8 stories
Astro Boy
Toby Tenma is a gifted 13-year-old boy who lives in Metro City, a futuristic city-state that floats above the polluted surface of earth. Toby's father, Dr. Tenma, is a famous roboticist and head of the Ministry of Science, but has a distant relationship with his son. Dr. Tenma meets the city's obstructive leader President Stone to demonstrate a new defensive robot called the Peacekeeper. To power it, Tenma's friend Dr. Elefun unveils the Blue and Red Core, two energy spheres which emit opposing positive and negative energy. Against Elefun's warnings, Stone places the destructive Red Core into the Peacekeeper, causing it to go berserk and turn against the scientists. Toby is disintegrated after sneaking into the room when the Peacekeeper self-destructs. A distraught Tenma secretly constructs a robotic replica of Toby, complete with his memories, but with built-in defenses to protect him. Powered by the Blue Core, Toby's replica is awakened and believes himself to be Toby. While he has Toby's mind, his personality is different in Tenma's eyes, when in actuality it is quite similar. Toby discovers his robotic capabilities including rocket-powered flight and the ability to understand other robots. Toby flies home but learns from Tenma of his origins and is rejected by him, flying away much to the sadness of Dr. Elefun. Stone, desperate to win a re-election, has Toby pursued by his guards but the battle leads to Toby tumbling off the city edge onto the surface when one of Stone's ships blast him with missiles. Tenma escapes arrest by agreeing to have Toby shut down. Toby awakens in an enormous junkyard, created from the redundant robots dumped by Metro City. He is found by a group of children, illiterate but smart Zane, twins Sludge and Widget, and the oldest Cora who has a grudge against Metro City. They are accompanied by a dog-like waste disposal robot named Trashcan. Toby also meets the members of the Robot Revolutionary Front (RRF), Sparx, Robotsky, and Mike the Fridge, who wish to free robots from mankind's control but are very inept and bound by the Laws of Robotics. However, they give Toby a new name, calling him "Astro". Astro departs with the kids, finding people still live on the Surface. He is taken in by robot repairman Hamegg, who also runs a robot fighting ring. The next day, Astro comes across an offline construction robot, Zog, whom he revives by sharing some of the Blue Core's energy. Hamegg accidentally scans Astro, realizing he is a robot, and paralyzes him the next day to participate in the fighting ring. Astro defeats Hamegg's fighters until Zog is deployed, but the two robots refuse to fight one another. Hamegg assaults them with an electrical blaster, only for Zog, who is so old he predates the Laws of Robotics to fight back. However, Astro saves Hamegg. President Stone's flagship arrives and takes Astro back to Metro City. Reuniting with Tenma and Elefun, Astro agrees to be shut down, apologizing to his father for not being a satisfying replacement for Toby. Realizing Astro is also his son, Dr. Tenma reactivates him and lets him escape. Stone loads the Red Core into the Peacekeeper, only for it to absorb him and take on his personality. The Peacekeeper absorbs weapons and buildings, growing in size until it is as big as skyscrapers. It then goes on a rampage across Metro City, prompting Astro to battle it. During the fight, Metro City's power station is destroyed, causing it to fall to the ground. Astro uses his superhuman strength to help it land safely. The Peacekeeper grabs Astro, but the connection of their cores causes them both pain. Dr. Tenma finds Astro and informs him that if the two cores reunite, they will be destroyed. When Astro's friends are captured, he flies into the Red Core, destroying the Peacekeeper and breaking his arm, but remaining mostly intact. Stone survives but is arrested for his crimes. Dr. Elefun and the children find Astro's body, lifeless. Zog however can revive Astro by sharing back the Blue Core energy given to him. Astro reunites with his loved ones, making peace with his father. A cycloptic extraterrestrial attacks the city, and Astro leaps into action as the film ends.
The Tale of Despereaux
Sailor Pietro and his rat companion Roscuro dock in the kingdom of Dor, famous around the world for its delicious soups, during the "Royal Soup Day." The chief cook, Chef Andre, makes good soup due to Boldo, a magical genie that emerges from his pot and is made entirely out of food. Enchanted by the smell of the delicious soup, Roscuro slips away and ends up in the royal banquet hall, on a chandelier above the royal family's table. He slips and falls into the Queen's soup, giving her such a fright that she has a heart attack and dies. The entire hall goes into panic, as the guards pursue Roscuro. He attempts to flee the castle but sees Pietro's ship has already sailed away. He narrowly escapes capture by falling down a sewer drain, which leads to the castle dungeons, where he's found and taken in by Botticelli, the leader of the dungeon's large rat population. Distraught over his wife's death, the king forbids any and all things related to soup and makes rats illegal. Without its soup, Dor becomes impoverished and dreary. Andre is banned from making any more soup and Boldo stops appearing. The king's daughter, Princess Pea, despairs over the sad state of the kingdom and how her father has shut out both her and the world in his grief. In a mouse village in the castle's abandoned kitchen storage room, a baby is born to the Tilling family. They name him Despereaux. As he grows up, it becomes clear Despereaux's not like other mice: he isn't meek and timid, but brave and curious, unnerving his family, friends, and school teachers. In an effort to teach him to behave like a proper mouse, his brother Furlough takes him to the castle library to show him how to chew books, but Despereaux is more interested in reading than eating them. He becomes fascinated by fairytale books about daring knights and trapped princesses. One day while reading, he comes across Princess Pea and the two speak. She makes him promise to finish reading the story about a trapped princess so he may tell her how it ends. Upon discovering Despereaux has violated mouse law by talking to a human, his parents turn him in to the mouse council. The council banishes Despereaux to the dungeons, where he meets and tells the princess' story to the castle jailor, Gregory, but he doesn't listen and leaves Despereaux alone. There, he is captured by the rats and thrown into their arena with a cat. As Despereaux is about to be eaten, Roscuro saves his life by asking Botticelli to give Despereaux to him to eat. Having been unable to adjust to being a sewer rat, Roscuro is desperate to hear about the outside world. The two become friends, as every day Despereaux tells him the stories and of the princess and her sadness. Hoping to make amends for all the trouble he's caused, Roscuro sneaks up to Princess Pea's room and tries to apologize, but she's frightened by him and lashes out. Hurt by this, Roscuro decides he wants to hurt Pea. He enlists the help of Miggery "Mig" Sow, Princess Pea's slightly deaf young maid who longs to be a princess herself, by convincing her she can take Pea's place if she kidnaps her. After Mig drags Pea down to the dungeons, Roscuro double-crosses her and locks her in a cell. Meanwhile, Despereaux (who has been punished by the mouse council again for his bravery by learning to be afraid by the threadmaster, Hovis, but after being lost in a cave, the mice thought he was dead) realizes that the princess is in danger, he tries to tell the king but he was too despondent to listen. Despereaux tries to get help elsewhere; he tries to tell his people to help, but they are afraid to see him alive (thinking that he is a ghost.) So Despereaux decides to ring the town's bell to prove to his people that he is still alive. A sleeping Andre heard the bell and dreams of his days before soups were illegal. After dreaming, Andre decided that he had enough of this law and gets back to make some soup, which brings the enchanted smell back to the kingdom and brings back Boldo. Back in the rat colony, Roscuro sees the apologetic sincerity in Pea's eyes and regrets his actions, but is unable to stop the rats, to whom he has given her, from clambering over her. Roscuro tries to tell the rats that Pea is not bad, but Botticelli does not let him because he wants Pea dead, even going as far as allowing the rats to eat or trample over Pea. Back at the castle, Despereaux tried to get help from Andre and Boldo, but Andre doesn't listen. Boldo, wanting to help, turns into a knight by Despereaux. As for Roscoro, he figures out that Botticelli is a double-crossing traitor and that Pea is doomed. However, Boldo sacrifices himself against the rats to let Despereaux escaped them and lets loose a cat and brings sunshines to the rat world, and the rats run away. As the cat runs back to its cage, Roscuro then forces Botticelli into it, where he is eaten by the cat. Mig is later reunited with her long-lost father Gregory, who recognizes the heart-shaped birthmark on the back of her neck. It finally stops raining and the sun shines after soup is made for the first time in years. The mice all then try to be braver like Despereaux. The king is able to overcome his grief and soup and rats are allowed back in the kingdom. Roscuro returns to a life at sea, where there is always light and a gentle breeze and Despereaux himself takes off on a journey to see the world as the film ends.
The Ten Commandments
Pharaoh Rameses I of Egypt orders the death of all newborn Hebrew males. Yoshebel saves her infant son by setting him adrift in a basket on the Nile. Bithiah, the Pharaoh's daughter, finds the basket and decides to adopt the boy even though her servant, Memnet, recognizes the child is Hebrew. Bithiah names the baby Moses. Prince Moses grows up to become a successful general, winning a war with Ethiopia and establishing an alliance. Moses and princess Nefretiri fall in love, but she must marry the next Pharaoh. While working on the building of a city for Pharaoh Sethi's jubilee, Moses meets the stonecutter Joshua, who tells him of the Hebrew God. Moses saves an elderly woman from being crushed not knowing that she is his biological mother, Yoshebel, and he reprimands the taskmaster and overseer Baka. Moses reforms the treatment of slaves on the project, but Prince Rameses, Moses's adoptive brother, charges him with planning an insurrection. Moses says he is making his workers more productive, making Rameses wonder if Moses is the man the Hebrews are calling the Deliverer. Nefretiri learns from Memnet that Moses is the son of Hebrew slaves. She kills Memnet but reveals the story to Moses only after he finds the piece of Levite cloth he was wrapped in as a baby, which Memnet had kept. Moses follows Bithiah to Yoshebel's house where he meets his biological mother, Brother Aaron, and Sister Miriam. Moses learns more about the slaves by working with them. Nefretiri urges him to return to the palace so he may help his people when he becomes pharaoh, to which he agrees after he completes a final task. Moses saves Joshua from death by killing Baka, telling Joshua that he too is Hebrew. The confession is witnessed by the overseer Dathan, who then reports to Rameses. After being arrested, Moses explains that he is not the Deliverer, but would free the slaves if he could. Rameses is declared the next Pharaoh and banishes Moses to the desert. Yoshebel dies sometime later. Moses makes his way across the desert to a well in Midian. After defending seven sisters from Amalekites, Moses is housed with the girls' father Jethro, a Bedouin sheik, who worships the God of Abraham. Moses marries Jethro's eldest daughter Sephora. Later, he finds Joshua, who has escaped hard labor. While farming, Moses sees the burning bush on the summit of Mount Sinai and hears the voice of God. Moses returns to Egypt to free the Hebrews. Moses comes before Rameses, now pharaoh, to win the slaves' freedom, turning his staff into a cobra. Jannes performs the same trick with his staves, but Moses's snake shows superiority. Rameses prohibits straw from being provided to the Hebrews to make their bricks. Nefretiri rescues Moses from being stoned to death by the Hebrews wherein he reveals that he is married. Egypt is visited by plagues. Moses turns the river Nile to blood at a festival of Khnum and brings burning hail down upon Pharaoh's palace. Moses warns him the next plague to fall upon Egypt will be summoned by Pharaoh himself. Enraged at the plagues, Rameses orders all first-born Hebrews to die but a cloud of death instead kills all the firstborn of Egypt, including the child of Rameses and Nefretiri. Angrily, Pharaoh exiles the Hebrews, which begins the Exodus from Egypt. Rameses takes his army and pursues the Hebrews to the Red Sea. Moses uses God's help to stop the Egyptians with a pillar of fire and parts the Red Sea. After the Hebrews make it to safety, Moses releases the walls of water, drowning the Egyptian army. A devastated Rameses returns empty-handed to Nefretiri, stating that he now acknowledges Moses's god as God. Moses again ascends the mountain with Joshua. Impatiently, Dathan urges a reluctant Aaron to construct a golden calf idol as a gift for Rameses. A wild and decadent orgy is held by most of the Hebrews. Moses sees the Ten Commandments created by God in two stone tablets. Moses descends from the mountain to the sight of decadence. Enraged, he throws the tablets at the golden calf, which explodes, killing the wicked revelers, and causing the others to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. Forty years later, an elderly Moses leads the Hebrews towards Canaan. However, he could not enter the Promised land due to his disobedience to the Lord at the Waters of Strife. He instead names Joshua as leader, and spends the rest of his life at Mount Nebo until his death.
The Penguins of Madagascar
The Penguins of Madagascar is a spin-off of the Madagascar films. The series follows the adventures of four penguins: Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and Private, who perform various commando-like missions to protect their home in the Central Park Zoo. The penguins often have to deal with problems caused, or made worse, by their zoo neighbors, King Julien XIII (a ring-tailed lemur), Maurice (an aye-aye), and Mort (a mouse lemur).
Wild America
In the summer of 1967, Marshall Stouffer is chased by his two older brothers, Mark and Marty; the brothers love using Marshall to film him in stunts, which he dislikes. Occasionally Marty and Mark will show footage of their antics in their garage to all their friends. Marshall repeatedly and secretly gets revenge on his brothers' pranks against him by pulling diminutive malicious stunts like cleaning the toilet with his brothers' toothbrushes and filling their canteens with downstream river water that they were at that current time urinating in. Mark and Marty have a dream of filming dangerous animals around the country, and the dream starts when they find a rare, special camera in a shop where they have their films developed. Much against their father Marty Sr.'s recommendation, their mother Agnes loans them the money she was saving up and they begin planning their trip. Their father is against this idea. The three brothers start camping. First, they miss a shot at catching an eagle, then go to film some alligators, and start by seeing a man who was attacked by an alligator. As they go in a swamp on a boat, Mark throws some bait but it lands in the trees, trying to retrieve it, his clothing gets stuck in a branch underwater and he starts to drown, Marshall and Marty drive the boat in attempts to save him, but it crashes into another branch, which sends Marshall flying into the water. Marshall gets a knife from Marty and cuts Mark loose, but Marshall is now dealing with a bigger problem; he and the alligator are face to face. Marshall is able to get back on the boat in time. When they get back to the hut, the alligator man (Strango) tells them about how back when he served in the Korean War he befriended a fellow soldier named Phil. Strango and Phil would exchange stories about their wilderness adventures. Strango would talk about hunting alligators and Phil would tell tall tales about bears. This rouses Marty's attention and he asks about it. Strango states that Phil was talking about a cave full of hundreds of bears somewhere "out West." They drive northwest until they reach Devil's Playground in Colorado, "the last home of the wild American wolf." Devil's Playground is located on government protected land. They catch footage of a wolf creeping up on a doe. Then as the wolf is about to ambush the doe there is a series of explosions. The brothers look up and see two F-4 Phantoms flying overhead. The pilots see the brothers and turn around, firing missiles at them eventually hitting a giant boulder knocking the three down. As they get up a herd of wild horses comes thundering towards them. They get in the truck just in time to film it. When the horses pass Marshall sees an owl that looks a lot like his owl Leona. The three follow it and discover a cave. On the wall of the cave is an ancient Indian drawing of a cave filled with bear-shaped figures. Marty and Mark draw it on Marshall's chest and show it to an old Indian woman. The woman tells them that it's located near Arapaho Peak in Montana. After a strange man (Danny Glover) saves Marshall after going down the stream, he tells the brothers about the cave where it is too. During the journey, they meet a woman whose husband was killed by bears, when returning to their van, they discovered they been robbed, but they still got the film, Mark breaks his leg after getting into a fight with Marty. Despite his injury, they continued finding the Bear Cave, they discovered it and begin filming while the bears are asleep, but the bears wake up, luckily the brothers sing a song that puts them to sleep. However the bears wake up, after some Bat Guano lands on one of their lamps and they managed to escaped, not before grabbing the camera. Upon returning home, Marshall learns his Dad never flew the plane and things start going downhill when the brothers' father get injured and is in the hospital, causing the boys and their mother to do the work now. The next day Marshall flies the plane, but Leon (Tracey Walter) jumps in helps while flying it, after flying it, his father ends up being impressed for learning how to fly it. They display their film at the school gym, and everyone claps, but when their adversarial affiliate DC makes a rude comment, their dad begins to applaud, having the crowd cheer and clap. DC, who is always being a "devil's advocate" from the beginning, becomes the only one who wants his money back, which he gets from Marty Sr., but everyone else comments all of the brothers with compliments. Marshall and his Dad smile at each other.
An Extremely Goofy Movie
Max Goof, finally free of his father, strives to become the top at his college's X Games. After arriving, Max is met by the reigning champions. Their fraternity leader invites Max to join them but one condition he won't take in his friends since they only want Max and Max declined, but the two bet that whoever loses the finals becomes each other's group's towel boy. Meanwhile, Goofy's empty nest syndrome causes him to falter at work, causing a massive explosion inside at the assembly toy factory and getting him dismissed. The unemployment office reveals that he needs a college degree to get another job, and since Goofy dropped out of college after three years, he is forced to return to college to finish his fourth year, coming to Max's college with his 70's university clothes. Despite Max's grounding efforts, Goofy interrupts their down times with chores, making Max introduce him to the librarian, Sylvia Marpole. They date that coming Saturday, during which Max makes his father join the Gammas, whom he'd accidentally impressed during Max's practices. Bradley installs a rocket booster on Goofy's skateboard, but Goofy beats Max in the first qualifiers and Max's team barely makes the semi-finals. Max lashes at Goofy to "leave him alone and get [his] own life" and storms off in anger. A depressed Goofy ultimately fails his first round of midterm exams. Back home however, Goofy is inadvertently advised by Pete and Goofy reconciles with Sylvia, who helps him ace the next terms, but when he quits the team, he is literally thrown out. While returning his pin there, he overhears the group plotting for the final, but Max, still angry with his father, does not listen to his warnings. At the semi-finals, all teams but Max's are eliminated. Just before the final race, P.J. is blasted away, leaving Max and Bobby for disqualification against a replacement. Max calls for Goofy to join, while Bradley is eliminated, but Goofy and Bobby get eliminated as well after accidents. Tank tries winning in Bradley's place, which angers Bradley into making our trio crash into the inflatable X-games logo ship, though they escape the wreckage. And, Max wins by a nose. Goofy congratulates Max for winning the race, but so does Bradley whom Goofy glares his anger at. Max decides to cancel the bet, but he lets Tank slingshots Bradley into the X Games blimp overhead for double-crossing him. In the final scene, during graduation day, Max gives Goofy his grand-prize trophy, as an apology gift for his selfish disownment, and Goofy drives away with Sylvia for their next date.
A Goofy Movie
Goofy is the single father of teenager Max Goof, although the two have a tense relationship. On the last day of school before summer vacation, Max and his best friends P.J. and Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski hijack the auditorium stage in the middle of Principal Mazur's speech, creating a small concert where Max performs, while costumed as the pop singer Powerline. The performance succeeds in making Max a school celebrity and impressing his love interest, Roxanne, but he, P.J., and Bobby are sent to Mazur's office. While waiting outside of the office, Roxanne speaks with Max and agrees to go with him to a party where Powerline's concert will be viewed live on television. However, Mazur telephones Goofy and exaggerates Max's actions, forewarning him that Max's behavior may result in him facing capital punishment. Oblivious to Max's plans with Roxanne, Goofy decides to take Max on a fishing trip to Lake Destiny, Idaho, following a cross-country map route he and his father took years ago. Before they leave town, Max manages to stop by Roxanne's house to call off their date, but when the heartbroken Roxanne mentions going with someone else, Max panics and instead fabricates a story about his father knowing Powerline, telling her he will be on stage at the concert. Despite his son's objections, Goofy plans his own trip, with initially disastrous results. Max hurts his father's feelings after Goofy inadvertently humiliates Max at an opossum-based theme park. Later, Pete and P.J. happen to meet up with them while camping by a lake. While P.J. informs Max of how all their peers back home anticipate seeing him onstage at the Powerline concert, Pete advises Goofy to keep Max under control. Goofy takes his son fishing and shows him the Perfect Cast fishing technique, accidentally luring Bigfoot to their camp. Pete and P.J. flee, leaving Goofy and Max to spend the night with Bigfoot. At night, while Goofy sleeps, Max alters the map's route to Los Angeles, where the concert is taking place. The next morning, Goofy decides to make Max the navigator of the trip. The two go to several locations that satisfy both of them. Eventually, they stop by a motel where they meet Pete and P.J. again. When Pete overhears a conversation between the boys, he tells Goofy that Max has tricked him into traveling to Los Angeles. The next day, Goofy and Max come to a junction: one leading to Idaho, the other to California. Max chooses the route to California, making Goofy stop the car at the Grand Canyon and storm off in anger. With the brake loose, the car drives off on its own; Goofy and Max chase after it and end up in a river. After a heated argument, Goofy solemnly declares that no matter how old Max gets he will always be his son, and the two finally reconcile with each other. After learning of Max's promise to Roxanne, Goofy decides to take him to the concert in Los Angeles. The two nearly plummet to their deaths down a waterfall, but Max saves Goofy using the Perfect Cast technique. Goofy and Max make it to the concert, and while attempting to sneak backstage, they end up onstage and dance with Powerline, watched by Pete, P.J. and Roxanne on separate televisions. Goofy and Max later return to Roxanne's house in their damaged car. Max tells the truth to Roxanne, though she accepts it and admits she always had feelings for him, ever since the first time she ever heard him laugh, "Ah-hyuck!"; thus, a relationship starts between them. Goofy's car suddenly explodes because of damage it had sustained, ejecting Goofy in the process, who then falls through the porch roof of Roxanne's house, and Max proceeds to introduce him to Roxanne.
Contact
Dr. Ellie Arroway works for the SETI program at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Guided into science and communication by her now-deceased father, she listens to radio emissions from space, hoping to find evidence of alien life. David Drumlin, the president's science advisor, pulls the funding from SETI, because he believes the endeavor is futile. Arroway gains backing from secretive billionaire industrialist S. R. Hadden's company, which allows her to continue the project at the Very Large Array in New Mexico. Four years later, with Drumlin seeking to close SETI, Arroway discovers a signal repeating a sequence of prime numbers, apparently sent from the star system Vega some 26 light-years away. This announcement causes Drumlin and the National Security Council led by Michael Kitz to attempt to take control of the facility. Arroway's team then discover a second signal and find a video buried in the new signal: Adolf Hitler's opening address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Arroway and her team postulate that this would have been the first television signal strong enough to leave Earth's ionosphere, taking 26 years to reach Vega and then being transmitted back from there. The project is put under tight security and its progress followed worldwide. Arroway learns that when the original frames of the Hitler video combined with the modified version shows that the signal also contains more than 63,000 pages of indecipherable data. The reclusive S. R. Hadden secretly meets on his airplane home with Arroway to provide the means to decode the pages, found when they are arranged in three dimensions rather than two-dimensional pages. The pages reveal schematics for a complex machine that is determined to be some kind of transport for a single occupant. The nations of the world fund the construction of the machine at Cape Canaveral. An international panel is assembled to choose a candidate to travel in the machine. Although Arroway is a frontrunner to go, her hopes are scuppered by Christian philosopher Palmer Joss, a panel member whom Arroway met and briefly became romantically involved with in Puerto Rico. When he brings attention to her atheism, the panel selects Drumlin instead on the belief he would be more representative of humanity. However, on the day the machine is tested, a religious terrorist destroys the machine in a suicide bombing, killing Drumlin and dozens of others. A cancer-stricken Hadden, now in residence on the Mir space station, reveals to Arroway that his company had secretly made a second machine in Japan, and that Arroway will be the one to go. Outfitted with several recording devices, Arroway enters the machine's pod, a sphere surrounded by a dodecahedron, which is then dropped into four rapidly spinning rings, causing the pod to apparently travel through a series of wormholes. Arroway sees a radio array-like structure at Vega and signs of an advanced civilization on another planet. She then finds herself on a beach, similar to a childhood picture she drew of Pensacola, Florida, and a figure approaches that becomes her deceased father. Arroway recognizes him as an alien taking her father's form and attempts to ask questions. The alien tells her that the familiar landscape and form were used to make their first contact easier for her and that this journey was just her first step to joining other spacefaring species. Arroway falls unconscious as she begins traveling back through a wormhole. She awakens to find herself on the floor of the pod, the mission control team repeatedly hailing her. She learns that, from outside the machine, it appears the pod merely dropped through the machine's rings and landed in a safety net. Arroway insists that she was gone for approximately 18 hours, but her recording devices show only static. A Congressional Committee is formed and speculates that the Vega signal and machine were a hoax designed by the now-deceased Hadden. Although she cannot prove it happened, Arroway asks the committee to accept the truth of her testimony on faith. In an online private conversation, Kitz and White House official Rachel Constantine reflect on confidential information that, although Arroway's recording device only recorded static, it recorded 18 hours of it. Arroway and Joss reunite, and Arroway receives ongoing financial support to increase the number of dishes at the VLA from 27 to 72.
