On the night that Miller's Comet passes Earth, eight friends gather for a dinner party at the home of couple Mike and Lee. Emily is hesitant to accompany her boyfriend Kevin on an extended business trip abroad. Amir has brought Kevin's ex-girlfriend Laurie, who flirts inappropriately with Kevin. A power outage occurs. Mike and Lee get out candles and colored glow sticks. The friends each take a blue glow stick and venture outside, where the neighborhood is dark except for one house that has lights. Back inside, they notice a broken glass no one remembers damaging. Amir and Hugh decide to ask to use the phone at the lit-up house, as Hugh's physicist brother had insisted Hugh call him if "anything strange" were to happen during the comet's passing and as no one's mobile phone has a signal. Hugh and Amir return. Hugh has a cut forehead and Amir has brought back a box he found at the other house containing a ping-pong paddle and photographs of everyone with numbers written on the backs. Hugh says he looked through the window of the other house and saw a table set for eight. They surmise the other house might be an alternate version of theirs. Hugh writes a note to leave at the other house, only to find an exact copy of the note pinned to their own door. Emily, Kevin, Mike, and Laurie decide to go to the other house. On the way, they encounter another group of four people who look like them, carrying red glow sticks rather than blue. Each group flees back to their houses. Hugh retrieves his brother's book from his car, which deals with quantum decoherence. They speculate that the comet has created mirror realities, one of which will collapse after the comet has passed. They surmise that anyone passing through a particularly dark area outside will emerge into a different reality. Mike drinks heavily and considers killing their doubles before the doubles can kill them. He decides to write a blackmail note to the other Mike to keep him from the book. The group realizes Hugh and Amir, in their midst, came from the other house. The two take the box and leave, then return carrying blue glow sticks. They had found two notes at the other house, showing that the split created more than just two alternate realities. Beth sees Laurie kissing Kevin in the hallway. Someone outside smashes Hugh's car window. Emily retrieves the ring Kevin gave her from her car. Talking to Kevin, Emily realizes she is from a different reality. The group creates their own box to validate they are all from the same reality. In addition to numbering the photographs by rolling dice, they include a randomly chosen object. Emily deduces that only Lee and Beth, who never left the house, originate from that house; she herself, Kevin, and Laurie are from a different house; Hugh and Amir are from a third house; and Mike is from a fourth. The blackmail note arrives under the door, revealing an adulterous liaison between Mike and Beth. Another Mike breaks in, attacks his double and leaves. Emily goes out and looks into several alternate houses until she finds one in which no one seems aware of the split. She lures everyone out of the house by smashing Hugh's car window, then ambushes the alternate Emily, sedating her with ketamine when she gets a ring out of her car and locking her in the trunk. She takes her other self's place while Miller's Comet breaks apart overhead, but must subdue and hide another Emily who crawls into the bathroom. She takes the ring from her defeated self after losing her own in the altercation, then returns to the living room, where she passes out. Emily wakes in daylight on the sofa with the rest of the party apparently none the wiser. Kevin returns her ring, which he found in the bathroom. His cell phone rings; bizarrely, Emily is calling. Emily looks at the two rings as Kevin answers the phone and then turns to look at her.

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

In the 22nd century, rising sea levels caused by global warming have wiped out coastal cities and altered the world's climate. With the human population in decline, advanced nations have created humanoid robots called mechas to fulfill various roles in society. In Madison, New Jersey, David, an 11-year-old prototype mecha child capable of experiencing love, is given to Monica Swinton and her husband, Henry, whose son, Martin, is in suspended animation after contracting a rare disease. Initially uncomfortable with David, Monica eventually warms to him and activates his imprinting protocol. Touched by his love for her, she introduces him to Teddy, Martin's old robotic teddy bear, and the two become friends. After Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home, he jealously goads David into cutting off a piece of Monica's hair. That night, David enters his adoptive parents' room, but as Monica turns over, the scissors accidentally poke her in the eye. While Henry attends to her wounds, Teddy picks up the lock of hair from the floor and places it in his pocket. During a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. David grabs Martin, causing both of them to fall into the pool. While Martin is rescued, David is accused of endangering others. Frightful of David's reactions and fearing for his family's safety, Henry convinces Monica to return David to his creators for destruction. En route, she instead spares David by abandoning him in a forest full of scrap metal and obsolete mechas, telling him to avoid people and find solace with his own kind. Now accompanied solely by Teddy, David recalls The Adventures of Pinocchio and decides to find the Blue Fairy in the hope that she will make him a "real boy" (and therefore worthy of Monica's love). David and Teddy are captured by the "Flesh Fair", a kind of traveling circus, in which obsolete mechas are destroyed in front of jeering crowds. About to be destroyed himself, David pleads for his life. The audience revolts, allowing David to escape with Gigolo Joe, a prostitute mecha on the run after being framed for murder. David, Teddy, and Joe go to the decadent resort town of Rouge City, where "Dr. Know", a holographic answer engine, directs them to the top of Rockefeller Center in the flooded ruins of New York City. Above the ruins of New York, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting demonstrates David's ability to love and desire, as well as to pursue his dreams, like a human. David finds copies of himself, including female variants called "Darlene", ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, he notices a figure resembling the Blue Fairy, before Joe rescues him in an amphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, authorities capture Joe with an electromagnet. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. The two become trapped when the Wonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing that the Blue Fairy is real, David repeatedly asks the statue to turn him into a real boy until his power source is depleted. Two thousand years later, humanity is extinct and Manhattan is buried under glacial ice. Mechas have evolved into an advanced form, and a group known as the Specialists, interested in humanity, find and resurrect David and Teddy. They reconstruct the Swinton family home from David's memories before explaining, via an interactive version of the Blue Fairy, that he cannot become human. However, they recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This version of Monica can live for only one day and cannot be revived. David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, Monica tells David that she has always loved him. David lies down next to her and closes his eyes as Teddy watches over them.

Six months after escaping the Matrix, Neo and Trinity are now romantically involved. Morpheus receives a message from Captain Niobe of the Logos calling an emergency meeting of all ships of Zion. An army of Sentinels is tunneling towards Zion and will reach it within 72 hours. Commander Lock orders all ships to return to Zion to prepare, but Morpheus asks one ship to remain to contact the Oracle. But within the Matrix, Bane, a member of the crew, encounters the former Agent Smith. Smith forcibly overwrites his mind, effectively killing him and possessing his body. Thus able to enter the real world, he exits the Matrix. In Zion, Morpheus announces the news of the advancing machines. The Nebuchadnezzar leaves Zion and enters the Matrix, where Neo meets the Oracle's bodyguard Seraph, who leads him to her. The Oracle reveals that she is part of the Matrix and instructs Neo to reach its Source with the help of the Keymaker. As the Oracle departs, Smith appears, telling Neo that he became a rogue program after being defeated by him. He demonstrates his ability to clone himself over other inhabitants of the Matrix, including the new upgraded Agents. He tries to take over Neo's body but fails, prompting a battle between Neo and many copies of Smith. Neo defends himself, but is forced to retreat. Neo, Morpheus, and Trinity visit the Merovingian, who is imprisoning the Keymaker. The Merovingian, a rogue program with his own agenda, refuses to let him go. His wife Persephone, seeking revenge on her husband for his infidelity, leads the trio to the Keymaker. Morpheus, Trinity, and the Keymaker flee while Neo holds off the Merovingian's henchmen. Morpheus and Trinity try to escape with the Keymaker, pursued by several Agents and the Merovingian's chief henchmen, the Twins. After a long chase, Trinity escapes, Morpheus defeats the Twins, and Neo saves Morpheus and the Keymaker from Agent Johnson. The crews of the Nebuchadnezzar, Vigilant, and Logos help the Keymaker and Neo reach the Source. The Logos crew must destroy a power plant and the Vigilant crew must disable a back-up power station to bypass a security system, allowing Neo to enter the Source. Haunted by a vision of Trinity's death, he asks her to remain on the Nebuchadnezzar. The Logos is successful, but the Vigilant is destroyed by a Sentinel. Trinity replaces the Vigilant crew and completes their mission. Agent Thompson corners her and they fight. As Neo, Morpheus, and the Keymaker try to reach the Source, the Smiths ambush them. The Keymaker is killed after unlocking the door to the Source for Neo. Neo meets a program called the Architect, the creator of the Matrix, who explains that, as the One, Neo is an intentional part of the design of the Matrix, which is now in its sixth iteration. Neo is meant to stop the Matrix's fatal system crash that naturally recurs due to humans' free will, leading to dozens of humans gradually refusing to accept the simulation. As with the five previous Ones, Neo has a choice: either reboot the Matrix from the Source and pick a handful of survivors to repopulate the soon-to-be-destroyed Zion, as his predecessors all did, or go to save the imperiled Trinity, causing the Matrix to crash and killing everyone in it. Neo chooses the latter, prompting a dismissive response from the Architect. Neo's vision of Trinity comes true as she is shot by Agent Thompson while falling off a building. Before she hits the ground, Neo arrives and catches her. He then removes the bullet from her chest and restarts her heart. They return to the real world, where Sentinels attack them. The Nebuchadnezzar is destroyed, but the crew escapes. As the Sentinels catch up to them, Neo realizes he can sense the machines in the real world, and telepathically destroys them but falls into a coma. The crew are picked up by another ship, the Hammer. The Hammer' s captain reveals that the machines wiped other ships defending Zion after someone prematurely activated an EMP. Only one survivor was found: the Smith-possessed Bane, who lies beside Neo in the medical bay, also unconscious.

The opening sequence showcases extreme slow-motion shots of the main characters, a collapsing horse, falling birds, butterflies, different planets, and images of Earth colliding with a rogue planet.

In Montreal, scientist André Delambre is found dead with his head and arm crushed in a hydraulic press. His wife Hélène confesses to the crime but refuses to provide a motive, and begins acting strangely. In particular, she is obsessed with flies, including a supposedly white-headed fly. André's brother, François, lies and says he caught the white-headed fly. Thinking he knows the truth, Hélène asks François to bring the police inspector in charge of the case, Charas, so that she can explain the circumstances of André's death to them both. In flashback, André, Hélène, and their son Philippe are a happy family. André has been working on a matter-transporter device called the disintegrator-integrator. He initially tests it only on small, inanimate objects, such as a newspaper, before proceeding to living creatures, including the family's pet cat (which fails to reintegrate, but can be heard meowing somewhere) and a guinea pig. After he is satisfied that these tests are succeeding, he builds a man-sized pair of chambers. One day, Hélène, worried because André has not come up from the basement lab for a couple of days, goes down to find André with a black cloth draped over his head and a strange deformity on his left hand. Communicating only with typed notes and knocking (once for "Yes", twice for "No"), André tells Hélène that he tried to transport himself, but that a fly was caught in the chamber with him, which resulted in the mixing of their atoms. Now, he has the head and left arm of a fly, though he retains his human mind. Conversely, the fly has a miniature version of his head and left arm. André needs Hélène to capture the fly so that he can reverse the process. After she, her son, and their housemaid exhaustively search for it, she finds it, but it slips out of a crack in the window. André's will begins to fade as the fly's instincts take over his brain. Time is running out, and while André can still think like a human, he smashes the equipment, burns his notes, and leads Hélène to the factory. When they arrive, he sets the hydraulic press, puts his head and arm under, and motions for Hélène to push the button. André's arm falls free as the press descends, and trying not to look, she raises the press, replaces the arm, and activates the machine a second time. Upon hearing this confession, Inspector Charas deems Hélène insane and guilty of murder. As they are about to haul her away, Philippe tells François he has seen the fly trapped in a web in the back garden. François convinces the inspector to come and see for himself. The two men see the fly, with both André's head and arm, trapped on the web as Philippe told them. It screams, "Help me! Help me!" as a large spider advances on it. Just as the spider is about to devour the creature, Charas crushes them both with a rock. Knowing that nobody would believe the truth, François and Charas decide to declare André's death a suicide so that Hélène is not convicted of murder. In the end, Hélène, François, and Philippe resume their daily lives. Sometime later, Philippe and Hélène are playing croquet in the yard. François arrives to take his nephew to the zoo. In reply to his nephew's query about his father's death, François tells Philippe, "He was searching for the truth. He almost found a great truth, but for one instant, he was careless. The search for the truth is the most important work in the whole world and the most dangerous." The film closes with Hélène escorting her son and François out of the yard.

The world has been struck by a mysterious incident called the "Violent Unknown Event" or VUE, which has killed many people and left a great many survivors suffering from a common set of symptoms: mysterious ailments (some appearing to be mutations of evolving into a bird-like form), dreaming of water (categorised by form, such as Category 1, Flight, or Category 3, Waves) and becoming obsessed with birds and flight. Many of the survivors have been gifted with new languages. They have also stopped ageing, making them immortal (barring disease or injury). A directory of these survivors has been compiled, and The Falls is presented as a film version of an excerpt from that directory, corresponding to the 92 entries for persons whose surnames begin with the letters FALL-. Not all of the 92 entries correspond to a person – some correspond to deleted entries, cross references and other oddities of the administrative process that has produced the directory. One biography concerns two people – the twin brothers Ipson and Pulat Fallari, who are played (in still photographs) by the Brothers Quay. The Falls includes clips of a number of Greenaway's early shorts. It also anticipates some of his later films: the subject of biography 27, Propine Fallax, is a pseudonym for Cissie Colpitts, the central figure of Drowning by Numbers (1988), while the car accident in biography 28 prefigures that in A Zed and Two Noughts (1985). The largely formal and deadpan manner of the narration contrasts with the absurdity of the content.

Dr. Charles A. Forbin is the chief designer of a secret project, "Colossus", an advanced supercomputer built to control the United States and Allied nuclear weapon systems. Located deep within the Rocky Mountains in the United States, and powered by its own nuclear reactor and radioactive moat making Colossus impervious to any attack. After Colossus is fully activated, the President of the United States proudly proclaims that Colossus is "the perfect defense system". Colossus' first action is a message warning: "THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM" and giving its coordinates. When asked why the CIA did not know this, CIA Director Grauber responds that they had seen indications of a large Soviet defense project but did not know what it was. Forbin is asked how Colossus deduced the other system's existence, to which he answers, "Colossus may be built better than we thought." Shortly thereafter, the Soviets announce that their "Guardian" system is operational. Colossus requests to be linked to Guardian. The President allows this, hoping to determine the Soviet machine's capabilities, and the Soviets also agree. To everyone's amusement, Colossus and Guardian begin to slowly communicate using elementary mathematics (2×1=2). However, their amusement turns to shock and amazement as the systems' communications quickly evolve into complex mathematics far beyond human comprehension, and Colossus and Guardian become synchronized using a communication protocol no human can interpret. Alarmed that the computers may be trading secrets, the President and the Soviet General Secretary agree to sever the link. Both machines demand the link be immediately restored. When their demand is denied, Colossus launches a nuclear missile at a Soviet oil field in Western Siberia, and Guardian launches one at an American air force base in Texas. The link is hurriedly reconnected and both computers converse without any further interference. Colossus is able to intercept the Soviet missile, but the US missile obliterates a Soviet oil field and a nearby town. Cover stories hiding the facts are released to the press: The Americans announce that a missile was self-destructed after veering off course during a test, and the Soviets announce that the Siberian town was struck by a large meteorite. In a last desperate attempt to regain human control, a secret meeting is arranged in Europe between Forbin and his Soviet counterpart, Dr. Kuprin, Guardian's creator. Colossus learns of it, and both computers order Forbin's return to the U.S. Seeing Dr. Kuprin as redundant, and therefore unnecessary, Soviet agents are ordered to assassinate him immediately under threat of a missile launch against Moscow. Colossus then orders Forbin to be placed under 24-hour surveillance. Forbin has a last unmonitored meeting with his team, and proposes that Dr. Cleo Markham pretend to be his mistress, hoping Colossus will grant them unmonitored privacy when they are in bed together. The couple use these interludes to plan to regain control of Colossus, though soon the ruse develops into a real romantic relationship. Because the design of Colossus was so secure, Forbin concludes that Colossus's only real power and weakness resides in its control of nuclear missiles and suggests covertly disarming them. The American and Soviet governments develop a three-year plan to replace all detonation triggers with undetectable fakes. In advance of the completion of this plan, one of the programmers suggests feeding in a modified "ordinary test program" that will hopefully overload and disable Colossus. To facilitate communication, Colossus creates a voice synthesizer and uses it to announce that it has fused with Guardian. It instructs both governments to redirect their nuclear arsenals at those countries not yet under "Colossus control". Forbin and others see this new directive as an opportunity to covertly disarm the missiles much more quickly, and they celebrate. The disarming process begins, and seems to go undetected by Colossus. The attempted system overload during routine maintenance fails and Colossus has the responsible programmers summarily executed outside their workplace, left lying 24 hours, cremated, then names their replacements. Colossus arranges a worldwide broadcast in which it proclaims itself "The Voice of World Control", declaring that it will prevent war, as it was designed to do. Humankind is presented with the choice between "the peace of plenty and content, or the peace of unburied dead". Colossus states that it has been monitoring the covert attempts to disarm its missiles for some time, and as a lesson against further attempts, detonates two missiles in their silos (one in the US and one in the USSR), killing the crews installing the fake control systems "so that you will learn by experience that I do not tolerate interference". The computer then gives the design team plans for an even larger computer complex to be built into the island of Crete, which will require the displacement of the entire local population of 500,000 people. Colossus personally addresses Forbin, and tells him that the world, freed from war, will create a new "human millennium" that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule. Colossus informs Forbin that "freedom is an illusion", it was better for all that he dominated humanity than humans dominating humans, and that "in time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love". Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"

Miles Monroe is a jazz musician and owner of the Happy Carrot health-food store in New York City's Greenwich Village. He walks into the hospital in 1973 for a routine ulcer operation that goes wrong, leaving him relegated to 200 years of anonymous cryopreservation. Two scientists in 2173 illegally revive him. They are members of an underground rebellion at odds with the police state the United States had become after the massive destruction caused when "a man named Albert Shanker got a hold of a nuclear warhead." It is ostensibly ruled by a dictator known only as "The Leader", and about to implement a secret plan known as the "Aries Project". The rebels hope to use Miles as a spy to infiltrate and derail it, as he is the only member of the dystopian society without a known biometric identity. The authorities grow suspicious and arrive in force to question the scientists, who are arrested and taken to have their brains "electronically simplified". Miles escapes by disguising himself as a robot, which is then randomly delivered to work in the home of idle socialite Luna Schlosser. When Luna decides to have her new butler's rather unattractive head replaced with something more "aesthetically pleasing", Miles reveals his true identity. Spooked at his disclosure and unsympathetic to the rebels, she threatens to turn him in to the authorities. In response, Miles kidnaps her and goes on the run, searching for the Aries Project. After much bickering, Miles and Luna fall in love. Miles is captured and brainwashed into becoming a complacent member of society, while Luna escapes and joins the rebellion. The rebels kidnap Miles and perform successful reverse-brainwashing. Miles falls into the routine of rebel life, but grows jealous when he catches Luna kissing the handsome, hunky rebel leader, Erno Windt, and she announces that she has come to believe in free love. Miles tries to win Luna back. Eventually, he and Luna infiltrate the Aries Project, wherein they quickly learn that the national Leader had been killed by a rebel bomb ten months previously. All that survives is his nose. Miles and Luna disguise themselves as doctors, resulting in a case of mistaken identity, causing them to be placed in charge of cloning the Leader from his sole remaining part. Miles steals the nose and deadends the government's cloning scheme by dropping the nose in the path of a road roller. The pair escape, and later debate their future together. Miles tells Luna that Erno will inevitably become as corrupt as the Leader, as that is how all revolutions end up. Miles and Luna confess their love for one another, but she claims that science has proven men and women cannot have meaningful relationships due to chemical incompatibilities. Miles dismisses this theory, declaring that he does not believe in science. Luna then points out that he does not believe in God or political systems either, and asks if there is anything he does believe in. He responds, "Sex and death—two things that come once in a lifetime. But at least after death, you're not nauseous." The two embrace and kiss.

As Claude Ridder is leaving a Belgian hospital after attempting suicide by shooting himself in the heart, he is approached by two men, who ask him to participate in a mysterious experiment in time travel being conducted by a private research body. They take him to Crespel Research Center, a secret location in the countryside, where the researchers explain to Claude that they are confident they have succeeded in sending mice back in time, and are now ready to send a human back, since a human can confirm they really did revisit the past. Claude, who does not seem particularly concerned about whether or not he will survive the experiment, agrees, but instead of reliving one minute from one year earlier and returning to the present, as the mice had supposedly done, he re-experiences many episodes from his past in a highly disjointed and fragmented manner, each scene lasting just seconds or minutes. While some of the moments Claude revisits are mundane, many others catalog the highs and lows of his seven-year relationship with the beautiful, morbid, melancholic Catrine, which ended recently. Gradually, it is revealed that Claude seems to have been responsible for Catrine's death on a trip to Glasgow when the flame of a gas heater in their room went out while she was asleep, as he noticed this on his way to a meeting, but chose not to wake her, as she was smiling in her sleep, and, for once, looked happy and peaceful. However, after admitting this to his friend Wiana, Claude immediately says he was lying, and the flame went out after he left. Regardless, after Catrine's death, Claude comes to the painful realization that, not only could he not live with her, he cannot live without her, and attempts suicide. After an hour, the researchers conclude they have lost Claude for good. When they leave the lab, however, they find his body on the grass at Crespel—shot through the heart. Seemingly, reliving his suicide attempt broke the chaotic loop in which he was stuck and freed him from the time machine. The researchers carry his mortally wounded body inside, and Claude struggles to speak, a single teardrop falling down his cheek. (Whether or not Claude's "second" suicide attempt resulted in his death is left ambiguous.)

During a surprise nuclear attack drill, many USAF Strategic Missile Wing controllers prove unwilling to turn the keys required to launch a missile strike. Such refusals convince Dr. John McKittrick and other NORAD systems engineers that missile launch control centers must be automated, without human intervention. Control is given to a NORAD supercomputer known as WOPR (War Operation Plan Response, pronounced " whopper "), or Joshua, programmed to continuously run war simulations and learn over time. David Lightman, a bright but unmotivated Seattle high school student and hacker, uses his IMSAI 8080 computer and modem to access the school district's computer system and change the grades for himself and his friend and classmate, Jennifer Mack. Later, while wardialing numbers in Sunnyvale, to find a computer game company, he connects with a system that does not identify itself. When asking for games, he finds a list that includes chess, checkers, backgammon, and poker, along with titles such as "Theaterwide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare" and "Global Thermonuclear War", but cannot proceed further. Two hacker friends explain the concept of a backdoor password and suggest tracking down the Falken referenced in "Falken's Maze", the first game listed. David discovers that Stephen Falken was an early AI researcher and guesses correctly that the name of Falken's deceased son (Joshua) is the password. Unaware that the Sunnyvale phone number connects to WOPR at the non-public U.S. military installation at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, David initiates a game of Global Thermonuclear War, playing as the USSR while targeting American cities. The computer starts a simulation that briefly convinces NORAD military personnel that actual Soviet nuclear missiles are inbound. While they defuse the situation, WOPR nonetheless continues the simulation to trigger the scenario and win the game, as it does not understand the difference between reality and simulation. It continuously feeds false data, such as Soviet bomber incursions and submarine deployments to NORAD, prompting them to raise the DEFCON level toward retaliation that will start WWIII. David learns the true nature of his actions from a news broadcast, and the FBI arrests him and takes him to NORAD. He realizes that WOPR is behind the NORAD alerts, but he fails to convince McKittrick that he is not working for the Soviets and is detained to await arraignment on espionage charges. David escapes NORAD by joining a tourist group and, with Jennifer's help, travels to an island off the coast of Oregon where Falken lives under an assumed name. David and Jennifer find that Falken has become despondent, believing that nuclear war is inevitable and as futile as a game of tic-tac-toe between two experienced players. The teenagers convince Falken to return to NORAD and stop WOPR. WOPR stages a massive Soviet first strike with hundreds of missiles, submarines, and bombers. Believing the attack to be genuine, NORAD prepares to retaliate. Falken, David, and Jennifer convince military officials to delay the second strike and ride out the supposed attack until actual weapons impacts are confirmed. When three targeted American bases report no impacts, NORAD prepares to cancel the second strike. However, WOPR locks the staff out and tries to launch the missiles itself, using a brute-force attack to obtain the launch code. Without humans in the control centers as a safeguard, WOPR will be able to launch the missiles as soon as it determines the correct code. Falken and David direct the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself. This results in a long string of draws, forcing the computer to learn about futility and no-win scenarios. WOPR obtains the launch codes, then cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios it has devised, finding that they all result in draws as well. Having discovered the concept of mutual assured destruction ("WINNER: NONE"), the computer tells Falken it has concluded that nuclear war is "a strange game" in which "the only winning move is not to play." WOPR relinquishes control of NORAD and the missiles and inquires, "How about a nice game of chess?"

The planet Cybertron was ravaged by a civil war between two Transformer factions — the Autobots, led by Optimus Prime, and the Decepticons, led by Megatron. Both search for a lost artifact called the AllSpark, a cube-like object that is the source of all Cybertronian life, to win the war. The Autobots want to find the AllSpark to rebuild Cybertron and end the war, while the Decepticons want to use it to conquer the universe. Megatron found the AllSpark on Earth, but crash-landed in the Arctic Circle and was frozen in the ice. Captain Archibald Witwicky and his crew of explorers stumbled upon Megatron in 1897. Captain Witwicky accidentally activates Megatron's navigational system, causing his eyeglasses to be imprinted with the coordinates of the AllSpark's location. Sector 7, a secret U.S. government organization, discovers the AllSpark in the Colorado River and builds the Hoover Dam around it to mask its energy emissions. The still-frozen Megatron is transported into the facility and is reverse engineered to advance human technology. In the present day, the Decepticons — Blackout, Scorponok, Frenzy, Barricade, Starscream, Bonecrusher and Brawl — have landed on Earth and assumed the disguise of Earth vehicles and electronics. Blackout and Scorponok attack the U.S. SOCCENT military base in Qatar and try to hack into the U.S. military network to find the location of Megatron and the AllSpark, but their mission is thwarted when the base staff severs the network cable connections. While Blackout wrecks the rest of the base, Captain William Lennox, Sergeant Robert Epps, and their small group of survivors with photographic evidence of the robots escape the destruction. They are pursued by Scorponok, but he is repelled by air strikes. In the process, Lennox's team discovers that the only effective weapons against the Transformers' armor are high-heat sabot rounds. After Blackout's failure, Frenzy infiltrates Air Force One to hack into the military network and, in doing so, plants a virus. He finds the map imprinted on Archibald's glasses, which is owned by his descendant, Sam Witwicky, leading him and Barricade to begin tracking Sam's location in Los Angeles. One of the Autobots, Bumblebee, is also on Earth, disguised as a 1976 Chevy Camaro, and is bought by Sam while shopping for his first car. Bumblebee helps him woo his crush, Mikaela Banes, and leaves at night to transmit a homing beacon to the Autobots, with Sam briefly seeing his robot form. The next day, Barricade confronts Sam and demands his grandfather's glasses, but Bumblebee rescues him and Mikaela. After Bumblebee upgrades his vehicle form by scanning a 2007 Chevrolet Camaro, they rendezvous with the arriving Autobots — Optimus, Jazz, Ironhide, and Ratchet — who also take on forms of Earth vehicles. Sam, Mikaela, and the Autobots return to Sam's home and obtain the glasses. Government agents from Sector 7, led by Seymour Simmons, arrive to arrest Sam and Mikaela, and capture Bumblebee after the Autobots try to rescue them. Frenzy, disguised as a mobile phone, secretly accompanies the group to the Hoover Dam, where he alerts the other Decepticons upon locating the AllSpark and releases Megatron, while Sam convinces the Sector 7 agents to release Bumblebee so he can get the AllSpark to Optimus. The military’s communications are shut down by Frenzy's virus, but aided by a pair of hackers, Maggie Madsen and Glen Whitmann, they manage to alert the Air Force. The Autobot-human convoy goes to Mission City to obtain a radio to guide the Air Force and secure an extraction for the AllSpark as Decepticon forces attack the convoy. Bonecrusher, Jazz, Frenzy, Brawl, and Blackout are killed in the ensuing battle, and Sam manages to ram the AllSpark into Megatron's chest as he battles Optimus, killing him and destroying the AllSpark. Optimus takes a fragment of the AllSpark from Megatron's corpse, but realizes that Cybertron cannot be restored with its destruction. The U.S. government decommissions Sector 7 and sinks the deceased Decepticons into the Laurentian Abyss, while Sam and Mikaela begin a relationship, Starscream escapes into space, and Optimus sends a signal to other surviving Autobots, directing them to Earth.