Mortal Engines
Universal Pictures | Release Date: December 14, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
44
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 33 Critic Reviews
Positive:
5
Mixed:
20
Negative:
8
Watch Now
Buy on
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On
Expand

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
86
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiDec 5, 2018
It’s an overpowering world of steampunk delights, almost Miyazakian in its presentation. It’s hard to complain about a path being well-worn when all the sights will make your eyes pop. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 14, 2018
Mortal Engines, the movie adaptation of Philip Reeve’s YA novel, represents one of the most impressive examples of “world building” in recent years, surpassing such contenders as Valerian, Cloud Atlas, and even the recent Star Wars episodes. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaDec 12, 2018
Like all good YA fantasy, it’s rooted in earnest adolescent anxieties, and dresses them up with the same level of earnestness. Read full review
63
Philadelphia Daily NewsGary ThompsonDec 20, 2018
While the movie is often dazzling, it’s also frequently dull. Read full review
63
USA TodayBrian TruittDec 5, 2018
Unfortunately, there’s not much room left for fleshed-out personalities or narrative depth, making the whiz-bang wonder often feel too empty. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicWeldon B. JohnsonDec 18, 2018
Mortal Engines is an entertaining movie if you don’t ask to many questions of the story and stick to what’s put in front of you onscreen. Read full review
60
The New York TimesBen KenigsbergDec 13, 2018
As these things go, Mortal Engines offers a fair amount of fun. Read full review
60
EmpireHelen O'HaraDec 10, 2018
It rips a few too many pages from familiar playbooks, but when it indulges in its own weirdness this film casts off those heavy caterpillar tracks and soars. Read full review
58
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 5, 2018
Despite all of the film’s retro-future eye candy, it never quite sweeps you out of your seat and transports you someplace new. It’s a squeaky salvage job that could have used a fresh dose of oil to make it hum. Read full review
50
Rolling StoneDavid FearDec 17, 2018
As a distraction, it’s inoffensive. But you can tell it wants to be the juggernaut on wheels, the unstoppable giant mowing down or devouring everything in its path. It’s really the smaller thing trying desperately to outrun oblivion. It’s all scraps and nothing but. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshDec 14, 2018
Visually, it's busy, hefty and propulsive, but emotionally and thematically, it's as light as air. These engines could have used a bit more in the tank. Read full review
50
VoxAlissa WilkinsonDec 13, 2018
Mortal Engines is visually spectacular, if a bit derivative. It’s a social allegory that goes for broke. And while it’s hardly a groundbreaking movie, it’s still pretty fun. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 13, 2018
Mortal Engines is bursting with everything you’d want except compelling emotional intelligence. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleDavid LewisDec 12, 2018
The film is a reasonably entertaining trifle, though it’s overstuffed with battle sequences and peripheral characters that often consume the main story line. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleDec 12, 2018
Ultimately, Mortal Engines is the kind of non-summer blockbuster that seems destined to find a few ardent defenders. Too unfocused to be good, too packed full of ideas to be entirely bad, it should become quite the cable television staple in just a few years' time. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 12, 2018
The surprising thing about the film of Phillip Reeve’s Mortal Engines, essentially a movie about roving, bulldozing cities that devour small towns, is how long this eye candy holds your interest. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeDec 12, 2018
This is a headache-inducing spectacle that raises more questions than it answers, and does little to inspire viewers to go find the answers themselves. But hey, at least it’s too loud to fall asleep to. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyDec 5, 2018
In short, it's a long-arc revenge tale fitted out with very elaborate effects, courtesy of Peter Jackson's Wingnut Films, and characters that are moderately decent company but hardly compelling. Read full review
50
IndieWireDavid EhrlichDec 5, 2018
Even at its worst (which is where it often resides), “Mortal Engines” is still a rousing advertisement for the theatrical experience. Read full review
42
Original-CinLiam LaceyDec 13, 2018
Mortal Engines, which is produced by Peter Jackson and written by the team behind the Lord of the Rings films, is grandly, majestically, epically inert, a high-concept fantasy with a wide chasm between the money we see up on the screen and poverty of the story. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Simran HansDec 16, 2018
The film’s critiques are unimaginative, tutting at how territories attack first in order to consolidate power, as well as the spectacle of war itself, bystanders crowding the balconies of the ship-like city, shrieking as guns and lasers fire at the wastelands below. Read full review
40
Time OutCath ClarkeDec 11, 2018
Mortal Engines really is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent slog, as characters leap unfeasibly out of planes on to bits of cities while a squad of rebel-fighter pilots straight out of Star Wars buzz around. Read full review
40
VarietyAndrew BarkerDec 5, 2018
The film never captures the bonkers, go-for-broke energy that made the ill-fated likes of “Cloud Atlas” or “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” such enjoyable noble failures, too caught up in hitting the same old blockbuster beats to stop and wonder where the story’s weirder threads might have lead. Read full review
40
The TelegraphTim RobeyDec 5, 2018
Mortal Engines has been thoroughly storyboarded, make no mistake. But here lies the rub – lift-off, personality, and plainly put, direction, aren’t there. All the pieces of the movie slide mechanically into place and wait – and wait – for some spark of soul to turn up and animate them. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawDec 5, 2018
There are some lively things about Mortal Engines, and the performances are game enough. Yet in all its effortful steampunkiness, Mortal Engines isn’t a film which is particularly exciting or funny, and the idea of the “traction city” is a stylistic and visual design tic that you just have to take or leave. Read full review
38
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Anne T. DonahueDec 14, 2018
What’s ironic (and frustrating) is that in an era defined by a constant feeling of doom, a story that could actually capitalize on it makes us feel that way only when we all realize it’s been nearly an hour in to the story and we’re still meeting new characters. Read full review
38
New York PostSara StewartDec 14, 2018
Most of Mortal Engines is a wearying blast of CGI and genre-cribbing (most egregiously, director Christian Rivers hired composer Junkie XL to seemingly lift, wholesale, his soundtrack from “Mad Max: Fury Road”). Read full review
38
RogerEbert.comGlenn KennyDec 14, 2018
But it looks great, right? Not really. Directed by Christian Rivers, a longtime art director for Jackson, the overall look asks the question, “are you sick of Steampunk yet,” and for me, yeah. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineChris BarsantiDec 12, 2018
After a while, it all starts to feel like a showreel for the film’s special-effects team than an honest effort to tell a story. Read full review
37
Washington PostMichael O'SullivanDec 13, 2018
The story is bloated and, despite flashes of imagination, overly familiar. And the dialogue, peppered with well-worn catchphrases. Read full review
33
ConsequenceDominick Suzanne-MayerDec 13, 2018
As with any number of popular YA novels-turned-feature films, Mortal Engines has a wealth of possibilities and curious ideas at its disposal. Instead, it tears past them in pursuit of some of the subgenre’s most exhausted narrative tropes, chewing up everything engaging as it grinds along. Read full review
25
The Seattle TimesSoren AndersenDec 13, 2018
Mortal Engines hasn’t much in the way of originality, other than its rolling city, to distinguish it from other, better post-apocalyptic tales. Read full review
20
ScreenCrushMatt SingerDec 17, 2018
I never would have thought I could get so little amusement out of a film where Hugo Weaving dramatically intones nonsense like “Prepare to ingest!” Read full review
More From This Movie

44 Critic Reviews

6.0 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL