Mortal Engines—Book/Movie Comparison (SPOILER ALERT!)

Which was better? The Book or the Movie?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Mortal Engines: The Book, I did like the book better. Also, if you have no idea what Mortal Engines is about, please go check out the post as I explain what the world is like and also a not-so-brief synopsis.

First of all, the moving cities; the traction cities. The movie absolutely NAILED them. London was exactly as I had imagined it; they did a great job with the other cities, it was great. The airships, however, left much to be desired, as they were not airships at all but like, spaceships that didn't ascend higher than the stratosphere. Airhaven as well was descriptively inaccurate, but I mean, it's a town in the sky. They did their best.

In the book, Airhaven suffered some minor damages at the hands of the freaky Stalker Shrike (or Grike, depending on which edition of the book you read. The newest version names him Shrike, while the older edition, as well as the prequels, originally christens the Stalker Grike. The movie refers to him as Shrike so for this post so will I). The damages were for the most part superficial; some aviators lost their ships, a few ropes and things burned, but the air balloon keeping the thing aloft was unharmed enough for Airhaven to set down safely for repairs. In the movie, however, the thing was completely burned up and irreparable.

There was some plot differentiation, in fact quite a lot, but the book is rather long, about three hundred pages in fact, and I cannot hope to describe and pick apart each one, so I will only mention the ones that I thought to be the biggest ones.

1. The Early Appearance of the Stalker Shrike

In the book, Shrike didn't show up until Airhaven (see above). In the movie, he showed up just as Hester and Tom were escaping from the slave auction, which never happened because the two protagonists escaped before the slave trader even got to the cluster. This early appearance made Anna Fang's rescue a lot more cinematic and vital. I am undecided whether it was a better introduction to Tom and Hester—the rest of the audience meets Shrike a bit earlier, when Valentine goes to request his assistance—than the book, but I am leaning toward the book's intro.

2. The Lack of Deaths

In the book, at the end, London imploded on itself because an incorrect password was entered for the target coordinates and MEDUSA blew up, causing the deaths of most of the Londoners. Katherine sacrificed herself to save Hester's life, and Bevis Pod saved Katherine's life and was crushed under The Thirteenth Floor Elevator (Valentine's airship, flown by Pewsey and Gench, who did die) that Tom shot down. In the movie, both Bevis and Kate lived and there was no character development there. Anna Fang did die in the movie after an epic duel with Valentine, which was for the most part accurate except for the fact that the duel was fought in St. Paul's Cathedral, wheres in the book they fought at Batmonkh Gompa in Fang's attempt to stop Valentine from setting the Shield Wall's whole air fleet on fire. She failed, and lost her life because of it. In the movie, the whole air fleet (minus the ones that were destroyed along with Airhaven) were fine. Valentine did die, but not in the redeemed way he was in the book; he was crushed under London's treads after a fight with Hester that never happened in the book, solidifying him as the villain when in the book he was really just a henchman.

3. London ACTUALLY HIT Batmonkh Gompa! TWICE!

In the book, London never actually got MEDUSA to fire; Katherine's dying, fallen form landed on the computer keys after MEDUSA asked for a password to confirm target coordinates, however since Katherine "entered" in the wrong password, MEDUSA rejected the coordinates and imploded on itself due to the extreme energy buildup. Hester barely got out of there alive, and London's collapse lived on in infamy. However, in the movie, the drastic power of MEDUSA was underplayed, so it would take at least three blasts—point-blank, no less, not the 100 miles away that London was in the book—to completely destroy the Shield-Wall.

London blasted the Shield-Wall with MEDUSA twice, dealing terrible damage to Batmonkh Gompa. In the book, only one blast from over a hundred miles away would completely level a structure twice as large as the Shield-Wall, but apparently, it's not cinematic enough. There has to be that sense of timing, I guess.

Regardless of these points, I really did enjoy the movie; the casting was excellent, the effects were phenomenal, and the cities were incredible to see. There's only so much your imagination does, and I really did love what they did with London.

Hopefully I have made myself clear that I much prefer the book, but not that the movie was terrible. Others have said so , and the movie lost a great deal of money, which might just be due to the fact that it released at a bad time, when movies like Aquaman and Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse were pulling most of the audience. The movie would probably have done much better when such popular blockbusters were out of the theater.

Be sure, if you haven't already, to read my other Mortal Engines posts.