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- [Narrator] Here are five differences
between the Mortal Engines books and film.
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Fans love Philip Reeve's sci-fi quartet of books,
which have been adapted to screen by Peter Jackson.
But did you notice these five alterations?
One, Hester's scar.
Fans have commented that heroine Hester Shaw
has a dramatically reduced scar in the film.
The character you recognize from the books
looks a little different on screen.
- Okay, Hester's scar is a digital scar.
We did have a silicone prosthetic that was designed,
which we shot her through the whole film.
But it just wasn't impactful enough.
It doesn't have the actual depth that we needed.
And the only way you can get that,
because with a prosthetic, you can only actually build up.
The only way to actually eat into the skin
is to cut them or to actually use
a chemical called collodion,
which was used extensively in the old days.
It was really bad for your skin, too,
and we're not allowed to use it anymore.
And it was used in Tom Beringer in Platoon.
It actually shrinks your skin.
You paint it on, so we couldn't do that, not to Hera.
- [Narrator] Two, St. Paul's Cathedral.
The book features giant traction cities,
one of which was based on London.
- There's no one traction city can look like the other.
- Yeah, and they also have to be
believable in their own world so if it's Saltzahken,
then it's a mining town that's scraping salt off
and it should look like it's a town that can scrape salt.
- So we flipped St. Paul's around.
If you actually look at the teaser trailer,
St. Paul's is actually
the orientation of the doors facing forward.
It's this thing in the book where there's a statue
of one of the gods Clio.
And Clio is always reaching back into the past,
so she's facing backwards.
And so we wanted London to have this...
It's moving forward, but then everything
is sort of more facing the back,
the wind tunnel effect.
- [Narrator] Three, Minions.
In the books, Disney characters are prayed to
in the futuristic London museum.
But as the film is produced by Universal,
these have been changed to Minions.
Four, Shrike.
The characterisation of Stalker Shrike
is one of the best things about the film.
Actor Stephen Lang, who you might recognize from Avatar,
brought some unusual influences to the role
to make him look a little different.
- Shrike is described in the book,
he's got quite big proportions
and he's a bit more robotic.
And we just worked out
the more human we made his proportions,
he felt more sympathetic.
Stephen sort of looked at different birds,
'cause the Shrike bird is actually the butcher bird.
He was sort of looking at some stuff
that Rudolf Nureyev did for Swan Lake
and how he would move like a bird and not move his arms.
It would be very easy for him to feel Terminator-esque
or have some kind of locomotion
that made him feel slightly awkward
and so it gave him a grace.
- [Narrator] Five, Anna Fang.
Jihae Kim stars as Anna Fang in the movie.
You might know her as a badass character in the books,
but they have really stepped it up in the movie.
- Fang being such a strong, empowered character
with such complexities, it was,
it was a gift.
It was a gift to be able to play her.
It actually helped me get empowered myself, so.
- [Narrator] To become leader of the Anti-Traction League,
she worked with Mark Trotter,
who is a nine times world champion of taekwondo.
Fans will be pleased that her true name
is revealed in the film.
- Anna Fang has another name,
which we managed to get that reference in there
and sort of a little bit of an explanation
about where it came from.
- [Narrator] Tell us in the comments below
if you spotted anything that we didn't.
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