TheWrap

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.

A review by William Bibbiani for TheWrap on 2018-12-05

ReelViews

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.

A review by James Berardinelli for ReelViews on 2018-12-14

New York Magazine (Vulture)

Like all good YA fantasy, it’s rooted in earnest adolescent anxieties, and dresses them up with the same level of earnestness.

A review by Emily Yoshida for New York Magazine (Vulture) on 2018-12-12

Philadelphia Daily News

While the movie is often dazzling, it’s also frequently dull.

A review by Gary Thompson for Philadelphia Daily News on 2018-12-20

USA Today

Unfortunately, there’s not much room left for fleshed-out personalities or narrative depth, making the whiz-bang wonder often feel too empty.

A review by Brian Truitt for USA Today on 2018-12-05

Arizona Republic

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.

A review for Arizona Republic on 2018-12-18

The New York Times

As these things go, Mortal Engines offers a fair amount of fun.

A review by Ben Kenigsberg for The New York Times on 2018-12-13

Empire

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.

A review by Helen O'Hara for Empire on 2018-12-10

Entertainment Weekly

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.

A review by Chris Nashawaty for Entertainment Weekly on 2018-12-05

Rolling Stone

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.

A review by David Fear for Rolling Stone on 2018-12-17

Chicago Tribune

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.

A review by Katie Walsh for Chicago Tribune on 2018-12-14

Vox

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.

A review by Alissa Wilkinson for Vox on 2018-12-13

Los Angeles Times

Mortal Engines is bursting with everything you’d want except compelling emotional intelligence.

A review by Kenneth Turan for Los Angeles Times on 2018-12-13

San Francisco Chronicle

The film is a reasonably entertaining trifle, though it’s overstuffed with battle sequences and peripheral characters that often consume the main story line.

A review by David Lewis for San Francisco Chronicle on 2018-12-12

Austin Chronicle

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.

A review for Austin Chronicle on 2018-12-12

The A.V. Club

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.

A review by Katie Rife for The A.V. Club on 2018-12-12

The Hollywood Reporter

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.

A review by Todd McCarthy for The Hollywood Reporter on 2018-12-05

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.

A review by Roger Moore for /reviews/publisher:

Even at its worst (which is where it often resides), “Mortal Engines” is still a rousing advertisement for the theatrical experience.

A review by David Ehrlich for /reviews/publisher:

Original-Cin

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.

A review by Liam Lacey for Original-Cin on 2018-12-13

The Observer (UK)

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.

A review by Simran Hans for The Observer (UK) on 2018-12-16

Time Out

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.

A review by Cath Clarke for Time Out on 2018-12-11

Variety

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.

A review by Andrew Barker for Variety on 2018-12-05

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.

A review by Tim Robey for /reviews/publisher:

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.

A review by Peter Bradshaw for /reviews/publisher:

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

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.

A review for The Globe and Mail (Toronto) on 2018-12-14

New York Post

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”).

A review by Sara Stewart for New York Post on 2018-12-14

Slant Magazine

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.

A review for Slant Magazine on 2018-12-12

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.

A review by Glenn Kenny for /reviews/publisher:

Washington Post

The story is bloated and, despite flashes of imagination, overly familiar. And the dialogue, peppered with well-worn catchphrases.

A review by Michael O'Sullivan for Washington Post on 2018-12-13

Consequence

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.

A review by Dominick Suzanne-Mayer for Consequence on 2018-12-13

The Seattle Times

Mortal Engines hasn’t much in the way of originality, other than its rolling city, to distinguish it from other, better post-apocalyptic tales.

A review by Soren Andersen for The Seattle Times on 2018-12-13

ScreenCrush

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!”

A review by Matt Singer for ScreenCrush on 2018-12-17