The first images from the movie Mortal Engines have been released by Universal Pictures.
Peter Jackson, the Oscar-winning mastermind behind The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, produced and wrote the screenplay for the upcoming adaptation (in theaters December 14, 2018) of Philip Reeve’s 2001 young-adult dystopian novel. Set a few thousand years into a post-apocalyptic future, the movie introduces a world where nations no longer exist and huge metropolises on wheels gobble up smaller towns for their resources.
The film revolves around the journey of — and growing relationship between — museum apprentice Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) and fugitive assassin Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar).
Tom is a twenty-something Londoner who’s only ever lived inside his traveling hometown, and his feet have never touched grass, mud or land. His first taste of the outside comes quite abruptly: Tom gets in the way of the masked Hester’s attempt to kill Thaddeus Valentine (Hugo Weaving), a powerful sort she blames for her mother’s murder, and both Hester and Tom end up thrown out of the moving “traction” city and on their own.
He’s also forced to deal with the mysterious Hester, a disfigured girl raised by Shrike (Stephen Lang), the last of an undead battalion of soldiers known as Stalkers, who were war casualties reanimated with machine parts.
Visual spectacle abounds, from flying towns like Airhaven that house the resistance group the Anti-Traction League (including Hester and Tom’s pilot ally, Anna Fang, played by South Korean singer Jihae) to breakneck ground-and-pound, city-on-city action that would make Mad Max jealous.
Mortal Engines First Look is brought to you by Wild About Movies.
