Trama

An orphaned teen hits the road with a mysterious robot to find her long-lost brother, teaming up with a smuggler and his wisecracking sidekick.

Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Simon Stålenhag, the story takes place in a reimagined version of 1997. With humans isolated in their VR helmets and a continuing battle against a strange breed of monstruous drones in the wake of a technological meltdown, a teenage girl named Michelle and a robot travel the West Coast of the U.S in search of the girl's missing brother.

A runaway teenager and her yellow toy robot travel west through a strange USA. The ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, heaped together with the discarded trash of a high tech consumerist society in decline. As their car approaches the edge of the continent, the world outside the window seems to be unraveling ever faster - as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.—texasboyy

In 1990, a war between humans and robots has left the world in disarray. Robots were initially introduced by Walt Disney in their theme parks and quickly became the backbone of the global workforce. Robots did all the jobs that humans did not want to do. They never complained about working round the clock. Eventually, the robots grew tired of the lives assigned to them by humans and rebelled. They assembled into an army led by Mr. Peanut. When robots fail to return to work, a war erupts. Robots were winning as they did not need to eat, drink or sleep.

With the help of Sentre CEO Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), who developed Neurocaster Technology that allowed humans to upload their minds into drone robots. For the first time, robots were met with mechanized fire and humanity managed to win the war within weeks. The defeated robots were banished to the exclusion zone, a desert facility measuring 100,000 square miles and hosting 6000 robots. Mr Peanut signed the treaty of surrender on behalf of the robots.

However, the success of this technology meant many people opted to live their virtual lives in a semi-vegetative state while drones did most of the work.

In 1994, teenager Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) lives with her incompetent foster dad, Ted (Jason Alexander). Years earlier, she was involved in a car crash along with her family, in which her parents and brother reportedly perished. She has lived with a succession of foster families, unable to find a stable home. She is also having trouble at school due to her refusal to use Neurocaster technology to participate in virtual classes.

One day, the sentient robot Cosmo (Alan Tudyk) seeks Michelle out at her foster home. Michelle believes that the robot had come to kill her but soon realizes that Cosmo is harmless. He is only able to communicate using gestures and a limited set of Pre-recorded words, but manages to convince her that he is controlled by her deceased younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman), who was a child prodigy.

Christopher was a boy and was already acing tests that were once taken by Einstein and even he took 3 days to complete it. Christopher was always afraid of his own talent and says that people stole Einstein's brain after he took that test. Christopher believed that human consciousness could transcend physical boundaries.

Ted tries to stop Michelle and Cosmo by calling 911, but Michelle hits him with a taser gun. She steals Ted's car and takes Cosmo along with her. Michelle and Cosmo set out across a dystopian landscape to find Christopher. Cosmo indicates to Michelle that Christopher is alive and is somehow connected to Sentre. Cosmo says that only a doctor with glasses knows where Christopher is. Michelle remembers Dr Amherst at the hospital, a doctor with glasses, who broke the news of Christopher's death to her. Cosmo points to a map and indicates that Amherst is in the middle of the Exclusion zone.

They need a way to break into the Exclusion Zone. In Ted's car boot, Michelle finds many packages that were mailed to him from the Exclusion Zone and grabs an address. Along the way, Michelle and Cosmo encounter Keats (Chris Pratt), a veteran with a complex past, and Herman (Anthony Mackie), a sentient robot who is able to take on multiple forms. Keats trades contraband materials that he smuggles out of the Exclusion Zone and his hideout is very close to it. Unknown to Michelle, she is being tracked by Colonel Bradbury, a hero of the robot wars. Bradbury reaches the basement of Keats' hideout where he keeps out of his merchandise. Bradbury attacks when Michelle resists arrest and Bradbury destroys the entire basement. His robot drone is more than a match for Cosmo and Herman. Herman and Cosmo team up to defeat the Bradbury drone.

Michelle, Keats and their robots escape, and end up in the Exclusion Zone. Michelle says that Amherst is on tabletop mountain, which is 300 miles away. Herman commandeers a bigger body and carries the trio in a van. They meet up with a band of robots in the exclusion zone, led by Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson). Mr Peanut hears Michelle's story and wonders why Sentre would be interested in Christopher. At Mr Peanut's hideout, Michelle finds that some mail had been left in Christopher's name and realizes that this might be Amherst's location.

Meanwhile, Skate finds that the data transfer rates to Neurocaster are dropping fast, and his team informs him that Christopher's consciousness is no longer inside the Neurocaster, which was powering the whole thing. They say that there was a tiny unsecured gap in Christopher's data layer, and he dripped slowly out of the Neurocaster, over a period of time. Skate connects with Bradbury and tasks him with bringing Cosmo to him.

Inside the Exclusion Zone, Michelle and Keats find Dr. Amherst (Ke Huy Quan) who explains that Sentre found Christopher in a seemingly permanent vegetative state after the accident and discovered that they could create the Neurocaster technology by exploiting Christopher's exceptional intellect and integrating his consciousness into the Neurocaster. Only the vast computing power of Christopher's brain could link the Neurocaster to the drones. This technology was instrumental in giving humans an advantage during the war against the robots. But now Christopher is holding the entire network together and if he is removed from the Sentre mainframe all drones would fail.

However, after Christopher unexpectedly came out of his coma thirteen months later, a remorseful Amherst built a tiny way for his mind to escape, before he ran away from the facility. Sentre drones under the command of Colonel Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) attack, recapturing Christopher / Cosmo, killing Amherst, and destroying the robots' home. Cosmo is taken to the Sentre HQ in Seattle.

Bradbury accuses Skate of lying to him, killing Amherst and having him hunt Christopher, a boy and not a robot. Skate defends his actions by deeming them necessary for the salvation of humanity.

Determined to rescue her brother, Michelle infiltrates Sentre's headquarters with the help of Keats and Herman while the other robots wage war with Skate's drone army. Michelle uses Amherst's robot whom he used as his personal hard disk and the robot knew all of Sentre's schematics and access codes. Disgusted with Skate's inhuman actions, Bradbury defects and helps Peanut to confront Skate while Michelle discovers Christopher in a comatose state, his consciousness trapped within the Neurocaster system.

In a reunion within the virtual realm, Christopher explains that his consciousness is what is powering Skate's robots, expressing his desire to be freed from his exploited existence. Respecting his wishes, Michelle disconnects him, resulting in his physical body dying. During the battle, Keats almost loses Herman when his large robot form gets destroyed by a drone robot. However, a miniature version of Herman emerges from the wreckage.

Christopher's death triggers the shutdown of Sentre's drone operations, dismantling Skate's control and ending the exploitation of the Neurocaster technology. In the aftermath, Skate is arrested, and the world begins to rebuild from the devastation wrought by the war and corporate greed. Michelle then broadcasts to the world exposing how the Neurocaster technology has affected people's lives and inviting those who wish to live in peace to the exclusion zone.

Cosmo's body is dumped in a junkyard, but he is shown rising up, suggesting that a part of Christopher's consciousness may still reside within the robot.