Robin Wright is the aging star at the center of a story about fame, memory, and the price of technology that treats actors as consumable assets. Her career has faltered under a reputation for erratic behavior and unreliability, even as she battles personal heartbreak. Her son, Aaron Kodi Smit-McPhee, suffers from Usher syndrome, a condition that slowly robs him of sight and hearing, and she struggles to slow his decline with the help of Dr. Barker as his condition advances toward a terminal stage. Her longtime agent, Al Harvey Keitel, sets up a meeting with Jeff Green Danny Huston, the head of Miramount Studios, a company eager to buy her likeness and digitize her into a computer-generated shell. The offer comes with a stark demand: she must never act again. After her body is scanned, Miramount can produce films starring a CGI version of her, with no need for the real actress on set.
Twenty-something years slip by, and Robin travels to Abrahama City to speak at the Futurological Congress, Miramount’s dazzling entertainment conference. Abrahama City is a surreal, animated utopia born from the imaginations of its inhabitants, a place where anyone can become an avatar, provided they ingest hallucinogenic drugs to enter a mutable, illusory state. In the decades since the scan, her digital persona has become the lead in a blockbuster franchise, Rebel Robot Robin, making her and a certain real-life star one of the last enduring emblems of cinema. As she negotiates a new contract, Miramount unveils a chilling development: a technology that could allow anyone to devour her identity or transform themselves into her using the hallucinogen. She agrees to the deal, yet a steady wave of conscience gnaws at her, convinced that no one should be reduced to a product.
When she is asked to address the Congress, Robin speaks with bold, provocative candor, upsetting fans and executives alike before security moves in. The gathering is attacked by rebels who oppose the industry’s reach, and the assault culminates in the apparent assassination of the Congress’s head. During the chaos, she is rescued by Dylan Truliner Jon Hamm, Miramount’s lead animator, and the two escape only to be captured by Miramount Police. In a shocking moment, Robin appears to be executed by Jeff Green, a punishment for defying the corporation, but doctors later reveal this to be a hallucination born of the hallucinogen’s grip. The medical team concludes that she has become so intoxicated by the drug that she must be frozen until a cure can be found.
Two decades pass, and Robin is revived while still living within a hallucinatory landscape. She reconnects with Dylan, who explains that the hallucinogenic technology is now widespread, letting people take on any form and transforming society in myriad ways—both wondrous and troubling. The two fall in love and roam through a vivid, colorful animated world, yet Robin clings to the desire to return to the real world to be with Aaron. The only path back is a capsule that blocks all hallucinogenic effects, a device in this world that functions as a suicide capsule. Dylan, who negotiated a retirement package with Miramount, arranges one and hands it to her.
Back in reality, Robin discovers a dystopian environment where a tiny, privileged elite hovers above ruined cities in vast airships, while most people have chosen life inside the animated realm. Aaron vanished only six months earlier, having likely created a new identity within that world, and there seems to be no way to locate him. Dr. Barker provides an inhalation ampoule that would let Robin re-enter the animated world, but warns that her experiences will have shifted and she may never be able to re-enter the same world again. With the drug in hand, Robin’s memories of Aaron surge to the fore, and she finally locates him in the middle of an expansive, animated desert.
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