FADE IN:

INT. LITTLE MILES TELLER’S GARAGE

Ten-year-old YOUNG MILES TELLER brings YOUNG JAMIE BELL to have a look at his homemade TELEPORTER.

YOUNG JAMIE BELL

Wow, I know fans said we were too young for these roles, but this is ridiculous.

YOUNG MILES TELLER

This is the prologue, doofus. Our characters spend the rest of the movie in their late teens.

YOUNG JAMIE BELL

Ah, so Fantastic Four High, not Fantastic Four Babies. Marginally better.

YOUNG MILES TELLER

Anyway, check out my experiment for sending a spaceship through a radioactive space cloud and holy crap I just now realized how utterly ridiculous an origin story that is. Forget that, it’s teleportation now. I’m building a teleporter.

YOUNG JAMIE BELL

Also marginally better!

They switch on the TELEPORTER and cause a massive BLACKOUT.

YOUNG MILES TELLER

Awesome! Say, you wanna come over every day and help me work on my design?

YOUNG JAMIE BELL

Well I'd like to, but even if my family of bossy violent assholes let me wander off and do science for a couple hours a day, your parents would never let you keep building dangerous shit in the garage after you knocked out the power grid just now.

YOUNG MILES TELLER

They will if we just skip ahead nearly a decade and assume they did!

INT. SCIENCE FAIR

Years later, MILES and JAMIE have completed their TELEPORTATION DEVICE and are PUBLISHING AN EARTH-SHATTERING RESEARCH PAPER AND PRESENTING THEIR DESIGNS TO DARPA entering it into a HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE FAIR. They are approached by KATE MARA and REG E. CATHEY.

KATE MARA

We’re from an advanced research institute and we’re looking for a scientific genius to help us crack interdimensional teleportation. Not sure what the hell we’re doing at a science fair for kids. Maybe we broke down outside and came in for the central heating while we wait for AAA.

REG E. CATHEY

Miles, we’d like to offer you a full scholarship. As for your friend who just spent years helping you create this thing, I’m not even going to speak to him or acknowledge his existence. Tell him to fuck off.

JAMIE BELL

Whatever. Not sure what contribution I’m supposed to have made to the project anyway. Bye Miles, you go be a world-famous scientist while I slink back to my squalid home inside a junk yard.

(leaves)

MILES TELLER

Hey, did you guys say interdimensional teleportation? Does that mean my samples have been going to a different dimension? I had no idea! I just figured they were going to China or something! That’s not a joke, my character actually thought that!

KATE MARA

So you didn’t even know what your device does? You just kept sending stuff “somewhere”, and never even thought to send a camera through or analyze the soil samples that came back or anything?

MILES TELLER

Yep! And the first two real scientists I talk to about this both point out that I came within an inch of ending the world. Clearly we’re not running with the comic’s characterization of “Reed Richards: smartest man in the universe”.

INT. INTERNATIONAL HOUSE OF SCIENCE

KATE and REG bring MILES to the RESEARCH FACILITY and INTRODUCE HIM AROUND.

REG E. CATHEY

This is your fellow physicist who’ll be working on the science with you, Toby Kebbell.

TOBY KEBBELL

Ugh. I gotta share my science with another kid genius? That’s lame. And Kate seems more interested in his gee-willikers amiability than my sulky mumblings and grumpy stares. That’s lame too. You’re all lame. Everything sucks.

(shoves hands in pockets)

MILES TELLER

So your character name is Victor Von Doom? That’s funny, there’s actually a Marvel supervillain with that name. Only he’s an intimidating badass, not a mopey basement-dwelling douchenozzle.

REG E. CATHEY

And the actual fabrication of the machine will be handled by my son, Michael B. Jordan.

INTERNET IDIOTS

What? Johnny Storm’s BLACK?! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! BOOOO!!

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

Hang on, how much of this is racism, and how much of it is just traditional nerd rage over any change to anything? And why can’t I figure out which of those I want to punch in the face more?

KATE MARA

Meanwhile I’ll be making the environment suits for the exploration party, because they couldn’t think of anything more interesting to give me to do.

MILES TELLER

Imagine how awkward things will be when they realize the job they thought up for the one woman on our team was costume design.

They build the TELEPORTER and successfully demonstrate the safe interdimensional transportation of a CHIMP for GOVERNMENT FUNDING GUY TIM BLAKE NELSON.

TIM BLAKE NELSON

Great work! Now we should coordinate with NASA so we can send some astronauts to this other dimension.

MILES TELLER

Astronauts? But us pasty lab geeks figured we’d be the ones who got to go!

TIM BLAKE NELSON

Well, no. Obviously not. You’re far too valuable to send on a potentially hazardous expedition, and you don’t have the skill set for it anyway. That was a completely unrealistic thing to expect.

MILES TELLER

THIS IS BULLSHIT. Come on Michael, Toby, let’s go get hammered. Preferably, hammered enough that our actions in the next few scenes seem believable.

TOBY KEBBELL

I don’t think there’s enough alcohol in the world, but let’s give it a shot.

MILES, MICHAEL and TOBY all get absolutely PLASTERED.

MILES TELLER

(wasted)

Y-you know what we should do? We should, like, just get in the teleporter and (hic) teleport ourselves and then we’d be first.

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

(blitzed)

Yeah! If this place had any kind of safety protocols we wouldn’t even be able to activate the teleporter without people monitoring us, but clearly we skipped all that crap so we’re good!

TOBY KEBBELL

(shitfaced)

This is a great plan! It’s just like when Seth Brundle got totally drunk then jumped in a barely-tested experimental teleporter. And if I recall correctly, everything worked out great for that guy!

MILES TELLER

Oh, oh, you know who else we should invite to come with us?

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

Well obviously Kate, since she’s worked just as hard as us on this project since its inception and-

MILES TELLER

MY OLD HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND YOU GUYS HAVE NEVER HEARD OF! AND NOBODY ELSE!

(calls Jamie)

Hey Jamie, wanna come out to a lab in the middle of the night so a bunch of drunk guys can strap you into an experimental machine?

JAMIE BELL

(perfectly sober)

Sure, sounds legit.

JAMIE comes over then the four of them TELEPORT THEMSELVES to ANOTHER DIMENSION.

EXT. DIMENSION OF POINTY CRAP

MILES, JAMIE, MICHAEL and TOBY stumble out onto a BARREN ROCKY LANDSCAPE.

MILES TELLER

Hey look, at the bottom of that cliff, those glowing fissures in the ground seem to converge on a huge puddle of radiant green sludge! Let’s go to there!

TOBY KEBBELL

Yes! I’mma shove my hand right into the sludge! For SCIENCE!

(grabs handful of radioactive goo)

This is clearly the drunkest anybody has ever been.

But getting FISTED just PISSES THE SLUDGE OFF, and the entire landscape starts CONVULSING! TOBY seemingly gets DISSOLVED BY THE SLUDGE and the OTHERS all jump back into the TELEPORTER.

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

AW SHIT I’M ON FIRE NOW AND IT’S GIVING ME FIRE POWERS!

JAMIE BELL

AND I’M BEING PELTED WITH ROCKS AND THAT’S GIVING ME ROCK POWERS!

MILES TELLER

Whereas I’m, I dunno... drowning in taffy? Bah, I can’t think of something to account for stretchy powers, so let’s not bother.

They TELEPORT BACK TO THE LAB and the EXPLODING TELEPORTER lets off some kind of BLUE PULSE THING that turns KATE invisible or whatever.

INT. LAB

MILES wakes up to find himself converted into SLENDER NERD.

MILES TELLER

Oh no, scientists have me strapped to a table! I’ve become some kind of freak lab specimen for them to exploit! Either that or it makes perfect sense for doctors to examine somebody after they get exploded and their flesh turns to rubber. But I’m gonna assume it’s the first thing!

He BREAKS LOOSE and starts looking for a WAY OUT. On the way he passes by JAMIE’S CELL.

JAMIE BELL

Miles, help me! I seem to have turned into a claymation figurine from a Tool video! Seriously, I can’t believe we actually managed worse-looking Thing effects than Michael Chiklis’s “Michelin Man with psoriasis” suit.

MILES TELLER

I’d like to stay and help you, buddy, but I need to get out of here so I can find a way back to the alternate dimension and try and develop a cure for what’s happened to us, both of which are things this lab would actively help me to do if I stuck around! Laters!

(flees)

JAMIE BELL

Hey, come back! You’ll miss the best part of any superhero origin story, where we discover and train up our abilities and take them into the field for the first-

INT. LAB - ONE YEAR LATER

JAMIE BELL

...What? ONE FUCKING YEAR LATER? For the love of FUCK, people!

TIM BLAKE NELSON

So, Jamie’s been proving an unstoppable force on the battlefield, as you can see from these brief video clips of kickass action sequences we won’t be putting in this movie. And now Michael’s ready to be put into action as well.

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

Hell yeah! Let’s do this!

KATE MARA

What the hell, Michael? How dare you actually get any kind of enjoyment out of your amazing superhuman powers? You should be brooding and miserable like Jamie and me! I for one can turn invisible and create impenetrable force fields and fly and that is AWFUL.

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

Okay, maybe Jamie has an excuse to spend all his time pouting. His constant pantslessness lets us see exactly how much HE’S lost. But excuse me if I think that worse things can happen to a guy than gaining the ability to zoom around the sky like a rocket and shoot fire from his hands.

KATE MARA

But think of how Tim’s exploiting us!

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

You mean exploiting us by helping us develop our powers, making us suits that allow us to control them better, and not forcing either you or me to do anything? Just leaving it on the table that we might do superhero missions for them if we feel like it, no pressure though? That’s the exploitation you’re talking about?

REG E. CATHEY

Listen to her, son. You can’t waste your life by choosing to use your unique abilities to save lives and fight the forces of evil!

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

In other words, with great power comes great responsibility to never use those powers to help anybody or do anything? This is such fake wangsty bullshit.

TIM BLAKE NELSON

Good news guys, we’ve located Miles! We should send somebody who wants to bring him in quietly. Somebody who can sneak invisibly up to his position, and capture him much as you could by trapping him inside a force field of some kind.

(pause)

Huge loud rock monster who basically wants to smash Miles into pulp, you’re up!

EXT. FOREST

TIM’S SOLDIERS track down MILES, who is hiding in the woods working on his HARRY TUTTLE COSTUME. He flails at them with pathetic looking RUBBER ARM ATTACKS and they fall down, presumably out of PITY.

JAMIE BELL

MILES, YOU SONOFABITCH! What the hell are you doing having your effects look completely stupid? That’s MY thing!

MILES TELLER

Oh, we’re going to fight? Great, it's about time this superhero movie had an actual action scene-

(instantly knocked out)

INT. LAB

MILES is brought back to the LAB.

TIM BLAKE NELSON

We need your science brain, Miles. We want to send more guys to the pointy dimension to get some more random superpowers, but we can’t get Mark Two of the teleporter to work.

MILES TELLER

So why didn’t you just build another Mark One? That thing seemed to work fine.

TIM BLAKE NELSON

Uh, I guess when you blew up the teleporter you also managed to blow up the science somehow?

MILES completes the new TELEPORTER with about five seconds of TYPING, then they send a bunch of EXPLORERS to the other DIMENSION. But no sooner do they get there than they find TOBY is there and still alive!

TOBY KEBBELL

Hey, guys. What do you think of my bitching new cloak? I have no fucking idea where I’m supposed to have gotten this thing.

(collapses)

TOBY is taken back to the LAB, where TIM meets with him.

TIM BLAKE NELSON

Your environment suit seems to have fused to your body, making you look exactly like a guy with a rubber suit glued on. Seriously, you look so dumb. I keep expecting another eight of you to show up and then you all get kicked in the face by the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

TOBY KEBBELL

Uh huh. Anyway, I guess I’ll destroy the world now.

TIM BLAKE NELSON

Uhhh, why exactly?

TOBY KEBBELL

Something about wiping out humanity so they can’t destroy my deserted wasteland planet? I don’t know, it’s just a bunch of vague apocalyptic mumbling, doesn’t really make any sense.

He SCANNERS TIM’S HEAD OFF, then goes through the LAB using his TELEKINESIS to blast people’s BRAINS out of the back of their SKULLS in a way that makes him look about as powerful as any random DUDE WITH A GUN.

TOBY KEBBELL

So here I am, a troubled loner stalking the halls, with all these innocent people screaming and fleeing as I blow their brains out. I sure hope this isn’t tastelessly reminiscent of certain real-life tragedies or anything.

Finally he reaches the TELEPORTER and escapes back to the other DIMENSION, but not before KILLING REG with some weird TELEKINETIC FRYING ATTACK.

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

OH MY GOD DAD, NNNOOOOOoh great, now I'm as miserable as the rest of you. They do know we're based on a colorful adventure comic full of lavish space battles, right? This movie's way too dark.

MILES TELLER

I know. We seem to be, bafflingly, taking a few pages from Man of Steel's Bumper Book of Depressing Violence and Emotional Despair.

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

No, I mean literally, this movie's just plain too dark. What, was this filmed inside a sock drawer? I can't see a damn thing.

EXT. UGLY, SHITTY DIMENSION OF ROCKS

TOBY KEBBELL

Now to open a huge interdimensional portal in the sky, which is a thing I can do apparently, and start pulling all the matter on Earth through the portal into some kind of cosmic bug zapper thing that I created with my mind! My powers are a little bit ill-defined.

He opens the PORTAL. On the EARTH SIDE it drags up HUGE CHUNKS OF THE LANDSCAPE and HUNDREDS OF CARS, but doesn't affect any of the PEOPLE running out of the CARS because a CATASTROPHIC BODY COUNT is one part of that MAN OF STEEL BOOK that not even this shitpile wants to touch.

MILES TELLER

Damn! Okay guys, let’s all just fly through the portal so we can go fight Toby. Good thing he opened the portal directly above us, instead of on the other side of the planet, or we’d be fucked!

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

So wait, what we’ve got on our hands is an angsty youth who accidentally got telekinesis powers, has gone on a rapidly-escalating murder rampage, and now his also-superpowered former friends - one of whom is played by me, Michael B. Jordan - have to stop him? What the hell, Josh Trank?

DIRECTOR JOSH TRANK

I know, I know. It’s just, this movie’s kind of turning into a trainwreck, so I thought I’d remake Chronicle real quick to remind people I did something good once.

The MEDIOCRE FOUR fly through the PORTAL and start fighting TOBY.

TOBY KEBBELL

Even though it’s been made clear that I could just make all you guys instantly explode, I figure I’ll just keep throwing stuff at you instead.

MILES TELLER

(fighting pathetically)

You know, tearing the planet apart with a boring MCU-style pillar of energy seems a bit drastic for the second act. What the hell are you gonna do for the climax?

TOBY KEBBELL

What are you talking about? This is the climax. We’re already there.

MILES TELLER

Huh? Bullshit. All we’ve done so far is buildup, foreshadowing and shitty character stuff. This is the first scene of actual superhero action in the movie! We only introduced the main villain like five minutes ago, and now we’re just going to have a half-assed punchup and that’s it?

TOBY KEBBELL

Dude, look at me. I look like a half-melted Cobra Commander doll and I keep saying lines like “I’ve always been alone”, and “there is no Victor, only Doom”. I can guarantee the audience doesn’t want to see any more of me than they already have.

MILES TELLER

Actually yeah, you’re making Phase Two MCU villains look impressive, let’s get this over with already. In fact this whole movie can fuck off as soon as possible.

MILES distracts TOBY by LETTING HIM PUNCH HIS FACE IN while KATE makes JAMIE INVISIBLE so he can sneak up on TOBY.

JAMIE BELL

Now please do us a favor and not react during the last couple of seconds where I turn visible again for no reason and scream my catchphrase. IT'S CLOBBERIN' TIME!

TOBY KEBBELL

Do you think maybe it's time to admit that your catchphrase is kind of embarra-

(punched into bug zapper thing)

(disintegrates)

MICHAEL B. JORDAN

Good job, everybody! Great work coming up with a finishing move that didn’t require me to do anything at all.

The team return to EARTH, where they talk the GOVERNMENT GUYS into giving them their own LAB, basically by implying that otherwise they would MURDER THEM.

MILES TELLER

Well, that was like four percent of an adventure. Let’s hope that next time we get some more action in. And hey, how the hell do you think they’re going to tie us in to the X-Men franchise? There are like, zero mutants in this world as far as I can tell.

KATE MARA

Are you kidding me? None of that is happening. Every recent interview with the cast and director has been about whose fault this movie is. Trust me, Fantastic Four is finished. Fox is just going to let the rights revert to Marvel, and even then these characters will be lucky if they’re even allowed to guest star on the Luke Cage TV series.

MILES TELLER

Aw come on, we’re the only chance Fox has to jump on the expanded universe bandwagon. What evidence is there, really, of a total lack of faith in us?

KATE MARA

Dude. We didn’t even score a Stan Lee cameo.

MILES TELLER

...Yeah, we’re boned.

END.