A bamboo cutter named Sanuki no Miyatsuko discovers a miniature girl inside a glowing bamboo shoot. Believing her to be a divine presence, Miyatsuko and his wife decide to raise her as their own, calling her "Princess". The girl grows rapidly and conspicuously, marveling her parents and earning her the nickname "Takenoko" (Little Bamboo) from the other children in the village. Sutemaru, the oldest among Kaguya's friends, develops a particularly close relationship with her.
The film opens in 2018 with an American manned landing mission to the Moon. The lander carries two astronauts, one of them an African American male model, James Washington, specifically chosen to aid the U.S. President in her re-election (various "Black to the Moon" word-play posters are seen in the film, extolling the new Moon landing).
In 2035, Lunar Industries has made a fortune after an oil crisis by building Sarang, an automated lunar facility to mine the alternative fuel helium-3. Helium-3 is used primarily to power fusion reactors and other things that run on fusion energy.
The film begins in an unnamed war-torn European city in the late 18th century (dubbed "The Age of Reason" in an opening caption), where, amid explosions and gunfire from a large Turkish army outside the city gates, a fanciful touring stage production of Baron Munchausen's life and adventures is taking place. Backstage, city official "The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson" reinforces the city's commitment to reason (here meaning uniformity) by ordering the execution of a soldier (Sting in a cameo) who had just accomplished a near-superhuman feat of bravery, claiming that his bravery is demoralizing to other soldiers.
In 2079, there is a colony on the Moon called Little America. A retired smuggler called Pluto Nash (Eddie Murphy), who just left prison, buys a nightclub, in an attempt to fulfil a long-time wish of his. Additionally, this prevents the murder by ingestion of battery acid of the club's previous owner, Anthony Frankowski (Jay Mohr), a Polish polka dancer, by mobsters Gino (Burt Young) and Larry (Lillo Brancato) whom Anthony owed money to. Pluto rebuilds the club and establishes it as "Club Pluto." In the next seven years, Club Pluto becomes a very popular Little America nightclub. Its staff consists of Pluto himself, a Hispanic assistant, and an android named Bruno (Randy Quaid), an inferior 63 plus model.
When their latest rocket test fails and government funding collapses, rocket scientist Dr. Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson) and space enthusiast General Thayer (Tom Powers) enlist the aid of aircraft magnate Jim Barnes (John Archer). With the necessary millions raised privately from a group of patriotic U. S. industrialists, Cargraves, Warner, and Barnes build an advanced single-stage-to-orbit atomic powered spaceship, named Luna, at their desert manufacturing and launch facility; the project is soon threatened by a ginned-up public uproar over "radiation safety". The three idealists circumvent legal efforts to stop their expedition by simply launching the world's first Moon mission well ahead of schedule; as a result, they must quickly substitute Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) as their expedition's radar and radio operator.
Four isolated astronauts in the lunar mining base Ark suffer a meteor storm. While inspecting the damage caused by the meteors, astronaut Ava Cameron discovers spores contained in one of the fragments and brings them back to the base for investigation. The medical officer discovers that these spores can grow rapidly, and in the process Ava is contaminated with them. Shortly afterward, Ava shows evident signs of a rapidly progressing pregnancy and, a few hours later, she goes into labor. The life form escapes the lab, and none of the others believe Ava's stories; they instead attribute her pregnancy to a cyst. The alien stalks crew member Johns, eventually taking his shape and killing him. Using notes posthumously left by Johns, Ava and Col. Brauchman attempt to kill the alien before it can kill them. Eventually, Ava and Brauchman prepare to abandon the base in an escape pod, but it is hijacked by the alien. Ava and Brauchman, having expended most of the base's remaining power to ready the escape pod, are resigned to their fates until a rescue ship arrives from Earth. Brauchman sends a message to Earth from the rescue ship, warning them to kill whatever they discover in the escape pod, but it's revealed that the alien has escaped.
In 1964, the United Nations (UN) has launched a rocket flight to the Moon. A multi-national group of astronauts in the UN spacecraft land on the Moon, believing themselves to be the first lunar explorers. They discover a British Union Jack on the surface and a note naming Katherine Callender, claiming the Moon for Queen Victoria. Attempting to trace Callender, UN authorities find she has died, but find her husband Arnold Bedford now an old man in an old people's home. The nursing home staff do not let him watch television reports of the expedition because, according to the matron, it "excites him", dismissing his claims to have been on the Moon as insane delusion. The UN representatives question him about the Moon and he tells them his story. The rest of the film, as a flashback, shows what Bedford and Professor Cavor did in the 1890s.
At the close of the 20th century, all of the Earth's kaiju have been collected by the United Nations Science Committee and confined in an area known as Monsterland, located in the Ogasawara island chain. A special control center is constructed underneath the island to ensure that the monsters stay secure, and to serve as a research facility to study them.
Fictional television station WIDB-TV (channel 8) experiences problems with its late-night airing of science-fiction classic Amazon Women on the Moon, a 1950s B movie in which Queen Lara (Sybil Danning) and Captain Nelson (Steve Forrest) battle exploding volcanoes and man-eating spiders on the moon. Waiting for the film to resume, an unseen viewer begins channel surfing—simulated by bursts of white noise—through late night cable, with the various segments and sketches of the film representing the programming found on different channels. The viewer intermittently returns to channel 8, where Amazon Women continues to resume airing before faltering once more.
2047. Vingt neuf ans ont passé depuis l'affrontement nucléaire entre les Terriens et les nazis de la lune. Neomenia, l’ancienne base lunaire des nazis, est devenue le dernier refuge de l’Humanité, car la Terre a été dévastée par le conflit. Cependant, ses entrailles cachent une puissance qui pourrait sauver les derniers humains … ou les détruire définitivement. Face à la menace, quelques réfugiés de la Lune vont se rendre au centre de la Terre. Ils y affronteront une race reptilienne extraterrestre.
Marshall Richard "Dick" Dix, a special detective, saves a fast food chain restaurant from a terrorist hostage situation, much to the displeasure of the police chief. He drives away, and back to the police station, where he meets his boss, who is with a police worker, Cassandra Menage. She retells her experience of the cloning of the President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, who remains unnamed throughout the film. Dix is sent to the cloning facility, a moon base called Vegan. Dix causes a mayhem on the way there. He reaches Vegan, and is met by Lt. Bradford Shitzu at the security check. On the way to meet the main suspect in the cloning, Dr. Griffin Pratt, Dix experiences strange happenings throughout the colony involving certain Aliens who live there. During a very strange incident involving an Alien about to explode, Dix meets Capt. Valentino DiPasquale, with whom Dix will share his quarters. Dix and Shitzu get to Dr. Pratt's quarters, and talk to him. Shitzu leaves, and Pratt takes Dix on a tour of his cloning facility.
At a meeting of the Astronomic Club, its president, Professor Barbenfouillis, proposes a trip to the Moon. After addressing some dissent, five other brave astronomers—Nostradamus, Alcofrisbas, Omega, Micromegas, and Parafaragaramus—agree to the plan. They build a space capsule in the shape of a bullet, and a huge cannon to shoot it into space. The astronomers embark and their capsule is fired from the cannon with the help of "marines", most of whom are played by a bevy of young women in sailors' outfits. The Man in the Moon watches the capsule as it approaches, and it hits him in the eye.