In futuristic London, Alex DeLarge is the leader of his "droogs", Georgie, Dim and Pete. One night, after getting intoxicated on "drencrom" (milk laced with drugs), they engage in an evening of "ultra-violence," which includes beating an elderly vagrant and fighting a rival gang led by Billyboy. After stealing a car, they drive to the country home of writer F. Alexander, where they beat Mr. Alexander to the point of crippling him for life. Alex then rapes his wife while singing "Singin' in the Rain".
In an African desert millions of years ago, a tribe of man-apes is driven from their water hole by a rival tribe. They wake to find a featureless black monolith has appeared before them. One man-ape realizes how to use a bone as a tool and weapon; the tribe kills the leader of their rivals and reclaims the water hole.
In 1995, John Connor is ten years old and living in Los Angeles with foster parents. His mother Sarah Connor had been preparing him throughout his childhood for his future role as the leader of the Human Resistance against Skynet, but was arrested after attempting to bomb a computer factory and imprisoned at a mental hospital under the supervision of Dr. Silberman. Skynet sends a new Terminator, designated as T-1000, back in time to kill John. The T-1000 is an advanced prototype composed of a mimetic polyalloy that allows it to take on the shape and appearance of almost anything it touches, and transform parts of its anatomy into knives and other stabbing weapons. The T-1000 arrives under a freeway, kills a policeman and assumes his identity. Meanwhile, the future John Connor has sent back a reprogrammed T-800 (Model 101) Terminator to protect his younger self.
Truman Burbank is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program in which his entire life, since before birth, is filmed by thousands of hidden cameras, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is broadcast live around the world. The show's creator and executive producer Christof is able to capture Truman's real emotion and human behavior when put in certain situations. Truman's coastal hometown of Seahaven is a giant set built under a giant arcological dome in the Los Angeles area. Truman's family and friends are all played by actors, allowing Christof to control every aspect of Truman's life.
In 2805, Earth is long-abandoned and covered in heaps of garbage leftover from decades of mass consumerism, facilitated by the megacorporation Buy 'n' Large (BnL). Seven hundred years earlier, BnL evacuated Earth's population in fully automated starliners, leaving behind WALL-E trash compactor robots to clean the planet for humanity's eventual return, however the plan failed and all the bots were shut off. Only one WALL-E robot remains active, and has developed sentience after so many years of life-experience. He manages to remain active by repairing himself using parts from other inactive units.
In futuristic Los Angeles, Theodore Twombly is a lonely, introverted, depressed man who works for a business that has professional writers like himself compose letters for people who are unwilling or unable to write letters of a personal nature themselves. Unhappy because of his impending divorce from childhood sweetheart Catherine (Rooney Mara), Theodore purchases a talking operating system (OS) with artificial intelligence, designed to adapt and evolve. He decides that he wants the OS to have a female voice, and she names herself Samantha. Theodore is fascinated by her ability to learn and grow psychologically. They bond over their discussions about love and life, such as Theodore's avoiding signing his divorce papers because of his reluctance to let go of Catherine. Samantha proves to be constantly available, always curious and interested, supportive and undemanding.
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.
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 "the not-too-distant future", eugenics is common. A genetic registry database uses biometrics to classify those so created as "valids" while those conceived by traditional means and more susceptible to genetic disorders are known as "in-valids". Genetic discrimination is illegal, but in practice genotype profiling is used to identify valids to qualify for professional employment while in-valids are relegated to menial jobs.
In April 2054, Washington, D.C. has a special police force called PreCrime that stops murderers before they act. Murders are predicted using three Precogs, mutated humans who "previsualize" crimes by receiving visions of the future. Over the past six years, PreCrime has successfully reduced the city's murder rate to zero, and the Federal government is on the verge of adopting it, even though the public finds it controversial. Captain John Anderton (Tom Cruise), the head of PreCrime, has been suffering from drug addiction since the unresolved disappearance of his son, Sean, which led to his wife, Lara (Kathryn Morris), divorcing him. With PreCrime poised to go nationwide, the system is being audited by Danny Witwer (Colin Farrell), an agent from the United States Department of Justice. In the middle of the audit, the Precogs generate a new prediction, one saying that Anderton will murder a man named Leo Crow in thirty-six hours. Anderton does not know Crow, but flees the area as Witwer begins a manhunt.
In a dystopian near-future, Detroit, which is now bankrupt and overrun with crime, gives Omni Consumer Products (OCP) control of its struggling police force. The company plans to replace the poor, run-down sections of Old Detroit with the high-end "Delta City," but must first address the city's high crime rate. As an alternative to existing law enforcement, OCP senior president Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) offers the prototype ED-209 enforcement droid, but it accidentally kills a board member during a demonstration. The OCP chairman, nicknamed "The Old Man" (Dan O'Herlihy), decides instead to back Jones' young rival, Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), and his experimental cyborg police officer program, "RoboCop.
Japanese middle school student Shuya Nanahara copes with life after his father's suicide. Meanwhile, schoolmate Noriko Nakagawa is the only student attending class 3-B. Their teacher, Kitano, resigns after being impulsively attacked by a student.
A man and his young son struggle to survive after an unspecified cataclysm has caused another extinction event. Civilization has collapsed, reducing the survivors to scavenging and in most cases cannibalism. The duo search for supplies as they travel south on a road to the coast in the hope it will be warmer. The man is armed with a revolver, but carries just two rounds.
In 1988, following a 400% increase in crime, the United States Government has evacuated Manhattan and turned the island into a giant maximum-security prison in which all inmates serve a life sentence. A 50-foot (15 m) containment wall surrounds the island and routes out of Manhattan have been dismantled or mined. Armed helicopters patrol the rivers and harbor.
In a dystopian 1984, Winston Smith endures a squalid existence in the totalitarian superstate of Oceania under the constant surveillance of the Thought Police. The story takes place in London, the capital city of the territory of Airstrip One (formerly "either England or Britain").