal Engines movie script?

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If Philip Reeve wrote the book, who wrote the Mortal Engines movie script?

First up, Reeve did not write the script of the feature movie. He sold the filming rights to his works to Peter Jackson's production company, we think, in approximately 2008. Since that time he has had extremely limited involvement in the production of the movie.

So who then wrote the script for the film?

Enter the Oscar winning trio of Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson. The threes have written the scripts collaboratively for most of Jackon's filming career since the original Lord of the Rings movie. If you also weren't aware, Jackson and Walsh are married.

Boyens has written all the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies with Fran and Peter and also has a credited hand in King Kong, The Lovely Bones and of course Mortal Engines.

NZ On Screen notes that "Boyens studied English and History at Auckland University, and worked in theatre as a writer, producer and script editor. She also spent time as director of the New Zealand Writer’s Guild. Boyens first became a Tolkien fan as a child. When she came onboard to help the writing team on The Lord of the Rings, she had already read the trilogy seven times."

After doing some TV work in the 1980s, Walsh met Peter Jackson in the mid-80s, while he was in the final stages of making his feature debut and kiwi classic Bad Taste. She and Jackson were among the quartet of writers on his puppet follow-up Meet the Feebles.

On the collaboration between the three, Jackson has said about the working relationship

" It's a lack of respect though, too. The worst thing when you're collaborating is when you have to be polite, when you have to say, 'Well that's a good idea!' Whereas we can just say, 'Come on, that's stupid!' As a collaboration, that makes it so much easier. You can just be honest and no one gets offended. You respect, you have trust and it leads to a lack of respect, which is also very healthy."

The New York Times once summarised what each team writing member brings to the party in "Ms. Walsh has a knack for conveying emotion, Ms. Boyens excels at structure (and line readings), and Mr. Jackson is the visual genius."

No word if Peter and the Gang will be doing the second film in the series, Predator's Gold but one can imagine that the plot lines are slowly been drawn out.

Fun fact - Mortal Engines is the first film these three have written together were Peter has not directed the movie himself. 

 

Fun fact 2: The writing team when through seven drafts of the script before it was given to the principal actors on their arrival in NZ.

1 comment fran walsh, peter jackson, phillipa boyens