This Christmas’ Fantasy Epic ‘Mortal Engines’ Gets a Suitably Epic Trailer (VIDEO)

This will be the first Christmas in four years without a Star Wars movie to contend with, so the studios are rolling out the big guns in hopes of generating a franchise. Universal is banking on Mortal Engines, a high concept fantasy film that simply wouldn't have been possible pre-Lord of the Rings.

Speaking of which, this will be the first big post-Middle Earth production from Peter Jackson, though he's not directing the flick. Storyboard artist and visual effects wiz Christian Rivers is stepping behind the camera for this one, and hopefully he landed the job for more reasons other than his wedding ring was the model for the One Ring in Jackson's LOTR trilogy.

Also, christ on a cracker can we get Hugo Weaving a nice guy role again? What the hell happened, he's a heavy in every golldurn movie now. He can be fun, just watch Priscilla Queen of the Desert, he's fantastic in that. Get him another role like that already.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. It's based on a series of books, so the potential to franchise it is there. It just seems a tad high concept for American audiences. We've generally shunned big budget, high-concept movies like Edge of Tomorrow, Pacific Rim, Valerian, Blade Runner 2049, Jupiter Ascending, the list goes on. Granted those aren't all good movies, but there are some gems in there and Americans were more or less indifferent to them all.

Hopefully this bucks the trend. Mortal Engines opens on December 14, the same day as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.