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

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

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

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

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

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

An army of the Teutonic Order invades and conquers the city of Pskov with the help of the traitor Tverdilo, and massacres its population. Novgorod is their next intended target. Despite resistance from the boyars and merchants of Novgorod (urged on by the monk Ananias, Tverdilo's henchman), an appeal is made to Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, to again become their prince and defend Novgorod. To do so he rallies the common people of the Novgorod area. In the decisive Battle of the Ice, on the surface of frozen Lake Chudskoe, the Teutonic forces are defeated. Pskov is retaken, and there Nevsky passes judgment: the surviving Teutonic foot-soldiers are set free, while the surviving Teutonic knights will be held for ransom. Tverdilo the traitor, together with a Catholic priest who blessed the burning alive of Pskov children, disappear as they are mobbed by the onlookers. A subplot throughout is the rivalry and friendship of Vasili Buslai and Gavrilo Oleksich, two famous (and historic) warriors of Novgorod. Both become commanders of the Novgorod forces, and are engaged in a contest of courage and fighting skill in order to decide which will win the hand of Olga Danilovna, a Novgorod maiden whom both are courting. At the same time Vasilisa, daughter of a boyar of Pskov killed by the Teutons, joins the Novgorod forces as a soldier. She and Vasili wind up fighting side by side; she throws him a weapon when he is surrounded and weaponless, and it is she who finds and slays Ananias. Gavrilo and Vasili are seriously wounded and are found by Olga, who retrieves them from the battlefield. Though they defer to each other, in the end Vasili publicly states that neither was the bravest in battle: that honor goes to Vasilisa, followed by Gavrilo. Thus Gavrilo and Olga are united while Vasili chooses Vasilisa as his bride-to-be (with her unspoken consent).

Manor Farm is mismanaged by its drunken owner, Mr. Jones. Prize pig Old Major encourages the farm animals to rebel against Jones and take over the farm, teaching them the revolutionary song "Beasts of England" before he dies from a heart attack. When Mr. Jones forgets to feed the animals the next morning, Major's successor Snowball leads the animals into the storehouse for food, before leading them into chasing away Jones, who returns later with neighbouring farmers in attempt to retake the farm. The animals defeat the invaders, rename the farm "Animal Farm" and destroy the tools of oppression that had been used against them. They decide against living in the farmhouse, though Saddleback boar Napoleon is interested and begins to secretly raise an orphaned litter of puppies as attack dogs while helping himself to Jones's jam storage. The Seven Commandments of Animalism are written on a barn wall, the most important being "All animals are equal". The animals cooperate to run the farm and produce plenty of food, but the pigs, led by Napoleon and his second-in-command Squealer, avoid physical labor yet claim leadership and special foods such as milk "by virtue of their brainwork". As the winter causes work to slow, Snowball holds a meeting where he promises electric power at the cost of harder work and rationing in the meantime, which Napoleon opposes. When the animals decide to proceed in favour of Snowball, Napoleon has his dogs chase Snowball from the farm and killed before declaring himself leader of Animal Farm and denouncing Snowball as a traitor. He promptly abolishes farm policy meetings, appropriates all decision-making, and advances Snowball's plan for a windmill as his own. Work begins on the windmill, spearheaded by Boxer the workhorse and Benjamin the donkey who work overtime, while the pigs consume more food and appropriate more luxuries for themselves. When Boxer and Benjamin find the pigs sleeping on beds in the farmhouse, the pigs alter the Commandment "No animal shall sleep in a bed" to "No animal shall sleep in a bed WITH SHEETS". Napoleon starts trading some of the hens' eggs for jam from local businessman Mr. Whymper without their consent, prompting the hens to revolt against the pigs before Napoleon's dogs intervene. To impose his will through fear, Napoleon holds a show trial of the hens, where a sheep and a duck also confess to dissenting; they are all executed by the dogs, and the victims' blood is used to change one of the Commandments into "No animal shall kill another animal WITHOUT CAUSE". Fearful of a potential counter-revolution, Napoleon also bans "Beasts of England" under penalty of death, declaring the revolution complete and the dream of Animal Farm realised. Later, farmers jealous of Mr. Whymper's profits attack Animal Farm. The animals ambush and repel the farmers at the cost of numerous casualties, while Jones drunkenly blows up the windmill with himself inside. The animals are forced to rebuild the windmill, including Boxer, whose injuries and age cause an accident that forces him to retire. Napoleon calls a van to take Boxer away, which Benjamin recognises as being from Whymper's glue factory; he and the other animals try to save him, but to no avail. Squealer delivers a sham eulogy in which he claims Boxer's last words were to glorify Napoleon. The animals see through the propaganda but are driven away by the snarling dogs. That night, the pigs toast to Boxer's memory with whisky they traded for his life. Several years later, Napoleon rules Animal Farm under a cult of personality and has expanded its influence into neighbouring farms owned by pigs who now act almost identically to humans, walking upright on two legs and wearing clothes. During one pig ceremony, Benjamin and the animals, now famished after constant harsh labour and rationing, are horrified to learn that the pigs have reduced the Commandments to one single phrase: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". Benjamin spies on the pigs' dinner party, where Napoleon is congratulated for having the hardest-working and lowest-consuming animals in the country, and the pigs toast to a future of similar pig-owned farms everywhere. Benjamin has a hallucination of Napoleon and the pigs all turning into Jones. Realizing the only thing the revolution accomplished was trading one dictator for another, Benjamin rallies the farm animals and others from nearby farms to storm the farmhouse while the dogs are too drunk to respond. The animals smash through the house and kill Napoleon and his followers as Benjamin stands with triumph.

Under the project called Bio-com, the Earthtek Corporation has locked 6 scientists in a deep underground vault to study the effects of isolation. The experiment has been ongoing for almost two years. Unknown to everyone except one of the scientists, the fake isolation experiment hides Earthtek's real purpose: to use drug(s) to create super-soldiers. A creature escapes the lab and kills a mouse and the base's cat. The creature can take over the body of whatever it inhabits.

Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director, is suffering from " director's block ". Stalled on his new science fiction film that includes thinly veiled autobiographical references, he has lost interest amidst artistic and marital difficulties. While attempting to recover from his anxieties at a luxurious spa, Guido hires a well-known critic to review his ideas for his film, but the critic blasts them. The film portrays Guido ambiguously floating in and out of surrealistic dreams and flashbacks to his childhood. Guido has recurring visions of an Ideal Woman, whom he sees as key to his story. His mistress Carla comes to visit him, but Guido puts her in a separate hotel. The film production crew relocates to Guido's hotel in an unsuccessful attempt to get him to work on the film. Guido admits to a cardinal that he is not happy. The cardinal offers little insight. Guido invites his estranged wife Luisa and her friends to join him. They dance, but Guido abandons her for his production crew. Guido confesses to his wife's best friend Rosella that he wanted to make a film that was pure and honest, but he is struggling with something honest to say. Carla surprises Guido, Luisa, and Rosella outside the hotel, and Guido claims that he and Carla ended their affair years earlier. Luisa and Rosella call him on the lie, and Guido slips into a fantasy world where he lords over a harem of women from his life, but a rejected showgirl starts a rebellion. The fantasy women attack Guido with harsh truths about him and his sex life. When Luisa sees how bitterly Guido represents her in the film, she declares that their marriage is over. Guido's Ideal Woman arrives in the form of an actress named Claudia. Guido explains that his film is about a burned-out man who finds salvation in this Ideal Woman. Claudia concludes that the protagonist is unsympathetic because he is incapable of love. Broken, Guido calls off the film, but the producer and the film's staff announce a press conference at which the filming will commence. Guido attempts to escape from the journalists and eventually imagines shooting himself in the head. Guido realizes he was attempting to solve his personal confusion by creating a film to help others, when instead he needs to accept his life for what it is. He asks Luisa for her assistance in doing so. Carla tells him that she figured out what he was trying to say: that Guido cannot do without the people in his life. As the production crew and cast begin to troop onto the set, Guido's passion revives and he begins to direct. The men and women of the cast and crew start holding hands and walk briskly around in a circle with Guido and Luisa joining them last. The production set is dismantled, Guido salutes the last of the crew members, and the set fades to black.

There are four main story arcs, listed in approximate order below. In typical Wong fashion, they are presented in non-chronological order. Knowledge of Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love is assumed, but not necessary to understand 2046.

Bradley Morahan (played by Mason) is an Australian artist who feels he has become jaded by success and life in New York City. He decides that he needs to regain the edge he had as a young artist and returns to Australia. He sets up in a shack on the shore of a small, sparsely inhabited island on the Great Barrier Reef. There he meets young Cora Ryan (Mirren), who has grown up wild, with her only relative, her difficult, gin -guzzling grandmother 'Ma' (Carr Glyn). To earn money, Cora sells Bradley fish that she has caught in the sea. She later sells him a chicken which she has stolen from his spinster neighbour Isabel Marley (Katsos). When Bradley is suspected of being the thief, he pays Isabel and gets Cora to promise not to steal any more. To help her save enough money to fulfil her dream of becoming a hairdresser in Brisbane, he pays her to be his model. She reinvigorates him, becoming his artistic muse. Bradley's work is disrupted when his sponging longtime "friend" Nat Kelly (MacGowran) shows up. Nat is hiding from the police over alimony he owes. When Bradley refuses to give him a loan, Nat invites himself to stay with Bradley. After several days Bradley's patience becomes exhausted, but Nat then focuses his attention on romancing Isabel, hoping to get some money from her. Instead, she unexpectedly ravishes him. The next day, he hastily departs the island, but not before stealing Bradley's money and some of his drawings. Ma subsequently catches Cora posing nude for Bradley and accuses him of carrying on with her underage granddaughter. Bradley protests that he has done nothing improper. Finally, he gives her the little money he has left to get her to go away. When Cora discovers that Ma has found her hidden cache of money, she chases after her. In the ensuing struggle, Ma falls down a hill, breaks her neck, and dies. The local policeman sees no reason to investigate further, since the old woman was known to be frequently drunk. Later that night Cora goes to Bradley's shack, but is disappointed when he seems to view her only as his model. When she runs out, Bradley follows her into the water, and he finally comes to view her as a desirable young woman.