Mortal Engines aimed to be a franchise-starting epic, but it looks like the grandest thing
about it is the scale of its failure.
Here's how this hundred-million dollar book adaptation turned into one of the biggest
box office bombs of 2018.
Mortal Engines is based on the 2001 book of the same name by Philip Reeve, which launched
a seven-book series of sequels and prequels.
The post-apocalyptic story is based around the premise of cities that are constantly
in motion, roaming the world in competition with each other over resources.
The protagonist is a woman named Hester, who wears a mask to hide scars she received from
a man named Thaddeus, an evil historian in London who killed her mother.
To help get her vengeance on Thaddeus, Hester joins up with a team of rebels who are fighting
to make cities stop preying on each other, and go back to sitting still.
And that's honestly only the half of it.
As you might imagine, there's a lot going on here.
"Just give it to me one more time, simpler."
Over the course of its debut weekend, Mortal Engines made only $7.5 million at the domestic
box office, a crushingly low number that saw the movie opening in fifth place.
The film fared better in foreign markets, where it brought in nearly $35 million, with
the combined total making for an opening weekend take of just over $42 million.
Relative to the movie's budget, that's an especially dismal performance.
The production budget for Mortal Engines has been reported as being over $100 million,
with the marketing budget reportedly being $120 million, according to Deadline.
That means it may have cost in the realm of $220 million to make and market Mortal Engines.
With such a lousy opening weekend, the movie is pretty much doomed.
According to Deadline and other outlets, it may well end up losing over $150 million by
the time its run is through.
Mortal Engines had the misfortune of debuting during a crowded time of year.
On its debut weekend, it faced off against Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,
an animated superhero feature that topped the domestic box office.
It also faced surprising competition from Clint Eastwood's The Mule, which came out
to one of the best financial performances of the director's career.
And those are just the brand-new movies.
Audiences also spent the weekend with family films like The Grinch or the Wreck-It Ralph
sequel, still holding strong after several weeks in theaters.
Other big movies audiences are still catching up on include Creed II, Bohemian Rhapsody,
and the Fantastic Beasts sequel, with Once Upon a Deadpool - the re-edited, PG-13 version
of Deadpool 2 - also peeling away a few million dollars worth of viewers for itself.
"You dropped a super duber dumperuski in your little diapey wipey, didn't you, buddy?"
"Yes I did."
Basically, there's no shortage of decent movies to choose from in winter 2018.
While Mortal Engines may have distinguished itself from the rest of the pack with its
weird premise, it totally failed to get people interested in actually seeing it.
A movie doesn't need great reviews to be a success at the box office.
But Mortal Engines proved a turn-off to audiences and critics both.
"That must've been one lousy movie."
After its opening weekend, Mortal Engines sat at a mere 28% on Rotten Tomatoes, with
129 reviews being counted toward the movie's average score.
Writers referred to the movie as being wearying, crummy, and a giant slog, with even the more
positive reviews typically finding something to complain about.
While some gave credit to the movie's special effects, it seemed the movie's story failed
to justify the spectacle.
Compare this reception to a movie like Spider-Verse, which is a recognizable franchise movie getting
universal acclaim.
Next to offerings like that, Mortal Engines just looks like too much of a risk.
Mortal Engines' biggest problem may be that it's too difficult to advertise.
The cities-on-wheels idea is just too high-concept, and wasn't explained in a compelling way by
the movie's marketing.
This is less of a problem for a book series, which gets time to build a world over many
pages.
But movies have to sell themselves with intriguing posters, killer trailers, and concepts that
could fit in a single sentence.
For a story that's this out there, that's a pretty tricky proposition.
Complicating things is the fact that the book series Mortal Engines is based on is relatively
unpopular in the United States, compared to series like The Hunger Games or Harry Potter.
So Mortal Engines largely had to sell itself on its merits as a movie.
It apparently made for a hard sell.
Imagining cities on wheels in a book is one thing, but when you see them chasing each
other across the landscape in a movie trailer, it's easy to just be confused.
Mortal Engines was produced in part by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, with a screenplay
by Jackson, Walsh, and Philippa Boyens.
They're a creative team that rang in the new millennium with their adaptations of The Lord
of the Rings, making a stone-cold classic trilogy of movies that remain the gold standard
for epic book adaptations.
But whatever magic helped to elevate those films to Oscar-sweeping greatness failed to
come into being with Mortal Engines, with the property simply failing to generate enough
interest among audiences.
One reason why the movie failed is lousy timing when it comes to cinematic trends.
Jackson originally purchased the rights to the Mortal Engines story over a decade ago,
when adaptations of young adult novels were more in fashion.
Now the landscape is much different, and audiences apparently aren't as attracted to these stories
as they used to be.
The Darkest Minds, another YA adaptation released in August 2018, also proved a flop on its
opening weekend.
But that movie had a much smaller budget, so its failure caused less damage.
Mortal Engines was a big bet that didn't pay off.
Whether the filmmakers thought people would come out for the property, or for Peter Jackson,
they were wrong.
Nobody wanted to see it at all.
It was supposed to be a franchise-starter, but instead it's ended up a fascinating failure.