In 1975, a time-traveling agent, whose face is not seen, suffers severe burns while trying and failing to disarm a bomb in a public building's basement. An unseen person helps him activate his time-travel device, called a "field kit", allowing him to escape to his agency's headquarters in 1992. He receives reconstructive surgery for his burns, but is told he will now look and sound different. He is further warned about the risk of mental instability from his long career. Once he recovers, the agent is sent on his final mission before retirement and goes undercover as bartender in 1970 New York City, where he meets John, a bitter columnist who writes under the pen name "The Unmarried Mother". When pressed on how he writes confession stories so well, John begins telling his life story. A baby was found on the steps of a Cleveland orphanage in 1945, where she was taken in and given the name Jane. Jane exceled both physically and academically in high school, and upon graduation was recruited by Agent Robertson to join the space program as a concubine, but was disqualified after a medical examination. In college, Jane fell in love with a mysterious man, but was abandoned shortly into the relationship. Jane went back to Robertson to try to join the space program, but Robertson admitted that he was using the space program as a front to recruit Jane for an elite covert agency that recruits people with no past and no certain future. Jane joined the agency, but was forced to drop out when she discovered she was pregnant. Jane gave birth to a baby girl at a hospital, telling the baby "you are the best thing that's ever happened to me", but, during the delivery doctors discovered that she was intersex. Complications during delivery rendered the female organs unviable, and the physicians began the process of gender reassignment surgery. Jane spent almost a year undergoing further treatment to become male, during which time the baby was kidnapped from the hospital by an older man. After being rejected from the space program again, Jane renamed himself John and relocated to New York City, eventually becoming a columnist and still harboring resentment toward the man who impregnated and abandoned him when he was Jane. When John finishes his story, the agent reveals that he works for the Temporal Bureau, in which Robertson is either a high-ranking officer or the head. He offers John the chance to kill his mysterious lover, who the agent thinks may be the Fizzle Bomber, in exchange for John joining the bureau as an agent. Together they go back to 1963, where John encounters and falls in love with Jane (his past self), realizing that he was his past self's lover all along. John, determined to change the past, goes ahead with the relationship and vows not to abandon himself. Meanwhile, the agent illegally returns to 1975 and helps his wounded past self, which Robertson allows as long as the agent kidnaps Jane's baby and delivers it to the Cleveland orphanage in 1945, completing the bootstrap paradox that makes John both of his own parents. Returning to 1963, the agent compels John to leave Jane and join the agency in 1985, as their troubled past is what will make them so effective at saving lives. They travel to headquarters, where John passes out and is hospitalized. Informed his field kit will decommission after one final jump, the agent retires to New York City in 1975, but the kit fails to decommission. With information left for him by Robertson, he finds the Bomber, only in his horror to discover that it is his future self. The bomber says that all his bombings were designed to prevent much greater disasters, and that the field kit still working is evidence that he was predestined to become the bomber. The bomber gives the agent a chance not to kill him and break the cycle, but the agent shoots him. The agent records a message to be delivered to John at headquarters when he wakes up in 1985, repeating the line "you are the best thing that's ever happened to me" that Jane told her baby. He then takes off his robe to reveal scars from gender reassignment surgery, confirming he is an older John—an orchestrated paradox created by Robertson.

In the future, all forests on Earth have become extinct from careless environmental exploitation. As many specimens as possible have been preserved in a series of enormous greenhouse-like geodesic domes serving as closed ecological systems attached to large cargo spaceships, forming part of a fleet of eight " American Airlines Space Freighters", stationed outside the orbit of Saturn. Freeman Lowell, one of four crewmen, is the resident botanist and ecologist on one of these ships, the Valley Forge. He carefully maintains a variety of plants for their eventual return to Earth and the reforestation of the planet. He spends most of his time in the domes, cultivating the crops and attending to the animal life. The crew of each ship receives orders to jettison and destroy their domes and return the freighters to commercial service. After four of the six Valley Forge domes are jettisoned and destroyed with nuclear charges, Lowell rebels and opts to save his ship's plants and animals. He kills John Wolf, one of his crewmates who arrives to plant explosives in his favorite dome, and his right leg is seriously injured in the process. He then jettisons and triggers the destruction of the other remaining dome to trap and kill the remaining two crewmen. Enlisting the aid of the ship's three service robots, Lowell stages a fake premature explosion as a ruse and sends the Valley Forge speeding toward Saturn in an attempt to hijack the ship and flee with the last forest dome. He then reprograms the drones to perform surgery on his leg and sets the Valley Forge on a risky course through Saturn's rings. Later, as the ship endures the rough passage, Drone 3 is lost, but the ship and its remaining dome emerge relatively undamaged on the other side of the rings. Lowell gives the surviving drones the names Dewey (Drone 1) and Huey (Drone 2), while the lost Drone 3 is named Louie (a nod to Disney characters Huey, Dewey, and Louie). Lowell, Huey, and Dewey set out into deep space to maintain the forest. Lowell reprograms Huey and Dewey to plant trees and play poker. He also has them bury Wolf in the bio-dome. Lowell begins speaking to them constantly, as if they are children. Huey is damaged when Lowell accidentally collides with him while driving a buggy recklessly, and Dewey sentimentally refuses to leave Huey's side during the repairs. As time passes, Lowell is horrified when he discovers that his bio-dome is dying, but is unable to come up with a solution to the problem. When the Berkshire —another space freighter waiting to see if the Valley Forge has survived the trip around Saturn—eventually reestablishes contact, he knows that his crimes will soon be discovered. It is then that he realizes a lack of light has restricted plant growth, and he races to install lamps to correct this situation. In an effort to save the last forest before the Berkshire arrives, Lowell jettisons the bio-dome to safety. He then detonates nuclear charges, destroying the Valley Forge, the damaged Huey, and himself in the process. The final scene is of the now well-lit forest greenhouse drifting into deep space, with Dewey tenderly caring for it, holding Lowell's battered old watering can.

In a near-future dystopia, Detroit is on the brink of social and financial collapse. Overwhelmed by crime and dwindling resources, the city grants the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) control of the Detroit Police Department. OCP senior president Dick Jones demonstrates ED-209, a law-enforcement robot designed to supplant the police. ED-209 malfunctions and brutally kills a volunteer, allowing ambitious junior executive Bob Morton to introduce OCP's chairman ("the Old Man") to his own project — RoboCop. Meanwhile, police officer Alex Murphy is transferred to the Metro West precinct. Murphy and his new partner, Anne Lewis, pursue notorious criminal Clarence Boddicker and his gang: Emil Antonowsky, Leon Nash, Joe Cox, and Steve Minh. Lewis is incapacitated while the gang ambushes and tortures Murphy until Boddicker fatally shoots him. Morton has Murphy's corpse converted into RoboCop, a heavily armored cyborg with no memory of his former life. RoboCop is programmed with three prime directives: Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law. A fourth prime directive, Directive 4, is classified. Assigned to Metro West, RoboCop is hailed by the media for his brutally efficient campaign against crime. Lewis suspects that he is Murphy, recognizing the unique way he holsters his gun (a trick Murphy learned to impress his son). After experiencing a nightmare of Murphy's death during maintenance, RoboCop encounters Lewis, who addresses him as Murphy. While on patrol, RoboCop arrests Antonowsky, who recognizes Murphy's mannerisms, furthering RoboCop's recall. RoboCop then uses the police database to identify Antonowsky's associates and review Murphy's police record. He recalls further memories while exploring Murphy's former home, his wife and son having moved away after his death. Elsewhere, Jones gets Boddicker to murder Bob Morton as revenge for Morton's attempt to usurp his position at OCP. RoboCop tracks Boddicker's gang to a cocaine factory. After a shootout in which Minh is killed, RoboCop arrests and brutally interrogates Boddicker until he admits to working for Jones. RoboCop attempts to kill Boddicker for revenge until his programming directs him to uphold the law. RoboCop attempts to arrest Jones at the OCP Tower, but Directive 4 is activated, a fail-safe measure to neutralize RoboCop were he to act against an OCP executive. Jones admits his culpability in Morton's death and releases an ED-209 to destroy RoboCop. Although he escapes, RoboCop is attacked by the police force on OCP's order and is badly damaged. He is rescued by Lewis, who brings him to an abandoned steel mill to repair himself. Angered by OCP's underfunding and short-staffing, the police force goes on strike, causing Detroit to descend into violent chaos. Jones frees Boddicker and his remaining gang, arming them with high-powered weaponry to destroy RoboCop. The gang are quickly eliminated at the steel mill, but Lewis is badly injured in the shootout. RoboCop confronts Jones at the OCP Tower during a board meeting, revealing the truth behind Morton's murder. Jones takes the Old Man hostage, who responds by firing him, nullifying Directive 4. RoboCop shoots Jones, causing him to crash through a window and fall several stories to his death. The Old Man compliments RoboCop's shooting and asks his name. He replies, "Murphy."

Fifty years after a nuclear holocaust, mankind is decimated and the surviving nations—the American western-influenced Market and the Soviet-Russian-influenced Confederation—have agreed to outlaw traditional open war. In their place, disputes are settled with gladiator-style matches between giant robots operated by pilots called "robot jox" who are contracted to fight ten matches. The Confederation champion is Alexander, who has killed his last nine opponents thanks in part to a spy in the Market leaking information to the Confederation. The Market's champion, Achilles has won nine fights and will fight his final match against Alexander for the territory of Alaska. Achilles is supported by robot designer "Doc" Matsumoto and strategist Tex Conway, the only jox to win all ten of his contract fights. As Achilles gets the upper hand in the match, Alexander launches a rocket fist at him. The projectile goes out of control and heads toward the bleachers. Achilles intercepts the projectile but his robot takes the full force of the impact and is knocked into the crowd, killing over 300 people. The referees declare the match a draw and order a rematch, but Achilles, shaken by what happened, declares this was his contractual tenth match and announces his retirement. He goes to live with his brother Philip and his family, and finds he is publicly branded a traitor and a coward. Meanwhile, a new jox is chosen to face Alexander, a genetically engineered "gen jox" named Athena, who is the first female jox. Worried for Athena and attracted to her, Achilles returns to the Market and agrees to fight Alexander again, infuriating Athena. As Achilles' robot is rebuilt, Matsumoto refuses to divulge any knowledge of its new weapons so it cannot be leaked by the spy, and Conway confides in Achilles he believes Matsumoto is the spy. Conway confronts Matsumoto in his office. Matsumoto reveals he has analyzed Conway's final fight and deduced that the "lucky" laser hit Conway claims allowed him to defeat a clearly superior opponent was in fact deliberately aimed; Matsumoto accuses Conway of being a Confederation agent. Conway confesses and shoots Matsumoto, who secretly records the deed as part of the mission briefing. Conway informs the Market leadership that Matsumoto was the spy. On the day of the fight Athena drugs Achilles and steals his jox suit to commandeer the robot. Unable to stop the fight once she takes the field, the Market decides to support her. While watching Matsumoto's briefing on the robot's new weaponry, the footage of Conway killing Matsumoto is played and Conway jumps down the robot's elevator shaft to his death. Alexander takes the field against Athena. Athena takes the early advantage, but Alexander overpowers her and incapacitates the robot. The fight is declared in Alexander's favor and referees order him to stand down. Achilles arrives on the field and takes over the robot from Athena while Alexander smashes the referee hovercraft; the two jox stand to continue the fight. Both robots take to the air and a short space battle ensues. Alexander critically damages Achilles' robot, forcing him to crash land and flee for cover to the arm of Alexander's robot Athena sliced off earlier in the fight. Achilles hotwires the arm to launch its fist at Alexander, destroying his robot. Alexander emerges from the wreckage and the two battle with poles before Achilles finally convinces Alexander a match does not have to end with the death of a jock. Alexander throws down his weapon, and they salute each other with the jox's traditional "crash and burn" thumbs up (this iconic thumbs up would be referenced by Hideo Kojima in his Death Stranding Series).

A spacecraft presumed to be of alien origin is discovered on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, estimated to have been there for nearly 300 years. A team of experts, including marine biologist Dr. Beth Halperin, mathematician Dr. Harry Adams, astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding, psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman and U.S. Navy Captain Harold Barnes, is assembled and taken to the Habitat, a state-of-the-art underwater living environment located near the spacecraft. Examining the spacecraft, the team is perplexed to learn it is not alien at all but rather American in origin. However, its technology far surpasses any in the present day. The ship's computer logs cryptically suggest a mission that originated either in the distant past or future but the team deduces that the long-dead crew was tasked with collecting an item of scientific importance. Norman and Beth discover the ship's logs, with the last entry noting an "unknown event". A holographic reenactment of the event reveals that hundreds of years in the future, the ship encountered a black hole, which apparently led to a crash landing in the ocean, back in the 1700s. Soon after, Norman and the others stumble on a large, yet perfect sphere hovering in the cargo bay. They cannot find any way to probe the inside of the sphere, as the fluid surface seems to be impenetrable. On observation, Norman ominously notes that the sphere reflects everything in the room, except them. When they return to the Habitat, Harry hypothesizes that everyone on this team is fated to die. Harry notes that the black hole is referred to as an "unknown event" in the future logs. However, here in the present, they have knowledge of the historic event, yet it is unable to be explained later on. During the night, Harry returns to the spacecraft and is able to enter the sphere. Norman follows Harry, where he finds him unconscious next to the sphere, and returns him to the Habitat. The next day, the crew discovers a series of numerically encoded messages appearing on the computer screens. The crew is able to decipher them, and comes to believe they are speaking to "Jerry", an alien intelligence from the sphere. They find that Jerry is able to see and hear everything that happens on the Habitat. A powerful typhoon strikes the surface and the Habitat crew is forced to stay in the Habitat several more days. During that time, a series of tragedies strikes the crew, including attacks from aggressive jellyfish and a giant squid and equipment failures in the base that kill Ted, Barnes and the team's support staff. The survivors, Beth, Harry and Norman, believe Jerry is responsible. Norman discovers that they had misinterpreted the initial messages from Jerry, and that the entity speaking to them through the computers is actually Harry himself, transmitted from his mind while he is asleep. Norman and Beth eventually realize that when Harry entered the sphere, he gained the ability to make anything he imagines a reality, and they conclude that all the horrors that have befallen the Habitat were manifestations of Harry's fears. Norman and Beth sedate Harry with enough sleeping drugs to put him into a dreamless sleep to prevent him from doing any further damage. However, when Norman is attacked by a snake, Beth realizes that Harry alone could not have been responsible for everything that had happened on the Habitat and she confronts Norman, accusing him of entering the sphere when he went to retrieve Harry. Beth's suspicions prove to be correct but after experiencing her own nightmarish vision, she confesses to Norman that she too entered the sphere. When rejoined by Harry, the group realizes that the crew of the ship must have also entered the sphere and they ended up killing each other after being driven mad by their fears. Under the stress of the situation, Beth has suicidal thoughts, which causes the detonation mechanisms on a store of explosives to engage, threatening to destroy the base and the spacecraft. They race to the Habitat's mini-sub but their combined fears cause them to reappear back in the spacecraft. As a psychologist, Norman is able to see through the illusion. He triggers the mini-sub's undocking process and overrides the others' fears that they will not escape the destruction of the Habitat and spacecraft. The sphere is untouched by the explosions. The mini-sub makes it to the surface as the surface ships return. As Beth, Harry and Norman begin safe decompression, they realize that they will be debriefed and their newfound powers discovered. Fearing humans are not ready for this ability they agree to erase their memories of the event using their powers, to ensure the "unknown event" paradox is resolved. The sphere then rises from the ocean and accelerates away into distant space.

In 2004, four Mexican students arrive at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB); born in Mexico, raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where they attend an underfunded public high school. Oscar Vazquez goes to an Armed Forces Career Center to enlist into the U.S. Army; while he is waiting for his interview, he sees a video announcement and brochures about a Marine Underwater Robotics Competition, an event sponsored by NASA and the United States Armed Forces. Although he distinguishes himself as part of the Carl Hayden High School Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, he is forbidden to join the U.S. Army because of his status as an illegal immigrant; he is recommended not to present himself to any government office to avoid being reported to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Vazquez lies to his mother about his progress in the Army; looking for another way to move ahead in life, he investigates the Underwater Robotics Competition. With no previous formal teaching experience and between jobs, Fredi Cameron interviews for a vacant substitute teacher position at Carl Hayden High School. The principal questions his job stability record, but eventually hires Cameron because of his PhD and engineer credentials. After the interview, while in the school's parking lot, Lorenzo Santillan overrides Cameron's car temperature safety sensor for $20 to avoid a more costly repair job. As part of his normal teaching responsibilities, Cameron is assigned to oversee an engineering club, where he meets Vazquez, who is looking for help to build a remotely operated underwater robot for the UCSB robotics competition. Cameron begrudgingly agrees to help, even though he doesn't feel he is going to remain at the school for long. Vazquez, looking for more kids to join the engineering club, talks to teacher Gwen Kolinsky, who recommends Cristian Arcega. After agreeing to help, Arcega takes the technical lead of the project and sketches an early design of the potential robot. Before starting to build it, Cameron suggests a prototype so they can do a proof of concept model. Cameron starts to learn about the competition rules and requirements, which demands the robot to successfully complete a series of underwater tasks. Kolinsky offers to help teaching him about the PBASIC programming language, to implement the robot's intelligence module. After catching Santillan stealing from the principal's car, Cameron forces him to join the team and the now named Robotics Academic Club, so he can help with the mechanical design and building of the prototype. They later recruit Luis Aranda, for being strong enough to help lift the machine in and out of the pool. Because of a lack of funds to see the project through, the team starts looking for spare parts and asking for donations from the local businesses, which raise $663.53, plus $134.63 given by Cameron himself. The small budget forces them to scale back the original design and to innovate in how the robot is constructed, including the glue which gives the robot its name, "Stinky". Needing to go from Phoenix to Santa Barbara creates problems because three of the four boys were illegal immigrants from Mexico. The day before the competition, they have to fix a critical electrical problem, due to a leak in the case that protected the intelligence module, by using tampons to contain the water. They face several highly funded college teams; the team from MIT is backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. Yet their robot finishes the practical segment of the competition in fourth place with 75 points after missing three tasks. They are still hopeful for a chance to make it into third place because 30% of the total score would be based on the judges' technical evaluation and interview of the teams. The night of the awards ceremony, they are given a Special Achievement award, which the team assumes is their final result. They are later surprised when they are announced as the champions of the event.

Unemployed brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie screen a poorly made film they have produced. When the disappointed patrons become hostile, the brothers release a jar of moths into the theater, which disrupts the showing and allows them to escape without issuing refunds, although they do give one refund to two crying children, which turns out to be the beer money their father gave them. The next day, the two place a live mouse in an empty beer bottle in an attempt to blackmail the local beer store into giving them free beer from Elsinore Brewery, but they are told to take their complaint to Elsinore Brewery's management. When they do so, they are given jobs on the bottling line inspecting for mice in bottles. Meanwhile, the evil Brewmeister Smith is developing a plan to take over the world by adulterating Elsinore beer with a mind control drug which, while rendering the consumer docile, also makes them vulnerable to mind control when certain tones are played. Smith tests this spiked beer on patients of the neighbouring Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane, which is connected to the brewery by tunnels. Bob and Doug learn that the brewery's former owner, John Elsinore, has recently died under mysterious circumstances and his daughter Pam has inherited the family castle and been given full control of the brewery. While exploring the massive complex, they find a shuttered cafeteria containing an old Galactic Border Patrol video game, which supernaturally reveals that Brewmeister Smith murdered John Elsinore and that Pam's bumbling Uncle Claude was involved. Bob recognizes a brewery employee as former hockey great Jean "Rosie" LaRose, who suffered a career-ending nervous breakdown and has fallen under Smith's control. Eventually, Bob and Doug wander into the Brewmeister's operations room while he is away, and Doug takes a floppy disk containing a video of John Elsinore's murder (thinking it is a " new wave EP bootleg " and not realizing the importance of its contents). Smith and Claude tranquilize the brothers and arrange to frame them for murder, concealing Pam and her father's friend, Henry Green, in beer kegs in the back of their sabotaged van, and instruct the brothers to deliver the kegs to a party. Unable to stop, the brothers careen into Lake Ontario. All survive (Pam with apparent memory loss), and the brothers are arrested. The brothers' bizarre antics at their trial cause the judge to declare them insane and put them under Brewmeister Smith's care at the asylum. Rosie soon finds them and helps them escape, and they find and rescue Pam. Having figured out the Brewmeister's plan, Rosie foments an uprising among the brainwashed mental-patient test subjects. The brothers separate for the first time in their lives. Doug and a group of asylum inmates help capture Claude, while Rosie and another group overpower Brewmeister Smith. The spirit of John Elsinore, possessing the brewery's electrical system, electrocutes Smith when he is shoved against his light-up world map. Meanwhile, Smith has locked Pam and Bob in a brewery tank and begins filling it with beer; they escape when Bob consumes all the beer, expanding to a cartoonish size. John Elsinore's ghost warns them that Smith has already shipped tainted beer to Oktoberfest and urges them to prevent the beer from being consumed. The police accompany the brothers back to their house to retrieve their dog, Hosehead, to invade the party. Enticed by promises of free beer and sausages, Hosehead leaps into the air and flies over the city like a superhero. He crashes into the tent at the celebration and, mistaken for a skunk, frightens people away from the tainted beer. In the end, the McKenzie Brothers are heroes and Pam and Rosie find true love. Bob and Doug are allowed to haul away the contaminated beer, apparently to try to drink it all. The film ends with an over-the-credits commentary by Bob and Doug about the film and select crew members as their names scroll by in the credits.

Nada is a homeless man who comes to Los Angeles, California in pursuit of work, where he spots a preacher warning that "they" have recruited the rich and powerful to control humanity. He finds employment at a construction site and befriends his coworker Frank, who invites him to live in a shanty town near a church, where he meets their community leader, Gilbert. A hacker takes over TV broadcasts, alerting that humanity is "their cattle" and the only way to unfold the truth is to shut off the signal at its source. Those watching the broadcast complain of headaches. Nada follows Gilbert and the preacher into the church, discovering a recording of gospel music playing that unbeknownst to Nada obscures a meeting with a group including the hacker. Nada also uncovers equipment and boxes inside, but escapes when he bumps into the preacher. The shantytown and church are destroyed in a police raid, and the hacker and preacher are brutalized by law enforcement officers. Nada retrieves one of the boxes from the church and takes a pair of sunglasses from it, concealing the box in a trash pile. He finds out that they make the world appear monochrome and reveal subliminal messages in the media to consume and conform. They also disclose that many people are ghoulish, bug-eyed aliens hiding under human façades. Additionally, the creatures have wristwatch communicators that allow them to teleport, along with surveillance drones. When aliens at a supermarket realize that Nada can detect them, he is confronted by two alien police officers. He kills them, steals their guns, and enters a bank, where he sees that multiple employees and customers are aliens. He kills several and escapes by taking a human, Holly Thompson, hostage. Nada attempts to persuade her to put on the glasses, but she throws him out of a window. While speaking to the police, Holly realizes that Nada dropped his glasses on her carpet. While Nada retrieves another pair of sunglasses from the trash pile, Frank comes to give him his paycheck and orders him to stay away following Nada's killing spree becoming widespread news. Realizing that Frank is not one of the aliens, Nada pleads with Frank to put on the glasses, but he refuses, and eventually the two come to blows. After a long and painful fight, Nada subdues Frank, and places the glasses on his face. Seeing the aliens for himself, and now believing Nada, Frank agrees to go into hiding together. The two run into Gilbert, who introduces them to the human resistance. They are given contact lenses to replace the sunglasses and learn about the aliens using global warming to xenoform Earth's atmosphere to be more like their homeworld's while depleting its resources for their own gain. They also learn that the aliens have been bribing human collaborators in exchange for wealth. Holly joins the meeting, bringing information about where the signal may be originating. Soon afterwards, the meeting is raided by police, with the majority of those present killed and the survivors scattered. Nada and Frank are cornered in an alley, but Frank activates an alien wristwatch, opening a portal to the alien's spaceport on Earth under Cable 54, an alien-run news network. Coming across a meeting of aliens and wealthy collaborators celebrating the defeat of the human resistance, they are approached by a drifter from the shanty town, now a collaborator. Mistaking them for new recruits, he gives the pair a tour of the facility, where the aliens broadcast a signal that prevents humans from identifying them and their hidden messages. Nada and Frank locate Holly and fight their way to the transmitter on the roof, but Holly, a collaborator responsible for the raid, murders Frank. Nada kills Holly and blasts the transmitter, but is fatally shot by a police helicopter. With the signal shutting down, he gives them the middle finger as he dies from his injuries. Owing to the transmitter being destroyed, humans all over the world discover the aliens hiding among them.

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.

In a small Pennsylvania town in July 1957, teenager Steve Andrews and his girlfriend Jane Martin kiss at a lovers' lane when they see a meteorite crash beyond the next hill. Steve goes looking for it but Barney, an old man living nearby, finds it first. When he pokes the meteorite with a stick, it breaks open and a small jelly-like globule blob inside attaches itself to his hand. In pain and unable to scrape or shake it loose, Barney runs onto the road, where he is nearly struck by Steve's car. Steve and Jane take him to Doctor Hallen. Doctor Hallen anesthetizes the man and sends Steve and Jane back to locate the impact site and gather information. Hallen decides he must amputate the man's arm since it is being phagocytosed. Before he can, the Blob completely absorbs Barney, then Hallen's nurse Kate, and finally the doctor himself, growing redder and larger with each victim. Steve and Jane return in time for Steve to witness the doctor trying to escape through the window with the Blob covering him. They go to the police station and return with Lieutenant Dave Barton and Sergeant Jim Bert, but they find no sign of the Blob nor its victims. The skeptical Bert dismisses Steve's story as a prank. Steve and Jane are taken home by their parents, but they sneak out later. The Blob absorbs a mechanic at a repair shop. During a midnight screening of Daughter of Horror at the Colonial Theater, Steve recruits Tony and his friends to warn people about the Blob. When Steve notices that his father's grocery store is unlocked, he and Jane go inside to investigate. The janitor is nowhere to be seen. The couple is quickly cornered by the Blob and they seek refuge in the walk-in freezer. The Blob oozes under the door but quickly retreats. Steve and Jane gather their friends and set off the town's fire and air-raid alarms. The responding townspeople and police still refuse to believe them. The Blob enters the Colonial Theater and envelops the projectionist, then oozes into the auditorium. Steve is finally vindicated when screaming people flee the theater in panic. Steve, Jane and her kid brother Danny are trapped in a diner, along with the owner and a waitress, as the Blob — now enormous from the dozens of people it has consumed in the theater — engulfs the building. Lieutenant Dave taps into the diner's telephone with his police radio and warns those in the diner to shelter in the cellar before the police bring down a live power line onto the Blob. Dave and Bert plan to electrocute the Blob by felling an overhead high-voltage power line. It discharges a massive electric current into the Blob, which is unaffected, but the diner underneath is set ablaze. When the diner's owner uses a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher on the approaching fire inside, Steve notices that the Blob recoils. Steve remembers it also retreated from the freezer and realizes it cannot tolerate cold temperatures. Shouting, in hopes of being picked up on the open phone line, Steve tells Dave about the Blob's vulnerability to cold. The firemen have a limited supply of CO fire extinguishers. Jane's father, high school principal Henry Martin, leads Steve's friends to break into the school to retrieve its extinguishers. When they return, a brigade of fire extinguisher-armed students, firemen and police drive the Blob away from the diner, freeing the five trapped there. They surround and freeze the Blob. Dave requests authorities send an Air Force heavy-lift cargo aircraft to transport the frozen Blob to the Arctic. Dave realizes that the cold will stop the Blob "as long as the Arctic stays cold", but it won't kill it. Parachutes bearing the Blob on a pallet lower it onto an Arctic ice field with the superimposed words The End morphing into a question mark.

Children Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari grow up in Amorgos, Greece in the 1960s. Enzo challenges Jacques to collect a coin on the sea floor but Jacques refuses. Jacques' father—who harvests shellfish from the seabed using a pump-supplied air hose and helmet —goes diving. His breathing apparatus and rope gets caught and punctured by rocks, and weighed down by water, he drowns in front of the children. By the 1980s, both are well known for their freediving skills. In Sicily, Enzo rescues a trapped diver from a shipwreck. He is a world champion freediver and now wishes to find Jacques and persuade him to return to no-limits freediving to prove he is still the better of the two. Jacques works as a human research subject with dolphins and is participating in research into human physiology in the lakes of the Peruvian Andes, where his bodily responses to cold water immersion are being recorded. Insurance broker Johana Baker visits the station and is introduced to Jacques. After hearing that Jacques will be at the World Diving Championships in Taormina, Sicily, she fabricates an insurance problem that requires her presence there, to meet him again. The two start dating. However, neither of them realizes the extent of Jacques' allure for the deep. Jacques beats Enzo by 1 metre, and Enzo offers him a crystal dolphin as a gift, and a tape measure to show the small difference between their respective records. Johana goes back home to New York but is fired after her deception is discovered; she leaves New York and begins to live with Jacques. She hears the story that mermaids appear to the ones who truly love the sea and lead them to an enchanted place. At the next World Diving Championships, Enzo beats Jacques' record. The depths at which the divers compete enter new territory, and the dive doctor suggests they should stop, to no avail. Jacques is asked to look at a dolphinarium where a new dolphin has been placed, and where the dolphins are no longer performing; surmising that the new dolphin is homesick, the three of them break in at night to liberate and return her to the sea. Back at the competition, other divers attempt to break Enzo's world record, but each fails. Jacques succeeds, reaching 400 feet (120 m). Angered by this, Enzo prepares to break Jacques' record. The doctor warns that the competitors must not go deeper, as the pressure becomes lethal at those depths. Enzo dismisses the doctor and attempts the dive anyway but is unable to return to the surface. Jacques dives to rescue him. Enzo, dying, tells Jacques that he was right and that it is better down there. He begs Jacques to help him back down to the depths, where he belongs. Distraught, Jacques refuses, and Enzo dies in his arms. To honor his dying wish, Jacques takes Enzo's body back down to a depth where the human body becomes negatively buoyant, and lets his friend sink into the depths. Jacques—himself suffering from cardiac arrest after the dive—is rescued by supervising scuba divers and requires his heart to be restarted with a defibrillator before being placed in medical quarters to recover. Jacques appears to be recovering from the diving accident but later experiences a hallucinatory dream in which the ceiling collapses and the room fills with water, and he finds himself in the ocean depths with dolphins. After discovering she is pregnant, Johana returns to check up on Jacques but finds him lying unresponsive in his bed with bloody ears and a bloody nose. Johana attempts to help him, but Jacques gets up and walks to the diving boat and gets suited up for one final dive. Desperately, Johana begs Jacques not to go, saying she is alive but whatever has happened at the depths is not, but he says he has to. She announces she is pregnant and begs Jacques to stay. However, she eventually lets him go. The two embrace and Johana breaks down crying. Jacques then places the release cord for the dive ballast in her hand, and—still sobbing—she pulls it, sending him down to the depths. Jacques descends and floats for a moment, staring into the darkness. A dolphin then appears, and Jacques lets go of his harness, swimming away with it into the darkness.

In 1914, aliens known as Mondoshawans meet their contact on Earth, a priest of a secret order, at an ancient Egyptian temple. They take the only weapon capable of defeating a great evil that appears every 5,000 years, promising to protect it and return it before the great evil's re-emergence. The weapon consists of the four classical elements, as four engraved stones, plus a sarcophagus containing a "fifth element". In the 23rd century, the great evil appears in deep space as a giant living fireball. It destroys an armed Earth spaceship as it heads to Earth. The Mondoshawans' human contact on Earth, priest Vito Cornelius, informs the president of the Federated Territories of the great evil's history and the weapon that can stop it. On their way to Earth, a Mondoshawan spacecraft carrying the weapon is ambushed and destroyed by a crew of Mangalores, alien mercenaries hired by Earth industrialist Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, who is working for the great evil. A severed hand in metal armour from the wreckage of the spacecraft is brought to New York City. From this, the government uses biotechnology to recreate the original occupant of the sarcophagus, a humanoid woman named Leeloo, who remembers her previous life. Alarmed by the unfamiliar surroundings and high security, she escapes and jumps off a ledge, crashing into the flying taxicab of Korben Dallas, a former major in Earth's special forces. Dallas delivers Leeloo to Cornelius and his apprentice, David, who recognises her as the fifth element. As Leeloo recuperates, she tells Cornelius that the stones were not on board the Mondoshawan ship. Simultaneously, the Mondoshawans inform Earth's government that the stones were entrusted to an alien opera singer, the diva Plavalaguna. Zorg reneges on his deal with the Mangalores for failing to obtain the stones, and kills some of them. Earth's military sends Dallas to meet Plavalaguna; a rigged radio contest provides a cover, awarding Dallas a luxury vacation aboard a flying hotel on planet Fhloston, accompanied by flamboyant talk-show host Ruby Rhod. It includes a concert by Plavalaguna, and learning that Leeloo shares his mission, Dallas lets her accompany him. Cornelius instructs David to prepare the temple, then stows away on the luxury spaceship. The Mangalore crew, pursuing the stones for themselves, also illegally board the ship. During the concert, the Mangalores attack, and Plavalaguna is killed. Dallas extracts the stones from her body and kills the Mangalore leader, causing the others to surrender. Zorg arrives, shoots Leeloo, and activates a time bomb. He flees with a carrying case which he presumes contains the stones, but returns when he discovers that it is empty. As Zorg's bomb causes the hotel's evacuation, Dallas finds Leeloo traumatised and escapes with her, Cornelius, Rhod, and the stones in Zorg's private spaceship. Zorg deactivates his bomb, but a dying Mangalore sets off his own, destroying the hotel and killing Zorg. As the great evil approaches Earth, the four meet David at the temple. They deploy the stones, but Leeloo, having learned of humanity's history of cruelty, has given up on life. Dallas declares his love for her and kisses her. Leeloo combines the power of the stones, emitting divine light onto the great evil and defeating it. Dallas and Leeloo are hailed as heroes, and as dignitaries wait to greet them, the two passionately embrace in a recovery chamber.