In 2067, life on Earth is collapsing. NASA scientists Amelia Brand, Romilly, and Doyle are set to embark on an intergalactic mission to find life on other planets, after earlier missions—called Lazarus —reported habitable environments in faraway systems, accessible by a wormhole near Saturn. Former NASA pilot Cooper is led by coincidence (he refuses to term it supernatural) to the secret NASA facility where Amelia's father and mission leader, Professor Brand, convinces him to join. Despite objections from his young daughter Murph, Cooper leaves to pilot the Endurance spacecraft. After a two-year voyage to Saturn, the spacecraft passes through the wormhole, emerging into a planetary system orbiting a supermassive black hole, Gargantua. Three planets, previously explored by Miller, Mann, and Edmunds, respectively, have shown signs of habitability. The first and closest, Miller's planet, turns out to be an ocean world with massive tsunamis. Doyle perishes on the planet, and Amelia and Cooper struggle to escape. They return to the Endurance after 23 Earth years have passed due to the extreme time dilation caused by the planet's proximity to Gargantua's gravity. Alone aboard the Endurance, Romilly significantly ages. Their full mission compromised, the team decides to investigate Mann's planet, at the expense of ever visiting Edmunds' planet. While there, a message is relayed from Earth that Professor Brand has passed away. On his deathbed, Professor Brand told Murph, herself a scientist now, that the Endurance mission was never meant to return (since humanity's Earth existence is doomed). Murph feels betrayed that Cooper left knowingly, though he was misled as well. Cooper resolves to return, but Mann tries to stop him. It emerges that Mann falsified data of his planet's habitability, in hopes of being rescued. While he escapes, Romilly is killed in the process. Mann dies in space, leaving Amelia and Cooper as the lone survivors. Aboard a damaged spacecraft with limited resources, Cooper proposes a gravitational slingshot around Gargantua to Edmunds' planet. This will save fuel but lose them time (50+ Earth years) due to time dilation. At the last moment, Cooper ejects from the Endurance, sacrificing himself so that Amelia can complete the mission. Cooper is sucked into the black hole, falling into an unusual tesseract, where time is a physical dimension. He sees himself decades ago inside Murph's bedroom and realises he can interact with objects there. Knowing Murph will return in her adult life, he encodes data about the black hole into the ticking of his old wristwatch (placed on Murph's bookshelf). After Professor Brand’s death, Murph visits her childhood bedroom, where she comes across Cooper's wristwatch. She deduces that the supernatural coincidence that led Cooper to NASA was Cooper himself (communicating from the future), and uses the wristwatch data to finish Professor Brand’s incomplete work. Cooper realizes that humans in the far distant future have built the wormhole and are arranging events, in a way analogous to how he is communicating with Murph, to create the sequence that will ultimately save mankind. Cooper is ejected from the tesseract and is picked up in the future (his present) by a spacecraft orbiting Saturn. On a space station with a recreated healthy Earth environment, he is reunited with Murph. It is she who directed humanity's exodus from a dying Earth. Murph, now older than Cooper, who has a calendar (if not physical) age of 124, is surrounded by her descendants and does not want Cooper to witness her death. She suggests he seek out Amelia on Edmunds' planet. As Cooper sets out again, Amelia is shown discovering Edmunds' destroyed ship, and kneeling before a grave she's constructed for him. With Edmunds presumably dead, robots build a colony on the planet's surface, and Amelia removes her helmet to breathe in the air from the planet's atmosphere.

Three years after the destruction of the Death Star, the Imperial fleet, led by Darth Vader, dispatches probe droids across the galaxy in search of the Rebel Alliance. One probe locates the Rebel base on the ice planet Hoth. A wampa captures Luke Skywalker before he can investigate the probe crash site, but he escapes by using the Force to retrieve his lightsaber and wound the beast. Before Luke succumbs to hypothermia, the Force spirit of his deceased mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, instructs him to go to the swamp planet Dagobah to train as a Jedi Knight under Jedi Master Yoda. Han Solo discovers Luke and insulates him against the weather inside a tauntaun carcass until they are rescued the next morning. Alerted to the Rebels' location, the Empire launches a large-scale attack using AT-AT walkers, forcing the Rebels to evacuate the base. Han, Princess Leia, C-3PO and Chewbacca escape aboard the Millennium Falcon, but the ship's hyperdrive malfunctions. They hide in an asteroid field, where Han and Leia grow closer amid the tension. Vader summons several bounty hunters, including Boba Fett, to find the Falcon. Evading the Imperial fleet, Han's group travels to the floating Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin, which is governed by his old friend Lando Calrissian. Fett tracks them there, and Vader forces Lando to surrender the group to the Empire, knowing Luke will come to their aid. Meanwhile, Luke travels with R2-D2 in his X-wing fighter to Dagobah, where he crash-lands. He meets Yoda, a diminutive creature who reluctantly accepts him as his Jedi apprentice after conferring with Obi-Wan's spirit. Yoda trains Luke to master the light side of the Force and resist negative emotions that will seduce him to the dark side, as they did Vader. Luke struggles to control his anger and impulsiveness and fails to comprehend the nature and power of the Force until he witnesses Yoda using it to levitate the X-wing from the swamp. Luke has a premonition of Han and Leia suffering, and, despite protestations from Obi-Wan and Yoda, he abandons his training to rescue them. Although Obi-Wan believes Luke is their only hope, Yoda asserts that "there is another." Leia confesses her love for Han before Vader freezes him in carbonite to test whether the process will safely imprison Luke. Han survives and is given to Fett, who intends to collect the bounty on Han from Jabba the Hutt. Lando frees Leia and Chewbacca, but they are too late to stop Fett's escape. The group fights its way back to the Falcon and flees the city. Luke arrives and engages Vader in a lightsaber duel over the city's central air shaft. Vader defeats Luke, severing his right hand and separating him from his lightsaber. He urges Luke to embrace the dark side and help him destroy his master, the Emperor, so they may rule the galaxy together. Luke refuses, citing Obi-Wan's claim that Vader killed his father, which prompts Vader to reveal that he is Luke's father. Distraught, Luke plunges down the air shaft and is ejected beneath the floating city, where he dangles from an antenna. He reaches out through the Force to Leia, and the Falcon returns to rescue him. They are pursued by TIE fighters and Vader's Star Destroyer, but manage to escape after R2-D2 repairs the Falcon ' s hyperdrive. After the group joins the Rebel fleet, Luke's missing hand is replaced by a robotic prosthesis. He, Leia, C-3PO, and R2-D2 observe as Lando and Chewbacca depart on the Falcon to find Han.

In 1999, in an unnamed city, Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer known as " Neo " in hacking circles, investigates the mystery of the "Matrix", bringing him to the attention of hacker Trinity. She tells him that Morpheus can answer Neo's questions. At his workplace, Neo is pursued by Agents led by Agent Smith, while Morpheus, able to somehow observe their movements, guides him by phone, but Neo ultimately surrenders. The Agents interrogate Neo about Morpheus, but he refuses to cooperate. In response, they seal his mouth shut and implant a robotic tracking device in his abdomen. Neo awakens at home, believing the encounter was a nightmare until Trinity and her companions remove the device and take him to Morpheus. Morpheus offers Neo a choice: a red pill to uncover the truth about the Matrix or a blue pill to return to his normal life. Neo takes the red pill and awakens in the real world, submerged in a mechanical pod and connected to invasive cables. He sees countless humans similarly encased and tended by machines before he is ejected from the building and rescued by Morpheus aboard the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar. Morpheus reveals that the year is approximately 2199. In the 21st century, humanity lost a war against its artificially intelligent creations, leaving Earth a devastated ruin. Humans blackened the sky to deprive the machines of solar power, but the machines retaliated by creating vast fields of artificially grown humans, harvesting their bioelectric energy. To keep their captives pacified, they built the Matrix, a simulated reality modeled on human civilization at its peak. The remaining free humans founded an underground refuge called Zion, surviving on scarce resources. Morpheus and his crew hack into the Matrix to liberate others, exploiting its rules to gain superhuman abilities inside it. Even so, they remain outmatched by the Agents—sentient programs that protect the system—and death in the Matrix means death in the real world. Morpheus freed Neo because he believed him to be "the One", a prophesied figure destined to free humanity. The crew enters the Matrix to seek guidance from the Oracle, who foretold of the One. She implies that Neo is not the One and warns him of an imminent choice between his life and Morpheus's. The crew is ambushed by Agents after being betrayed by Cypher, a disillusioned crew member who longs to return to the virtual comforts of the Matrix. Convinced of Neo's importance, Morpheus sacrifices himself to confront Smith and is captured. Meanwhile, Cypher exits the Matrix and begins disconnecting the others, killing them. Before he can kill Neo and Trinity, he is killed by Tank, a wounded crew member, who extracts the survivors. Smith interrogates Morpheus to obtain access codes for Zion's mainframe, which would enable the machines to destroy the human resistance. Determined to rescue Morpheus, Neo re-enters the Matrix with Trinity. They free Morpheus, who escapes the Matrix with Trinity, but Smith intercepts Neo. Realizing his potential, Neo fights Smith as an equal and kills him. However, Smith resurrects in a new body and kills Neo. In the real world, machines called Sentinels attack the Nebuchadnezzar. Standing by Neo's body, Trinity confesses her love for him and reveals that the Oracle prophesied she would fall in love with the One. In the Matrix, Neo revives with the ability to perceive and manipulate its code. He effortlessly destroys Smith and escapes the Matrix just as the Nebuchadnezzar ' s electromagnetic pulse disables the Sentinels. Later, within the Matrix, Neo communicates with the system, vowing to show humanity a world of limitless possibilities, before flying away.

An armed gang chases after an escaped chicken in a favela called the City of God. The chicken stops between the gang and a young man nicknamed Rocket. In the 1960s, three impoverished, amateur thieves known as the "Tender Trio"—Shaggy, Clipper, and Rocket's older brother, Goose—rob business owners and share the money with the community who, in turn, hide them from the police. Li'l Dice, a young boy, convinces them to hold up a motel and rob its occupants. The gang resolves not to kill anyone and tells Li'l Dice to be a lookout. Instead, Li'l Dice guns down the motel occupants after falsely warning the trio that the police are coming. The massacre attracts so much police attention that the trio is forced to split up: Clipper joins the Church, Shaggy is shot by the police while trying to escape the favela, and Goose is shot by Li'l Dice after taking his money while Li'l Dice's friend Benny, Shaggy's brother, watches. In the 1970s, Rocket has joined a group of young hippies. He enjoys photography and likes one girl, Angélica, but his attempt to get close to her is ruined by a gang of petty criminal kids known as "The Runts". Li'l Dice, who now calls himself "Li'l Zé", has established a drug empire with Benny by eliminating all of the competition, except for Carrot, who is a good friend of Benny's. Rocket witnesses Li'l Zé take over 'the apartment', a known drug distribution center, and forces Carrot's underboss Blacky, to work for him instead. Because of this monopoly, a relative peace comes over the City of God under the reign of Li'l Zé, who manages to avoid police attention by executing petty criminals, including a member of The Runts. Benny decides to branch out of the drug dealer crowd and befriends Tiago, Angélica's ex-boyfriend, who introduces him to his friend group. Benny and Angélica begin dating. Together, they decide to leave the city and the drug trade. During Benny's farewell party, Zé and Benny get into an argument about Benny leaving; the argument is interrupted by Blacky accidentally killing Benny while trying to shoot Li'l Zé. Benny's death leaves Li'l Zé unchecked. Carrot kills Blacky for endangering his life. Li'l Zé and a group of his soldiers start to make their way to Carrot's hideout to kill him. On the way, Zé follows a girl who dismissed his advances at Benny's party. He beats up her boyfriend, a peaceful man named Knockout Ned, and rapes her. After Ned's brother stabs Li'l Zé, his gang retaliates by shooting into his house, killing his brother and uncle in the process. A gang war breaks out between Carrot and Li'l Zé. A vengeful Ned sides with Carrot, initially trying to stay true to his ideals, but he quickly loses his morals. Tiago also is drawn into the conflict to support his drug addiction, siding with Li'l Ze. The war is still ongoing a year later, in 1981, the origin forgotten. Both sides enlist more "soldiers" and Li'l Zé gives the Runts weapons. One day, Li'l Zé has Rocket take photos of him and his gang. A reporter publishes the photos, a significant scoop since no outsiders can safely enter the City of God anymore. Rocket believes Li'l Zé will kill him for publishing the photo of him and his gang. The reporter takes Rocket in for the night, and he loses his virginity to her. Unbeknownst to him, Li'l Zé, jealous of Ned's media fame, is pleased with the photos and with his own increased notoriety. Rocket returns to the city for more photographs. Rocket finds himself caught between Zé's gang and the arriving police, who quickly withdraw when they realize they are outnumbered and outgunned. Rocket is surprised that Zé asks him to take pictures, but as he prepares to take the photo, Carrot's gang arrives. In the ensuing gunfight, Ned kills Tiago but is then killed by a boy who has infiltrated Carrot's gang to avenge his father, a policeman whom Ned shot during a bank robbery. The police capture Li'l Zé and Carrot and plan to show Carrot off to the media. Since Li'l Zé has been bribing the police, they take all of Li'l Zé's money and let him go, but Rocket secretly photographs the scene. The Runts kill Zé to avenge the Runt killed at the behest of Zé; and they intend to take over his criminal enterprise for themselves. Rocket contemplates whether to publish the cops' photo, expose corruption, and become famous, or the picture of Li'l Zé's dead body, which will get him an internship at the newspaper. He decides on the latter, and the Runts walk around the City of God, making a hit list of the dealers they plan to kill to take over the drug business.

The film takes place in Edo in the year 1630. A rōnin called Tsugumo Hanshirō arrives at the estate of the Iyi clan and says that he wishes to commit seppuku within the courtyard of the palace. To deter him, Saitō Kageyu, the daimyō ' s senior counselor, tells Hanshirō the story of another rōnin, Chijiiwa Motome — formerly of the same clan as Hanshirō. Saitō scornfully recalls the practice of rōnin requesting the chance to commit seppuku on the clan's land, but in fact hoping to be turned away and given alms. Motome had arrived at the palace a few months earlier and made the same request as Hanshirō. Infuriated by the rising number of "suicide bluffs", the three most senior samurai of the clan—Yazaki Hayato, Kawabe Umenosuke, and Omodaka Hikokuro—persuaded Saitō to force Motome to follow through and kill himself, ignoring his request for a couple of days delay. Upon examining Motome's swords, his blades were found to be made of bamboo. Enraged that any samurai would "pawn his soul", the House of Iyi forced Motome to disembowel himself with his own bamboo blade, making his death slow, agonizingly painful, and deeply humiliating. Despite this warning, Hanshirō insists that he has never heard of Motome and says that he is sincere in wanting to commit seppuku. Just as the ceremony is about to begin, Hanshirō is asked to name the samurai who shall behead him when the ritual is complete. To the shock of Saitō and the Iyi retainers, Hanshirō successively names Hayato, Umenosuke, and Hikokuro — the three samurai who coerced the suicide of Motome. When messengers are dispatched to summon them, all three decline to come, with each claiming to be too ill to attend. While waiting for the messengers to return, Hanshirō recounts his life story to the assembled samurai, starting with the admission that he did know Motome. In 1619, his clan was abolished by the Shōgun. His lord decided to commit seppuku and, as his most senior samurai, Hanshirō planned to die alongside him. To prevent this, Hanshirō's closest friend took his place instead, leaving Hanshirō responsible for his teenage son, Motome. In order to support Motome and his own daughter Miho, Hanshirō rented a hovel in the slums of Edo, taking up work as a fan and umbrella craftsman while Motome became a teacher. Realizing the love between Motome and Miho, Hanshirō arranged for them to marry. Soon after, they had a son, Kingo. When Miho became ill with tuberculosis, Motome could not bear the thought of losing her and did everything to raise money to hire a doctor. When Kingo also fell ill, Motome left one morning, saying he planned to take out a loan from a moneylender. Later that evening, Hayato, Umenosuke, and Hikokuro brought home Motome's mutilated body, and described and mocked his death before leaving. It is now clear that Motome had requested a delay so he could visit his family and put his affairs in order. A few days later, Kingo died, and Miho lost the will to live and died, leaving Hanshirō with nothing. Finishing his story, Hanshirō explains that his sole desire is to join Motome, Miho, and Kingo in death. He explains, however, that they have every right to ask him whether justice has been exacted for their deaths. Therefore, Hanshirō asks Saitō if he has any statement of regret to convey to Motome, Miho, and Kingo. He explains that, if Saitō does so, he will die without saying another word. Saitō refuses, calling Motome an "extortionist" who deserved to die. After provoking Saitō's laughter by calling the samurai moral code bushido a facade, Hanshirō reveals the last part of his story. Before coming to the Iyi estate, he tracked down Hayato and Umenosuke and cut off their topknots. Hikokuro then visited Hanshirō's hovel and, with great respect, challenged him to a duel. After a brief but tense sword fight, Hikokuro suffers a double disgrace: his sword is broken and his topknot is taken as well. As proof, Hanshirō removes their labelled topknots from his kimono and casts them upon the palace courtyard. He mocks the Iyi clan, saying that if the men he humiliated were true samurai, they would not be hiding out of shame. He also questions the clan's honor and bushido itself, pointing out that they should not have ignored Motome's request for a delay to his seppuku without investigating the reason why he asked, but they were too preoccupied with their supposed honor to care. Having badly lost face, an enraged Saitō calls Hanshirō a madman and orders the retainers to kill him. In a fierce battle, Hanshirō kills four samurai, wounds eight, and contemptuously smashes into pieces the antique suit of armor which symbolizes the glorious history of the House of Iyi. Finally, the clan corners Hanshirō and prepares to kill him not with swords, but with three matchlock guns. As Hanshirō commits seppuku, he is simultaneously shot by all three gunmen. Terrified that the Iyi clan will be abolished if word gets out that "a half starved rōnin" killed so many of their retainers, Saitō announces that all deaths caused by Hanshirō shall be explained by "illness". At the same time, a messenger returns reporting that Hikokuro had killed himself the day before, while Hayato and Umenosuke are both faking illness. Saitō angrily orders that Hayato and Umenosuke be forced to commit seppuku as atonement for losing their topknots. Those three deaths are also to be attributed to "illness". As the suit of armor is cleaned and re-erected, a new entry in the official records of the House of Iyi is read by a voiceover. Hanshirō is declared to have been mentally unstable, and he and Motome are both listed as having died through harakiri. The Shōgun is said to have issued a personal commendation to the lord of the Iyi clan for how his councilors handled the suicide bluffs of Motome and Hanshirō. At the end of his letter, the Shōgun praises the House of Iyi and their samurai as exemplars of bushido. As workers scrub the blood from the ground of the clan's estate, one of them finds a severed topknot and places it in his work bucket.

On Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey contemplates suicide. The prayers of his family and friends reach Heaven, where guardian angel second class Clarence Odbody is assigned to save George to earn his wings. Clarence is shown flashbacks of George's life, beginning when 12 year-old George rescued his younger brother Harry from drowning in a frozen pond, leaving George deaf in his left ear. George later saves pharmacist Mr. Gower from accidentally poisoning a customer. Before starting college, George plans a world tour. He is reintroduced to Mary Hatch, who has had a crush on him since childhood. When his father dies from a stroke, George postpones his travel to settle the family business, Bailey Brothers Building and Loan. Avaricious board member Henry F. Potter, who owns most of the town's businesses, seeks to dissolve the company, but the board of directors votes to keep it open if George runs it. George works alongside his uncle Billy and gives his tuition savings to Harry, with the understanding Harry will run the company when he graduates. When Harry returns from college married and with a job offer from his father-in-law, George resigns himself to running the Building and Loan. George and Mary rekindle their relationship and marry, but forego their honeymoon and use the money to keep the company solvent during a run on the bank. Under George, the company establishes Bailey Park, a housing development to compete with Potter's slums. Potter entices George with a high-paying job, but George rebuffs him when he realizes that Potter's goal is to close the Building and Loan. On Christmas Eve, the town prepares a hero's welcome for Harry, a Navy fighter pilot awarded the Medal of Honor for preventing a kamikaze attack on a troopship. Billy goes to deposit $8,000 ($ 143,068 in 2025) of the Building and Loan's money in Potter's bank. He taunts Potter with a newspaper headline about Harry, but absentmindedly wraps the cash in Potter's newspaper. Potter keeps the money while Billy cannot recall how he misplaced it. While a bank examiner performs an audit, George fruitlessly retraces Billy's steps. Frustrated and angered by Billy's blunder, which may lead to scandal and jail, George resents the sacrifices he has made and the family that has kept him trapped in Bedford Falls. He appeals to Potter for a loan, but has only a meager life insurance policy for collateral. Potter scoffs that George is worth more dead than alive and, accusing him of bank fraud, phones the police. George flees Potter's office, gets drunk at a bar and prays for help. Contemplating suicide, he goes to a bridge, but before he can jump, Clarence falls into the water below and George rescues him. When George wishes he had never been born, Clarence takes him into an alternate timeline in which he never existed and Bedford Falls is called Pottersville, an unsavory town occupied by sleazy entertainment venues and callous people. No one knows George, including his mother and Mary, who is an " old maid ". He learns that Uncle Billy was committed to an institution after the Building and Loan failed and Mr. Gower was jailed for manslaughter for poisoning the customer. George also discovers Harry's grave; without George to save him, Harry drowned as a child, and without Harry to save them, the troops aboard the transport were killed. George races back to the bridge and begs Clarence, and then God, for his life back. His wish granted, he gleefully rushes home to await his arrest. Meanwhile, Mary and Billy have rallied the townspeople, who donate more than enough to replace the missing money. Harry arrives and toasts George as "the richest man in town". Among the donations is a gift from Clarence, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, with the inscription, "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings!" When a bell on their Christmas tree rings, George's youngest daughter, Zuzu, explains that "every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings."

In 1993, Rajakannu and Sengeni, a couple from the Irula tribe, earn a living catching rats and venomous snakes for upper-caste landowners. After Rajakannu is called to remove a snake from a wealthy man's house, jewellery is reported stolen from the residence, and suspicion falls on him. Police raid his home, assault and unlawfully detain the pregnant Sengeni, and arrest Rajakannu's brother Iruttappan, his sister Pachaiammal and his brother-in-law Mosakutty. All are tortured in an attempt to reveal Rajakannu's whereabouts. Sengeni is eventually released, while Rajakannu remains in custody and is tortured into confessing. She is later told that Rajakannu, Iruttappan and Mosakutty have escaped from custody, and the police continue to harass her for information. Mythra, who teaches adults from the Irula community, learns of Chandru, a Communist lawyer known for defending tribal people, and persuades him to help Sengeni. Chandru files a habeas corpus petition and, citing the Rajan case, successfully requests witness examinations. The Solicitor General argues that the three men escaped from custody, relying on police testimony. Suspecting perjury, Chandru seeks an investigation into Sub-Inspector Gurumurthy, head constable Veerasamy and constable Kirubakaran. The case is later taken over by Advocate General Ram Mohan, who maintains that the men fled to Kerala. Varadarajulu, Iruttappan's employer, claims Iruttappan confessed to robbery while in hiding. Chandru discovers that the police had travelled to Kerala to telephone Varadarajulu and that Gurumurthy had impersonated Iruttappan. At Chandru's request, the court appoints Inspector General Perumalsamy to lead the investigation. After weeks of searching, Chandru and Perumalsamy examine records near the Pondicherry border and discover that Rajakannu's unidentified body had been recovered and cremated the day after his supposed escape. Convinced he died in custody, Chandru consults the pathologist who performed the post-mortem at JIPMER. Although the injuries were recorded as consistent with a road accident, Veerasamy privately admits to Ram Mohan that Rajakannu died from torture. Gurumurthy then instructed the officers to claim that all three prisoners had escaped and to stage Rajakannu's death as an accident, while Iruttappan and Mosakutty were transferred to a jail in Kerala. As Chandru, Mythra, Sengeni and the Irular community campaign for justice, Chandru uncovers further evidence of police coercion and misconduct. Mythra locates Iruttappan and Mosakutty in a jail near Dharapuram, where they testify about the torture they suffered and Rajakannu's death. Perumalsamy reveals that the officers accepted bribes from the real thief to conceal the truth. Chandru also presents evidence linking tyre marks and footprints at the scene to the police vehicle and officers involved. After hearing the evidence, the court orders an expedited murder trial against the three policemen and their immediate arrest. It commends Chandru and Perumalsamy for their efforts and awards compensation to the victims and their families. Sengeni later thanks Chandru, who attends the inauguration of her new house, fulfilling Rajakannu's dream of providing her with a home.

In 1939, in Fascist Italy, young Italian Jew Guido Orefice arrives to work in Arezzo, Tuscany, with his uncle Eliseo in a hotel restaurant. He is comical and sharp, and falls in love with the gentile girl Dora. Later, Guido sees her again in the city where she is a teacher and set to be engaged to Rodolfo, a rich but arrogant local government official with whom he regularly clashes. Guido sets up many "coincidental" incidents to show his interest in Dora. Eventually, Dora gives in to Guido's affection and promise. Guido steals her from her engagement party on Uncle Eliseo's horse, Robin Hood, humiliating Dora's fiancé and mother. They are later married, have a son, Giosuè, and run a bookstore. Dora's mother visits once, meeting her grandson. In 1944, at the height of World War II, Nazi Germany occupies Northern Italy. Guido, his uncle Eliseo, and Giosuè are arrested on Giosuè's birthday. They and many other Italian Jews are forced onto a train bound for a concentration camp. After confronting a guard about her husband and son and being told there is no mistake, Dora insists on boarding the train to stay with her family. However, as men and women are separated in the camp, Dora never sees her family during their internment. Guido pulls off various stunts, such as hijacking the camp's loudspeaker to send messages, symbolic or literal, to Dora to assure her that he and Giosuè are safe. Eliseo is murdered in a gas chamber shortly after their arrival. Giosuè narrowly avoids being gassed himself as he hates to bathe, and did not follow the other children when they had been ordered to "take a shower". Guido consistently hides the true situation from Giosuè. He convinces him that the camp is a complicated game in which he must perform the tasks given to him. Each task earns them points and whoever reaches one thousand points first wins a tank. He is told that if he cries, complains for his mother, or says that he is hungry, he will lose points, while quiet boys who hide from the guards earn extra points. Giosuè is at times reluctant to go along with the game, but Guido continually encourages him. One day, Guido takes advantage of the appearance of visiting German officers and their families to show Giosuè that other children are hiding as part of the game. Then he tricks a German nanny into thinking Giosuè is one of her charges to feed him while Guido serves the German officers. Giosuè must stay quiet at all times for this part of the game and simply follow the other children, as he cannot speak German. Giosuè is almost exposed as a prisoner when he accidentally says "thank you" in Italian to another server at dinner. However, when the server returns with his superior, Guido provides a ruse by teaching all of the German children how to say "thank you" in Italian, saving Giosuè. Guido maintains this story through the end when, in the chaos of shutting down the camp as the Allied forces approach, he tells his son to stay hidden until everybody has left, the final task in the competition before the promised tank is his. Guido goes to find Dora but is caught by a German soldier. An officer orders his execution, so he is led off by the soldier. As he is walking to his death, Guido passes by Giosuè one last time and winks, still in character and playing the game. Guido is then shot dead in an alleyway. The next morning, Giosuè emerges from hiding, just as a U.S. Army unit led by a Sherman tank arrives and the camp is liberated. An overjoyed Giosuè, unaware of his father's death, believes he won the tank, and an American soldier allows him to ride with him on it. Giosuè soon spots Dora in the procession leaving the camp and reunites with her. While the young Giosuè excitedly tells his mother about how he had won a tank, just as his father had promised, the movie's narrator reveals himself as the adult Giosuè, reminiscing on the sacrifices his father made for him.

In a period of galactic civil war, Rebel Alliance spies have stolen blueprints to the Death Star, a colossal space station built by the Galactic Empire that is capable of destroying entire planets. Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, secretly a rebel leader, has obtained the schematics, but her ship is intercepted and boarded by Imperial forces under the command of Darth Vader. Leia is taken prisoner, but the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO escape with the plans, crash-landing on the nearby desert planet of Tatooine. Darth Vader orders his troops to pursue the droids. The droids are captured by Jawa traders, who sell them to the moisture farmers Owen and Beru Lars and their nephew, Luke Skywalker. While Luke is cleaning R2-D2, he discovers a recording of Leia requesting help from a former ally named Obi-Wan Kenobi. R2-D2 goes missing, and while searching for him, Luke is attacked by Sand People. He is rescued by the elderly hermit Ben Kenobi, who soon reveals himself as Obi-Wan. He tells Luke about his past as one of the Jedi Knights, peacekeepers of the former Galactic Republic, who drew mystical abilities from the Force and were all but exterminated by the Empire. Luke learns that his father, also a Jedi, fought alongside Obi-Wan during the Clone Wars until Vader, Obi-Wan's former pupil, turned to the dark side of the Force and murdered him. Obi-Wan gives Luke his father's lightsaber, the signature weapon of the Jedi. R2-D2 plays Leia's full message, in which she begs Obi-Wan to take the Death Star plans to Alderaan and give them to her father, a fellow veteran, for analysis. Luke initially declines Obi-Wan's offer to accompany him to Alderaan and learn the ways of the Force. However, he quickly changes his mind after Imperial stormtroopers murder his family and destroy his home while searching for the droids. Seeking a way off the planet, Luke and Obi-Wan travel with the droids to the city of Mos Eisley and hire the smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee partner Chewbacca, pilots of the starship Millennium Falcon. On the way to Alderaan, Obi-Wan begins Luke's training in the use of the Force. Meanwhile, the Death Star commander Grand Moff Tarkin has Alderaan obliterated by the station's superlaser. The Death Star's tractor beam captures the Falcon, but Luke and his companions manage to avoid detection and infiltrate the station. Vader, however, senses Obi-Wan's presence, and begins searching for him. As Obi-Wan deactivates the tractor beam, Luke persuades Han and Chewbacca to help him rescue Leia, who is scheduled for execution after refusing to reveal the location of the rebel base. After disabling the tractor beam, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself in a lightsaber duel against Vader, which allows the rest of the group to escape. Using a tracking device placed on the Falcon, the Empire locates the rebel base on the moon Yavin 4. Analysis of the Death Star schematics reveals a weakness in a small exhaust port leading directly to the station's reactor. Luke joins the Rebellion's X-wing squadron in a desperate attack against the Death Star, while Han and Chewbacca leave to pay off a debt to the crime lord Jabba the Hutt. In the ensuing battle, Vader leads a squadron of TIE fighters and destroys several rebel ships, while Tarkin prepares to destroy Yavin 4 with the Death Star. Han and Chewbacca unexpectedly return in the Falcon, knocking Vader's ship off course before he can shoot Luke down. Guided by the voice of Obi-Wan's spirit, Luke uses the Force to aim his torpedoes into the exhaust port, causing the Death Star to explode moments before it can fire on the rebel base. In a triumphant ceremony, Leia awards Luke and Han medals for their heroism.

Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents Akio and Yūko travel to their new home. Akio, driving down an unexpected road, ends up in front of a tunnel leading to what appears to be an abandoned resort town, which her parents insist on exploring over Chihiro's protests. Upon finding a seemingly empty restaurant stocked with food, Chihiro's parents immediately begin to eat. While exploring further, Chihiro finds an enormous bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, spirits begin to appear, and Chihiro discovers that her parents have been transformed into pigs and that she cannot cross the now-flooded river. Haku finds Chihiro and instructs her to ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji, a yōkai spirit commanding soot sprites known as susuwatari. Kamaji instead asks a worker named Lin to bring Chihiro to Kamaji's master Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse and who cursed Chihiro's parents. Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away but eventually gives her a work contract. As Chihiro signs the contract with her name (千尋), Yubaba takes away the second kanji in her name, renaming her Sen (千). She soon forgets her real name, and Haku later explains that Yubaba controls people by taking their names; if Chihiro completely forgets hers like he once did, she will never be able to leave the spirit world. The other workers, except for Kamaji and Lin, frequently mock Sen. While working, she invites a silent creature named No-Face inside, believing him to be a customer. The spirit of a polluted river arrives as Sen's first customer. After she cleans him, he gives her a magic emetic dumpling as a token of gratitude. Meanwhile, No-Face demands food from the bathhouse workers, granting gold copied from the river spirit in exchange. However, when Sen declines the gold and leaves to find Haku, No-Face angrily swallows some workers. Sen sees paper shikigami spirits attacking a dragon and recognizes the dragon as a metamorphosed Haku. When the seriously injured Haku crashes into Yubaba's penthouse, Sen follows him upstairs. A shikigami that stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Yubaba's twin sister Zeniba, who turns Yubaba's son, Boh, into a mouse and creates a false copy of him. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her that carries a deadly curse. Haku strikes the shikigami, causing Zeniba to vanish. Sen and Haku fall into the boiler room, where she feeds him part of the emetic dumpling. He vomits up the seal and a slug that a disgusted Sen kills. Sen resolves to return the seal and apologize to Zeniba. She confronts an engorged No-Face and feeds him the rest of the dumpling, forcing him to regurgitate the workers. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, and Lin helps them leave. Sen, No-Face, and Boh travel to see Zeniba using train tickets from Kamaji. Meanwhile, Yubaba nearly orders Sen's parents slaughtered, but Haku reveals Boh is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Yubaba agrees, but only if Sen can pass a final test. The train crosses a sea to a land where Sen meets Zeniba, who reveals that Yubaba used the slug to control Haku. Zeniba tells Sen that she cannot help her parents, but she makes her a magic protective hairband. Using his dragon form, Haku flies Sen and Boh back, while No-Face decides to stay with Zeniba. Mid-flight, Sen recalls falling into the Kohaku River years earlier and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku's real identity as the spirit of the Kohaku River and restoring his memory. When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba tests Sen, asking her to identify her parents among a group of pigs. After she answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, her contract disappears and she is given back her real name. Haku takes her to the now-dry riverbed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro crosses the riverbed to her restored parents. Shortly before leaving for her new home, Chihiro looks back at the tunnel, still wearing her hairband from Zeniba.

In 2029, Earth has been ravaged by the war between the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet and the human resistance. Skynet sends the T-1000 —an advanced, shape-shifting prototype Terminator made of virtually indestructible liquid metal —back in time to kill resistance leader John Connor when he is a child. To protect John, the resistance sends back a reprogrammed T-800 Terminator, a less advanced metal endoskeleton covered in living tissue. In 1995 Los Angeles, John's mother Sarah is incarcerated in Pescadero State Hospital for her violent efforts to prevent " Judgment Day "—the prophesied events of August 29, 1997, when Skynet will gain sentience and, in response to its creators' attempts to deactivate it, incite a nuclear holocaust. John, living with foster parents, also considers Sarah delusional and resents her efforts to prepare him for his future role. The T-1000 locates John in a shopping mall, but the T-800 intervenes, coming to John's aid and enabling his escape. John calls to warn his foster parents, but the T-800 deduces that the T-1000 has already killed them. Realizing the T-800 is programmed to obey him, John forbids it to kill people and orders it to help him rescue Sarah from the T-1000. The T-800 and John intercept Sarah as she attempts to escape the hospital. Initially horrified that the T-800 resembles the Terminator sent to kill her in 1984, she joins them and escapes the pursuing T-1000. Sarah uses the T-800's knowledge of the future to learn that a revolutionary microprocessor, being developed by Cyberdyne engineer Miles Dyson, will be crucial to Skynet's creation. Over the course of their journey, Sarah sees the T-800 serving as a friend and father figure to John, who teaches it catchphrases and hand signs while encouraging it to become more human-like. Sarah plans to escape to Mexico with John, but a nightmare about Judgment Day prompts her to decide to kill Dyson. She attacks him in his home but cannot bring herself to go through with it and relents. John arrives and reconciles with Sarah while the T-800 explains to Dyson the future consequences of his work. Dyson reveals that his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and severed arm of the 1984 Terminator. Believing that his work must be destroyed, Dyson helps Sarah, John, and the T-800 break into Cyberdyne, retrieve the CPU and the arm, and set explosives to destroy the lab. The police assault the building and fatally shoot Dyson, but he detonates the explosives as he dies. The T-1000 pursues the surviving trio, cornering them in a steel mill. Sarah and John split up to escape while the T-1000 mangles the T-800 and briefly deactivates it by destroying its power source. The T-1000 assumes Sarah's appearance and voice to lure out John, but Sarah intervenes and, along with the reactivated T-800, pushes it into a vat of molten steel, where it disintegrates. John also throws the 1984 Terminator's arm and CPU into the vat. The T-800 explains that it must also be destroyed to prevent it from serving as a foundation for Skynet. Despite John's tearful protests, the T-800 persuades him that its destruction is the only way to protect their future. Sarah, having come to respect the T-800, shakes its hand and lowers it into the vat. The T-800 gives John a thumbs-up as it is incinerated. As Sarah drives down a highway with John, she reflects on her renewed hope for an unknown future, musing that if the T-800 could learn the value of life, so can humanity.