In the Second Age of Middle-earth, the lords of Elves, Dwarves, and Men each receive Rings of Power. Unbeknownst to them, the Dark Lord Sauron forges the One Ring in Mount Doom, imbuing it with his power to control the other Rings and conquer Middle-earth. A final alliance of Men and Elves battles Sauron's forces in Mordor. Isildur of Gondor severs Sauron's finger, vanquishing him and returning him to spirit form, marking the beginning of the Third Age. The Ring corrupts Isildur, who takes it and is later killed by Orcs. The Ring is lost in a river for 2,500 years until it is found by Gollum, who possesses it for five centuries, until it abandons him and is found by a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. Sixty years later, Bilbo celebrates his 111th birthday in the Shire with his old friend, Gandalf the Grey. He leaves the Shire for one last adventure, passing on his inheritance, including the Ring, to his nephew Frodo. Gandalf investigates the Ring, learns its true nature, and discovers that Gollum was captured by Sauron and revealed two words during interrogation: "Shire" and "Baggins." Gandalf warns Frodo to leave the Shire. As Frodo departs with his gardener friend, Samwise Gamgee, Gandalf heads to Isengard to seek counsel from his friend, the powerful wizard Saruman. Saruman reveals Sauron has dispatched his nine Nazgûl servants to retrieve the Ring. Gandalf immediately attempts to flee to warn Frodo, but is imprisoned by Saruman who has allied himself with Sauron, communicating with him via a palantír. Frodo and Sam join up with fellow hobbits Merry and Pippin and evade the Nazgûl before reaching Bree to meet Gandalf, who never arrives as Saruman captures him. A Ranger named Strider helps them get to Rivendell but they are ambushed on Weathertop by the Nazgûl, who wound Frodo with a Morgul blade. Arwen, Strider's beloved Elf, finds them, rescues Frodo, and takes him to Rivendell to be healed and reunite with Gandalf, who had escaped Isengard on a Great Eagle. That night, Arwen declares to Strider she is willing to sacrifice her immortality for their love. Learning of Saruman's betrayal from Gandalf and that they are now facing threats from both Sauron and Saruman, Arwen's father Lord Elrond holds a council of Elves, Men, and Dwarves, also attended by Frodo and Gandalf, that decides the Ring must be destroyed. However, Elrond explains that it can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom, the volcano where it was forged. Frodo volunteers to take the Ring, accompanied by Gandalf, Sam, Merry, Pippin, the Elf Legolas, Gimli, Boromir of Gondor, and Strider—who is actually Aragorn, Isildur's heir and the rightful King of Gondor. Bilbo, now living in Rivendell, gives Frodo his old sword Sting, and a chainmail shirt made of mithril. The Fellowship of the Ring is forced to travel through the Mines of Moria due to a storm summoned by Saruman. Gandalf warns Frodo that Gollum, released from Sauron's fortress, has been trailing them with the intention to reclaim the Ring. They find the Dwarves of Moria dead and are attacked by Orcs and a troll. While they hold off the attack, they are pursued by Durin's Bane, a Balrog. The others escape as Gandalf confronts the Balrog and falls into a deep chasm while battling it. The devastated Fellowship reaches Lothlórien, where Galadriel, the Elf-queen, tells Frodo that he alone can complete the quest and warns that one of his companions will try to take the Ring. She shows him a vision of Sauron enslaving Middle-earth should he fail. Meanwhile, Saruman creates an army of Uruk-hai in Isengard to destroy the Fellowship, intending to betray Sauron and claim the Ring for himself. The Fellowship travels to Parth Galen by river. As warned by Galadriel, Frodo is confronted privately by Boromir, who attempts to take the Ring. Uruk-hai scouts ambush the group; their leader, Lurtz, mortally wounds Boromir as he fails to stop them from capturing Merry and Pippin. Aragorn arrives and kills Lurtz, comforting Boromir in his final moments, promising to aid Gondor in their conflict. Worried the Ring will corrupt his friends, Frodo decides to go to Mordor alone, but Sam insists on accompanying him, honouring Gandalf's promise to protect him. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli plan to rescue Merry and Pippin, while Frodo and Sam navigate the pass of Emyn Muil towards Mordor.

Dom Cobb and Arthur are "extractors" who perform corporate espionage using experimental dream-sharing technology to infiltrate their targets' subconscious and extract information. Their latest target, Saito, is impressed with Cobb's ability to layer multiple dreams within each other. He offers to hire Cobb for the ostensibly impossible job of implanting an idea into a person's subconscious; performing "inception" on Robert Fischer, the son of Saito's competitor Maurice Fischer, with the idea to dissolve his father's company. In return, Saito promises to clear Cobb's criminal status, allowing him to return home to his children. Cobb accepts the offer and assembles his team: a forger named Eames, a chemist named Yusuf, and a college student named Ariadne. Ariadne is tasked with designing the dream's architecture, something Cobb himself cannot do for fear of being sabotaged by his mind's projection of his late wife, Mal. Maurice Fischer dies, and the team sedates Robert Fischer into a three-layer shared dream on an airplane to America bought by Saito. Time on each layer runs slower than the layer above, with one member staying behind on each to perform a music-synchronized " kick " (using the French song " Non, je ne regrette rien ") to awaken dreamers on all three levels simultaneously. The team abducts Robert in a city on the first level, but unknown to any team member, his subconscious projections, trained to anticipate such a scenario, attack them. After Saito is wounded, Cobb reveals that while dying in the dream would usually awaken dreamers, Yusuf's sedatives will instead send them into " Limbo ": a world of infinite subconscious. Eames impersonates Robert's godfather, Peter Browning, to introduce the idea of an alternate will to dissolve the company. Cobb explains to Ariadne that he and Mal entered Limbo while experimenting with dream-sharing, experiencing fifty years in one night due to the time dilation with reality. After waking up, Mal still believed she was dreaming. Attempting to "wake up," she committed suicide and framed Cobb for her murder to force him to do the same. Cobb fled the U.S., leaving his children behind. Yusuf drives the team around the first level as they are sedated into the second level, a hotel dreamed by Arthur. Cobb persuades Robert that Browning has kidnapped him to stop the dissolution and that Cobb is a defensive projection, leading Robert to another third level deeper as part of a ruse to enter Robert's subconscious. In the third level, the team infiltrates an alpine fortress with a projection of Maurice inside, where the inception itself can be performed. However, Yusuf performs his kick too soon by driving off a bridge, forcing Arthur and Eames to improvise a new set of kicks synchronized with them hitting the water by rigging an elevator and the fortress, respectively, with explosives. Mal then appears and kills Robert before he can be subjected to the inception; he and Saito are subsequently lost in Limbo, forcing Cobb and Ariadne to rescue them in time for Robert's inception and Eames's kick. Cobb reveals that during their time in Limbo, Mal refused to return to reality; Cobb had to convince her it was only a dream, accidentally incepting in her the belief that the real world was still a dream. Cobb makes peace with his part in Mal's death. Ariadne kills Mal's projection and wakes Robert up with a kick. Revived into the third level, Robert discovers the planted idea: his dying father telling him to create something for himself. While Cobb searches for Saito in Limbo, the others ride the synced kicks back to reality. Cobb finds an aged Saito and reminds him of their agreement. The dreamers all awaken on the plane, and Saito makes a phone call. Arriving in Los Angeles, Cobb passes the immigration checkpoint, and his father-in-law accompanies him to his home. Cobb uses Mal's "totem" – a top that spins indefinitely in a dream – to test if he is indeed in the real world, but he chooses not to observe the result and instead joins his children.

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

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

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

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

In 1985, teenager Marty McFly lives in Hill Valley, California, with his depressed alcoholic mother, Lorraine; his older siblings, who are professional and social failures; and his meek father, George, who is bullied by his supervisor, Biff Tannen. After Marty's band fails a music audition, he confides in his girlfriend, Jennifer Parker, that he fears becoming like his parents despite his ambitions. That night, Marty meets his eccentric scientist friend, Emmett "Doc" Brown, in the Twin Pines mall parking lot. Doc unveils a time machine built from a modified DeLorean, powered by plutonium he swindled from Libyan terrorists. After Doc inputs a destination time of November 5, 1955 (the day he conceived his time travel invention), the terrorists arrive unexpectedly and gun him down. Marty flees in the DeLorean, inadvertently activating time travel when reaching 88 miles per hour (142 kilometers per hour). Arriving in 1955, Marty discovers he has no plutonium, so he cannot return to 1985. While exploring a burgeoning Hill Valley, Marty encounters his teenage father, discovering Biff was bullying George even then. George falls into the path of an oncoming car while spying on the teenage Lorraine changing clothes, and Marty is knocked unconscious while saving him. He wakes to find himself tended to by Lorraine, who becomes infatuated with him. Marty tracks down and convinces a younger Doc that he is from the future. Doc explains the only source available in 1955 capable of generating the 1.21 gigawatts of power required for time travel is a lightning bolt. Marty shows Doc a flyer from the future that documents an upcoming lightning strike at the town's courthouse. As Marty's siblings begin to fade from a photo he carries with him, Doc realizes Marty's actions are altering the future and jeopardizing his existence: Lorraine was supposed to tend to George instead of Marty after the car accident. Early attempts to get his parents acquainted fail, Marty gains the animosity of Biff, and Lorraine's infatuation with Marty deepens. Lorraine asks Marty to the school dance, and he plots to feign inappropriate advances on her, allowing George to intervene and rescue her, but the plan goes awry when Biff's gang locks Marty in the trunk of the performing band's car, while Biff forces himself onto Lorraine. George arrives expecting to find Marty but is assaulted by Biff. After Biff hurts Lorraine, an enraged George knocks him unconscious and escorts the grateful Lorraine to the dance. The band frees Marty from their car, but the lead guitarist injures his hand in the process, so Marty takes his place, performing while George and Lorraine share their first kiss. With his future no longer in jeopardy, Marty hurries to the courthouse to meet Doc. Doc discovers a letter from Marty warning him about his future and rips it up, worried about the consequences. To save Doc, Marty recalibrates the DeLorean to return ten minutes before he had left the future. The lightning strikes, sending Marty back to 1985, but the DeLorean breaks down, forcing Marty to run back to the mall. He arrives as Doc is being shot. While Marty grieves at his side, Doc sits up, revealing he had pieced Marty's note back together and is wearing a bulletproof vest. He takes Marty home and departs to 2015 in the DeLorean. Marty wakes the next morning, discovering his father is now a confident and successful science fiction author, his mother is fit and happy, his siblings are successful, and Biff is a servile valet in George's employ. As Marty reunites with Jennifer, Doc suddenly reappears in the DeLorean, insisting they return with him to the future to save their children from terrible fates.

In the Pride Lands, a pride of lions rules over the kingdom from Pride Rock. King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi 's newborn son, Simba, is presented to the gathered animals by Rafiki, the mandrill who serves as the kingdom's shaman and advisor. Mufasa's younger brother, Scar, covets the throne and plots to eliminate Mufasa and Simba so that he may become king. When Simba grows into a young cub, Mufasa shows him the Pride Lands and forbids him to explore beyond its borders. Mufasa explains to Simba the responsibilities of kingship and the "circle of life," which connects all living things. Scar manipulates Simba into exploring an elephants' graveyard beyond the Pride Lands. There, Simba and his best friend, Nala, are chased by three spotted hyenas named Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed. Mufasa is alerted by his majordomo, the hornbill Zazu, and rescues the cubs. Though disappointed in Simba for disobeying him and endangering himself and Nala, Mufasa forgives him. He explains that the great kings of the past watch over them from the night sky, from which he will one day watch over Simba. Scar visits the hyenas and convinces them to help him kill Mufasa and Simba in exchange for hunting rights in the Pride Lands. Scar lures Simba into a gorge and signals the hyenas to drive a large herd of wildebeest into a stampede to trample him. He then alerts Mufasa, who saves Simba and tries to escape the gorge, but Scar betrays him by throwing him into the stampede to his death. Scar then deceives Simba into believing that Mufasa's death was his fault and tells him to leave the kingdom and never return. He orders the hyenas to kill Simba, but Simba escapes. Unaware of Simba's survival, Scar tells the pride that the stampede killed both Mufasa and Simba, and steps forward as the new king, allowing the hyenas into the Pride Lands. Simba collapses in a desert but is rescued by two outcasts, a meerkat and a warthog named Timon and Pumbaa. Simba grows up with his two new friends in their oasis, living a carefree life under their motto " hakuna matata " ("no worries" in Swahili). Years later, an adult Simba rescues Timon and Pumbaa from a hungry lioness, who is revealed to be Nala. Simba and Nala fall in love, and she urges him to return home, telling him that the Pride Lands have become drought -stricken under Scar's reign. Still feeling guilty over Mufasa's death, Simba refuses and leaves angrily. He encounters Rafiki, who tells Simba that Mufasa's spirit lives on in him. Simba is visited by the spirit of Mufasa in the night sky, who tells him that he must take his place as king. After Rafiki advises him to learn from the past instead of running from it, Simba decides to return to the Pride Lands. Aided by his friends, Simba sneaks past the hyenas at Pride Rock and confronts Scar, who shames Simba over his supposed role in Mufasa's death. Scar then reveals to Simba that he killed Mufasa. Enraged, Simba retaliates and forces Scar to confess the truth to the pride. A battle ensues between Simba and his allies and the hyenas. Scar attempts to escape but is cornered by Simba at a ledge near the top of Pride Rock. Scar begs for mercy and attempts to deceive Simba by blaming his actions on the hyenas. Simba spares Scar's life, but orders him to leave the Pride Lands forever. Scar refuses and attacks Simba. Following a brief battle, Simba throws Scar off the ledge. Scar survives the fall, but the hyenas, who overheard him betraying them, attack and maul him to death. With Scar and the hyenas gone, Simba takes his place as king, and Nala becomes his queen. With the Pride Lands restored, Rafiki presents Simba and Nala's newborn cub to the assembled animals, thus continuing the circle of life.

In 180 AD, the Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius intends to return home after he leads the Roman army to victory against Germanic tribes near Vindobona. Emperor Marcus Aurelius tells Maximus that his own son, Commodus, is unfit to rule and that he wishes Maximus to succeed him, as regent, to restore the Roman Republic. Angered by this decision when Marcus Aurelius tells the news to him, Commodus secretly assassinates his father by smothering him personally on the spot. Commodus proclaims himself the new emperor and requests loyalty from Maximus, who refuses. Maximus is arrested by Praetorian Guards led by Quintus, who tells Maximus that he and his family will die. Maximus kills his captors and, wounded, rides for his home near Turgalium, where he finds his wife and son murdered. Maximus buries them, then collapses from his injuries. He is found by slave traders, who take him to Zuccabar and sell him to the gladiator trainer Proximo. Maximus fights in local tournaments, his combat skills helping him win matches and gain popularity. He earns the nickname "the Spaniard " and befriends Juba, a gladiator from Carthage, and Hagen, a gladiator from Germania. In Rome, Commodus organizes 150 days of gladiatorial games to commemorate his father and win the approval of the Roman public. Upon hearing this, Proximo reveals to Maximus that he was once a gladiator who was freed by Marcus Aurelius, and advises him to "win the crowd" to gain his freedom. Proximo takes his gladiators to fight in Rome's Colosseum. Disguised in a masked helmet, Maximus debuts in the arena as a Carthaginian in a re-enactment of the Battle of Zama. Unexpectedly, he leads his side to victory and wins the crowd's support. Commodus and his young nephew, Lucius, enter the Colosseum to offer their congratulations. Seeing Lucius, Maximus refrains from attacking Commodus, who orders him to reveal his identity. Maximus removes his helmet and declares he will seek vengeance on Commodus, who is compelled by the crowd to let Maximus live. That evening, Maximus is visited by Lucilla, his former lover and Commodus' sister. Distrusting her, Maximus refuses her help. Commodus arranges a duel between Maximus and Tigris of Gaul, an undefeated gladiator. Several tigers are set upon Maximus, but he prevails. At the crowd's desire, Commodus orders Maximus to kill Tigris, but Maximus spares his life in defiance. In response, the crowd chants "Maximus the Merciful", which angers Commodus. To provoke Maximus, Commodus taunts him about the murder of his family, but Maximus resists the urge to strike him. Increasingly paranoid, Commodus instructs his advisor, Falco, to have every senator followed, and refuses to have Maximus killed for fear he will become a martyr. Maximus discovers from Cicero, his ex- orderly, that his former legions remain loyal to him. He secretly meets with Lucilla and Gracchus, an influential senator. They agree to help Maximus escape from Rome to join his legions in Ostia, which will enable him to oust Commodus and hand power back to the Roman Senate. Soon after, the Praetorians arrest Gracchus. Lucilla meets Maximus at night to arrange his escape and they share a kiss. Lucius accidentally hints at the conspiracy, and Commodus threatens him and Lucilla. Commodus sends the Praetorians to attack the gladiators' barracks, and during the battle Proximo and his men sacrifice themselves to enable Maximus to flee. Maximus makes it to the rendezvous point with Cicero, but Commodus' soldiers kill Cicero and capture Maximus. Commodus demands that Lucilla provide him with an heir. He challenges Maximus to a duel in the Colosseum to win back public approval, and stabs him before the match to gain an advantage. Despite his injury, Maximus disarms Commodus during the duel. After Quintus and the Praetorians refuse to help Commodus, he unsheathes a hidden knife, but Maximus overpowers him and kills him. Before Maximus succumbs to his injuries, he asks for political reforms, the emancipation of his gladiator allies, and the reinstatement of Gracchus as a senator. As he dies, Maximus envisions reuniting with his wife and son in the afterlife. His friends and allies honor him as "a soldier of Rome" and carry his body out of the arena. That night, Juba visits the Colosseum and buries figurines of Maximus' wife and son at the spot where Maximus died.

In the 29th century, Earth is an inhospitable, garbage-strewn wasteland due to an ecocide caused by rampant consumerism, corporate greed, and environmental neglect. Humanity was evacuated to space by the megacorporation Buy n Large on giant spaceships 700 years earlier, leaving trash-compacting "WALL-E" robots to clean up the planet, but the cleanup was eventually abandoned after the planet became far too toxic. All but one of the robots have stopped functioning; the last remaining active WALL-E has developed a personality and uses a truck designed to carry the WALL-E robots as a home. WALL-E remains active by salvaging parts from other inactive robots, with his pet cockroach Hal as his only companion. One day, WALL-E's routine of compressing trash and collecting interesting objects is broken by the arrival of a sleek, futuristic robot called EVE, who scans the planet for sustainable life. WALL-E is smitten by her, and the two begin to connect until EVE goes into standby mode when WALL-E shows her his most recent find: a living seedling. WALL-E cares for EVE until she is collected by a large unmanned rocket; with WALL-E clinging on, it returns to its mothership, the starliner Axiom. In the centuries since the Axiom left Earth, its passengers have degenerated into helpless obesity due to microgravity and laziness, with robots catering to their every whim. Captain B. McCrea sits back while his robotic AI autopilot helm, nicknamed AUTO, pilots the ship. McCrea is unprepared for the positive probe response, but discovers that placing the plant in the ship's Holo-Detector will trigger a hyperjump back to Earth so that humanity can begin recolonization. When McCrea inspects EVE's storage compartment, the plant is missing, and EVE blames WALL-E for its disappearance. EVE is deemed faulty and taken to diagnostics. Mistaking this for torture, WALL-E intervenes and inadvertently releases the other faulty bots, causing him and EVE to be designated rogue robots. Frustrated with WALL-E's reckless actions, EVE tries sending WALL-E home in an escape pod, but as WALL-E refuses, the two witness McCrea's first mate robot, GO-4, stowing the plant in a pod set to self-destruct, proving WALL-E's innocence. WALL-E enters the pod to retrieve the plant just as it launches, and he and the plant survive the pod's destruction. EVE catches up to him and they reconcile, dancing in space around the Axiom. EVE brings the plant to McCrea, who watches her recordings of Earth, concluding that they must save it, and EVE is touched by seeing recordings of WALL-E caring for her while she is in standby mode, understanding his feelings for her. AUTO reveals his secret no-return directive A113, recorded by Shelby Forthright, Buy n Large's CEO, in 2110, which orders them not to return to Earth on account of its toxicity levels, unaware that the planet is actually starting to recover; AUTO had ordered GO-4 to get rid of the plant earlier. When McCrea tries overriding the directive, AUTO mutinies and electrocutes WALL-E, throws him and EVE down a garbage chute, and confines McCrea to his quarters. EVE and WALL-E are nearly ejected into space with the Axiom ' s garbage, but a cleaning robot named M-O inadvertently jams the airlock and rescues them. McCrea escapes by tricking AUTO with an image of the plant and fights for control of the Axiom, destroying GO-4 in the process, while humans and robots work to secure the real plant. AUTO crushes WALL-E using the Holo-Detector, but McCrea rises from his chair, activates the manual override and deactivates AUTO. EVE inserts the plant into the Holo-Detector, initiating the hyperjump back to Earth. Arriving on Earth, EVE repairs WALL-E, but his memory and personality have been erased. Heartbroken, EVE gives WALL-E a "smooch", which releases a static electricity shock, restoring him. WALL-E and EVE reunite as the Axiom inhabitants take their first steps on Earth. Humans and robots work to restore the ravaged planet with the help of WALL-E and EVE, and the plant grows into a tree, which WALL-E and EVE admire together.

A deep-space salvage crew find an escape shuttle where Ellen Ripley has been in stasis for 57 years after destroying her ship, the Nostromo, to kill an alien creature that slaughtered the crew. Ripley is debriefed by her Weyland-Yutani Corporation employers who doubt her claim about alien eggs in a derelict ship on the exomoon LV-426, now the site of a terraforming colony. After contact is lost with the colony, Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke and Colonial Marine Lieutenant Gorman ask Ripley to accompany them to investigate. Still traumatized by her alien encounter, she agrees on the condition that they exterminate the creatures. Ripley meets the Colonial Marines aboard the spaceship Sulaco but distrusts their android, Bishop, because the Nostromo ' s android, Ash, betrayed its crew to protect the alien on company orders. A dropship lands the crew on LV-426, where they find the battle-ravaged colony and two live alien facehuggers in containment tanks. The only colonist found is a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt. The team locates the other colonists' signals beneath the fusion-powered atmosphere processing station and heads to their location, descending into corridors covered in alien secretions. At the station's center, the marines discover opened eggs, dead facehuggers, and cocooned colonists serving as incubators for the alien embryos. The marines kill a newborn alien after it bursts through a colonist's chest, rousing several adult aliens who ambush the marines, killing or capturing many. When the inexperienced Gorman panics, Ripley assumes command and rams their armored personnel carrier into the nest to rescue Corporal Dwayne Hicks, and Privates Hudson and Vasquez. Hicks orders the dropship to recover the survivors, but a stowaway alien kills the pilots, causing the dropship to crash into the station. Low on ammunition and resources, the survivors barricade themselves inside the colony facility. Ripley discovers that Burke ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship containing the alien eggs, intending to profit by recovering them for biological weapon research. Before she can expose Burke, Bishop reports that the dropship crash damaged the power plant's cooling system, and it will soon overheat and explode, destroying the colony. Bishop volunteers to travel to the colony transmitter and remotely pilot the remaining dropship to the surface. Asleep in the medical lab, Ripley and Newt awaken to find themselves trapped with the two released facehuggers. Ripley triggers a fire alarm to alert the marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. She accuses Burke of releasing the facehuggers to implant her and Newt with alien embryos to smuggle them through Earth's quarantine. The power is suddenly cut, and aliens attack through the ceiling. In the ensuing firefight, the aliens kill Burke, subdue Hudson, and injure Hicks; the cornered Gorman and Vasquez sacrifice themselves to avoid capture. Newt is separated from Ripley and taken by the creatures. Ripley takes Hicks to the dropship but refuses to abandon Newt and arms herself before descending into the processing station hive alone to rescue her. During their escape, they encounter the alien queen amid dozens of eggs. When one opens, Ripley burns the eggs and blows up the queen's ovipositor. Pursued by the enraged queen, Ripley and Newt reach the dropship and escape with Bishop and an unconscious Hicks moments before the station explodes, consuming the colony in a nuclear blast. Aboard the Sulaco, the queen, stowed away in the dropship's landing gear, attacks the group. The queen rips Bishop in half and advances on Newt, but Ripley battles the creature using an exosuit cargo loader, expelling it into space through an airlock while the damaged Bishop shields Newt. Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop then enter hypersleep for their return trip to Earth.