I have to say that I liked this movie a lot. It is kind of fantasy, science fiction (emphasis on fiction here) and steam punk (or perhaps I should say diesel punk) mixed together.
The world is a fairly dark post apocalyptic world where moving predator cities prays on each other. The entire concept is really quite ridiculous of course but it makes for some really fantastic and spectacular special effects and I am a sucker for spectacular special effects.
In addition the overall story holds together fairly well. That is, in the context of the ludicrous world that is the background of this story in the first place of course. It is quite straightforward without too much annoying social or green preaching that plagues so many movies nowadays. Somewhat predictable but overall a good vehicle for the plentiful action.
I also liked most of the characters. Both the bad guy and the good guys had decent charisma with the exception of Tom who was a bit of a naive whiner although he got it together towards the end.
There where few flaws. Nothing really major except that, in one scene at the end, the city of London was shown against the wall and it was bloody tiny compared to the wall. The main bad guy’s last resort was to pummel London against the wall and was expected to break it down. Before in the movie London was depicted as really huge. That scene really screwed that and made him delusional.
Apart from that, end Tom’s whining and naivety, I really liked this movie. It was the kind of over the top, fantasy/fiction movie with a big budget that you do not see every day. Of course the dickwads, a.ka “critics”) at Rotten Tomatoes and other mainstream media assholes did their best to tell everyone how bad it was. As usual that’s just the stuff that comes out of the south end of a north bound bull.
From the team that brought us everything from Middle Earth comes this great to look at, but highly derivative fantasy adventure that regurgitates a hybrid of stories and spits them out pretty unremarkably. To be fair, there is charisma between the two leads - both attractive, young, and ballsy - Hera Hilmar ("Hester)' and Robert Sheehan ("Tom") as they try to thwart the maniacal ambitions of "Thaddeus Valentine" (a suitably dramatic, "Elrond" like, Hugo Weaving) who is charged with providing an uninterruptible power source for the marauding mechanical city of London. The visual effects are super, as you might expect, and the score certainly has something of the Howard Shore about it, but the relentlessness of the out of the frying pan into the fire scenarios against impossible odds just recycle themselves once too often and the ending, though impressive to appreciate creatively, has all the jeopardy of night following day. Money has clearly been spent on this, but not on the script nor the plot. It's fine, but nothing more...
