L’Avalon, un vaisseau spatial de la compagnie Homestead, se dirige vers la planète Homestead II. À son bord se trouvent 5000 passagers dont 258 membres d’équipage dont le but est de fonder une colonie spatiale, alors que la Terre est surpeuplée. Le voyage doit durer 120 ans et tous les voyageurs sont placés en biostase dans des capsules individuelles. Mais après 30 ans, l'Avalon traverse un champ d'astéroïdes dont l'un d'eux trop gros pour le bouclier du vaisseau créé plusieurs avaries, qui se propagent à l'une des capsules d'hibernation et déclenchent le processus de réveil de son occupant, Jim Preston, un mécatronicien.
In 2154, Earth is overpopulated and polluted. Most of the earth's citizens live in poverty, on the edge of starvation, and with little technology and medical care. The rich and powerful live on Elysium — a gigantic, terraformed space habitat located in Earth's orbit. Elysium is technologically advanced; such technology includes Med-Bays: medical machines that can cure all diseases, reverse the aging process and regenerate new body parts. A long-running feud exists between the wealthy residents of Elysium and the citizens of Earth, who want Elysian technology to cure their medical ailments.
After the sudden death of John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), a former American Civil War Confederate Army captain, Carter's nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Daryl Sabara), attends the funeral. Per Carter's instructions, the body is put in a tomb that can be unlocked only from the inside. His attorney hands Burroughs Carter's journal, which Burroughs reads in the hope of finding clues to Carter's cause of death.
Dr. Jumba Jookiba is arrested and put on trial by the Galactic Federation for "illegal genetic experimentation", as evidenced by his Experiment 626, a living creature which is capable of creating untold chaos. Jumba is imprisoned while Experiment 626 is supposed to be exiled on a desert asteroid. 626 manages to escape in a spaceship and activates the hyperdrive, causing its guidance systems to malfunction and randomly set a course for Earth. The Grand Councilwoman dispatches Jumba and Agent Pleakley, the Council's Earth expert, to the planet to have 626 captured discreetly. 626 lands on the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, but is knocked unconscious by a passing truck and taken to an animal shelter.
In 1914, aliens known as Mondoshawans arrive at an ancient Egyptian temple to collect, for safekeeping, the only weapon capable of defeating a great evil that appears every 5,000 years. The weapon consists of four stones, representing the four classical elements, and a sarcophagus containing a fifth element in the form of a human, which combines the power of the other four elements into a divine light capable of defeating the evil. The Mondoshawans promise their human contact, a priest from a secret order, that they will come back with the element stones in time to stop the great evil when it returns.
In 2084, Earthbound construction worker Douglas Quaid is having troubling dreams about Mars and a mysterious woman there. His wife Lori dismisses the dreams and discourages him from thinking about Mars, where the governor, Vilos Cohaagen, is fighting rebels while searching for a rumored alien artifact located in the mines. At "Rekall", a company that provides memory implants of vacations, Quaid opts for a memory trip to Mars as a secret agent fantasy. However, during the procedure, before the memory is implanted, something goes wrong, and the story diverges between the question of what is real and what is hallucination. Apparently, Quaid starts revealing previously suppressed memories of actually being a secret agent. The company sedates him, wipes his memory of the visit, and sends him home. On the way home, Quaid is attacked by his friend Harry and some construction coworkers; he is forced to kill them, revealing elite fighting-skills. He is then attacked in his apartment by Lori, who reveals that she was never his wife; their marriage was just a false memory implant and Cohaagen sent her as an agent to monitor Quaid. He is then attacked and pursued by armed thugs led by Richter, Lori's real husband and Cohaagen's operative.
En 1975, Jean Grey provoque un accident de voiture qui tue sa mère et blesse son père. Terrorisée et orpheline, la fillette est recueillie par le Professeur Xavier, qui lui présente son Institut.
Durant la préparation de la mission Prometheus, Peter Weyland ordonne à un androïde de prendre part à la mission. Weyland se présente comme le « créateur » de l'être synthétique et lui explique que cette mission a pour but de connaitre les créateurs des humains. Weyland demande ensuite à l’androïde de se choisir lui-même un prénom. Après avoir contemplé la célébrissime statue de Michel-Ange, il choisit alors « David ».
Dans les années 1920, les parents de Katherine Coleman apprennent que leur fille possède un don pour les sciences, qu'elle doit parfaire en fréquentant une école pour Noirs (les Blancs étant dans des écoles séparées) car elle est dotée d'aptitudes intellectuelles supérieures. En 1962, devenue mathématicienne, Katherine Coleman (désormais Goble) travaille au sein d'un groupe de calculatrices humaines, sur le campus ouest du Centre de recherche Langley à Hampton, en Virginie, aux États-Unis, avec deux amies et collègues : l'aspirante ingénieure Mary Jackson et la superviseure d'équipe Dorothy Vaughan. À la suite du lancement réussi de Spoutnik 1, Al Harrison, directeur du Space Task Group, exige encore plus d'efforts de la part des employés sous sa supervision, de crainte que les Soviétiques ne mettent en orbite une bombe H pouvant exploser au-dessus du sol américain. Goble est envoyée dans son groupe pour vérifier les calculs, devenant la première Afro-Américaine à participer à ce groupe de recherche. Au début, elle est ignorée de ses collègues blancs et doit travailler à partir de données partiellement masquées (Goble n'ayant pas le niveau d'habilitation nécessaire) sous les ordres de Paul Stafford, un homme croyant en sa supériorité intellectuelle et refusant de reconnaître le travail de Katherine.
As a man heads into space to prevent climate-controlling satellites from creating a storm of epic proportions, his brother discovers a plot to assassinate the president.
A Drax Industries Moonraker space shuttle on loan to the United Kingdom is hijacked in mid-air and MI6 operative, James Bond, agent 007, is assigned to investigate. En route to England in a small charter plane, Bond is attacked by the crew and pushed out of the plane by the mercenary assassin Jaws. He survives by stealing a parachute from the pilot, whilst Jaws lands on a circus tent.
A massive metal ring with engraved cover stones is discovered in the sands of Giza, Egypt in 1928, by an archaeologist named Langford and his young daughter, Catherine. Many years later, the elderly Catherine Langford offers Egyptologist and linguist Daniel Jackson the chance to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphs on the cover stones. Jackson accepts and travels to a US Air Force installation where he examines the stones. Special Operations Colonel Jack O'Neil arrives to take command of the project and he declares it "classified" before Jackson can begin his research.
Prior to the destruction of Krypton, the criminals General Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas) and Non (Jack O'Halloran) are sentenced to banishment into the Phantom Zone for insurrection and murder, amongst other crimes.
The "Minutemen", a team of costumed crime fighters, was formed in 1939 in response to a rise in costumed gangs and criminals; the "Watchmen" was similarly formed decades later. Their existence has dramatically affected world events: in particular, Doctor Manhattan's superpowers help the United States win the Vietnam War, resulting in President Richard Nixon being reelected. Doctor Manhattan gives the West a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, which by the 1980s threatens to escalate the Cold War into a nuclear war. During that time, growing anti-vigilante sentiment in the country leads to masked crime-fighters being outlawed. While many of the heroes retire, Doctor Manhattan and the Comedian operate as government-sanctioned agents, and Rorschach continues to operate outside the law.