10. So the drunk boys decide, like infinite drunk boys before them, to take dad’s car out for a late-night spin—although in this case, dad’s car is a billion-dollar inter-dimensional teleporter. Reed even calls up his old friend Ben, who was there way back at the start, to come join them. (Remember Ben? He’s been stuck back in Oyster Bay all this time, a fact which the movie subtly conveys by presenting him wearing a shirt that says “Oyster Bay.”) So the four boys get into their space suits, hop in the teleporter, and zap themselves into another dimension. Amazingly, none of them thinks to invite Sue, who has of course (unlike Ben) been working with them on the project this whole time. Classy move, bros.

10a. It’s important to remember that for the remainder of the movie we’re expected to continue to take the side of these ridiculous drunk kids whenever they get into an argument with the awful corporate types who wanted to bring in trained grownup explorers from NASA.

10b. It’s also probably worth noting here that the movie has no theory whatsoever of what an alternate dimension might signify. The teleporter always sends matter to the exact same spot on the other-dimension planet, and there is never any suggestion that it could teleport anywhere else. That other planet basically just seems like an ordinary planet, except for the fact that it has some kind of green, liquefied power source coursing just beneath its crust like magma. (If anyone involved in the movie had any sense, the product tie-in for an energy drink practically writes itself.)

11. Upon arrival on this new world, the boys get out of the capsule to explore. (The chimp did not do this, but it’s probably safe, right?) They’re intrigued by the green energy liquid and decide they want to know more about it. When Reed notices that it seems to be pooling down at the base of a 300-hundred-foot cliff, he encourages his pals, “C’mon, let’s go check it out!” They climb down and examine the energy pool, which they decide is “alive.” (What this means is anyone’s guess.) Moreover, to their surprise—though not that of any possible moviegoer—this green goo turns out not to be completely safe. It begins erupting from the ground, like volcanic discharge or an aggressively manipulated zit, and it swallows Victor as they climb back up the cliff. (There’s no chance we’ll see him again, is there?) The other boys run to the capsule and zap back to Earth, but all of them are spattered with some of the goo. So, too, is Sue—who’s been minding her own business back at the lab all this time—when the capsule explodes upon arrival.

12. This is where the movie takes a turn for the grim and self-serious, a tonal mode that almost no one other than Christopher Nolan has made work in a superhero movie, but one which pretty much everyone apart from Marvel Studios continues to attempt. (Again, Fantastic Four is a Fox property.) Josh Trank’s only previous film as a director, Chronicle, had many fans, but I was not among them. In it, three teenagers stumbled upon an energy source that gave them great powers, and they then spent the bulk of the film petulantly bickering among themselves over the proper use of those powers. Trank’s Fantastic Four follows a similar script, but it is much, much worse.