The film incorporates characters and events from several of the albums, in particular the first, "Adèle and the Beast," first published in 1976, and the fourth, 1978's "Mummies on Parade," within an overall plot of Besson's construction and takes place primarily in Paris, France, circa 1912.
The film starts in sepia toned Kansas in the early 1900s. Dorothy Gale lives with her dog Toto on the farm of her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Dorothy and Toto get in trouble with a ruthless neighbor, Miss Almira Gulch, when Toto bites her. However, Dorothy's family and the farmhands are all too busy to pay attention to her. Miss Gulch arrives with permission from the sheriff to have Toto euthanized. He is taken away, but escapes and returns to Dorothy; she then decides to run away from home with Toto to escape Miss Gulch.
After the King of England, Uther Pendragon, dies, leaving no heir to the throne, a sword appears inside an anvil in London. The sword bears an inscription proclaiming that whoever removes it will be the new king. No one can remove the sword, which is eventually forgotten, leaving England in the Dark Ages.
In 1863, where an alternate nineteenth century Europe has made tremendous strides in steam-powered technologies, scientist Lloyd Steam and his son Edward have succeeded, after a lengthy expedition, in discovering a pure mineral water. They believe the water can be harnessed as an ultimate power source for steam engines (the main industrial engine of the time). An experiment in Russian Alaska goes terribly wrong, with Edward being engulfed in freezing gases, but results in the creation of a strange spherical apparatus.
In London in the year 1907, a British aristocrat named Sir Anthony Ross (Donald Sinden) hastily arranges an expedition to the Arctic to search for his lost son Donald. Donald had become lost on a whaling expedition to find the fabled island where whales go to die.
In the film's backstory, human civilizations built flying cities, which were later destroyed by an unspecified catastrophe, forcing the survivors to live on the ground. The only remaining flying city, Laputa, still floats in the sky, concealed by a permanent powerful thunderstorm that surrounds it.
In the futuristic city of Metropolis humans and robots coexist. Robots are discriminated against and segregated to the city's lower levels. A lot of Metropolis' human population are unemployed and deprived, and many people blame the robots for taking their jobs.
Jonathon Tibbs (Kenneth More), son of a family of English gunsmiths, has no interest in the business and prefers inventing gadgets, in particular a steam-powered horseless carriage. Threatened with disinheritance if he does not report for work, he discovers that the company is not doing very well, and concludes that someone must expand their sales.
A boy eating lunch in a 1950s style kitchen plays war with his surrounding toys. A bomb blast outside the window frightens him under the table from where he is rescued and taken to an Amphitheatre, where an invisible audience cheers. An army resembling the Terracotta Army enter; Romans under the command of Titus Andronicus, the general at the center of the play, return victorious from war. They bring back as spoils Tamora, Queen of the Goths, her sons, and Aaron the Moor. Titus sacrifices Tamora’s eldest son, Alarbus, so the spirits of his 21 dead sons might be appeased. Tamora eloquently begs for the life of Alarbus, but Titus refuses her plea.
In a dilapidated apartment building in post-apocalyptic France, food is in short supply and grain is used as currency. On the ground floor is a butcher's shop, run by the landlord, Clapet (Jean-Claude Dreyfus), who posts job opportunities in the Hard Times paper as means to lure victims to the building, whom he murders and butchers as a cheap source of meat to sell to his tenants.
From an ocean rig, a demented scientist, Krank (Daniel Emilfork), kidnaps children from the nearby, unnamed port city to steal their dreams, as he is incapable of having dreams of his own. Among them is the adopted little brother, Denree (Joseph Lucien), of carnival strongman and former whaler One (Ron Perlman), who sets out to rescue him with the help of a little girl named Miette (Judith Vittet), a member of a thieves' guild composed entirely of orphaned children. They delve into the world of a bio-mechanical kidnapping cult and discover the connection between the scientist and the missing Denree.
Chine, 19ème siècle, une guerre sans fin ravage le royaume. Sur le champs de bataille, un guerrier d’exception fait preuve d’une force sans limite. Mais ce don surhumain finira aussi par le tuer. Pour survivre, il devra se rendre là où tout a commencé et percer le secret d’une pratique ancestrale…
The film is set in an alternate-reality Earth. In 1899, The Martians launched an unprovoked attack on the major nations of the world. In Leeds, England, a younger Eric Wells watches in horror as a Martian Tripod lays waste to his city and then kills his father and mother. But before it can kill him, the Martian Tripod suddenly keels forward and crashes into the ground. Over 140 million people were killed by the Martians, and many of the great cities of the world were destroyed until the Martians were killed off by Earth's bacteria, against which the Martians had no defence.