Mortal Engines

A female action lead is sold as a savior-type hero who can stop London. Anna Fang is cast as an elite multi-skill Asian warrior mentor in line with the book. Multiethnic Anti-Traction heroes stand opposite a largely white London elite. The far-future global setting softens any mismatch, but the pattern is still clear to viewers.

Talk on screen stays with revenge, Municipal Darwinism exposition, romance, and action logistics. There is no sustained modern DEI, race, gender, or queer activist speech. Resource and consumption worldbuilding appears but is not spoken as identity politics.

Core arcs are revenge, found partnership, and stopping an imperial superweapon rather than race or gender identity journeys. Female competence from Hester, Anna, and Katherine and light empowerment framing are built into the structure. Class and traction-versus-static conflict dominate, with no LGBTQ plotline.

London acts as a predatory traction capital that eats weaker settlements and drives toward the Asian static civilization behind the Shield Wall. Municipal Darwinism satirizes eat-or-be-eaten power. This is a classical dystopian empire critique more than a modern lecture on whiteness, patriarchy, or Christianity.

Some social posts called it a woke mess over strong women, a weaker male lead, white villains, and POC or Far-East-aligned good guys. A few reviews nodded at Hollywood woke sensibilities. There was no large mainstream anti-woke news cycle, and the flop story was about storytelling and box office.

Cached scores are low for Rivers, Walsh, Jackson, Boyens, Reeve, and related producers and casting. They are mainly fantasy and VFX craftspeople with little identity-activist public record. Reeve has publicly rejected being labeled an anti-capitalist crusader.