Hester Shaw: How I Learnt to Love Her Without a Grotesque Scar

Warning: Spoilers for both the Mortal Engines film and the original book series below. Tread carefully across the Great Hunting Ground!

The Great Debate: Adapting Hester's Face for the Big Screen

For years leading up to the film's release, many passionate Mortal Engines fans speculated that Hester Shaw would not have her truly horrific, face-destroying scar in the Hollywood adaptation. In Philip Reeve's original novel, Thaddeus Valentine's sword strike didn't just give her a cool cheek scratch. It was a brutal attack that cleaved away her nose, destroyed one of her eyes, and left her mouth permanently twisted into a grotesque sneer.

When the very first trailer came out, we were collectively nervous. Even though Hester had a red scarf covering her face, she clearly had two fully functioning eyes. Also, why does she have a red scarf before she meets Tom? In the deep lore of the books, he gave it to her much later as a profound moment of bonding, specifically because he recognized her deep self-consciousness about her deformity.

Many fans thought this extreme physical disfigurement was a key pillar of the character. Indeed, it brilliantly turned the tired cliche about the young adult heroine always being conventionally pretty completely on its head.

Turns out, in the Peter Jackson produced cinematic universe, Hester's scar 'tis just but a scratch' compared to how it is vividly described in the novel.

Philip Reeve's Original Vision: The Anti-Heroine

Author Philip Reeve, who masterfully created the character, was quite clear on her scarification and his creative motives when he said:

"But it struck me that people who live by their wits in wastelands tend not to be that glamorous or good looking, and who cares about beautiful people anyway?

So I decided right from the start to make Hester ugly, and I liked the idea that the hero would slowly fall in love with her anyway, which is far more interesting than having two gorgeous people seeing each other across a crowded room and falling in love.

Then it seemed to make sense to give Hester a scar, which she's received at the hands of the villain, so there's her initial motivation, revenge, right there on her face; she's like Captain Ahab with his missing leg!"

Why We Worship the Feral Survivor

Because of this fearless, raw depiction, Hester Shaw became quite the iconic, if not a cult figure, for those that love the Mortal Engines series. She isn't a typical noble hero. She is driven by feral survival instincts and deep-seated rage.

I love her for the simple, unhinged reason that she literally killed a man with a heavy Old Tech typewriter in Infernal Devices to protect her family. She is a ruthless force of nature.

But, let us face reality. There is a massive amount of money to be made with a big budget Mortal Engines movie, and Hollywood studio logic dictates that you cannot sell a massive tentpole film with an "ugly" woman as the romantic lead.

You apparently just can't, even though Charlize Theron literally won an Oscar for playing a physically transformed, ugly serial killer in Monster.

So enter Hera Hilmar, an apparently lovely lass and a talented actress deemed worthy of playing Hester Shaw (though there has been absolutely no mention on Twitter about her lethal typewriting skills).

The Hollywood Compromise and Fan Backlash

So director Christian Rivers and Peter Jackson sat down and probably went, "We can't make bank with our lead looking like a horror movie victim. We need some eye candy, right? So what if we just heavily toned down that scar?"

And the producers started laughing all the way to their bank.

Then they officially published the promotional pictures of Tom and Hester.

And the loyal fan boys and fan girls absolutely lost their minds. They went, "You completely ruined it, PJ" (literally, I saw much more colorful versions of that sentiment trending on Twitter). To the hardcore readers, erasing the severity of the scar felt like erasing the severity of her trauma.

Acceptance: Why the Scar Is Not Everything

Sure, I have tweeted some of that exact sentiment myself and loudly wondered about what a grittier adaptation could have been. But then I was sitting down with a nice hoppy home-brewed beer after emptying the dishwasher, folding some towels, and I thought: why does a physical scar really matter to her core identity?

I mean really?

Hester has a million deeply ingrained psychological reasons to hate herself and the world. A scar on her face is but one physical manifestation of her pain.

If the central idea of Hester's character is that she is completely 'broken' internally, then it doesn't matter exactly how she looks on the outside, what truly matters is how the movie sets up how she feels. I think I would be pretty pissed off if my parents had both been murdered in front of me, and I then had to spend my formative years wandering a wasteland being raised by a kind of zombie cyborg called Shrike that used to be a man and currently has hands for knives. For the record, Shrike is basically the complete, terrifying opposite of C3PO.

That trauma is reason enough to be the wildly unhappy, moody and even murderous Hester Shaw we all adore.

Surely?

Getting Bums on Seats

So, this Mortal Engines fan has decided to get with the program and simply accept that Hester will not have a grotesque scar in the film.

And you know what? I am going to guess that the Mortal Engines book has sold, say, 400,000 copies globally. I really have no idea. Let us say 10,000 of those readers REALLY CARE about the accuracy of the scar.

OK?

Those 10,000 purists are going to bitch and moan exactly like those Star Wars fans did about The Last Jedi. No matter what the filmmakers do, they will complain.

But if Peter Jackson and Christian Rivers want to make 500 million dollars bank on this film, they have got to get bums on cinema seats. The vast majority of those bums will not have read the book, they will not care about a missing eye they never knew existed, and they will simply enjoy a visually spectacular film where the giant city of London runs around on tracks trying to eat other smaller cities.

So no gruesome scar for you, just a beautifully realized, bad ass Anna Fang instead.

So, let us just hope Hera Hilmar's Hester has a really, really good bitchy resting face, because that is the true spirit of Hester Shaw.