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).

In rural Centerville, police Chief Cliff Robertson and officer Ronnie Peterson respond to a report from farmer Frank Miller regarding a missing chicken. They briefly interact with Hermit Bob, a bearded eccentric, in the woods. On their way back to the station, Cliff notices there is still daylight after 8 p.m. and Ronnie's watch and cell phone stop working. Later, at a diner, hardware store owner Hank Thompson hears a radio report concerning polar fracking. Two corpses reanimate when night falls and kill the two diner employees, who are discovered by Hank the next morning. Ronnie believes zombies killed the employees. Young travelers Zoe, Jack, and Zack stop for gas and meet Bobby. At the Centerville Juvenile Detention Center, inmate Geronimo tells fellow inmates Olivia and Stella that polar fracking has altered the Earth's rotation. Cliff and Ronnie find open graves at the cemetery, while Hermit Bob spies on them. Cliff emphatically rejects Ronnie's suggestion of informing Farmer Miller of the general suspicion that zombies are on the loose. Ronnie teaches Cliff how to kill zombies, and Bobby and Hank prepare weapons. Motel owner Danny Perkins watches news about pets behaving strangely and then finds out his cats are missing. Other of Farmer Miller's animals have disappeared. That evening, more zombies rise, and Danny is attacked and transformed. Cliff and Ronnie bring supplies to the station and tell fellow officer Mindy Morrison about the zombies. The corpse of Mallory, a local alcoholic, reanimates in the police station and Ronnie decapitates her. Two corpses reanimate at the funeral home and are beheaded with a sword by Zelda Winston, who recently bought the funeral home. She goes to the police station, where the three officers leave her to operate communications. The cops drive through town and find the three travelers dead at the motel. Ronnie beheads the bodies, much to Mindy's distress, and takes Zoe's Sturgill Simpson CD. Zelda waves her hand over the police computer and it generates code. Ronnie begins playing the CD on the police car sound system, but Cliff throws the CD out the car window. Hank and Bobby face zombies at the hardware store. Each zombie says only one word, related to something from their past or an item they see as a zombie. Zombies maul Farmer Miller. Inmates Geronimo, Olivia, and Stella flee the detention center, again observed by Hermit Bob. When zombies overwhelm the patrol car at the cemetery, Officer Mindy sees her dead grandmother, and exits the car, only to be engulfed by zombies. Ronnie says he knew all would end badly because Jim gave him the entire script ahead of time, while Cliff only got the pages for his own scenes. Zelda drives Ronnie's car through town, stopping to behead one last Fashion Zombie, and then walks calmly through the cemetery with sword in hand. Zombies amble away from the patrol car as a spinning UFO appears over the cemetery. Cliff and Ronnie watch as it beams up Zelda and departs. The two leave the car, and kill zombies including Bobby, Miller, Danny, Hank, and Mindy. Hermit Bob watches from the woods through binoculars, lamenting how the world is a terrible place, as zombies overwhelm Cliff and Ronnie.

On June 19, 1987, as the Earth crosses the tail of a rogue comet, Rhea-M, previously inanimate machines spring to life; an ATM insults a customer (Stephen King) and a bascule bridge rises during heavy traffic, causing all vehicles upon the bridge to fall into the river or collide. Chaos sets in as machines begin attacking humans worldwide automatically. At the Dixie Boy Truck Stop outside Wilmington, North Carolina, employee Duncan Keller is blinded after a gas pump sprays diesel in his eyes. After an electric knife injures waitress Wanda June and arcade machines in the back room electrocute a customer, cook and paroled ex-convict Bill Robinson begins to suspect foul play. Meanwhile, at a Little League game, a vending machine kills the coach by firing canned soda at him. A driverless road roller flattens a fleeing child, while Duncan's son Deke escapes on his bike. Newlyweds Connie and Curtis discover a corpse at a roadside gas station, but escape in their car when a tow truck attempts to kill Curtis. Meanwhile, humans and pets are murdered by lawnmowers, chainsaws, electric hair dryers, pocket radios, RC cars and an ice cream truck. At the Dixie Boy, a garbage truck kills Duncan when he departs to search for Deke, and a truck sporting a giant fiberglass Green Goblin mask on its grille slams bible salesman Camp Loman into a ditch. Later, big rig trucks encircle the truck stop. Connie and Curtis outmaneuver a semi-truck, causing it to crash off the side of the road and explode. They arrive at the fortified truck stop, where it is safer than out in the open. As they try to pass between the trucks, their car is hit and overturned. Bill and hitchhiker Brett Graham rush to help them before the trucks attack. The owner Bubba Hendershot uses M72 LAW rockets he had stored in a bunker hidden under the diner to destroy many of the trucks. Deke later arrives at the Dixie Boy and attempts entrance via the sewers, but is obstructed by the wire mesh covering the opening. That night, the survivors hear Loman screaming, and Bill and Curtis sneak out via the sewers to help him. Deke discovers Loman, believing him dead, but he awakens and attacks Deke. Bill and Curtis rescue Deke and determine that Loman is indeed dead, but a truck then chases them back into the pipe. The next morning, a bulldozer and a platform truck drive to the truck stop. The angered Hendershot uses the rocket launcher to blow up the bulldozer but only succeeds in blowing its roof off, but the platform truck fires its post-mounted machine gun into the building, killing many including him and Wanda. The truck then demands, via sending morse code signals through its horn that Deke deciphers, that the humans pump the trucks' diesel for them in exchange for their lives. As the survivors realize that their own machines have enslaved them, Bill suggests that they escape to Haven, an island off the coast, on which no motorized vehicles are permitted. While the crew rests, Bill theorizes that the comet is actually a "broom" operated by interstellar aliens that are using Earth's machines to destroy humanity so the aliens can repopulate the Earth. The next day, during a fueling operation, Bill sneaks a grenade onto the platform truck, destroying it, then leads the party out of the diner via a sewer hatch to the main road just as the trucks and the bulldozer demolish the entire building. As the remaining people approach the marina, the ice cream truck appears, but Brett and Curtis open fire and destroy it. The Green Goblin truck stalks them to the marina and kills Brad, a trucker distracted by a diamond ring on a corpse's finger. After Bill destroys it with a hit from a rocket shot, the survivors board a sailboat and set sail for Haven. Two days later, the machines go silent when a UFO hiding in the comet's tail is destroyed by a Soviet space platform disguised as a weather satellite, equipped with nuclear missiles and a laser cannon. Six days later, Earth passes out of the comet's tail, and the survivors are still alive.

In 2008, a combined task group of People's Liberation Army Special Operations Forces and Chinese police raid a drug smuggling operation in an abandoned chemical facility in southern China. The leader of the smuggling operation, Wu Ji, holds one of his own men hostage while taking cover behind a section of the facility's reinforced wall. Leng Feng, a skilled PLA sniper, ignores orders to stand down and fires three shots at a weak section of the wall, penetrating through and killing Wu Ji. Leng Feng is sent to solitary confinement as punishment, but is approached by Long Xiaoyun, the female commander of the legendary 'Wolf Warriors', an elite unit within the PLA tasked with simulating foreign tactics for the PLA to train against. Long Xiaoyun offers Leng Feng a place in the Wolf Warriors. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, crime lord Min Deng, Wu Ji's older brother, hires ex–US Navy SEAL "Tom Cat" (Scott Adkins) and his group to kill Leng Feng and avenge his brother. The Wolf Warriors participate in a training exercise in a remote and uninhabited forested region on China's southern border. During the exercise, Tom Cat and his mercenaries ambush a Wolf Warrior squad, killing one of Leng Feng's comrades. Subsequently, the PLA and the Wolf Warriors are tasked with hunting down Tom Cat's squad. The combined infantry force move into the forest but are delayed by multiple traps set by Tom Cat and pinned down by sniper fire until Leng Feng manages to kill the shooter. Afterwards, the rest of the PLA force engages Tom Cat's other mercenaries, who stage a fighting retreat but are eventually overwhelmed and killed. Meanwhile, Long Xiaoyun and the other PLA commanders deduce that Ming Deng himself is also in the training area to take possession of a smuggled cache of biotechnology, which could allow the creation of a genetic weapon that could target Chinese people exclusively. Leng Feng eventually catches Tom Cat just before China's southern border. Leng Feng is nearly defeated, but manages to kill Tom Cat with his own knife. Medical personnel claiming to be from a PLA relief force arrive, but Leng Feng recognises the wrist tattoo of a medic and realizes that they are Min Deng's men in PLA uniforms. He attacks them, eventually holding Min Deng at bayonet point on the very edge of the Chinese border. Min Deng's paramilitary force approaches from the other side of the border, but so do the rest of the Wolf Warriors and PLA soldiers. Min Deng's force retreats, leaving him to be arrested.

Extreme sport athlete Johnny Utah and his friend Jeff are traversing a steep ridgeline on motorbikes. The run ends with a jump onto a lone stone column, where Jeff overshoots the landing and falls to his death. Seven years later, Utah is an FBI agent candidate. He attends a briefing on a skyscraper heist in Mumbai, in which the criminals stole diamonds, escaping by parachute. A similar heist happens in Mexico where the criminals unload millions of dollars in bills, then disappear into the Cave of Swallows. Utah's research concludes that they were done by the same men, who are attempting to complete the Ozaki 8, a list of eight extreme ordeals to honor the forces of nature. They have already completed three, and Utah predicts they'll attempt the fourth on a rare sea wave phenomenon in France. After presenting his analysis, Utah is sent undercover to France under a field agent named Pappas. They reach France and Utah gets help from others to surf the tall tube wave. As he goes in, there is already another surfer riding the wave, leaving Utah unstable. Utah gets sucked into the wave and faints, but the other surfer bails and rescues Utah. He wakes aboard a yacht with the surfer, Bodhi, and his team: Roach, Chowder, and Grommet. They leave him to enjoy the party and he gets acquainted with a girl, Samsara. The next day, Utah finds the men in an abandoned Paris train station after he overhears them talking about the location. Bodhi gives him an initiation fight and soon he is accepted into the circle. They travel to the Alps for the next ordeal: wingsuit flying through "The Life of Wind" cliffs. The four succeed in their attempt and spend some time together with Samsara. The next day, they climb the snow peaks for the sixth ordeal, snowboarding down a steep mountain of snow. They reach their spot, but Utah decides to extend his line, so the others follow him. Chowder slips and falls to his death, and Utah becomes depressed about it. After a party, Samsara explains that she and Bodhi both knew Ono Ozaki when they were young, that her parents died in an avalanche accident and Ozaki gave her a home after. She explains further that after Ozaki completed his third ordeal, despite what was widely believed that he died attempting the ordeal, he was actually killed by a whaling ship crashing into his boat while he was trying to save humpback whales. On his boat, Bodhi (a young boy at the time) decided not to tell the truth of his story but to finish what Ozaki started. Next they travel to a gold mine where Bodhi detonates explosives Grommet and Roach planted. After blowing his cover, Utah chases Bodhi, managing to trip his bike. Bodhi escapes because Utah cannot stand up after the crash. The FBI freezes Bodhi's sponsors' assets; Bodhi plans to rob a nearby Italian bank on a mountain top. Utah and the police intercept the group, resulting in a crossfire that kills Roach. As the group flees, Utah chases and shoots one of them to death, who is revealed to be Samsara and not Bodhi. Utah finds the location of the next ordeal: free solo climbing with no safety beside Angel Falls in Venezuela. He finds Bodhi and Grommet and chases them on the climb, but Grommet falters, falling to his death. Utah catches up to Bodhi, but he falls backward down the waterfall, completing what should have been the last ordeal. Bodhi, however, has to redo the fourth ordeal, because he bailed out on the wave when he chose to save Johnny. Seventeen months later, Utah finds him in the Pacific facing another giant wave. As Utah tries to get Bodhi to come back with him and pay for his crimes, he eventually lets Bodhi attempt to surf it, both knowing that he will not come back. The wave engulfs Bodhi, killing him. Utah begins going through his own ordeals, unclear whether he is still an FBI agent.

In the aftermath of a financial crisis in the European Union and the weakening of NATO, collaborative dealings have occurred between a progressively militant North Korea and an ultranationalist Russia. The American mainland has become largely undefended from the increased deployment of U.S. troops abroad, and American infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks. U.S. Marine Jed Eckert is on home leave in Spokane, Washington, where he reunites with his father, Spokane Police Sergeant Tom Eckert, his brother, Matt Eckert, and his childhood friend Toni Walsh and her cousin Erica Martin, Matt's girlfriend. Matt, the quarterback for his football team, blew a playoff game because of his cowboy antics. After the city suffers a blackout, Jed and Matt witness North Korean paratroopers and transport aircraft invading the town. Their father tells them to escape to their cabin in the woods while he helps the townspeople. They're joined by Matt's friends Robert Kitner, Daryl Jenkins, Danny Jackson, siblings Julie and Greg Goodyear, a stranger named Pete, and his buddy. After Erica is captured, Toni joins them as well. As the group debates whether to surrender or resist, Pete and his buddy steal their supplies, inadvertently betraying their position. Captain Cho and his soldiers order Daryl's father, the mayor, to convince the group to surrender. Sergeant Eckert refuses to cooperate and is executed by Cho after encouraging them to resist, and the cabin is then torched to the ground. Jed is determined to fight back, and the group joins him. Under Jed's training, the group learns to hunt for survival, use weapons, and establish a base in an abandoned mine. The group, naming themselves the Wolverines after their school mascot, stage guerrilla attacks on soldiers and collaborators, including Pete, who is killed in a bombing. During a plot to eliminate the leadership during a rally, Jed soon finds Russian Spetsnaz working with the North Korean army. However, Cho discovers their bomb, compromising their mission. Matt recklessly strays from the plan to free Erica, who was on a prison transport, but Greg is killed in the process. The North Koreans find their location and retaliate with artillery fire, destroying their base, and killing Danny and Julie. The surviving Wolverines later encounter U.S. Marines Sergeant Major Andrew Tanner, Corporal Smith, and Sergeant Hodges, who reveal that a Russian-backed North Korean forces used a EMP weapon to disable the U.S. electrical grid and crippled the military forces, immediately followed by landings along the east and west coasts. American counterattacks eventually halted their advances, leaving a large area stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians as "Free America" while pockets of resistance continue to oppose the invasion. The Wolverines learn that Captain Cho's suitcase contains an EMP-resistant radiotelephone, and if they can steal it, the U.S. command could use it to their advantage in a counter-offensive. The Wolverines help the Marines infiltrate the police department, which is being used as the North Koreans' operation center, and steal the suitcase. Jed kills Cho, though Hodges is killed in the firefight. The Wolverines and Marines regroup at a safe house with the suitcase, but Jed is killed in an ambush by Russian Spetsnaz. As Matt and the group escape with the suitcase, Robert discovers that Daryl was tagged by the Russians with a subcutaneous tracking device during the police station raid. Knowing he cannot go with them, Daryl stays behind to buy time for the others as they head to the Marines' extraction point. Tanner and Smith depart with the suitcase, while the remaining Wolverines stay to continue fighting under Matt's leadership.

In 1947 New Mexico, a radio operator receives a bizarre signal coming from Roswell, New Mexico. He decides to investigate its origin and disappears tracking it. In the present day, the same signal is received from the South Pole and then retransmitted from the Falkland Islands to the United States. A satellite image captures an unknown object sitting on the Antarctic snow. Cryptologist Julian Rome, a teacher at the University of California, Berkeley, is invited to investigate the mystery. He is sent to an Antarctic research base, which includes a large greenhouse of genetically modified plants being studied by scientists. They discover what appears to be an alien vehicle frozen in a large block of ice. The object is shaped like a shell or pod and is emitting the mysterious encrypted signal. Once it is released from the ice, Julian discovers that it has a powerful static electric charge on its surface and painfully shocks anyone who touches it. Julian tries to decrypt the signal (which soon proves to be: "Do not open!"), while another team works to open the alien shell. They succeed in cutting off the lid, which allows a viscous liquid to pour out. An alien also escapes, while at the same time an airborne virus sealed in the shell kills four scientists by melting them from within. The virus also kills all the plants, making them wilt and turn brown. The virus has an unusually high speed of transmission and extreme virulence. It kills anyone within a few minutes of exposure. The government is aware of the alien virus and the global risk that it poses. They ask a Russian nuclear submarine to fire a nuclear missile at the base before the threat can spread. As the submarine nears its firing position, Julian manages to communicate with the alien, before it is killed by one of the survivors. Julian realizes that if any of the survivors leave the base alive, the lethal alien virus will cause a pandemic destroying all life on Earth. Just a few seconds before the missile hits, he and three others, Shelly, Kate, and Dr. Gierach, are rescued from the base by an alien spacecraft (which had homed in on the same signal Julian was studying). In the aftermath, the government mounts a cover-up campaign by claiming that an experimental nuclear reactor at the base went into meltdown, destroying all of the facilities and killing everyone. The film ends with the alien spacecraft, still carrying the human survivors, leaving the Solar System.

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

Agent Maxwell Smart is called back into service in order to stop a nefarious KAOS terrorist plan from exploding a bomb that destroys only clothing, so as to leave KAOS as the only supplier of clothes to the entire world. Norman Saint-Sauvage, the KAOS fashion designer, finds everyone else's clothing designs gauche, so he builds a machine capable of cloning his favorite seamstress and implements the Nude Bombs. He wears a costume including thimbles over each finger, and his mountain lair is entered via a giant zipper.

Roman-Catholic priest Doug Jones witnesses his parents die in a VFX car fire. He travels to China on a spiritual journey and comes across ninjas searching for an artifact said to turn people into the "Dragon Warrior". After becoming infected by the artifact, Doug begins having nightmares and he gets a kiss from his mentor Father Stewart. Doug then goes out into the forest late at night as he transforms into a dinosaur. He saves Carol, a prostitute, from a thug. Waking up in Carol's bed naked, with no memory of the night before, Doug initially believes they had sex, but after Carol tells him what happened he realizes the truth. Unpersuaded by her suggestion to use his new power to fight crime and get rid of people they believe are beyond spiritual salvation, he returns to the church for confession; speaking to Frankie Mermaid, Carol's pimp, he learns Frankie is the one responsible for killing Doug's parents. Enraged, Doug proceeds to kill Frankie and, now convinced about her plan to fight crime, returns to Carol needing her assistance. Father Stewart, learning of Doug's new power, encourages Doug to lose it and stop killing. He takes him to see Altair, an exorcist, hoping to remove Doug's power. In a flashback, it is revealed that Father Stewart saw a war buddy shot while off guard and that his love interest was killed by a mine. In the present, the exorcism fails and Doug transforms, slashing one of Father Stewart's eyes. Returning to Carol, Doug is confronted by ninjas. Father Stewart wakes up in a camp of drug-dealing Christian ninjas led by Wei Chan, who plans to sell highly addictive cocaine to people and then cut off supplies. Wei Chan hopes this will lead the addicts to turn to the church, where he will eventually take over, and use them as his army. Father Stewart rejects this idea, and is killed. Doug and Carol are confronted by ninjas, and plan to stop Wei Chan. Doug is stopped by Sam, the White Ninja, who he later realizes is his brother. Doug catches Sam off guard and uses telekinesis to take Sam's sword and kill him. Doug and Carol fight off more ninjas, and the latter is badly wounded. Doug, transforming into a velociraptor and fighting off the remaining ninjas, is shot by Wei Chan with an arrow containing venom to stop his transformation. Doug's hands are immune to the venom, and he proceeds to kill Wei Chan using his dinosaur powers, among other techniques. Doug carries Carol to the hospital where she recovers. Doug, no longer a priest and with a billion-dollar bounty on his head, plans to travel the world with Carol, and continue their original plan to kill off criminals.

Akademik Vladislav Volkov, a Russian research vessel in the South Pacific, communicates with the orbiting space station Mir. An energy source traveling through space strikes Mir, killing the cosmonauts and beaming itself down to Volkov. The electrical surge takes over the ship and attacks the crew. Seven days later, the tugboat Sea Star, captained by alcoholic Robert Everton, loses its uninsured cargo while sailing through a typhoon. Sea Star 's crew discover the engine room taking on water. When Sea Star takes refuge in the eye of the storm to make repairs, Volkov appears on their radar. Realizing that it could be worth millions in salvage, Everton orders his crew aboard. On Volkov, most of the electronics have been destroyed and the Russian crew are seemingly missing. Everton orders Sea Star 's navigator and ex- Navy officer Kelly Foster to help a fellow crewman, Squeaky, restore power to the ship. The ship's anchor then drops on its own, sinking Sea Star with deckhand Hiko and first mate J.W. Woods Jr. on board. Sea Star 's engineer Steve Baker leaves Squeaky to guard the engine room, where a robotic creature lures him to his death. Steve rescues an injured Hiko, while Woods comes out unscathed. As Foster treats Hiko in the sick bay, Chief Science Officer Nadia Vinogradova, the sole surviving member of Volkov 's crew, shoots at the crew before Steve subdues her. Nadia is hysterical about "it" needing power to travel through the ship and implores the crew to shut down the generators. She attacks Everton and Foster, who subdue her and take her to the bridge. Steve, Woods, and crewman Richie Mason look for Squeaky in the engine room but instead stumble upon an automated workshop producing more robots. The three are attacked by the robots and what appears to be a gun-wielding Russian crew member. The Russian is revealed to be a cyborg, but the three bring it down with salvaged munitions from Volkov 's small arms locker and take its seemingly dead body to the bridge. Nadia explains that the sentient electrical energy beamed from the Mir took over the ship eight days prior, scanned the ship's computers to find information on killing humans, then used the automated workshops to convert Volkov' s crew into cyborgs; the one brought to the bridge was the ship's captain and Nadia's husband. As the storm resumes, the crew head for the computer room. En route, they are ambushed by a converted Squeaky and a giant robot that kills Woods. The survivors barricade themselves in the communications room. Richie sends out a mayday, but Everton shoots out the radio, unwilling to give up his salvage. Foster punches Everton and removes him from command. Richie uses the computers to talk to the alien; it says that it is "aware" and sees mankind as a "virus" which it plans to use as "spare parts." This drives Richie insane, causing him to gun down Squeaky and flee. When the remaining crew leave the room, Everton talks to the alien, which recognizes him as the "dominant lifeform." The crew discovers that the alien has moved Volkov ' s computer elsewhere in the ship. Realizing that Volkov is moving, they return to the bridge by going outside, where Hiko is lost to the typhoon. Meanwhile, Everton is guided to one of the workshops, where he makes a bargain with the alien. Foster identifies Lord Howe Island as Volkov' s destination, with Nadia surmising that the alien wishes to seize a British intelligence station from which it could seize control of the world's military forces. As they decide to sink Volkov, the survivors are confronted by the now-cyborg Everton, which they defeat with a thermite hand grenade. They empty Volkov 's fuel tanks and set explosive charges. Foster, Steve and Nadia run into Richie. A giant robot (piloted by the alien) then appears and attacks the trio. The alien captures Foster and tortures her for the detonator's location. A mortally wounded Richie informs Steve that he prepared a jury-rigged ejection seat that can be used for escape. Nadia and Steve rescue Foster, and Nadia sacrifices herself by shooting a flaregun at nearby gas tanks to kill the alien; however, it is only damaged by the explosion and pursues the survivors. Foster and Steve use Richie's ejection seat, escaping the robot form, which triggers pin grenades causing an explosion of the missile bomb and sinks Volkov, causing the sentient electricity to disperse in the seawater. A U.S. naval ship later rescues Foster and Steve.

In the near future, the U.S. Navy develops the F/A-37 Talon, a single-seat strike fighter with advanced payload, range, speed, and stealth capabilities. The program recruits three pilots out of 400 applicants; Lieutenants Ben Gannon, Kara Wade, and Henry Purcell. Captain George Cummings is the overall head. To further advance the program, Cummings has an artificial intelligence, the " Extreme Deep Invader " (EDI), installed on an autonomous aircraft. EDI joins the others on the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Philippine Sea to learn combat maneuvers from the pilots. This sparks controversy over a machine's inability to make moral decisions versus the human struggle to overcome ego. While training EDI in air combat maneuvers, the team is unexpectedly reassigned to kill the commanders of three terrorist cells at a conference in downtown Rangoon. According to EDI's calculation, minimum collateral damage can only be achieved by a vertical missile strike augmented by the bomber diving at a speed sufficient to cause a human pilot to black out. Command authorizes EDI to attack, but Gannon defies orders and carries out the attack himself, blacking out and regaining consciousness just in time to avoid crashing. As the team returns to the Lincoln, EDI is hit by lightning. Subsequent inspection of EDI reveals an accelerated learning pace and development of a rudimentary ethical code and an ego, which might lead to unpredictable behaviors, but Cummings refuses to take EDI offline. During a mission to destroy stolen nuclear warheads in Tajikistan, Wade realizes that the fallout will cause significant civilian casualties. The human pilots abort, but EDI defies orders and destroys the warheads, causing extensive radioactive fallout and the anticipated casualties. After EDI refuses to return to base, an agitated Gannon decides to shoot it down. In the ensuing dogfight, a missile Purcell fires at EDI explodes on a mountain, blinding him and causing a fatal crash. Wade's plane is damaged by the same explosion, which triggers her plane's self-destruct, and in turn forces her to eject over North Korea. Command realizes EDI is executing a 20-year-old war scenario called 'Caviar Sweep' that involves attacking Russia. Gannon chases EDI into Russian territory where they destroy several Russian Su-37s. After both planes are damaged, Gannon calls a truce with EDI to avoid falling into enemy hands and rescue Wade. Cummings instructs the two to land in Alaska. At risk of facing court-martial for ignoring EDI's behavior, Cummings seeks to eliminate witnesses. He ignores Wade, who heads to the Korean Demilitarized Zone – while evading the army. Cummings orders Gannon eliminated, and orders Dr. Keith Orbit, EDI's creator, to Alaska to wipe EDI's memory. At the Alaskan base, suspecting Cummings' treachery, Gannon narrowly escapes an assassination attempt by the base's doctor and kills him in self defense. Meanwhile, while Orbit inspects EDI, the AI expresses regret for its transgressions. Realizing EDI has developed sentience, Orbit disregards Cumming's order to erase its memory. Orbit reinstalls EDI and Gannon climbs in the same plane as his was damaged during landing. Gannon uses EDI's weapons systems to clear a path for Orbit to flee, then flies to North Korea. Gannon contacts the Lincoln ' s skipper, Captain Dick Marshfield, to inform him about Cummings' deceit. Before Marshfield can order him arrested and court-martialed, Cummings commits suicide. Gannon finds the injured and embattled Wade nearing the border. He lands and runs to her aid. Out of ammunition and taking damage from an Mi-8 helicopter, EDI sacrifices itself by ramming the helicopter, destroying both. Gannon and Wade cross on foot into South Korea, where they are rescued. After attending Purcell's funeral, Gannon awkwardly expresses his feelings of love to Wade. In a post-credits scene, in the debris-strewn border between North and South Korea, EDI's "brain" is seen turning back on.