The Netflix ‘Top 10’ category is a great way to find out what most people are watching, with the streamer selecting titles across both film and TV that are currently the most popular on the platform. On the other hand, it’s not always the most reliable way to seek out quality. Just because it’s being streamed a lot, doesn’t mean the majority doing so are having the best experience, as may be the case if you decide to dive into the world of Mortal Engines…
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Mortal Engines movie breaks Netflix ‘Top 10’
The 2018 action sci-fi Mortal Engines is ranked in seventh place in Netflix‘s ‘top 10’ category, beating out movies like The Accountant and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
Set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, director Christian Rivers’ ambitious blockbuster is based on author Philip Reeve’s 2001 novel of the same name, bringing to the screen a world where cities have been mounted onto wheels and can move around.
Hera Hilmar plays Hester Shaw, a masked assassin and fugitive who wishes to take out Thaddeus Valentine, the corrupt Deputy Lord Mayor with a desire for even greater power.
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Hester meets Tom, an apprentice historian exiled from his city who becomes an ally in an emerging resistance movement.
Among the cast are the likes of Hugo Weaving (The Matrix, The Lord Of The Rings), Stephen Lang (Avatar), and Regé-Jean Page (Bridgerton). However, I remember seeing marketing for the film upon its theatrical release, and one of the major selling points was that it was produced and the screenplay was co-written by legendary filmmaker Peter Jackson, best known as the director of The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
Nevertheless, the talent aboard didn’t prevent Mortal Engines from being denounced for its shortcomings as an adaptation, deviating significantly from the source material. It has an incredibly low 26% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, aiming higher but not quite high enough with its 48% audience score.
I saw it in theaters and was totally underwhelmed. About halfway into its two-hour-plus runtime, I was pretty eager to escape and get on with my day, being constantly reminded of so many other better movies I’d rather be watching instead.
Mortal Engines was a box-office bomb
Mortal Engines may not be remember as a great or even a good movie, but it will go down in history as one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time.
With a reported budget of $100–150 million, the film opened domestically at a crushing $7.5 million in its opening weekend, announcing it as a financial trainwreck straight out of the gate. And then of course there were the bad reviews.
Looking back, Mortal Engines went on to earn a total worldwide gross of $83.7 million, failing to even meet its budget. Disastrously, the loss cost Universal Pictures an estimated $175 million.
Wasting so much of the studio’s money, we’d advise not to let it waste your time either.
Mortal Engines is now streaming on Netflix.
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