In the summer of 1982, Sam Brenner and Will Cooper are thirteen-year-olds who love playing in the local arcade. Brenner enters an arcade game world championships. At the event, the MC tells that a time capsule will be launched into space containing a videocassette that includes scenes from the championships. Brenner and Cooper meet Ludlow Lamonsoff, a child who's in love with Lady Lisa, the main character of the game Dojo Quest. Brenner succeeds in every game, but finally loses to Eddie Plant in Donkey Kong.
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 ».
In 1928, a solitary mountaineer encounters a glowing sphere. He loses consciousness and when he wakes, the sphere has gone and there is a scar on his hand where a sample of his DNA has been taken.
À la suite de la rencontre historique Apollo-Soyouz en 1975 entre les Américains et les Russes, d'autres nations envoient des astronautes rejoindre la station spatiale. Dans les siècles suivants, de nombreux extraterrestres, de toutes formes, les rejoignent. Rebaptisée Alpha, celle-ci devient trop vaste et risque de s'écraser sur la Terre. D'un commun accord, les dirigeants des races qui peuplent l'immense station décident de l'éloigner de la Terre. Pendant son voyage, elle continue cependant de croître jusqu'à héberger 17 millions d'êtres vivants.
Katie (Jenny McCarthy) and Becky (Pamela Anderson) are talking about a tape, which Katie thinks is a sex tape, but Becky refers to a cursed tape (The Ring). After several odd occurrences, they die. In a farm outside Washington, D.C., widowed farmer and former reverend Tom Logan (Charlie Sheen) and his clumsy younger brother George (Simon Rex) discover a crop circle, saying "Attack Here!" (Signs).
Billions of years ago, beings called the Guardians of the Universe used the green essence of willpower to create an intergalactic police force called the Green Lantern Corps. They divided the universe into 3600 sectors, with one Green Lantern per sector. One such Green Lantern, Abin Sur of Sector 2814, defeated the malevolent being Parallax and imprisoned him in the Lost Sector on the desolate planet Ryut. In the present day, Parallax escapes from his prison after becoming strengthened by an encounter with crash survivors on the planet, feeding off of their fear to gain strength before pursuing and nearly killing Abin Sur, who escapes and crash-lands on Earth where he commands his ring to find a worthy successor.
On August 12, 2011, large masses thought to be meteors land in the oceans near several major coastal cities. The objects are discovered to be spacecraft containing hostile extraterrestrial life. Marines from Camp Pendleton arrive in Los Angeles, including SSgt. Michael Nantz (Eckhart), an Iraq War veteran. Nantz was to begin retirement, but because of the attack, he is made the acting platoon sergeant for 1st Platoon, Echo Company, of the 2nd Battalion 5th Marines.
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.
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.
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 film opens in what will become North Texas, 35,000 BC. Entering a cave, a hunter stumbles upon a large extraterrestrial lifeform. They fight and the caveman wins, stabbing the creature to death, but he is also infected by a black oil-like substance which crawls into his skin. In 1998, in the same area, when a group of boys are digging a deep hole, a young boy named Stevie (Lucas Black) falls down the hole and finds a human skull. As he holds it, black oil seeps into his body until it reaches his head, causing his eyes to turn black. Four firefighters descend into the hole to rescue him but do not come out. A team of biohazard-suited men arrives on the scene.
Ellen Ripley is rescued after drifting through space in stasis for 57 years. She is debriefed by her employers at the Weyland-Yutani Corporation over the destruction of her ship, the Nostromo; they are skeptical of her claims that an Alien killed the ship's crew and forced her to destroy the ship.
In 2004, a satellite detects a mysterious heat bloom beneath Bouvetøya, an island about one thousand miles off the coast of Antarctica. Wealthy industrialist Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) discovers through thermal imaging that there is a pyramid buried 2000 feet beneath the ice. Weyland wants to claim it for his multinational communications company, Weyland Industries, and assembles a team of experts to go investigate. The team includes archaeologists, linguistic experts, drillers, mercenaries, and a guide named Alexa Woods (Sanaa Lathan).
In 1873, New Mexico Territory, an unnamed loner (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert being injured with no memory and with a strange metal object on his wrist. After killing three drifters who think he might be worth bounty money, he takes their clothes, weapons and a horse. He wanders into the small town of Absolution where the local preacher Meacham (Clancy Brown) treats his wound. After the stranger subdues Percy Dolarhyde (Paul Dano), a volatile drunk who has been terrorizing the town, Sheriff Taggart (Keith Carradine) recognizes the stranger as Jake Lonergan, a wanted outlaw, and attempts to arrest him. Jake beats up the posse sent to take him in and nearly escapes, but a mysterious woman named Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde) knocks him out. Taggart prepares to transport both Jake and Percy to Santa Fe for trial.