High school senior Venus "Vee" Delmonico longs to leave Staten Island for college, but is reluctant to tell her single mother because they continue to mourn the recent death of Vee's older brother and the price of college. Her friend Sydney is popular on Nerve, an online reality game in which users either enlist as "players" or pay to watch as "watchers". Players accept dares given by the watchers in order to receive money and a spot in the final. After Sydney chastises Vee's unadventurous nature, Vee decides to sign up as a player on Nerve. Her first dare is to kiss a random stranger. At a diner, she kisses Ian, who dances and sings to Vee, revealing he is another player on a dare. The watchers dare Ian to take Vee to Manhattan, and together, they travel to Manhattan. After their first dare of trying on expensive clothes, the fear of her mom catching her in the city gets to her and she decides it's time to go back to Staten Island. However, with the encouragement of Ian to step out of her comfort zone, and the next dare's cash prize, Vee continues to play the game. Thus, together they complete several dares: Vee gets a tattoo, and Ian drives his motorcycle at 60 mph blindfolded. This, as well as Vee and Ian's chemistry, allows them to become two of the top players. Jealous of Vee's popularity on Nerve, Sydney accepts a dare at a party to cross a ladder between two buildings, but she bails during the dare and is eliminated from Nerve. Vee arrives at the party and catches Sydney making out with J.P, a boy Vee has a crush on. As they argue, Vee discovers from her hacker friend Tommy that Ian was dared into bringing Vee to the party and incite an argument between her and Sydney. Vee receives a dare to complete Sydney's dare of crossing the ladder between the two buildings, which she completes. Realizing how dangerous Nerve is, Vee attempts to report the game to the police but is disbelieved. As a result, all of the money in her and her mother's joint bank account is removed. Nerve player Ty knocks Vee out in order to keep her in the game. Vee wakes up in a shipping container, where she finds Ian, who confesses that he and Ty were players whose friend was killed in a dare in Seattle. When they tried to alert the authorities, their families' jobs, bank accounts, and identities were compromised. Vee has joined them in the secret third category of the game: "prisoners". If a prisoner can reach and win the day's final round, they regain everything. Tommy and Sydney work with Tommy's hacker friends to try and disable Nerve by altering the game's online code. They hope to prevent Vee from playing the game, but since all of the watchers' phones and profiles act as a distributed server, they cannot completely disable Nerve. Vee wins a spot in the final of Nerve, and Ian completes a dare to also gain a spot in the final, which takes place at Battery Weed. At the final, Vee and Ian are dared to shoot each other with guns, which they both refuse to do. Ty then takes Ian's place in the final and proposes a vote on whether or not he should shoot Vee. The watchers vote yes by a majority, to which Ty shoots Vee, who seemingly dies in Ian's arms. Tommy and his hackers are able to modify Nerve ' s source code to decrypt the watchers' usernames into their real names and send them a message: "You are an accessory to murder." The panicked watchers log out of the game, closing all the servers and ending Nerve. Despondent over Vee's apparent death, Ian aims his gun at Ty, but Vee stops him, revealing that she and Ty staged her murder to scare the watchers into shutting down their profiles on Nerve and ending it permanently. Tommy and his hackers manage to restore the money to all of the players. As Vee and Ian watch the sunrise, he reveals his true name to be Sam. A few months later, Vee and Sydney have reconciled, while Vee and Sam are a couple. Vee is attending the California Institute of the Arts and asks Sam to come and see her in person.

Four wealthy friends meet for a retreat amidst growing global upheaval caused by AI-generated disinformation, produced and disseminated via fictional social media platform Traam. Among them are Venis "Ven" Parish, owner of Traam and the world's richest person; Jeff Abredazi, owner of Bilter, a company specializing in AI; Randall Garrett, an older member and mentor of the group who has recently received an incurable cancer diagnosis; and Hugo "Souper" Van Yalk, who, because of his $521 million net worth, is significantly less wealthy than his multi-billionaire friends. The retreat takes place at Souper's new remote Utah mountain home, dubbed "Mountainhead" (in reference to Ayn Rand 's novel The Fountainhead). Though the gathering is ostensibly an opportunity for the four men to reconnect as friends (dubbed the "Brewsters") without the interference of their usual business concerns, all four have their own ulterior motives. Ven, having fast-tracked new features to Traam that enabled the disinformation to spread, wishes to acquire Bilter for its fact-checking technology to avoid rescinding the new features and taking accountability. Randall wishes to see Traam continue to grow and progress, believing Ven's ventures could lead to a transhumanist solution for his illness. Jeff sees his net worth skyrocket as the turmoil worsens due to Bilter's fact-checking abilities, and does not want his company subsumed into Traam. Souper, feeling inferior for never having made a billion dollars, wishes to petition the others to invest in Slowzo, his "lifestyle super-app". The group tries to settle into the gathering, but soon after arriving Jeff and Ven begin arguing over Traam's effects, before the rest of them try to pressure Jeff into selling Bilter. They later snowmobile to and walk up a nearby mountain range, before conducting a Brewster ritual where they write their net worth on their chests in lipstick (ranked Ven, Randall, Jeff, and Souper). When they return, they realize the worldwide chaos caused by Traam has become worse and governments are beginning to falter, and the four get increasingly combative and exasperated. After Bilter's stock surges again, Jeff's net worth outranks Randall's, and Randall flips out on Jeff for making a big deal out of swapping Brewster hats. After Ven has a call with the President where he rebuffs attempts to either roll back or limit Traam's features, Ven, Randall, and Souper decide to use their influence to accelerate the chaos in an attempt to bring about a global technocratic dictatorship. Jeff privately approaches Randall, who is one of Traam's biggest investors, with a proposal to wrest control of the company from Ven and cooperate with the US government's desires to install security measures. Randall, believing Jeff's plan will ruin his hope of surviving cancer, discloses the scheme to Ven and Souper, and the three of them conceive a tenuous plot to kill Jeff and take control of Bilter. After two bungled attempts on his life by the other three, Jeff leads them on a chase through the house, eventually hiding out in the sauna. He is found and barricaded in by the others, who prepare to immolate him with gasoline. In desperation, Jeff hastily drafts the terms of an agreement to sign Bilter over to Traam, with the others agreeing to release him after working out the details. The next morning, Jeff is released after the contract is signed and awkwardly confronts his unapologetic friends at breakfast. The three also admit that they have lost interest in their plan to launch coups against multiple governments. As he prepares to leave Mountainhead, Jeff has a private conversation with Ven telling him he will try to fight the deal. Ven then asks him to do the deal legitimately, to which Jeff agrees on the condition that Randall be excluded. Jeff tells Ven that he believes Traam will fail even with Bilter's help, while Ven professes faith in his company. Jeff tells Ven if he does become part of Ven's company, he will eventually try to force Ven out, to which Ven replies, that is what makes it exciting. Randall witnesses the end of this exchange from afar, and rides away from Mountainhead looking dejected. The film comes to a close with Souper, having finally achieved billionaire status through the deal with Jeff, overlooking the scenery of the mountains surrounding his home while following a meditation exercise on Slowzo.

In a fictional outcome for the 2015 Canadian federal election, a political party comes to power and establishes a law called S-14. This legislation allows parents of troubled children with limited finances to place their children in hospitals, without regard for fundamental justice. Diane "Die" Després, a widowed mother and 46-year-old advice columnist, picks up her son Steve from an institution. Steve, who has ADHD and an attachment disorder, was being discharged after starting a fire in which another youth was injured. Die brings Steve to their new home in Saint-Hubert and struggles to care for him under financial distress. When Steve gives her a cart full of groceries and a necklace reading "Mommy", Die suspects that he has stolen the items. Enraged by the accusation, Steve begins choking her, and she defends herself by hitting him with a glass frame. Whilst chaos ensues, Kyla, a neighbour and teacher on sabbatical, shows up to tend to Steve's wounds. Kyla, who is dealing with a stuttering problem and recently moved into the area with her husband and daughter, begins to tutor Steve. After a disastrous tutoring session where Steve goads Kyla, she snaps and attacks him. After the confrontation, Steve mellows and indicates he is glad to know her and respects her boundaries and expectations. Kyla notes Steve reminds her of her late son. The three have bonded and their situation improves: Die has a cleaning job and translation work on the side, Kyla's speech problem is resolving, and Steve is receiving better marks on his school work. All is looking up, until Die is served papers by the parents of the injured boy, indicating she and Steve are being sued for the injuries caused by his fire. Die finds a lawyer, a neighbour and a potential love interest, who is willing to help them with Steve's case. The three of them go out to a karaoke restaurant for the evening. Over the night, Steve is increasingly agitated by the atmosphere and what he sees as his mother's sexual interest in the lawyer. Steve decides to sing, but is taunted by the audience, leading to a fight. They are thrown out. Steve, Die and their lawyer argue, ending with Die slapping the lawyer in retaliation for him slapping Steve, driving the lawyer away. Die in turn shouts at Steve for continually being an issue in her life, whereupon Steve runs away. He returns the following morning. Die continues to try and help her son and rebuild their lives, but while out shopping with Steve and Kyla, Steve disappears. He is found by Kyla after slitting his wrists. Although he survives, Die comes to realise she is running out of options. One day Die and Kyla surprise Steve with a picnic, and on the drive Die finds herself reflecting on all the dreams she had for her son to live a fulfilled, happy life. The trio end up not at a picnic site as the faux ending implies, but at a hospital to commit Steve under S-14. Upon realising the deception by the two women, Steve angrily resists attempts to apprehend him by hospital staff. Die begins to regret the decision when she helplessly watches the officials use violence and tasers to subdue him. Kyla announces she is moving to Toronto and Die encourages her. Kyla is relieved Die is not upset. While explaining how much she enjoyed her time with Die and Steve, she accidentally makes a faux-pas about 'abandoning her family'. Die responds that she holds on to hope that her life and the life she envisages for her son will come to fruition. Kyla returns home as Die privately breaks down in tears. While preparing dinner and doing translation work, Die misses a phone call from Steve. Back at the hospital, Steve, restrained in a straitjacket, apologises to his mother in a voicemail. Immediately after the straps of his jacket are removed by two officials, Steve runs full speed towards a large, bright window.

CIA Officer James Silva leads a top secret CIA Special Activities Division unit, code-named Overwatch, to infiltrate a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) safe house in the United States. Under the supervision of James Bishop, Overwatch's mission is to locate and destroy shipments of caesium before the highly toxic substance can be weaponized to kill thousands. The unit kills the occupants, while Overwatch Agent Alice Kerr is wounded. One of the Russians, an 18-year-old named Anatole Kuragin, falls out of a window during an explosion after failing to save the caesium. Silva executes Kuragin despite his pleading, and everyone escapes. Sixteen months later, Indocarr (a fictional country loosely based on Indonesia) police officer Li Noor surrenders at the United States Embassy to negotiate for passage out of the country in exchange for information on the remaining caesium. Kerr vouches for Noor's reliability as an asset, but he refuses to reveal the password to an encrypted, self-destroying disc until he is safely on a plane. While Noor is being tested, Kerr tries to come to terms with her family issues. Axel, leading a team from the Indocarr State Intelligence Agency, arrives at the embassy and demands that Noor be handed over as Noor fends off an assassination attempt by Indocarr government agents. Overwatch Agent Sam Snow and Kerr arrive, shocked at his combat prowess, learning that Noor used to be Indocarr Special Forces. Silva agrees to take Noor to an airplane 22 miles away. Noor reveals he is turning on the corrupt Indocarr government because it killed his family. Bishop's surveillance feed blacks out, then comes on again. During the blackout, Axel's men place a bomb on the car, which explodes. While Silva's unit helps fend off Axel's men, Sam is mortally injured. Silva gives Sam two grenades and leaves her, letting her suicide-attack the remaining henchmen. Silva, Noor, Kerr, and another Overwatch Agent, William Douglas, enter a restaurant. Silva sees Axel and walks toward him despite Bishop's orders. Axel tells James to give up Noor, but James refuses. While returning, he brushes past two girls and realizes that there is a grenade in the restaurant; he tackles civilians before it explodes. When the dust clears, Douglas is severely wounded, and Silva is attacked by the girls. Noor helps Silva kill them. While going to a safe house, Douglas dies while holding off Axel's men. After taking cover in an apartment complex, Kerr is separated and meets a young girl. Kerr and the girl escape harm by using booby-trapped grenades. Silva and Noor split up, fighting Axel and his henchmen. Silva and Noor meet up again, as well as the young girl Kerr saved. She leads them to Kerr, who is losing against a henchman, until Noor kills him. On the way to the air strip, the remaining team members briefly confront Axel. Exasperated, Silva has Overwatch destroy his car with a drone strike. The team barely makes it to the airplane. Li Noor boards the airplane, along with Kerr who is going to meet her family once again. While on the airplane, Bishop notices Noor's heart rate is accelerating, and it is revealed that Noor is not a double agent, but a triple agent working for the Russian government, and Kuragin was the son of a high-ranking official within that government. The official hired Noor to give Alice the wrong information, so they would trust him. Just as Alice realizes this, Bishop's Overwatch surveillance team is raided. The entire team is shot and Bishop walks outside to die. Silva refuses to acknowledge that Alice is killed on the plane. Silva realizes this too late and details his experiences during a post-mission debriefing. Back at home, Silva puts up Noor's picture, vowing revenge.

As a child during Nazi-era Germany, Kurt Barnert (inspired by Gerhard Richter) visits an exhibit of Degenerate Art in Dresden with his beautiful young aunt Elisabeth. While there, he is mesmerized by Girl with Blue Hair, a modernist sculpture by Eugen Hoffmann. At a Nazi Party rally, Elisabeth – a member of the National Socialist Women's League – is given the honour of personally presenting a bouquet of flowers to Adolf Hitler. Later that day at home, Kurt walks in on a nude Elisabeth playing Bach's music on the piano. She tells a startled Kurt to "never look away" because "everything that is true holds beauty in it." Elisabeth then begins hitting a single piano note repeatedly, rambling euphorically that she is "playing a concert for the Führer", and then begins deliriously hitting herself on the head with a broken ashtray. Elisabeth is diagnosed with schizophrenia, and is sterilized and later murdered under the Nazi euthanasia program. The doctor who orders her sterilization and death is gynecologist Professor Carl Seeband, a high-ranking member of the SS medical corps. After the war, Seeband is arrested by the Soviets and placed in a prison camp, facing likely execution. While there, he volunteers to assist a Red Army officer's wife during a complicated birth and saves the lives of both wife and child. The grateful Soviet officer releases Seeband and thereafter helps to keep evidence of his Nazi past from catching up with him. As an adult, Kurt studies painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where he falls in love with a young fashion design student named Elisabeth (like his aunt), whom he calls Ellie. She is the daughter of Professor Seeband, though none of them are aware of their shared history and connection. Kurt excels in his studies, but is forced to complete paintings that reflect socialist realism, an ideology and school of art with which he does not identify. Eventually, he meets Ellie's father, who is now toeing the East German socialist party line. Seeband sees Kurt as genetically inferior to, and therefore unsuitable for, his daughter, and goes to great lengths to sabotage the young couple's relationship, even performing an abortion on Elisabeth based on a made-up health concern when she becomes pregnant with Kurt's child. However, the young couple's love strengthens and eventually the two get married. Fearing prosecution after the Soviet officer who had been protecting him is transferred to Moscow, Seeband flees East Germany for West Germany. Kurt and Ellie flee to West Germany themselves several years later. Since Kurt is already 30 years old, he lies about his age to be admitted to the famous Düsseldorf Art Academy, where he is able to study and practice art more freely than he could in East Germany. His teacher, Professor Antonius van Verten (based on Joseph Beuys) recognizes Kurt's deep personal experience, but also sees that he is struggling to find his own voice, having been trained only in figurative painting, a medium considered outdated and bourgeois by the standards of the school. Kurt shares adjoining studio space with fellow student and confidant Harry Preusser (inspired by Günther Uecker), who experiments with hammering nails into boards to produce large artworks. Only when Kurt finds a newspaper article about a captured Nazi doctor who was Seeband's superior does he have his artistic breakthrough. He starts using his figurative painting skills to copy black-and-white photographs onto canvases, adding a mysterious sfumato blur. Among the sources for the new paintings are Seeband's passport photographs and photographs of Kurt with Aunt Elisabeth from his own family album. When Seeband sees a painting that is a collage of himself, the captured Nazi doctor, and Kurt with Elisabeth, he abruptly leaves the studio. It is unclear if he is simply overwhelmed at being reminded of his past, just realized Elisabeth was Kurt's relative, or believes his son-in-law has uncovered his secret, but Kurt, for his part, still seems to be unaware of the connection. After years of infertility due to the abortion, Ellie becomes pregnant, and Kurt celebrates the moment she told him by painting her nude. Some time later, he gets his first art show, where his art impresses the critics, even though they completely misunderstand and misinterpret it. He rejoices in finally finding his voice and his place in the world.

In 2011, astronauts Brian Harper, Jocinda "Jo" Fowler, and Alan Marcus are on a Space Shuttle mission to repair a satellite. A mysterious swarm of alien technology attacks the orbiter, killing Alan and knocking Jo unconscious before tunneling into the surface of the Moon. Brian, the only witness to the swarm, returns the crippled shuttle to Earth, but his story is dismissed, and he is fired from NASA. Ten years later, conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman, who believes that the Moon is an artificial megastructure, surreptitiously gains access to a research telescope. He discovers that the Moon's orbit is veering closer to Earth. He tries to share his findings with Brian. NASA also discovers the anomaly. K.C. anonymously announces his observation on social media, which leads to a global panic. Jo, now NASA's deputy director, launches a spacecraft on an SLS Block 1B+ rocket to investigate the abnormality. After the astronauts drop a probe into a miles-deep artificial shaft that has opened up on the Moon's surface, the alien swarm attacks, killing all three lunar astronauts. The lunar orbit continues to decay, and as the Moon falls closer and closer to the Earth, seismic and gravitational disturbances occur. Jo meets former NASA official Holdenfield, who reveals that Brian was discredited because of a NASA coverup dating back to Apollo 11. During the first Moon landing, a two-minute radio blackout was meant to conceal evidence of pulsating lights on the Moon's surface. Apollo 12 revealed that the Moon is hollow. A military electromagnetic pulse (EMP) device was created to eliminate the swarm, but the project was abandoned for budgetary reasons. With help from her ex-husband General Doug Davidson, Air Force Chief of Staff, Jo requisitions the EMP and commandeers retired Space Shuttle Endeavour from a museum to serve the new mission: to correct the Moon's orbit and destroy the swarm. Brian, K.C., and Jo launch with the EMP, using the Moon's gravity, narrowly escaping to orbit as a tsunami destroys Vandenberg Air Force Base. They reach the interior of the Moon, revealed to be a Dyson sphere powered by a white dwarf at its center. The Dyson sphere's AI operating system explains to Brian that billions of years ago, the technologically advanced ancestors of modern humans created the AI swarm to serve them, but upon becoming self aware, it went rogue and they were eradicated by it. They built the Moon as an interstellar ark to create the Earth and then seed life on it, but the AI swarm discovered it and began siphoning energy from its power source, destabilizing its orbit. Meanwhile, Brian's son Sonny, Jo's son Jimmy, and Jimmy's caretaker Michelle try to reach Doug's military bunker in the Colorado mountains. They find Brian's ex-wife and Sonny's mother Brenda, her husband Tom, and their family. They avoid disasters caused by the Moon's proximity and fight other hostile survivors, then reach safety in a mountain tunnel. As the Moon strips away the local atmosphere, Tom's youngest daughter runs out of oxygen. The injured Tom gives her his own supply; he suffocates to death. The President of the United States orders a nuclear strike on the approaching Moon, but Doug refuses to comply, with debris collapsing the bunker shortly thereafter, apparently killing everyone inside. As the swarm attacks all electronic objects containing organic life inside, K.C. lures the swarm away from their spacecraft with their lunar module, sacrificing himself to detonate the EMP. Jo and Brian return to Earth, reuniting with their families, and the Moon's power is restored, returning to its regular orbit, but now shed of its rocky exterior. Reconstructing K.C.'s consciousness, the Moon's operating system appears to K.C. as his cat Fuzz Aldrin and his mother, who remarks that they must now "get started".

Nutan "Newton" Kumar, a rookie government clerk on reserve is sent on election duty to a Naxal -controlled town in the insurgency -ridden jungles of Chhattisgarh, India, when one of the main duty officers there is found to be facing heart problems. Faced with the apathy of the war-weary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) security forces, led by Assistant Commandant Aatma Singh, and the looming fear of guerrilla attacks by communist insurgents, he tries his best to conduct free and fair voting despite the odds stacked against him. He is disappointed when the voters do not turn up for the election. Later when a foreign reporter turns up at the polling station, the CRPF force the villagers from the constituency to turn up to cast their votes. When one of the villagers enters the polling booth, he is bewildered by the voting machine and does not understand how to operate it. After talking to the villagers, Newton soon realizes that they have no idea what the election is about. Some thought they would earn money from this, while others asked hopelessly about getting paid sufficiently for their work. He desperately tries to educate them but to no avail. Taking the lead, a frustrated Aatma Singh cuts off Newton aside and shames the villagers by telling them that these officers have risked their lives for their vote, and they should not turn them away. He tells them that the voting machine is a toy; there are symbols of elephants, cycles, etc. and they could press any symbol they like (leaving them uneducated about the fact that those symbols represent respective political parties). So while they vote for their favorite symbol, instead of politicians they have never heard about, the foreign reporter gets a good news report about India's democracy. Newton wants to sit at the polling booth for the stipulated time but is forced to flee due to a Naxal ambush, which he later realizes was actually staged by the CRPF. Upon learning this, he tries to outrun his escort team back to the polling booth, but gets caught on both sides, and is forcibly taken back to safety. On the way back, Newton decides to collect the votes of four villagers who suddenly turn up from deep inside the forest. Aatma Singh is reluctant to let them do so. Taking his duty very seriously, Newton steals Aatma Singh's rifle and holds the officer at gunpoint till the villagers cast their votes. Singh comments out of frustration that he did not want polling to be conducted in an area that was only secured by government forces 6 months ago, mentioning that there are still more landmines there than men. He tells Newton that he does not want to lose any more troops, especially when the government cannot even supply them with night vision goggles that they have been requesting for 2 years. Newton keeps him at gunpoint even after the voting for the remaining two minutes of his official duty (till 3 pm). The CRPF troops then beat him up out of frustration. The film concludes with a shot of the area six months later, showing mining activity going on. Aatma Singh is shown shopping in civilian dress with his wife and daughter during holidays, suggesting he is a human and conditions in Naxal-affected areas made him a dispassionate and cynical person. Newton is shown in his office wearing a neck brace for his injury from the beating but otherwise happy, and keeping with his old ways. He is visited by the local election officer Malko who asks him what happened after she left as she is unaware of the events and Newton asks her to tell everything over tea, but only after five minutes, when Newton's scheduled lunch break begins.

Dennis Scott, new chief of metallurgy at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, is introduced to Theodore Honey, an eccentric American scientist who is testing his theory that the new Rutland Reindeer aircraft is susceptible to structural failure of the tailplane. Honey is running a fatigue test on the tail assembly of a Reindeer, using a very high vibration rate dynamic shaker in an eight-hour daily test cycle (determined by complaints from neighbours). Eventually, it will fall off. Scott gives Honey a ride home and learns that he is a widower whose wife was killed by a V2 rocket during the war. The perfect embodiment of the absent-minded professor, Honey has educated his brilliant but reserved 12-year-old daughter, Elspeth, at home, without any real understanding of a child's need for play and friends. Honey tells Scott he expects failure to occur after 1440 flight hours. Scott notes that commercial planes are building up miles faster than the experiment, and Honey becomes very upset, declaring that he is a scientist, he cannot be concerned about people. In the company bar, Scott runs into a test pilot, an old friend from WWII, who tells him about the recent crash of a Reindeer in Labrador. The plane had flown 1407 hours. The tail was never found, the pilot was blamed, and Scott suspects Honey's theory is correct. He informs Sir John, the head of RAE, who puts the vibration test on a 24-hour basis. Honey is sent to Labrador to examine the wreckage, but finds himself flying across the Atlantic on a Reindeer airliner. He was told that all Reindeer have only 500 hours in service, but is shocked to learn that this early production aircraft had already logged 1422 hours at takeoff. Despite the fact that his theory is not yet proven, he warns the captain, who contacts London for advice. Honey also shows the safest place to survive a crash to renowned Hollywood actress Monica Teasdale, who meant a great deal to his wife. Teasdale believes Honey and through a night of waiting she grows close to him, as does stewardess Marjorie Corder. The Reindeer lands safely at Gander Airport in Newfoundland, and an inspection clears it to continue on its route. Honey takes drastic action to stop the flight by retracting the landing gear, dropping the aircraft on its belly and wrecking it. Honey is detained, and Corder offers to go to Elspeth when she returns to England. The next day, Teasdale speaks to Honey's superiors on his behalf. Sir John promises to seek the truth. However, there are powerful men who demand that Honey be repudiated to discredit his unproved theory and to save the reputation of British passenger aviation, which is now awash in a sea of bad press. Sir John tells a shaken Honey that he must undergo psychological testing. Honey goes home to find the house in order and Corder spending the night with Elspeth. Teasdale, who has also been helping Elspeth, abruptly leaves for California, deliberately allowing space for any romance between Corder and Honey to develop. Honey returns to his experiment but the 1440th hour soon passes without any structural failure. Corder is angered by his readiness to surrender and his failure to see how Elspeth is suffering. During a board meeting, Sir David questions Honey's sanity. Honey finally objects, refusing to be railroaded. He resigns and threatens to protest at the departure of every Rutland Reindeer—and collapse them, too. He walks out. At home, Corder worries what he will live on and discovers that he has not deposited his salary in the bank for seven months. Laughing and crying, she says he has to have someone to look after him. She is going to marry him. Meanwhile, the Reindeer that Honey disabled is repaired, but the tail falls off after its next landing. The tail spar is found in Labrador, showing metal fatigue. Scott, Sir John and Corder run to tell Honey in his lab and there is a horrific crashing noise as the tail separates, at last. Honey realizes that he failed to account for temperature fluctuations to affect the timing of the Reindeer's tail failures.

In 1916, during World War I in Northern France, French Major General Georges Broulard orders his subordinate, Brigadier General Paul Mireau, to take "the Anthill", a well-defended German position. Mireau initially refuses, citing the impossibility of success. When Broulard mentions a potential promotion, Mireau convinces himself the attack will succeed. In the trenches, Mireau throws a private out of the regiment for showing signs of shell shock. Mireau leaves the planning of the attack to Colonel Dax, despite Dax's protests. Before the attack, drunken Lieutenant Roget leads a night-time scouting mission, sending one of his two men ahead. Overcome by fear while waiting for the man's return, Roget lobs a grenade, accidentally killing the scout. Corporal Paris, the surviving scout, confronts Roget, who denies wrongdoing and falsifies his report to Colonel Dax. The daylight attack on the Anthill is a failure. Dax leads the first wave of soldiers into no man's land under heavy rifle and machine gun fire but none of them reach the German trenches and the follow up waves refuse to attack. Mireau orders his artillery to fire on them to force them onto the battlefield. The artillery commander refuses without written confirmation of the order. To deflect blame for the attack's failure, Mireau decides to court-martial a hundred soldiers for cowardice. Broulard orders Mireau to reduce the number and Mireau asks each company in the attacking wave to select one man. Roget picks Corporal Paris to keep him from testifying about the scouting mission. Private Ferol is deemed a "social undesirable" by his commander. Private Arnaud is chosen at random by lots, despite being decorated twice for heroism. Dax, a criminal defense lawyer in civilian life, volunteers to defend the men at their court-martial. The trial, however, is a farce. There is no formal written indictment, a court stenographer is not present, and the court refuses to admit evidence that would support acquittal. In his closing statement, Dax angrily denounces the proceedings. Dax later informs Broulard that Mireau had ordered their artillery to fire onto French soldiers. Despite Dax's efforts to save his men, the sentence of death is confirmed and the condemned men are eventually shot by firing squad. Following the executions, Broulard tells Mireau that he will be investigated for shelling his own men. Mireau denounces this as a betrayal by his commanding officer. Broulard offers Mireau's vacant command to Dax, assuming Dax's attempts to stop the executions were a ploy to gain Mireau's job. Disgusted at Broulard's assumption, Dax lashes out at him. Discovering Dax was sincere, Broulard rebukes him for his idealism, and Dax in turn denounces Broulard's nihilism. Shortly afterwards, Dax notices some of his soldiers carousing loudly at an inn and jeering at a captive German girl, but they grow more subdued as she sings a sentimental German folk song, " The Faithful Hussar ". Dax is informed by Boulanger that they have new orders to return to the trenches immediately, but Dax instead allows the men to stay in the bar for a while longer before returning to his office.

C.R. "Mac" MacNamara is a high-ranking executive in the Coca-Cola Company, assigned to West Berlin after a business fiasco a few years earlier in the Middle East (about which he is still bitter). While based in West Germany for now, Mac is angling to become head of Western European Coca-Cola Operations, based in London. After working on an arrangement to introduce Coke into the Soviet Union, Mac receives a call from his boss, W.P. Hazeltine, at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta. Scarlett Hazeltine, the boss's hot-blooded but slightly dim 17-year-old socialite daughter, is coming to West Berlin. Mac is assigned the unenviable task of taking care of her. An expected two-week stay extends into two months, and Mac discovers just why Scarlett is so enamored of West Berlin: she surprises him by announcing that she's married to Otto Piffl, a young East German Communist with ardent anti-capitalistic views. When the Southern belle is confronted about her foolishness in the matter of helping him blow up anti-American "Yankee Go Home" balloons (how the couple met) she simply replies with, "It's not anti-American, it's anti-Yankee. Where I come from, everybody's against the Yankees." Mac tries to come to terms with letting his boss's daughter marry a Communist and learns the horrible truth: the couple are bound for Moscow to make a new life for themselves ("They've assigned us a magnificent apartment, just a short walk from the bathroom!"). Since Hazeltine and his wife are coming to Berlin to collect their daughter the next day, Mac deals with the disaster by bribing East German officials to steal Scarlett’s marriage certificate from the archives. Mac also frames the young Communist firebrand Otto, resulting in his being arrested by the East German police, by planting on his motorcycle a "Russky Go Home" balloon and presenting him with a wedding present of an Uncle Sam cuckoo clock wrapped in the Wall Street Journal. After Otto, during interrogation, is forced to listen endlessly to a cover of the song " Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini " (which is intentionally badly distorted as it plays) he cracks and signs a confession saying that he is an American spy. Under pressure from his exasperated and disapproving wife Phyllis (who wants to take her family back to live in the US), and with the revelation that Scarlett is pregnant—and, worse, unmarried with her East German marriage certificate gone—Mac must now fix the mess he has created. He must restore the marriage certificate and bring Otto back with the help of his new Soviet business associates on whom Mac uses all his wiles, as well as his sexy secretary, Fräulein Ingeborg. With the boss on the way, he finds that his only chance is to turn Otto into a son-in-law in good standing — which means, among other things, making him a capitalist with an aristocratic pedigree (albeit contrived by adoption). Mac arranges to have Otto adopted by an impoverished count, who now works as a washroom attendant and includes a photo of the ruins of the family castle with the price of adoption (" U.S. Air Force, 1944?" "No, Turkish Cavalry, 1683."). Scarlett is dubious that her father will be fooled by the ruse, but is reassured that her baby will now be part of a long line of bleeders, which will please her snobbish mother. In a frenetic race against time and the arrival of the Hazeltines' plane, Mac outfits Otto in complete paraphernalia befitting his new aristocratic status, while Otto rails against being forced to join the detested bourgeoisie (his Communist Party membership is paid up through the year). Meanwhile, Scarlett and Mac coach Otto on how to speak to her conservative Southern father ("The Civil War was a draw..."). In the end, the Hazeltines approve of their new son-in-law, Otto, who Mac learns from Hazeltine will be named the new head of Western European Operations, with a disappointed Mac getting a promotion to VP of Procurement back in Atlanta. Mac reconciles with his family at the airport, and to celebrate his promotion, buys them Cokes from a vending machine. After handing out the bottles, he discovers that the last one actually is a Pepsi-Cola.

Ward Jones lands his light aircraft at an airfield in Monte Carlo, but it is destroyed following a collision with a remote controlled car operated by Thayer, a member of the secret THANATOS organisation. Jones dies in the explosion, and a package is retrieved from the wrecked aircraft by Thayer's henchwoman Maya. In a medical conference in Monte Carlo, Jones' girlfriend Yachuko escapes from Thayer's henchmen, aided by cosmetic surgeon Neil Connery. She is later kidnapped by British agent Miss Maxwell, but another of Thayer's henchwomen, Krayendorf, then captures Yachuko. Connery meets Maxwell and her boss Commander Cunningham. Jones had wanted to sell them the package and asked them to protect Yachuko, who also had access to relevant information. Connery believes that Jones has transferred the data to Yachuko using hypnosis. Cunningham demands that Connery help retrieve the information. After being reminded that he killed one of Thayer's henchmen in a fight at the conference, Connery agrees to help in exchange for the police investigation being dropped. Cunningham dispatches Connery to Malaga where Yachuko has been spotted. Connery and Maxwell are met by Juan, who has left his wedding early to greet them. Thayer's henchwoman Mildred has followed them to Malaga, but Connery hypnotizes her to reveal Yachuko's location, Krayendorf's castle. Firing an arrow, Connery short-circuits the electric fence protecting the castle and destroys its defensive machine gun position. Connery, Maxwell, Juan and their colleagues then attack the castle and defeat Krayendorf's henchmen. Juan kills Krayendorf and Connery rescues Yachuko. Using hypnosis, he accesses most of the critical information, but Mildred kills Yachuko before the process is complete. Juan then kills Mildred. Meanwhile, an "atomic nucleus" is being transported by American military police. Maya and more henchwomen dress up as can-can dancers, lure the MPs from their vehicles and steal the nucleus. With it, THANATOS can now power their "ultra-high-frequency magnetic waves", which will cause all metal machines to stop working. This will force world leaders to give THANATOS their gold. Following up information revealed by Yachuko, Cunningham persuades Connery to travel to Tétouan, Morocco, where Thayer owns a rug factory staffed exclusively by blind men. Goons try to kill Connery in the street, but he is rescued by Maya. THANATOS leader Alpha wants Connery dead, but Thayer wants to keep him alive. Connery attends a party hosted by Thayer, who resents Alpha's power. He is plotting to replace Alpha with a double, and Connery is required to change the man's face. Thayer also plans to murder his henchwomen, a fact that Connery passes on to Maya. Disguised as a blind Moroccan weaver, Connery infiltrates the factory, where the workers are in contact with dangerous radioactive materials. Connery warns a worker, who soon instigates a riot. Connery is eventually captured by Thayer. Later, at a yacht, Connery is to be forced to transform Thayer's henchman Kurt into an Alpha lookalike. Before the operation begins, Connery hypnotises Kurt, causing him to attack Thayer. Meanwhile, the female crewmembers of Thayer's yacht attack their male counterparts. The women take over the yacht, but Thayer escapes in a rubber dinghy. Alpha blames Thayer for his failure and demands that he kill himself. Thayer kills Alpha instead and takes control of THANATOS. Connery and Maya meet Juan in Munich, where they are also joined by the Scottish members of a Monte Carlo archery club. Using a Geiger counter to detect the radioactive rugs, Connery and Maya locate THANATOS's secret lair. Meanwhile, Thayer triggers the magnetic wave, paralysing machinery all over the world. Guns are no longer operational, so bows and arrows are now optimal weapons. Connery, Maya, Juan and the archers enter the base. While the archers tackle Thayer's henchmen, Connery plants an "anti-magnetic explosive" to stop the wave. He is discovered by Thayer and they fight, culminating in an archery duel in which Thayer is killed. Connery, Maya and the surviving archers escape from the base, which explodes. Cunningham wants to recruit Connery as a permanent agent, but Connery uses his hypnotic powers to dissuade him. Maya and Connery depart on Thayer's yacht for a romantic cruise.

The Earth is passing through the tail of a comet, an event which has not occurred in 65 million years and coincided with the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. On the night of the comet's passage, eleven days before Christmas, large crowds gather outside to watch and celebrate. Eighteen-year-old Regina "Reggie" Belmont works at a movie theater in southern California. She is annoyed to find someone with the initials DMK has the sixth highest score on the theater's Tempest video game; the other high scores are hers. Staying after the theater closes, she helps her boyfriend, projectionist Larry Dupree, sneak back in so he can loan out a film reel for illegal duplication. Reggie and Larry spend the night in the steel-lined projection booth and have sex. Meanwhile, Reggie's 16-year-old sister Samantha ("Sam") argues with their stepmother Doris, who Sam knows is cheating on her father, who is away on military duty. After a physical altercation, Sam spends the night in a steel backyard shed. The next morning, a reddish haze covers the sky; there are no signs of life but piles of red dust and heaps of clothing everywhere. Unaware that anything has occurred, Larry goes outside and is killed by a zombie. After trying to beat DMK's high score, Reggie looks for Larry, mistaking the red sky as bad smog. She quickly encounters the zombie, but escapes on Larry's motorcycle. At home, she finds her sister. The two surmise that because they both spent the night in steel containers, they were saved from the comet's effects. The sisters race to the local radio station after they hear a disc jockey on air, only to find it was a pre-recorded show. They come across another survivor there, Hector Gomez, who spent the night in the back of his steel truck. When Sam talks into the microphone, she is heard by researchers in an underground installation out in the desert. As they listen to Reggie, Sam and Hector debate what to do, the scientists note that the zombies, though less exposed to the comet, will eventually disintegrate into dust themselves. Hector leaves to check if any of his family survived, but promises to return. Reggie and Sam then go shopping for guns and clothing at a mall. After a firefight with some zombie stock boys and their leader, Willy, the girls are taken prisoner, but are saved by a rescue team sent by the scientists. Reggie is taken back to their base. Audrey White, a disillusioned scientist, offers to dispose of Sam, whom she diagnosed as having been exposed to the comet due to her developing rash, and to wait for Hector. After she fakes euthanizing Sam by injecting her with a sedative, she kills the other remaining scientist. When Hector returns, Audrey briefs him, then gives herself a lethal injection (as she herself has been exposed). Sam and Hector set out to rescue Reggie. Back at the base, it is revealed that the researchers had suspected and prepared for the comet's effects, but inadvertently left the ventilation system open and the fans running. The deadly dust permeated their base. Reggie, who has become suspicious, escapes and discovers that the dying scientists have hunted down and rendered healthy survivors brain-dead. They harvest their untainted blood to keep the disease at bay while they desperately search for a cure. Reggie saves a young boy and a girl before they are processed, then unplugs the other victims from their life support machines. Sam and Hector rescue the trio and blow up the scientists. Eventually, rain washes away the dust. Reggie pairs up with Hector, and they assume parental roles with the kids. Sam feels left out. Frustrated, she ignores Reggie's warning about crossing the street against the signal light, claiming there is nobody else left. Sam is almost run over by a sports car driven by Danny Mason Keener, a survivor about her own age. After apologizing, he invites her to go for a ride. As they drive off, the car is shown sporting the initials "DMK" on the vanity plate.