In 1989, Kevin Flynn, the CEO of ENCOM, disappears. Twenty years later, his son Sam, now ENCOM's primary shareholder, pranks the corporation by releasing the company's signature operating system online for free. ENCOM executive Alan Bradley, Kevin's old friend, approves of this, believing it aligns with Flynn's ideals of free software; nonetheless, Sam is arrested for trespassing. Alan posts bail for Sam and tells him of a pager message originating from Flynn's shuttered video arcade, which has been disconnected since his disappearance. There, Sam discovers a hidden basement with a large computer and particle laser, which suddenly digitizes and downloads him into the Grid, a virtual reality created by Kevin. He is captured and sent to "the Games", where he must fight a masked computer program named Rinzler. When Sam is injured and bleeds, Rinzler realizes Sam is human, or a "User". He takes Sam to Clu, the Grid's corrupt ruling program, who resembles a young Kevin. Clu nearly kills Sam in a Light Cycle match, but Sam is rescued by Quorra, a skilled warrior and "apprentice" of Flynn, who takes him to Kevin's hideout outside Clu's territory. Kevin explains that he had been working to create a "perfect" computer system and had appointed Clu and security program Tron as its co-creators. The trio discovered a species of naturally occurring " isomorphic algorithms " (ISOs), with the potential to resolve various natural mysteries. Clu, considering them an abnormality, betrayed Kevin, killed Tron, and destroyed the ISOs. The "Portal" permitting travel between the two worlds closed, leaving Kevin trapped in the system. Clu sent the message to Alan hoping to lure him into the Grid (though Sam serves his purpose just as well) and reopen the Portal for a limited time. Since Flynn's "identity disc" is the master key to the Grid and the only way to traverse the Portal, Clu expects Sam to bring Kevin to the Portal so he can take Flynn's disc, go through the Portal himself, and impose his idea of perfection on the human world. Against his father's wishes, Sam returns to Clu's territory and encounters one of the Sirens, named Gem, to help find Zuse, a program who can provide safe passage to the Portal. At the End of Line Club, the owner, Castor, reveals himself to be Zuse, then betrays Sam to Clu's guards. In the resulting fight, Kevin rescues his son, but Quorra's arm is damaged and Castor gains possession of Flynn's disc. Castor attempts to bargain with Clu over the disc, but Clu instead destroys the club along with Castor and Gem. Kevin and Sam stow away aboard a "Solar Sailer" transport program, where Flynn repairs Quorra and reveals her to be the last surviving ISO. The transport is intercepted by Clu's warship. As a diversion, Quorra allows herself to be captured by Rinzler, whom Kevin recognizes as Tron, not killed by Clu but rather reprogrammed. Sam reclaims Flynn's disc and rescues Quorra, while Kevin takes control of a Light Fighter. Clu, Rinzler, and several guards pursue the trio in Light Jets. Rinzler remembers his past as Tron and deliberately collides with Clu's Light Jet to save Flynn. Clu, enraged by Rinzler betraying him, fights Rinzler in midair, taking his spare baton to spawn another Light Jet. Rinzler plunges in to the Sea of Simulation. Clu confronts the others at the Portal, but Kevin reintegrates with his digital duplicate, destroying Clu along with himself. Quorra – having switched discs with Kevin – gives Flynn's disc to Sam, and they escape together to the real world as the ensuing explosion from Kevin's sacrifice destroys Clu's warship and levels the area around the Portal. In Flynn's Arcade, Sam backs up and deactivates the system. He then tells a waiting Alan that he plans to retake control of ENCOM, naming Alan chairman of the board. Sam departs on his motorcycle with Quorra as the sun rises.

Orphaned brothers Sam and Nathan "Nate" Drake are caught trying to steal a map made after the Magellan expedition from a Boston museum. Before the orphanage can expel Sam, he sneaks out to be on his own, but promises Nate that he will return, leaving him a ring belonging to their supposed ancestor Sir Francis Drake. Fifteen years later, Nate works as a bartender in New York City and pickpockets wealthy patrons. Victor "Sully" Sullivan, a fortune hunter who worked with Sam tracking treasure hidden by the Magellan crew, meets Nate and tells him that Sam vanished after helping him steal Juan Sebastián Elcano 's diary. Nate, no longer receiving postcards from Sam, agrees to help Sully find him. Sully and Nate go to an auction to steal a golden cross linked to the Magellan crew. There they meet Santiago Moncada, the last descendant of the Moncada family, who had financed Magellan's expedition, and Jo Braddock, leader of Moncada's mercenaries. Nate is ambushed by Braddock's men, and the ensuing fight creates a distraction for Sully to steal the cross. The duo travels to Barcelona, where the treasure is supposedly hidden, and rendezvous with Sully's contact Chloe Frazer, who has the other cross. Nate, Chloe, and Sully follow clues in Elcano's diary to Santa Maria del Pi, finding a secret crypt behind the altar. Nate and Chloe enter, finding a trap door, but as they open it, the crypt floods with water. Sully helps them escape after subduing an ambush by Braddock. Using the two crosses to unlock a secret passage, Nate and Chloe find a map indicating the treasure is in the Philippines. Chloe betrays Nate and leaves to take the map to Moncada, but she indicates that Sully is keeping a secret about Sam. Sully recovers Nate and reveals that Sam was shot and possibly killed by Braddock three years prior and that he left him for dead, straining their partnership. Moncada, Chloe, and Braddock's team depart in a cargo plane to find the treasure, on which Braddock murders Moncada, gaining control of the operation. Nate and Sully stowaway on the plane, so Nate confronts Braddock. A battle ensues; Sully parachutes out with the map, while Nate and Chloe are ejected from the plane, landing in the Philippines. There, they realize the map does not pinpoint the treasure. Nate discovers the treasure's true location through hints left by Sam's postcards, but leaves fake coordinates for Chloe after correctly doubting her loyalties. Nate discovers the Magellan ships and reunites with Sully, who had managed to follow Nate. Braddock follows close behind, forcing Nate and Sully to hide as her crew airlifts the ships. In their escape, Sully commandeers one of the helicopters, and Braddock orders another helicopter to approach for a boarding action. Nate defends himself from Braddock's mercenaries and shoots down the other helicopter with one of the ship's cannons. When Braddock corners Nate, Sully throws a bag of collected treasure at her, casting her into the sea, where she is killed when the ship falls on her. As the Philippine Navy arrive, Nate and Sully get away with a few pieces of treasure Nate had pocketed, while Chloe is left empty-handed. Meanwhile, an imprisoned Sam, revealed to be alive and having somehow survived being shot by Braddock, writes another postcard to Nate asking him to watch his back. In a mid-credits scene, Nate meets a man working for Roman, offering his ring for a "Nazi map" he has. He tries to betray Nate, but Sully saves him. They escape but are cornered by an unseen figure.

At the 1964 New York World’s Fair, a young inventor Frank Walker attempts to showcase his homemade jet pack, but it fails and does not impress the judges. However, a mysterious girl, Athena, sees potential in him. She gives him a lapel pin marked with a “T” and directs him onto the Disney It's a Small World ride, where the pin triggers a hidden transport to Tomorrowland—a dazzling futuristic city in another dimension. There, robots repair his jet pack, allowing him to soar through the city and join its secret community of innovators. In the present, Casey Newton is an idealistic teenager. She continually sabotages the demolition of a NASA launch platform in hopes of saving her father’s job. After she is arrested, she discovers a Tomorrowland pin among her belongings. Touching it transports her to the futuristic world, but only as a projection; when the pin’s power is expended, she abruptly returns to her normal reality. Determined to understand what she saw, Casey follows clues to a memorabilia shop in Houston, where the owners attack her for information about the pin. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. Athena brings Casey to Frank Walker (now an adult) who is a bitter recluse living in upstate New York. Banished from Tomorrowland years earlier, Frank wants nothing to do with the place. Casey discovers he has built a device predicting the imminent end of the world, but her refusal to accept that future causes the probability to drop—something Frank has never seen. When robotic assassins arrive to eliminate them, Frank reluctantly joins Casey and Athena. Using a teleportation device, they travel to Paris and launch an old Plus Ultra rocket hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower. Frank explains that Tomorrowland was created by a secret society of visionaries— Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison —who sought a place free from political and commercial interference. Arriving in Tomorrowland, the trio finds the once‑ utopian city in decline. Governor David Nix greets them and leads them to a tachyon machine Frank invented which can view possible futures. It has been broadcasting visions of global catastrophe to Earth. Casey realizes the machine’s warnings have become a self-fulfilling prophecy: humanity, overwhelmed by doom, simply stopped trying to prevent disaster. Nix admits he intended the images as a wake‑up call, but when the world ignored them, he gave up and decided to let the apocalypse unfold. Casey, Frank, and Athena attempt to destroy the machine, but Nix fights to stop them. During the struggle, Athena foresees Nix killing Frank. She sacrifices herself to save him by triggering her self‑destruct sequence. The explosion destroys the tachyon device, and the falling wreckage kills Nix. In the aftermath, Casey and Frank take leadership of Tomorrowland. They recruit Casey’s father and brother, and they build a new generation of Athena‑like animatronics. Given Tomorrowland pins, these childlike robots set out across the world to find new dreamers, thinkers, and inventors—people capable of building a better future.

Vice is narrated by Kurt, a fictitious veteran of the Afghan and Iraq wars. In 1963, Dick Cheney works as a lineman in Wyoming after dropping out of Yale University. After Cheney is caught driving while intoxicated, his wife Lynne threatens to leave him if he does not become sober. In 1969, Cheney becomes a White House intern during Richard Nixon 's presidency. Under Nixon's economic adviser, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney becomes a savvy political operative while juggling commitments to his wife and their daughters, Liz and Mary. Cheney overhears Henry Kissinger discussing the secret bombing of Cambodia with Nixon, exposing the executive branch 's true power to Cheney. Rumsfeld's abrasive attitude leads to him and Cheney being distanced from Nixon, which works in both men's favor; after Nixon's resignation in 1974, Cheney rises to the position of White House Chief of Staff for President Gerald Ford, while Rumsfeld becomes Secretary of Defense. The media dubs the sudden shake-up in the cabinet as the Halloween Massacre. During his tenure, a young Antonin Scalia introduces Cheney to the unitary executive theory. After Ford loses the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter, Cheney runs for Congress in Wyoming. After an awkward and uncharismatic campaign speech, Cheney suffers a heart attack. While he recovers, Lynne campaigns on his behalf, earning him a seat in the House of Representatives. During the Reagan administration, Cheney supports many conservative, pro-business policies favoring the fossil fuel industries, as well as the abolition of the FCC fairness doctrine, which contributed to the rise of Fox News, conservative talk radio, and the rising party polarization in the United States. Cheney then serves as Secretary of Defense under President George H. W. Bush during the Gulf War. Outside of politics, Cheney and Lynne come to terms with their younger daughter, Mary, coming out as a lesbian. Though Cheney develops ambitions to run for president, he decides to retire due to lack of presidential polling enthusiasm for him and to spare Mary from media scrutiny. Cheney becomes the CEO of Halliburton while his wife breeds golden retrievers and writes books. A false epilogue claims that Cheney lived the rest of his life healthy and happy in the private sector, and credits begin rolling, only to end abruptly before the film continues. George W. Bush invites Cheney to become his running mate in the 2000 United States presidential election. Assuming Bush is more interested in impressing his father than attaining power for himself, Cheney agrees on the condition that Bush delegates executive responsibilities to him and does not force him to take a stance against gay rights. As vice president, Cheney works with Rumsfeld, legal counsel David Addington, Mary Matalin, and Chief of Staff Scooter Libby to exercise control of key foreign policy and defense decisions. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Cheney and Rumsfeld maneuver to initiate and preside over the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Various other events from his vice presidency are depicted, including his endorsement of the unitary executive theory, the Plame affair, and the accidental shooting of Harry Whittington. Cheney's actions lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq, and he receives record-low approval ratings by the end of the Bush administration. While narrating Cheney's deathbed goodbye to his family after another heart attack, Kurt dies in a traffic accident. His heart is transplanted into Cheney. Liz publicly states her opposition to same-sex marriage while running for a Senate seat a few months later, and Cheney does not object. A distraught Mary distances herself from her family. Liz wins election to her father's former position in the House two years later. An irate Cheney breaks the fourth wall and delivers a monologue to the audience at the end of the film, declaring he has no regrets about anything he has done in his career. In a mid-credits scene, some members of a focus group reviewing the film passionately debate the film's effectiveness and the Trump administration, while others are uninterested and would rather discuss the latest Fast & Furious movie.

In 2046, Grey Trace, an auto mechanic, lives with his wife Asha who works for Cobalt, one of the companies contributing to human-computer augmentations. Grey asks Asha to help him return a refurbished car to his client Eron Keen, a renowned tech innovator. While visiting his home, Eron reveals his latest creation, a chip called STEM that can manage a human’s motor functions. Returning home, Grey and Asha's self-driving car malfunctions and crashes. Four men kill Asha and shoot Grey in the neck, severing his spinal cord. Grey returns home months later as a wheelchair-using quadriplegic, under the care of his mother, Pamela. Asha's death and the inability of Det. Cortez to identify their attackers causes Grey to sink into depression. After a suicide attempt, he is visited by Eron, who convinces him to accept a STEM implant. Grey regains control of his limbs and Eron has Grey sign a non-disclosure agreement, requiring Grey to pretend to still be paralyzed. While looking through a drone video feed of his wife's murder, Grey hears STEM speak in his mind. STEM says it can help Grey get revenge and quickly identifies one of the assailants, Serk Brantner, from the video. Grey breaks into Serk's home and finds proof Serk was "upgraded" through a secret military experiment, also connecting Serk to a local bar called the Old Bones. Serk arrives and attacks Grey, but STEM convinces Grey to temporarily give up control of his body, allowing STEM to turn Grey into a lethally efficient fighting machine, killing Serk with little effort. Cortez later sees drone footage of Grey’s wheelchair approaching Serk’s house, but his perceived paralysis negates him as a suspect. Eron has tracked STEM's movements and berates Grey for his vigilantism. Grey reveals STEM is speaking to him, which surprises Eron, who demands that Grey stop his investigation. Grey proceeds to the Old Bones and finds Tolan, another of the assailants. Grey allows STEM to torture Tolan to death, first getting the name of the assailants' ringleader, Fisk. Leaving the bar, Grey stumbles, and STEM informs him that Eron is attempting to shut them down remotely. STEM directs Grey to a nearby hacker, Jamie, who manages to remove STEM's input guard, then leaves just as Fisk arrives. Grey, with STEM's control restored, kills Fisk's companion. Grey returns home only for Pamela to see him walking, forcing him to reveal STEM's existence. Cortez arrives to interrogate them after finding Grey's wheelchair suspiciously abandoned at the Old Bones; she leaves after planting a listening device on Grey's jacket. Grey wishes to give up the hunt, but STEM explains that Fisk will track them down and kill them. STEM reveals that the hack gives it free control of Grey’s body. STEM uses Grey to drive to Fisk, causing an automated car to malfunction and crash into Cortez, who is tailing them. Cortez returns to Grey's home, where Pamela explains STEM. Grey and STEM find Fisk, who reveals he was only hired to paralyze Grey so he could be implanted. Fisk's own upgrades outpace Grey's movements. Grey taunts Fisk with the death of Serk, his brother, allowing STEM to gain the upper hand and kill Fisk. Fisk's phone reveals messages from Eron, suggesting he orchestrated all the events. Grey storms Eron's home, killing all personnel in his path, but is held at gunpoint by Cortez before he can kill Eron. Eron confesses how STEM forced him to do its bidding, having long since come to dominate all aspects of Eron's life in pursuit of its goal to become human. STEM kills Eron and attempts to kill Cortez, but Grey fights for control over his own body, managing to stab himself in the hand. Grey wakes up in a hospital room, not paralyzed. Asha explains he has been unconscious for two days following their crash. In reality, Grey is still in Eron's home. STEM, in full control, explains to Cortez that the psychological strain has finally broken Grey's mind; this was STEM's objective all along, as this allowed STEM to assume control over Grey's mind and body. Grey's consciousness believes the idyllic dream state it has found, while STEM kills Cortez and leaves.

In 1947 Los Angeles, animated cartoon characters, or "toons", co-exist with humans. Private detective Eddie Valiant, once a staunch ally of the toons, has become a depressed alcoholic following his brother Teddy's murder by an unknown toon five years prior. Maroon Cartoon Studios owner R.K. Maroon, upset about the recent poor performance of his toon star Roger Rabbit, hires Eddie to investigate rumors that Roger's glamorous toon wife, Jessica, is having an affair with Marvin Acme, owner of the Acme Corporation and Toontown, the animated metropolis in which toons reside. After watching Jessica perform at The Ink and Paint Club, Eddie secretly photographs her and Acme playing patty-cake. He shows the pictures to Roger, who becomes distraught, refusing to believe Jessica was unfaithful. The next morning, Acme is found murdered, and evidence implicates Roger. At the crime scene, Eddie meets Judge Doom, the sinister human judge of Toontown—having bribed the electorate for their votes—and his five weasel minions, the Toon Patrol. Doom reveals that he will execute Roger using the "dip", a chemical concoction of acetone, benzene, and turpentine, which can destroy the otherwise invulnerable toons. Roger's toon co-star, Baby Herman, believes Roger is innocent and suggests to Eddie that Acme's missing will, which supposedly bequeaths Toontown to the toons, may have been the killer's true motive. Eddie returns to his office and finds Roger hiding there, insisting that he has been framed. Eddie agrees to help after finding evidence of Acme's will; he hides Roger in a bar tended by his girlfriend, Dolores. Later, Jessica tells Eddie that Maroon threatened Roger's career unless she posed for the compromising photos. Meanwhile, Dolores uncovers that Cloverleaf Industries recently bought the city's Pacific Electric railway system and will purchase Toontown at midnight unless Acme's will is found. Doom and the Toon Patrol find Roger, but he and Eddie escape with help from Benny, a toon taxi cab. Sheltering in a movie theater, Eddie sees a newsreel of Maroon selling his studio to Cloverleaf. While Eddie goes to the studio to interrogate Maroon, Jessica abducts Roger. Maroon denies involvement in Acme's murder, admitting he intended to blackmail Acme into selling his company, as otherwise Cloverleaf would not buy the studio. In the middle of his confession, Maroon is assassinated, and Eddie spots Jessica fleeing. Assuming she is the assailant, he reluctantly follows her into Toontown after throwing away his remaining alcohol. After saving Eddie from being shot by Doom, Jessica reveals that her actions were to ensure Roger's safety, and it was Doom who killed Acme and Maroon. Acme gave his will to Jessica for safety. When she examined it, the paper was blank. Doom and the Toon Patrol capture Jessica and Eddie, bringing them to Acme's factory. Doom reveals that he is the sole shareholder of Cloverleaf. He plans to erase Toontown with a dip-spraying machine so he can build a freeway in its place and decommission the railway system to force people to use it. When Roger fails to save Jessica, the couple is tied to a hook in front of the machine's sprayer. Eddie performs a series of pratfalls that cause the weasels to laugh themselves to death, kicks their leader into the dip, and then fights Doom. After being flattened by a steamroller, Doom reveals himself as a disguised toon and Teddy's murderer. Struggling against Doom's toon abilities, Eddie empties the machine's dip supply, spraying and killing Doom. The machine crashes through the wall into Toontown, where it is destroyed by a train. As police and toons gather at the scene, Eddie realizes that Acme's will was written on the "blank" paper in temporarily invisible ink, confirming that the toons inherit Toontown. Having regained his sense of humor, Eddie happily enters Toontown alongside Dolores, Roger, Jessica, and the toons.

The President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage girl inside the Oval Office less than two weeks before the election. Conrad Brean, a top spin doctor, is brought in by presidential aide Winifred Ames to take the public's attention away from the scandal. He decides to construct a fictional war in Albania, hoping that the media will concentrate on this instead. Brean contacts Hollywood producer Stanley Motss to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a fleeing orphan to arouse sympathy. The hoax is initially successful, with the president quickly gaining ground in the polls. When the CIA learns of the plot, it sends Agent Charles Young to confront Brean about the hoax. Brean convinces Young that revealing the deception is against his and the CIA's best interests. But when the CIA, in collusion with the president's rival candidate Senator John Neal, reports that the war has ended, the media begins to revert its focus to the president's sexual misconduct scandal. To counter this, Motss invents a hero who was left behind enemy lines in Albania. Inspired by the idea that he was "discarded like an old shoe", Brean and Motss ask the Pentagon to provide a special forces soldier with a matching name (a sergeant named William Schumann is identified), around whom a POW narrative can be constructed. As part of the hoax, folk singer Johnny Dean records a song called "Old Shoe", which is pressed onto a 78-rpm record, prematurely aged so that listeners will think that it was recorded years earlier and sent to the Library of Congress to be "found". Bream and Motss fling pairs of old shoes into a tree outside of the White House grounds. Soon, large numbers of shoes begin appearing on phone and power lines and a grassroots movement to bring home Schumann takes hold, completing a successful astroturfing. When the team goes to retrieve Schumann, they discover that he is actually a criminally insane Army convict. On the return to Andrews Air Force Base, their plane crashes. The team survives and is rescued by a farmer, an illegal alien. However, Schumann is killed when he attempts to rape a gas station owner's daughter. Seizing the opportunity, Motss stages an elaborate military funeral for Schumann, claiming that he died from wounds sustained during his rescue and the farmer receives expedited citizenship for a better story. As the President rallies toward re-election, Motss becomes frustrated that the media are crediting his upsurge in the polls to the bland campaign slogan, "Don't change horses in mid-stream", rather than to Motss's hard work. Despite Brean's offer of an ambassadorship and the dire warning that he is "playing with his life", Motss demands that he receive credit for his production and he threatens to reveal his involvement unless he gets it. Realizing that he has no choice, Brean orders his security staff to kill him. A newscast reports that Motss has died of a heart attack at home, the president has been successfully re-elected and an Albanian terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for a recent bombing, suggesting that the fake war is becoming real.

In 1985, a man living in a Manhattan apartment watches news about escalating Cold War tensions and the response from five-term President Richard Nixon when an unknown assailant attacks and hurls him to the street below. Throughout the opening credits, a montage reviews the rise of costumed crime-fighters from 1939 to 1977, culminating in public backlash and the passage of an anti-vigilante act. Rorschach, a vigilante detective who operates illegally, discovers that the dead man was Edward Blake, better known as "the Comedian ", a costumed hero who worked for the government. Suspecting that other vigilantes could be attacked, Rorschach warns members of his former team, the Watchmen. Rorschach's former partner Dan Dreiberg believes he is paranoid, but relays his concerns to Adrian Veidt, a crime-fighter turned businessman, but he also dismisses the concerns. Rorschach later visits Doctor Manhattan, a physicist whose accidental superpowers make him a national security asset, but Manhattan is preoccupied with energy research and ignores him. At Blake's funeral, Manhattan, Veidt and Dreiberg each recall the Comedian's pessimism in his later years about the Watchmen's mission. After the service, a lone mourner pays his respects. Rorschach tracks down and questions the mourner, former supervillain Edgar Jacobi. Jacobi says that Blake had recently broken into his apartment while he was sleeping — tearful, unmasked, and incoherent. Rorschach is astonished but doubts that Jacobi would tell a lie so bizarre. During a press interview with Doctor Manhattan, an investigative journalist tells him that several people who had been in contact with Manhattan have developed cancer, including his former girlfriend. As other reporters mob Manhattan with questions, he snaps and exiles himself to Mars. Alone, Manhattan reflects on his existence and his regrets at allowing himself to be turned into a weapon. In his absence, the Warsaw Pact countries make aggressive moves, and Nixon prepares for war. Veidt survives an assassination attempt, suggesting that Rorschach's "mask-killer" theory is correct. Dreiberg takes in Laurie Jupiter, a second-generation vigilante and estranged lover of Manhattan, to whom Dreiberg is attracted. Rorschach's investigation of the assassin leads him back to Jacobi. Rorschach finds Jacobi dead and himself framed for Jacobi's murder. After a battle with police, Rorschach is arrested and unmasked as a low-born vagrant. In prison, Rorschach defends his vigilantism to a psychiatrist, saying he cannot ignore evil and the people who cause it. Dreiberg and Jupiter, after donning their costumes and saving multiple people from a burning building, have sex. Imprisoned crime boss Big Figure stages a riot as a cover for assassinating Rorschach. The attack fails, and Rorschach kills Big Figure and his accomplices before leaving the prison with Dreiberg and Jupiter who have arrived to break him out. Manhattan teleports Jupiter to Mars while Dreiberg joins Rorschach's investigation of the Blake murder. Evidence points them to Veidt as the mastermind; they find him at an Antarctic hideout, where he has just overseen the activation of Doctor Manhattan's energy reactors in New York City and other locations across the planet. On Mars, Jupiter tries to convince Manhattan that humanity is worth saving. She succeeds only when he learns that Jupiter is Blake's illegitimate daughter, a fact so unlikely (as Blake had once tried to rape Jupiter's mother) that it restores his respect for life. Veidt admits orchestrating Manhattan's exile, staging the assassination, framing Rorschach, and killing Blake, who was spying on his activities. He has also executed the final step of his plan: turning the world against Manhattan by rigging his reactors to explode, killing 15 million people. Manhattan returns with Jupiter to a devastated New York, pieces together what has happened, and teleports to Veidt's hideout. After a brief struggle, Veidt shows him that the world's countries have put aside their rivalries to focus on a common enemy: Doctor Manhattan. Realizing the logic of Veidt's plan, the Watchmen agree to keep his secret, except for Rorschach, whom Manhattan reluctantly kills to preserve the new global peace. Manhattan departs permanently for another galaxy while Dreiberg rebukes Veidt's moral sacrifice, and Jupiter finally comes to terms with her parentage. A New York tabloid editor, disgusted that there is no war to report on, tells a staff member to choose something from the "crank file", which contains Rorschach's journal.

In February 1958, the Second Cross-Winter Expedition for the Japanese Antarctic Surveying Team rides on the icebreaker Sōya to take over from the 11-man First Cross-Winter Expedition. The First Cross-Winter Expedition retreats by helicopter, leaving 15 Sakhalin huskies chained up at the Showa Base for the next Expedition. Due to the extreme weather conditions, Sōya can not get near enough to the base and it is decided not to proceed with the handover, leaving the base unmanned. The team is worried about the dogs, as the weather is extremely cold and only one week of food for the dogs has been left. They wish to rescue them but in the end are unable to, due to a shortage of fuel and drinking water. Eight of the fifteen sled dogs manage to break loose from their chains (Riki, Anko, Shiro, Jakku, Deri, Kuma, Taro, and Jiro), while the other seven starve. As the eight journey across the frozen wilderness, they are forced to survive by hunting penguins and seals on the ice shelves and even by eating seal excrement. As the months pass, most die or disappear. Riki is fatally injured by a killer whale while trying to protect Taro and Jiro. Anko and Deri fall through the ice and drown in the freezing waters. Shiro falls off a cliff to his death, and Jakku and Kuma disappear in the wilderness. Eleven months later, on 14 January 1959, Kitagawa, one of the dog handlers in the first expedition, returns with the Third Cross-Winter Expedition, wanting to bury his beloved dogs. He, along with the two dog-handlers Ushioda and Ochi, recover the frozen corpses of the seven chained dogs, but are surprised to discover that eight others have broken loose. To everyone's surprise, they are greeted warmly at the base by Taro and Jiro, brothers who were born in Antarctica. It is still unknown how and why they survived, because an average husky can only live in such conditions for about one month. In the movie, the director used the data available, together with his imagination, to reconstruct how the dogs struggled with the elements and survived.