We chat with the creators behind the Mortal Engines movie, watch the first 25 minutes of the film, and get our burning questions answered!
Gathered at Madison Square Garden, fans had already heard rumors that the Mortal Engines panel on Friday would reveal eight minutes of footage from the movie. But we were shocked to discover two things: one, that Andy Serkis himself was suddenly standing on stage (claiming that he’s still recovering from the loss of dear friends: Ulysses Klaue, Caesar, and Snoke), and two, that he was telling us that that wouldn’t be happening.
Instead, we were going to see the first 25 minutes of the movie!
If you haven’t watched the trailers yet, you should. The part of the film we watched involved most of what we see in the teaser trailer, except in fascinating detail, finally giving us a glimpse of how the Mortal Engines universe really works. We also got introduced to most of the main characters — including Hugo Weaving’s scary new villain, Valentine, and Hera Hilmar’s enigmatic heroine, Hester Shaw. The CGI in this movie looks incredible, and paired with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philipa Boyens’ prowess for on-screen worldbuilding, the result is something we’ve truly never seen before.
Hera Hilmar, Robert Sheehan, Leila George, Stephan Lang, Jihae, Peter Jackson, Christian Rivers and Philippa Boyens were on the panel, and all had a lot to say about their characters and the story.
Set many years after an apocalyptic event called “the 60-minute war” about 3000 years in the future (Jackson referred to it as a post-post-apocalyptic world), humanity has forsaken countries and adapted to living in cities on wheels, travelling over the splintered remains of Europe. But some cities, like London, come to be known as “predator cities”… assimilating smaller cities into their hulking mass and taking all their resources for themselves.
In the midst of this, a new heroine arises, driven by vengeance, to put an end to this predation once and for all.
The actors were all very excited to share who their characters are, and where they took inspiration from to create them.
Hilmar mentioned how grateful she was to have a chance to play such a complex character as Hester Shaw. Sheehan and George both alluded to sheltered pasts for both their characters — although one is an orphan and the other the daughter of the most powerful man in London — and said that they would have to face the realities of the world they lived in throughout the movie.
Lang had a lot to say about his character, who is a “resurrected body hunter” that became Hester’s custodian, and is now looking for her. Apparently, the way his character moves was inspired by birds — graceful, but also slightly robotic. Jihae’s character, on the other hand, seems to be a very talented badass, and a fierce environmentalist, although her exact role in the story is not yet clear.
They also gave us some hints about this strange, constantly-moving world:
– London is not the biggest city.
– The cities were designed in such a way that they could believably have been built out of the rubble of the originals.They are also places teeming with culture.
– However, “prey” is getting more and more scarce for predator cities. Eventually, they will run out of sources of fuel.
– There is another city, which Jihae’s character protects, that is a haven for nature. It has long withstood London.
– Although the concept is primarily steampunk, the design tried not to hold itself to those constraints, and instead paint a historically plausible picture.
Hugo Weaving also sent a video, which was played for the delight of the audience and the panel. (I later on heard Sheehan refer to Weaving as a “beefcake,” so there’s that.)
To end the panel, the audience saw the final Mortal Engines trailer, which notably shows us some glimpses of Lang and Jihae’s characters, who weren’t exactly present in the first 25 minutes of the movie (Lang’s is noticeably mostly special effects).
After the panel, Hypable got to catch up one-on-one with Christian Rivers, Peter Jackson and Stephen Lang [edited for clarity].
H: How much of what we just saw was CGI, and how much of it did you film?
Rivers: “Well, it’s fantastic — if you can’t tell if it’s CGI, then… [laughs]. There were quite a lot of sets, and most of the wide shots are of course all CGI. But we made certain components that the actors could interact with. I didn’t want to have actors just standing with green screen around them, especially for our new actors; it’s a lot of hard work for them to not just have to act in their characters, but also imagine all the stuff around them. So even if the majority of the environment around them was going to be expanded by CGI, I wanted them to at least have platforms and bits of wall and stuff that they could actually tangibly react to, at least in their immediate plan. I think that sort of helped tile it in.”
H: And the beginning scene… why did you choose to put that at the beginning?
Rivers: “You want to start the movie with a bang, and the beginning of the movie wants to explain the setting, which is the age of the traction cities. So it’s an age where we are now in the future and we have these giant cities that come down on smaller traction towns to ingest their resources and their people… sort of like colonialism gone mad. And so it was important to sort of show that part of the world.”
H: You mentioned colonialism. Was that something you had in mind while planning out the story?
Rivers: “I guess it’s just there as an aspect of how these things work. Again, it’s set in the future, but we also didn’t want to make it so alien that people wouldn’t relate to the future. And it’s sort of human nature, the cycle of human nature — we keep doing the same things. London is a traction city, with a very destructive way of living, but it’s the way they’ve always lived so they just keep doing it. There’s a few sort of parallels. Human nature is the same.”
H: Stephen, we only saw a glimpse of your character. Were you wearing a suit?
Lang: “My character’s a performance capture, which means that I was wearing a performance capture suit with markers on it… you know something about that. And so they capture everything I’m doing and the animators do what they do and hopefully a successful rendering of Shrike is a combination of my work and their work.”
“I’ve seen the entire film, so I’ve seen a lot of Shrike, and I’m really pleased with the fact that the animators did their job brilliantly, and part of the brilliance of their job is that they allowed my performance to come through very clearly.”
H: Do you feel that Shrike is more a victim or a villain?
Lang: “He’s certainly not a villain, per se. Is he a victim? I wouldn’t even call him a victim. He is what he is… he’s a predator, he’s a custodian, he’s just trying to find out who he is and what his place is on the planet. But he does have the qualities of the villain!”
H: It’s very interesting that you’re choosing to do a book-to-film adaptation. Is that something that you’re actively seeking?
Jackson: “Well, I read the books about 10 years ago, 2006 or 2007, and I just thought I would love to make these books into films. And so we got the rights, and then The Hobbit came along, and we got those rights — which I wasn’t expecting to get — and so we had to put this on hold for about five and a half years. So we came out of The Hobbit and got this off the ground right away.”
H: Do you think that break during The Hobbit helped flesh the movie out?
Jackson: “Well, we had done a little bit of pre-production back in 2008-2009, so it was interesting to revisit some of those old designs. And of course, Christian Rivers, who has done a lot of secondary direction for The Hobbit… I came out of The Hobbit exhausted, and I said “I really think this is the time for you to do it, and make your first movie.”
“I wanted to see the movie done because the rights were running out. So we had to make it very quickly. Fortunately, Christian’s had a lot of experience… he did the whole scene of the dwarves in the barrels floating down the river in the second Hobbit movie — that was pretty much all his — so I was very happy to help him. And he’s made a film which I really enjoy. I really love it.”
H: So how self-contained is this story, if you have it in mind to make other movies?
Jackson: “Well, it’s based on the novel, and there are four novels in this series — there are prequel ones as well — and this is the first of the four novels… so if it makes a lot of money, then hopefully Universal will give us the green light and fund the next one. The novels fulfill a linear story; they tell one story of Tom and Hester’s life journey, and it gets more crazy and unpredictable as it goes on.”
“So we’re in the hands of the audience, and if a lot of people go out to see this one, then we’ll get to make more.”
If the first 25 minutes of this movie are any indication, Mortal Engines has the potential to be the new movie series that grips our generation.
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