Plot summary

In Paris in 1870, an event splits the timeline from the one we're familiar with. Napoleon III, preparing for war with Prussia, has tasked a scientist with developing a drug -- dubbed the ultimate serum -- that will make his soldiers indestructible, able to recover almost instantly from wounds and disease. The emperor visits Professor Gustave Franklin's lab to gauge his progress. Franklin has a couple of creatures in a murky test chamber; he calls them Rodrigue (French voice: Benoît Brière; English voice: J.K. Simmons) and Chimène (French voice: Anne Coesens; English voice: Susan Sarandon). (Rodrigue and Chimène are named for characters from legends based on the life of the Spanish hero El Cid -- comparable to Romeo and Juliet.) We can't see the test subjects, but we hear them say a few words. When Franklin reports that he hasn't yet identified the right formula for the ultimate serum, the emperor loses his temper and orders his henchman to shoot Rodrigue and Chimène, without waiting to hear what Franklin urgently wants to tell him. The movie's timeline diverges from our own when the test subjects escape -- we never get a good look at them, but they seem to be four-legged and low to the ground -- and the ensuing explosion kills Franklin and Napoleon III.The immediate result is positive: Napoleon IV signs a peace treaty that averts the Franco-Prussian War, which didn't go well for France and is generally considered to have set the stage for World War I. Before long, though, scientists and inventors start to disappear. Technologies they would have developed -- notably radio, electricity, and petroleum-powered internal combustion and diesel engines -- never appear. Europe uses up its coal to power its steam engines, then consumes its forests. When the story resumes in 1931, France is planning to invade North America for its trees. The French government requires all remaining scientists to work for the state; their priority is to develop new weapons for the coming North American war.The descendants of Professor Franklin are renegades. His son Prosper (French voice: Jean Rochefort; English voice: Tony Robinow), now an old man who wants his family to call him Pops, has continued the search for the ultimate serum in secret. Prosper's son Paul (French voice: Olivier Gourmet; English voice: Mark Camacho) and Paul's wife Annette (French and English voices: Macha Grenon) are in it with him; even their young daughter April tries to help. When we first see Prosper, he's in a conservatory visiting a tree. When Paul comes to bring him back to work, Prosper says he's drawn to the tree and can't help coming every day.The Franklins are distilling the latest version of the ultimate serum when the gendarmes -- police -- break in on them, lead by Inspector Gaspar Pizoni (French voice: Bouli Lanners; English voice: Paul Giamatti). Annette hides the serum by injecting it into April's snowglobe and the family flees, Prosper in a steam-powered car and April, her parents, and her talking cat Darwin (French voice: Philippe Katerine; English voice: Tony Hale) in a police dirigible. Pops gets away; the rest of the family makes it onto a cable car bound for Germany, but the cops catch up with them before the cable car leaves Paris. The cable car is attacked by a strange dark cloud that strikes the police and April's parents with lightning that seems carefully aimed. April and Darwin escape in a kind of lifeboat just before the cable car explodes. In the aftermath Inspector Pizoni, who survived the explosion with injuries, is demoted to agent for bungling the capture of the Franklins. Paul and Annette are presumed dead, but Pizoni vows to win back his rank by finding Prosper.Ten years later, April (French voice: Marion Cotillard; English voice: Angela Galuppo) and Darwin are living on their own in the head of a huge metal statue of one of the Napoleons. Scientists are still disappearing. April makes her way around Paris stealing things she needs, and is followed by a young man, Julius (French voice: Marc-André Grondin; English voice: Tod Fennell), who is Pizoni's informant. (Pizoni hopes that April will lead them to Prosper.) She doesn't know Julius is following her, but the entrance to the statue is well hidden so he loses track of her. April is still working to perfect the ultimate serum, motivated by the knowledge that her beloved Darwin is dying -- his lungs have been damaged by all the soot in the air, product of decades of burning coal and wood in huge quantities. April reads to him ("Puss in Boots," another story about a talking cat) while they wait to see whether her latest formula will cure him. It doesn't, so she goes out again to steal ingredients for the next attempt.A fairground seems promising. One of the booths features a magic show that includes some chemical effects. (And, oddly, a pigeon outfitted to transmit audio and video.) April sneaks backstage during the show and finds what she needs, but the magician's assistant catches her and raises the alarm. April runs, with the magician's assistant in hot pursuit. (In a remote listening post, a shadowy figure orders that a spy rat be sent in.) Luckily for April, Julius has picked up her trail again and has recently been told by Pizoni to shield her from the consequences of stealing -- she can't lead them to Prosper if she's in jail. Grasping her predicament, Julius runs up to April saying "Honey, where have you been? I've looked all over for you!" and kisses her. This distracts her pursuer so Julius (who has previously exhibited some skill at sleight of hand tricks) can extract the stolen chemicals from her bag. When the magician's assistant looks into her bag, there's nothing incriminating to be found and they get away. April is baffled by Julius's help, seems uninterested in making friends, and ditches him as soon as he returns her chemicals. He follows her, as does a rat wearing the same kind of spy equipment we saw on the pigeon. Julius loses her again near the statue; the rat doesn't.In her lair, watched by the spy rat, April whips up another batch of what she hopes is really the ultimate serum and feeds it to Darwin. Julius, who's hanging around outside feeling frustrated, happens to notice that the statue's eyes -- April's windows -- are lit up. It's gotten dark and she's forgotten to pull down the shades.When it seems Darwin is getting worse instead of better, April loses it. She throws the vial of failed serum, which breaks and drips on the spy rat. She sweeps the distilling apparatus off the table, breaking and throwing things left and right -- including her snow globe, which leaks a little. Darwin slurps up the liquid and goes limp again -- he's almost too weak to move now. Moments later, as April weeps over his impending death, Darwin leaps up and announces that he's cured -- all signs of weakness and coughing are gone. Even his voice sounds stronger. Darwin tells April he drank some of the water from the snow globe, and April realizes her parents must have hidden their final version of the serum there. The mysterious masters of the spy rat see and hear all of this.Suddenly Julius appears at the window -- he's climbed the outside of the statue to find April. She's annoyed but helps him in rather than letting him fall to his death. They're distracted by a voice emanating from the spy rat. It's Paul, April's father, warning that she's in danger -- she should leave right away, go to the oak tree, and wait for Pops. Darwin pounces on the rat, apparently killing it and interrupting the transmission.At the window, Julius notices a strange dark cloud that looks very much like the one that attacked the Franklin's cable car 10 years before. It approaches quickly and starts to cut through the metal of the statue's head. April, Darwin and Julius flee down the stairs to the street and get away.In a control room, people in red coveralls monitor transmissions from all over the world. Their bosses, who seem to be robots or cyborgs -- we don't see them clearly -- discuss what just happened. A female voice says one of the scientists took control of the spy rat; a male voice, calling her "my love," replies that she's far too lenient with the humans and this scientist should be punished. The bosses go outside to a cell in the jungle. Its walls are made of red laser beams and inside is April's father Paul. The female voice asks Paul what he said to his daughter -- they want April's help with a project they're working on. Paul just smiles until they confront him with Annette, who looks angry.April, Darwin, and Julius eventually make their way to Julius's hideout, where they spend the night. Julius gives up his bed to April. Julius is a little sweet on her and offers to help, but April is dismayed at being thrown together with him and keeps saying she doesn't need friends, though Darwin reminds her how Julius has already helped them.April puzzles over her father's message, wondering where she can find an oak. Julius knows where to go, noting there's only one tree left in Paris. The next day they find the tree in a large conservatory and sit there for hours before an old man in a gas mask (to protect him from the sooty air) sits nearby and speaks to them. It's Pops. He gives them directions to a safe place but tells them he'll leave first and they should give him an hour's head start. April is impatient and leaves with Julius and Darwin soon after Pops departs.Meanwhile, April's parents are arguing. Annette wants to bring April into their unnamed project; she believes in the project and feels that April will be safer with them. Paul has lost confidence in the project and wants to keep April as far away from it as possible.In a huge hangar or warehouse, April and Julius find a large single-family house with an odd metal tunnel for an entrance. April seems to recognize the house. Pops arrives right behind them and scolds them for coming so quickly; he's afraid they'll be followed. April explains that she's had a message from her father, and hopes that her mother is alive too.The mysterious boss with the feminine voice questions Annette. She's disappointed that Paul wouldn't tell Annette anything, but assures Annette that they won't hurt him.In Pops' study, they're trying to figure out what's going on. Pops decides to go back to the statue to retrieve the spy rat. He won't let April come along, but tells her there are clothes for her upstairs. She discovers a wardrobe full of pink dresses, identical but in different sizes. She puts on one that fits and goes down to ask Julius what he thinks (it's a very different look for her -- she's been wearing boys' clothes up to this point), but can't find him: he's gone off to report to Pizoni. Julius agrees to give up Pops to Pizoni but lies that he doesn't know where April is. At the same time April fools with an untested electrical device Pops was working on; as soon as it powers up, the red-suits in the control center detect it and send a spy rat to pin down its location. Julius comes back in time to be zapped by the device before April manages to rip out its power cable.Pops is checking out the plaza around the statue when Pizoni catches him. Pizoni's very pleased with himself and gives Pops a lump of coal as a memento of their previous meeting, when Pops escaped the police raid by climbing a pile of coal and scrambling up a coal chute. Darwin, who has followed Pops, sees all this and trails them to a meeting with Pizoni's superior officer. The meeting doesn't go as Pizoni hoped. Though his boss is happy to have Prosper, he reminds Pizoni that he was told to stay away from the scientists and has him arrested. In the commotion, Darwin gets Prosper's attention and Prosper tells him "In case anything goes wrong, on my world globe, Uruguay! with a U for urgent!" Darwin also overhears that Prosper and Pizoni are being sent to Fort-la-Latte.Darwin high-tails it back to the house, where Julius is telling April he has to leave. Before he can get away, Darwin reports that Prosper has been captured and is bound for Fort-la-Latte. At Fort-la-Latte, a research station where many of the French government's captive scientists are working, Pizoni is locked up and Prosper is taken around to look at various research projects. A damaged airplane grabs his attention. It was found wrecked, its origin is unknown, and its technology is unfamiliar to the French scientists. Pops sets to work repairing it. Back at the house, April uses an atlas to locate Fort-la-Latte (a real medieval castle) on the coast of Brittany. The dark cloud attacks the hangar and starts cutting it up to get at the house -- the mysterious bosses have tracked April down.Darwin presses Uruguay on the globe and the house immediately encloses itself in armor, the desk in the study flips over to reveal a control console, and a recording of Pops' voice plays on the Victrola: "Dear visitor, if you're hearing this, it's because the situation is critical, so welcome to my metamansion. To steer the metamansion to the location of your choice, type your destination on the keyboard. For any other information, see the user's manual." (A large book pops out of a slot on the console.) A laser from the dark cloud is trying to cut through the metamansion's armor, so April wastes no time in entering "Fort La Latte" on the control console's keyboard. The house sprouts legs (à la Howl's Moving Castle) and runs off, dodging their pursuers and jumping into the River Seine -- the armor keeps out water as well as lasers, and the metamansion can swim as well as it can run. They head for the coast of Brittany to rescue Pops.The dark cloud that's been after them seems to give up, gaining altitude as it dissipates to reveal that it contains a plane -- or aerocopter -- that looks like the one Pops is trying to repair at Fort-la-Latte. Over the radio, the mysterious bosses discuss April's escape. The female boss calls the male boss, who's flying the aerocopter, Rodrigue.At Fort-la-Latte, Pops explains electricity to the government scientists as he repairs the damaged aerocopter. The area starts to flood because the metamansion has punctured the castle's foundation. April and company sneak in to find Pops, who's having so much fun with the aerocopter that he doesn't hear them calling at first. He gets it working and they all get aboard and escape from Fort-la-Latte as the guards shoot at them. The metamansion is lost.Once they're aloft, Pops explains that they don't know where they are and starts to work on the guidance mechanism while he questions Julius about why Pizoni knew where to find him. Julius admits that he turned Pops in because the alternative was jail. Pops doesn't seem too troubled by this, but April is furious.Pops' tinkering triggers a video and we finally get a good visual of the two mysterious bosses: they're lizards wearing armored, human-shaped suits, with their tails hanging out at waist level. In the video, the female boss says "Dear scientists, welcome aboard. We are your new masters, Rodrigue and Chimène. You are being guided to a safe haven where your talents will be appreciated and put to good use, in pleasant surroundings far away from the follies of your government. All science is most valuable to us. Like your cruel species, we have learned that knowledge is power. Your science will help us achieve supreme power through technological superiority. The nature of your work will be explained later."In the control center, the red-suits listen to April's reaction: "Lizards? Those lizards took my parents?" The bosses take control of the plane and fly it into a tunnel, where it seems to be losing power. Pops goes aft to see what's wrong with the propulsion and discovers a stowaway: Pizoni, who's heard where they're headed and doesn't want to go there, so he's destroying the engines with a crowbar.It's too late. Their momentum carries them out of the tunnel and into a jungle, where the plane crashes. Rodrigue is getting a massage and listening to music when Chimène breaks in to report the crash and suggest that he search the jungle for the wreckage; they expect April and company didn't survive.They're wrong, of course; April and Julius marvel at all the plants and the clean air and argue while Pops and Pizoni are captured almost immediately and confined in a laser-walled cell right next to Paul's. April, Darwin, and Julius find their way into the research station. They dress up in red coveralls and ask another red-suit where Annette and Paul Franklin are, but the guy realizes that anyone he doesn't know is likely to be a spy and calls for help, so they have to run. The lizard guard who shoots at them (one of Rodrigue and Chimène's many children) manages to short out the whole electrical system when he misses, putting everyone in the dark and letting Paul, Pops, and Pizoni out of their cells. Paul and Pops go looking for April, telling Pizoni he can get out through the chimney. (Apparently they're under ground. Pizoni spends the rest of the movie climbing.)Darwin distracts a lizard guard by climbing into its armor so Julius can grab its weapon. Held upside down, the guard tells them Paul is in a cell; they can follow the blue lights to find the holding area. They take off and the guard quickly reports to Rodrigue -- Papa -- that they're headed for Paul's cell and they have the guard's ray gun. Rodrigue (who is frequently advised by Chimène to quell his brutal tendencies) says "Chimène, I just had an idea. A nonviolent one! I think you'll like it."Paul and Pops wander the jungle looking for April while April, Julius, and Darwin, who have lost the trail of blue lights, wander aimlessly until they encounter Annette. April is overjoyed; Annette whisks them away and explains that she's working with the world's greatest minds in this "technological paradise" to complete "the project." April wants to know where her father is, why her mother isn't locked up ("You escaped, right? You were in a cell, like father? You know how to get him out?"), and whether this project has something to do with the ultimate serum. Annette is evasive until they meet Rodrigue and Chimène.April accuses her mother of betraying them; Annette denies it. April, assuming that they want the serum, gives Rodrigue the snowglobe. He smashes it, laughing, and says they want what's inside her head. Chimène and Annette explain that they've recreated the serum in the globe several times and it never worked -- Darwin was cured by April's serum. As proof, Chimène produces the spy rat that Darwin attacked just before they left April's lair in the statue: the rat, which consumed a few drops of April's serum after she broke the vial, is fine now, and can regenerate and survive any attack. Darwin gets very excited: "I could be a warrior -- a cat ninja!" When April asks how she could have created something like that in her makeshift lab, Rodrigue responds by shooting Darwin in the chest. The cat appears to die but quickly recovers and repeats, "Cat ninja!" Chimène tells April she's going to recreate her serum for the project. Just then the power comes back on and April, Julius, and Darwin realize they're on a launchpad. There's a rocket covered with vines and vegetation near the cliff wall and a crowd of red-suited scientists nearby.Chimène explains, "You see this rocket? It's covered with specimens of plants. It will explode in deep space, scattering billions of spores cultivated in this jungle. Once you've treated them with your serum, the spores will be able to survive the explosion and the interstellar vacuum. They'll spread to new planets where they'll flourish and multiply. Thanks to you, April, life will never end."Julius says "Hold on -- you're going to blow up a huge bomb to save life? That's why you need all this science?"Chimène and Rodrigue believe that humanity will eventually destroy the world. The purpose of their project is to spread life widely enough that it can't be stamped out. April is angry and says all this doesn't justify stealing her parents and killing all the people on the cable car. Chimène says that was an accident and threatens to let Rodrigue "deal with" Annette if April doesn't cooperate. April caves and gets to work, with Julius assisting, in a lab set up right on the launchpad. They test her serum on a dead potted plant, which revives, sprouts new leaves, and blooms before their eyes. Rodrigue asks for the serum and Julius hands him a vial.Rodrigue drinks the serum himself ("So this is what it feels like to be invincible! I like it!") and announces, over Chimène's protests, that he's lowered the altimeter setting on the bomb to 500 meters; it will destroy all life on the surface of the earth. (Presumably the lizards are safe in their cavern.) "These humans will get the fate they deserve!" When Chimène protests, Rodrigue attacks and overpowers her, despite Annette's attempt to help Chimène. Rodrigue demands that his children choose between living and ruling with him and dying with their mother. They start shooting.The wounded Chimène tells April the only hope is to get inside the rocket and reset the altimeter to trigger the bomb far out in space. Rodrigue is preparing to kill April when Julius shoots him with his captured ray gun. "Idiot! I'm invincible!" says Rodrigue, before keeling over. Julius explains that he switched the serum with a vial of water, which is what Rodrigue drank. They realize the rocket is about to take off and April, Julius, and Darwin rush to get aboard. Only Darwin is quick enough. But April is able to throw the vial of serum at the rocket, inoculating the vegetation before lift-off. Paul and Pops appear in an elevator and whisk Annette, April, and Julius away from the launchpad.Meanwhile Darwin, aboard the rocket, tries to reset the altimeter. It's not clear he succeeded until the rocket breaks through the ceiling of the cavern -- it turns out they were beneath Paris all along -- and disappears into the sky. Pizoni emerges from a chimney just in time to see it. He on his rooftop and the Franklins and Julius, who are in a car trying to get as far from the explosion as they can in case Darwin fails, see a bright, distant flash when the rocket explodes without destroying anything.A series of news reports plays out on a TV in a room that changes over time:1941: Napoleon V makes Pizoni head of his secret service.1951: "Limitless" oil has ended the energy wars; acclaimed biologist April Franklin has failed to make her ultimate serum compatible with the human organism; plant life is observed on the moon, Mars, and Venus.2001: A spaceship from the Democratic Union lands on the moon, which has verdant vegetation, a breathable atmosphere -- and a cat. Darwin says to the camera, "What took you so long? April, I'm coming!" An elderly Julius leaves the room to tell April that Darwin has been found.