Canadian Politics Today

I went to see "Mortal Engines" last night. The reviews were quite bad, and the box office has been disastrous, but the premise was just so completely bughouse loco that I had to see it for myself.

I quite enjoyed it. Normal people might want to chow down on some cannabis edibles before watching this, but for me, this was right up my alley. In a post-apocalyptic future, "the Ancients" (ie, us) have destroyed most of the earth with terrible weaponry. ("60 minutes was all it took.")  A thousand years in the future, cities on wheels roll about attempting to scavenge the resources their inhabitants need to survive. The largest of these cities-- London-- leaves the scavenging to others and just hunts down and eats entire cities. (I know, right? This is why I had to see this movie.)  London has already eaten almost everything in Europe and is growing hungry. She is pushing eastward, and Hugo Weaving has rebuilt an ancient superweapon that will allow London to break through the eastern lands' defenses and continue its rampage in Asia.


It stars Hugo Weaving as himself, Robert Sheehan as "Tom", a young historian/technologist, and Iceland's Hera Hilmar as "Hester", a would-be assassin.

I haven't read the book, but apparently Hester was supposed to be ugly. Like, really really ugly. Like, her face was supposed to look like a road map of scar tissue and veins or something like that. When the first trailers came out, there was some controversy, because Hester was visibly not ugly. She's this incredibly beautiful girl with a red scarf covering half of her face.  Fans of the book were angry that they had chickened out of making her ugly. There was even a hashtag on Twitter about it. #uglygirlsmatter or something like that.  I figured there'd be a big reveal. Like she pulls down the scarf to show Tom her real face and it's a mangled mess.  Nope.  She pulls down the scarf to show Tom her real face... and she's still incredibly gorgeous. She's an incredibly gorgeous girl with a scar on her cheek.

Hester: "THIS" (points at scar) "...THIS is what happens to people who stand in his way!"

Tom: "hmm.  Doesn't seem that bad, really."



 -k