Face values in the spotlight of film epic Mortal Engines

Rising Icelandic star Hera takes centre stage as scarred heroine in Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson’s sprawling new post-apocalypse feature

THERE’S a new Hollywood heroine in town shaking things up. And Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar, who plays her, reckons a character like this on the big screen is long overdue.

She’s talking about her role as the main character – Hester Shaw – in Peter Jackson’s new big-screen epic, Mortal Engines.

Hester is a fugitive on the run, who wants to avenge her mother Pandora’s murder.

She forms an unlikely friendship with Tom Natsworthy (played by Misfits star Robert Sheehan), who lives in London, and the pair embark on a journey to stop Thaddeus Valentine (played by Hugo Weaving) causing chaos and destruction.

A talking point about Hester has been her appearance and a deep scar across her face, given to her years earlier amid the tragedy that took her mother’s life.

Discussing how Hester’s appearance speaks to women having power beyond their looks on screen, Hilmar says: “To have a heroine that happens to be scarred on the face, is something that is still hard for Hollywood to swallow and it’s a huge step in terms of letting women be flawed.

“It asks the question ‘What is beauty and what is beautiful?’ and that’s a lot of what Hester is about, that part of the story that beauty is flawed and it isn’t being perfect like all the Instagram filters tell us today.

“It’s nice to put something like that out there in the world today, I feel.”

Hilmar, who has had a recurring role in TV series Da Vinci’s Demons, was pleased when she saw Hester’s scar for the first time.

“My first reaction to seeing the scar as me, myself, was that’s really cool because that’s how we see a lot of the heroes who are usually male: they have scars, they’re cool, they’re rugged,” she says.

“And women want to be that too – they don’t want to be men, but they want to be allowed to be free and colourful and flawed.”

But her part does more than this to advance women on screen, she argues.

“Even if we forget the scar for a second,” says Hilmar, “if you look at how she’s written, not enough female characters are written in that multidimensional way and they have a story arc that is usually used for male characters and so that’s something that is exciting.”

The film, directed by Christian Rivers and with a screenplay written by Jackson and his long-time collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, is based on the books penned in the early 2000s by British author Philip Reeve.

The narrative is set years after an event called the Sixty Minute War has destroyed humankind as we know it. Gigantic, mechanised cities move along the earth’s surface, ingesting smaller cities as they go, with London described as “a giant predator city on wheels”.

Another of the leading ladies who shares a lot of screen time with Hilmar’s Hester is Anna Fang, played

by South Korean-born singer Jihae.

A newcomer to the big screen, she grew up in the United States and has forged a career for herself as a musician.

“It’s kind of revolutionary to have the main star have this scar on her face; I think it’s really cool,” Jihae muses.

Of her character Anna, she says: “I’ve never before seen on a project of this scale – but also even on an indie level – an ethnic woman, specifically an Asian woman, having such a powerful role. It just didn’t exist, so that was really exciting.”

Both are struck by how relevant the topics explored in the film are today, despite the books being written more than a decade ago.

“Global warming in some ways too, just what the Earth has become,” says Hilmar. “I think about it even when we talk about global warming, people have been talking about the same thing since the 80s and you kind of go, ‘People were saying this then’ and the books were written around 2000.”

“I think it’s very relevant to what is happening today in terms of politics and I guess humanity has been doing this always,” she adds, “taking over land and moving people.”

She pauses before continuing: “I think it makes you think about what kind of world do we want to live in and what are we willing to sacrifice to live in that world?”

Jihae nods in agreement, saying: “It’s a good reminder in a way that if we keep going on like this with a profit, power-driven, divided world we are going to end up like Mortal Engines and there might be a Sixty Minute War that we don’t want to happen. So it poses the question, are we in a sustainable system to survive as humanity?”

• Mortal Engines will be previewed in cinemas from December 8 and released widely from December 14.