Mortal Engines

A thousand years in the future, archaeologists unearth statues of Despicable Me's Minions and assume they're religious icons worshipped by we "ancients". Maybe they're right. It's a rare moment of humour in an epic that otherwise lumbers inexorably across the screen like its visually arresting main motif: mobile cities. An apocalyptic "quantum weapons" war has devastated the planet and left civilisation's remnants divided between fixed settlements and predatory cities mounted on huge, caterpillar-tracked platforms. The story based on Philip Reeve's bestseller sees Hugo Weaving's mobile London (an unholy hybrid of St Paul's Cathedral and Big Ben) chug-chugging across a Channel land bridge in its constant search for food and fuel, and then heading east to unleash a rebuilt quantum weapon on a prosperous, settled township. But that's only if young rebels with personal agendas (Robert Sheehan, Hera Hilmar) don't stop him first. Essentially a steampunk riff on Star Wars, the feature debut from director Christian Rivers (protégé of co-writer/co-producer Peter Jackson) is visually stunning, with the steam-powered mobile cities especially impressive. The script and the performances are fine but, if anything, it's the film's visuals that will stay in the memory.