Luke Skywalker initiates a plan to rescue Han Solo from the crime lord Jabba the Hutt with the help of Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2. Leia infiltrates Jabba's palace on Tatooine disguised as a bounty hunter with Chewbacca as her prisoner. Lando is already there disguised as a guard. Leia releases Han from his carbonite prison, but she is captured and enslaved. Luke arrives soon afterward but after a tense standoff, he is captured. After Luke survives his battle with Jabba's Rancor, Jabba sentences him and Han to death by feeding them to the Sarlacc. Luke frees himself and battles Jabba's guards. During the chaos, Boba Fett, who has remained at Jabba's palace since delivering Han, attempts to attack Luke, but Han inadvertently knocks him into the Sarlacc pit. Meanwhile, Leia strangles Jabba to death, and Luke destroys Jabba's sail barge as the group escapes. While the others rendezvous with the Rebel Alliance, Luke returns to Dagobah where he finds that Yoda is dying. Before he dies, Yoda confirms that Darth Vader, once known as Anakin Skywalker, is Luke's father, and there is "another Skywalker". The spirit of Obi-Wan Kenobi confirms that this other Skywalker is Luke's twin sister, Leia. Obi-Wan tells Luke that he must fight Vader again to defeat the Empire.
In the late 2020s the world is in turmoil, with the United States fractured as a result of prolonged conflict and a pandemic of the "St. Mary's Virus" ravaging Europe. The United Kingdom is ruled as a fascist police state by the Norsefire Party. Political opponents, immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals and other "undesirables" are imprisoned in concentration camps. On November 4, a Guy Fawkes-masked vigilante identifing himself as "V" (Hugo Weaving) rescues Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), an employee of the state-run British Television Network (BTN), from members of the "Fingermen" secret police while she is out past curfew. From a rooftop, they watch his demolition of the Old Bailey criminal court building, accompanied by fireworks and the 1812 Overture. Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea), Scotland Yard's Chief of Police, is tasked with investigating V's activities while BTN declares the incident an "emergency demolition". V interrupts the broadcast to claim responsibility and urges the people of Britain to rise up against their government. He asks them to meet him exactly one year later, on November 5, Guy Fawkes Night, outside the Houses of Parliament, which he promises to destroy. During the broadcast, the police attempt to capture V. Evey helps him escape but is knocked unconscious.
In 1988, following his mother's death, a young Peter Quill is abducted from Earth by the Ravagers, a group of space pirates led by Yondu Udonta. Twenty-six years later on the planet Morag, Quill steals an orb, after which Korath, a subordinate to the fanatical Kree, Ronan, intercepts him. Although Quill escapes with the orb, Yondu discovers his theft and issues a bounty for his capture, while Ronan sends the assassin Gamora after the orb.
In 2029, the world is interconnected by a vast electronic network that permeates every aspect of life. Much of humanity has access to this network through cybernetic bodies, or "shells", which possess their consciousness and can give them superhuman abilities.
The story starts in a forest called Holiday Woods with seven trees containing doors leading to towns representing various holidays: Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Halloween and the Fourth of July. Halloween Town is a fantasy world filled with citizens such as deformed monsters, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, vampires, werewolves and witches. Jack Skellington, a skeleton known as The Pumpkin King, leads them in organizing the annual Halloween holiday. However, in a monologue, Jack reveals he has grown weary of the same routine year after year, and wants something more. Wandering dejectedly in the woods, he stumbles across the seven holiday doors and accidentally opens a portal to Christmas Town, whose residents are charged with organizing the annual Christmas holiday. Impressed by the bright and cheery feeling and style of Christmas, Jack presents his findings and his understanding of Christmas, to the Halloween Town residents. However, they fail to grasp his meaning and compare everything to their ideas of Halloween, although there is one Christmas character they can relate to: the fearsome lobster-like king of Christmas Town who flies at night, named "Sandy Claws". Meanwhile, Jack who barely understands Christmas himself, obsessively tries to study the holiday but fails to grasp any further meaning of it. He ultimately decides that since he cannot understand it, he should improve it, and announces that the citizens of Halloween Town will take over Christmas this year.
Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low-level government employee who has frequent daydreams of saving a damsel in distress. One day he is assigned the task of trying to rectify an error caused by a fly getting jammed in a printer, misprinting a file it was copying, resulting in the incarceration and accidental death during interrogation of cobbler Archibald Buttle, instead of the suspected terrorist, freelance heating engineer Archibald Tuttle.
In 2027, after 18 years of global human infertility, civilization is on the brink of collapse as humanity faces extinction. The United Kingdom, the only stable nation with a functioning government, is deluged by asylum seekers fleeing the chaos and war which have taken hold around the world. In response, Britain has become a militarized police state as British government forces round up and detain immigrants. Theo Faron, a former activist turned cynical bureaucrat, is kidnapped by the Fishes, a militant immigrants' rights group. They are led by Theo's estranged wife, Julian Taylor, from whom he separated after their son's death.
The film is set in 1980s Moscow. Standing right in the city centre on Kalinin Prospekt, a barefoot man dressed in a tattered coat appeals to anyone with a strange request: "Tell me the number of your planet in the tenture? Or least the number of your galaxy in the spiral?". Random passers-by, two Soviet citizens previously unknown to each other ("Uncle Vova", a gruff construction foreman from Moscow, Vladimir Mashkov, and a "Violinist", a student from Georgia, Gedevan Aleksidze), start a conversation with him, during which the stranger shows them an alien teleportation device – "traveller". The foreman Mashkov holds out his hand to the device and, despite the stranger's warnings, presses a random button. Suddenly Uncle Vova and the violinist find themselves alone on the desert planet "Pluke" in the "Kin-dza-dza" galaxy. From that point on, the movie describes their long quest to find a way back home.
An elderly woman tells her granddaughter a bedtime story of where snow comes from, by telling her the story of a young man named Edward who has scissors for hands. As the creation of an old Inventor, Edward was a human-like boy who had everything except for hands. The Inventor suffered a fatal heart attack and died before he could give real hands to Edward.
The resuscitated skeleton of the Third Angel escapes its confinement and tries to break out of NERV's arctic Bethany Base, but Mari Illustrious Makinami, a new pilot, launches Evangelion Provisional Unit-05 and destroys the Angel by self-destructing the EVA and safely ejecting at the last moment.
In New York Harbor, Carl Denham, famous for making wildlife films in remote and exotic locations, charters Captain Englehorn's ship Venture for his new project, but he is unable to secure an actress for a female role he reluctantly added. Denham searches the streets of New York for a suitable woman. He meets penniless Ann Darrow and convinces her to join him for the adventure of a lifetime. The Venture quickly gets underway. The surly first mate, Jack Driscoll, gradually falls in love with Ann. After weeks of secrecy, Denham finally tells Englehorn and Driscoll that their destination is Skull Island, an uncharted island shown on a map in Denham's possession. Denham speaks of something monstrous there, a legendary entity known only as "Kong".
A race of extraterrestrials called Mimics has taken over continental Europe. In England, General Brigham, head of humanity's United Defense Force, orders Major William Cage, a public affairs officer with no combat experience, to cover the next day's amphibious assault in France. Cage objects to the dangerous assignment and threatens to blackmail Brigham to avoid it. Brigham has Cage arrested; Cage is knocked out trying to escape. He wakes in handcuffs at a forward operating base at Heathrow Airport and discovers he has been demoted to private, charged with desertion, and assigned to a combat squad named "J" squad under the command of Master Sergeant Farell.
In an alternate 1982, an alien ship inexplicably stops over Johannesburg. When investigation teams enter the ship, they discover a population of sick and malnourished extraterrestrials, derogatorily referred to as "prawns". The South African government confines the aliens to "District 9", a government camp that is located outside of Johannesburg. Twenty-eight years later, in 2010, following periodic conflict between the aliens and the locals living near District 9, the government hires private military company Multinational United (MNU) to relocate the aliens to a new internment. Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), an Afrikaner bureaucrat, is appointed by Piet Smit (Louis Minnaar), an MNU executive and his father-in-law, to lead the relocation.
Okuyama's face was disfigured in an industrial accident, and his face is completely covered in burns; he wears bandages to cover them. He visits Dr. Hira, a psychiatrist who is able to fashion a "mask" for Okuyama to wear which is indistinguishable from the face on which it is modeled.
When alien crafts land across the world, a linguist expert is recruited by the military to determine whether they come in peace or are a threat. As she learns to communicate with the aliens, she begins experiencing vivid flashbacks that become the key to unlocking the greater mystery about the true purpose of their visit.