Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo's job is to oil and maintain the station's clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father. Accompanied by the goddaughter of an embittered toy merchant, Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home.
Alice returns to the whimsical world of Underland but this time through a Looking Glass to find The Mad Hatter in a horrible state, with that she must save her friends from Time, a creature part-clock, and borrow the Chronosphere, which The Red Queen wants also, and change the course of Underland's fate to save The Hatter.