Chapter Zero — The titular "zone" is the opening shot of the film, an ASTEROID BELT occupies the foreground while vibrant planets and strange celestial bodies eclipse behind it. The largest rock in this belt has a space station built into the side of it, THE GIDEON TRUST, a deep space mining venture set up by one of Earth's billionaires. We switch locations to The Trust's interior, lights are flickering, alarms are blaring, Abramsian visual debris fills up the screen, and the film itself cuts out completely every so often adding extra freneticism to the sequence. Bodies of nameless personel are strewn about the floor, the alarms indicate an evacuation, clearly something alien just breached the station moments ago, and everyone comprising the frightened mass sprinting down the main service corridor is wearing a labcoat. Separately, a team of ENGINEERS fire up improvised mining tools, suspensfully awaiting an invasion within their metal-grated engine room— ALIEN INSECTS breach the room in an overwhelming volume. Two men lead the labcoats into a room labeled EVAC STATION, narrowly escaping the swarm. "They came from engineering, that entire deck got flooded with those things! That means hull decompression, and... human casualties, and I'm responsible." "Don't say that. We'll count heads once the lifepods splashdown." Franklin Storm (Viggo Mortensen) carries a limping scientist into an escape pod while Gregory Gideon (Herbie Hancock) sets the coordinates for Earth. "Remind us again where that would be?" "New York, Franklin. On the Hudson. Ball's in your court now, that building of yours is now our safest haven." Franklin ejects one last pod full of scientists out into space, an exterior shot of The Trust shows the capsule disappear into a self-imposed space rupture, sending it back to our dimension, as the planet this station is orbiting is one you would neither recognize, nor wish to find yourself stranded upon.
Franklin turns to retrieve the final pod's final passenger, "Time to leave—" Gideon locks the door from the outside. "What's going on?" "I'm staying behind, Franklin. This is goodbye." "No, absolutely not! You're not. Open this door!" Gregory pulls a SIX SHOOTER from his coat, "Now Greg, just... think about what you're doing. The Zone was demilitarized for a reason." "You never can be too careful." "And what if they get their hands on that weapon? Is that careful?" "They won't. I swear I'll empty the chamber, then they'll never discover its purpose." "Like hell they won't! They're REPLICATORS, they'll reverse-engineer it! Put it away and get on the lifeboat! Don't be stupid!" Gideon begins to prep the pod for evac, their eye contact and dialogue remains unbroken through a small, circular window. "I put everything I had into this station, as if I wouldn't get another chance. Evidently, I was correct. It always had to be this way, Franklin." "Listen, this place is affecting your judgment, Gideon. God knows it's affected mine, too. Get inside the pod, and we'll regroup back on Earth—" "Earth? I'll take take my chances out here. Nothing good awaits me back on Earth." "That's not true. You've got a family! What about Claire and Thomas, what am I to say to them?!" "I've already said my goodbyes. Tell them I didn't make it. You'd be telling the truth." He begins to load the gun, "No, Gideon you can't do this, for gods sake you've got a family, don't do this to them!" The gun is loaded, Frank's appeal to emotion failed. "Listen to me, what if... what if they catch you... alive? There are far more valuable things at stake here than your goddamn legacy! If you're captured, they'll learn everything, Gideon! You'll damn us all with this foolish decision! Don't do this!" Gideon laughs, Storm pounds on the glass, "NO!" Gideon ejects him.
CHAPTER 1: From the Valley - "Gateways to other dimensions, hidden dwellings for strange beings, the passageway to another world, secret vaults of cosmic knowledge, subterranean crystals hiding some mysterious power." The first glimpses into this movie's world are obscured by static blurs, bad lighting, and liberal use of shakycam, shrouding an already dark and cryptic opening scene with an added layer of mystery. Minutes before we even kickstart the opening credits, we're immersed into a strange setting via familiar found footage tropes used as a temporary narrative device to communicate the experiences of this particular group of characters. The five spelunkers in the video are documenting a scientific expedition down into the scenic caves of the VALLEY OF THE DIAMONDS, a tourist attraction in the Wyoming wilderness. The purposefully trembled handheld-cam soon gives way to wider angles of the cave interior and better lighting, the reason for having such varied degrees of cinematography is because this footage is meant to be compiled into the unaired pilot episode of a new paranormal reality show called 'Monster Hunters' hosted by eccentric tv personality and once-respected pseudoscientist Professor HARVEY RUPERT ELDER (Bob Balaban) with a few collegiate understudies to make up his camera crew.
The explorers reach a terminal room- "Hazmats, everyone." -and begin to lace themselves in padded suits before entering the main chamber, "Here it is, the main event, a giant mineral deposit super-structure, the largest natural crystal formation ever found on Earth!" The crew hesitates to take the first step, Elder goes first. "Careful now, watch your step." They begin to trudge down the inclined gorge and position lighting fixtures all around the edge of the limestone cavity, its floor is covered with perfectly faceted crystalline blocks, "Gorgeous." "Eyes down, Alyssa." The brunette girl yelps then catches her a balance, "Slippery." "And razor sharp. Keep your head, Dr. Moy, you're going to need it." They stumble along the rugged surface well aware of the falling hazard, huge crystal beams tower over them, some equal in girth to that of an American sports car, and jut out sporadically from both the razor sharp blocks below and the quartz-laden ceiling above, and as the growing number of lighting apparati starts to brighten up these transluscent pillars, the whole place lights up Vegas, though someone of a nerdier persuasion could also be reminded of Superman's Fortress of Solitude. A stunning discovery— but it's not their discovery, nor is this the reason these scientists were summoned to the underground kingdom in the first place. Since this sequence is edited like some sort of basic cable UFO documentary, a montage of accompanying imagery gets the viewers caught up on the goings-on of this world, while Harvey Elder narrates.
“Four years ago, the discovery of THE OMNIVERSE, an infinitely overlapping stack of dimensions not too dissimilar from our own, sparked a renewed interest in space travel, of visiting and colonizing other planets, not those within our own solar system, but within the Negative Zone’s nearest system, SOLES AETURNUM. This revelation of 'worlds within worlds' has provided a timely distraction from the truest source of mystery, that of exploring the unexplored reaches of our own tiny blue rock, of a world within our world. Today, our first foray into the darkest recesses of Earth’s subterranean realm begins here in Wyoming's Valley of the Diamonds, or more accurately, fifty feet below its surface, where the famous ‘Cave of the Crystals’ became the site of an undocumented cryptozoological creature. Eyewitnesses depict the beast as five feet in stature, with green, transluscent wings and a 'robotic' face. Sounds a bit far-fetched, but backing up these tall claims are a complex series of alien glyphs, freshly etched into every flat surface available on the megastructure.” The film crew captures a lot of closeups and handheld tracking shots of the strange cuneiform etchings. “Our linguistics expert, DR. ALYSSA MOY, (Anna Popplewell) tried to determine their origin but came up empty. Rows upon rows of unidentifiable, ornamental pictographs now adorn these crystal columns, grooves carved with inhuman precision into these diamond-hard surfaces, but by who? Could it simply be an elaborate hoax? Impossible to say, but what is certain: the underworld entity described by eyewitness accounts was definitely not a member of the human race, and according to eyewitnesses, has shown a great hostility towards the known inhabitants of this planet.”
After an awkward stretch of silently staring into the lense, Harvey blinks twice and asks someone off-screen, "So was that a good take?" The blonde girl answers, "As good as we're gonna get. We shouldn't stay down here too long, Professor, the humidity's gonna damage my equipment." Elder heeds the warning of camera operator, SUSAN STORM (Taylor Momsen) but hardly contains his excitement in between takes. One of the explorers remarks on Susan's unwieldly DSLR camera scope, "Hey, so are you paparazzi?" "Excuse me?" "That scope, telescope-thing. You know camera phones exist, right? Same quality." "This is for wildlife photography." "Oh, you haven't heard? This guy's a quack. That rig's for when the animal is real." "Well, no-scoping is for noobs." "Oooh, they do say that. Blondie's got bantz?" Alyssa steps in, "Keep it to yourself, Petruski. We're strapped for time. Keep rolling." Harvey continues to narrate, "There are unique properties inherent to quartz and other crystalline structures, they tend to occillate at incredibly well-defined frequencies when struck mechanically, and thus can be activated electrically using something peculiar called 'The Piezoelectric Effect.' Certain minerals can generate an electrical charge in response to applied mechanical stress, and by tapping into these currents we might be able to access whatever information was stockpiled here by the alien author of these symbols. You see, just as the crystal occilator inside my quartz wristwatch keeps track of time, and computer chips in Silicon Valley can store vast amounts of digital data, so too can these gypsum pillars store immense amounts of information. If I'm not mistaken, we may be standing atop a goldmine of alien intelligence, a geological computer with exraterrestrial knowledge stored into the very walls... can you feel it?" On his cue, Alyssa Moy pulls out a hollowed-out cylindrical metal bar and passes it to him, "Here, allow me to demonstrate." He strikes the nearest pillar with a light tap, but to their shock, the resulting *PING* grows so close to deafening as the pitch reverberates throughout the entire cave complex, visible electricity coursing through each pillar, all converging at one point where four collumns intersect in a rhombus-like parallelogram.
These OTHERWORLDLY ENERGIES coincide not within the crystals themselves, but in the spaces between. The incidental doorway's empty patch of space blurs into an amorphous spiral until a bright flash of light nearly blinds the crew before quickly fading, then the speechless explorers are left standing around looking dumbstruck, wondering what the hell just happened. "Great, my ears are ringing. Let's put away the tuning fork now, please?" "Well Professor whatever you did, it managed to kill off all the lighting fixtures." Elder's team ventures deeper into the Valley with their handhelds at eye-level, setting up new lights until there aren't anymore left, all while having to rely on the dimness of their helmet lights. One of the explorers spots a GLOWSTICK hanging on the wall in the distance, "Tourists can't clean up after themselves." The naive students approach the glowstick and stop dead in their tracks when two GLARING EYES slide open above it, and two sets of bent antennae burn fiery orange to the ends of their wicks, a robotic mouth lets out an earpeircing screech as a transluscent wingspan unfolds and a terrifying creature makes its presence known. A quickly-edited mad scramble for the cave exit ensues as the horrified students, some of them dropping their cameras, muscle past their mentor offering no explanation as to what they just saw. The team converges at the mouth of the cave as their cameras adjust to the extreme brightness of outdoor lighting, jungle ambience fills the soundscape, they're all standing in a circle trying to catch their breaths. "This goes ... without saying ... but please tell me one of you got all that." Sue Storm, who stood closest to the creature, steps forward and unstraps her camera to show him the images it captured, "Oh my god. Look at this one, it has wings... freaky." "A species of bat, perhaps?" "Something that large could only thrive in a far less confined space... this. This confirms everything I've been saying." Susan's expression changes, "Now might be a good time to alert THE FOUNDATION!" "The Foundation? No! No this is my discovery! Not theirs!" "Professor be reasonable, you actually have something here." "Yes I bloody well do! This is mine, you and your family are not taking credit for my work!" "But it's real, Harvey, we all witnessed it. But who in their right mind would believe you? We need corroboration." She takes out her phone, "Distance from here to New York, in a Foundation aircraft? Estimated arrival time is half an hour." Alyssa doesn't see any other choice, "None of us are prepared to re-enter that cave. Not even you. We're unequipped to deal with this alone." Harvey wearily turns back towards the mouth of the cave, then concedes to her plan.
EXT - WYOMING NATIONAL FOREST - An army green, tandem-rotor Boeing Chinook CH-47 HELICOPTER's landing skids enter the frame as it docks in a cleared patch of forest and lets off its passenger. VIKTOR VON DOOM (Jack Huston) steps down from the military aircraft like a rockstar, carrying two thick metal briefcases. "Viktor!" Susan leans hard against the rotary wind to meet him half way, "I wouldn't have come out all this way if it were anyone else, Susan. Honestly when I heard you dabbled in conspiracy theory, I had to see for myself—" "It's real, Vik. We all saw it." Elder slowly stumbles over to greet the robotics expert, "Working for this clown is a little beneath you, don't you think?" "It's ...more of a side grind." "Side grind, now I understand. So what's the catch? What exorbitant amounts is he paying you to play along?" "His show got dropped by NatGeo, he needed a competent wildlife photographer, and settled for me instead. No catch." "Perhaps he's taken a liking to your body-of-work. So what are you going to jot down on your resume once he stages his next hoax, Susan? He's a liar." Elder finally reaches them, "Von Doom, I'm Dr. Harvey Elder. It's an honor to have someone of your standing aboard!" His extended hand is left hanging, "I'm not aboard. Turn that camera off! Explain to me why I'm here, Elder." "There's been a sighting. I have witnesses this time." "Witness, well... you cried wolf, show us the wolf, gang."
INT. THE CAVE'S ANTECHAMBER - Back down in the tunnel leading up to the crystal cave, Elder's expedition team haults in trepidation at the entrance to the monster's dwelling. "Oh for god's sake!" "This as far as I'm going." Vik is none-too pleased by this, "Tell me, what did this thing look like?" "Purple, green, articulated exoskeleton, almost... instectoid, but also robotic, and it had.. bat wings? Perhaps an evolutionary adaptation, to mimic the flying mammals within its ecosystem." Viktor conceals a smile upon hearing Elder's description of the monster, "The combined traits of two or more monstrous animals— Professor Elder, what you're describing is a Chimera." "Yes that's it!" Viktor shakes his head, "Thank Christ you caught me in a good mood. I'm sending in an AR scout." He unbuckles one suitcase and unloads a SPHERICAL AR DRONE from its foam padding, the metallic drone's patterns light up red, "The size of a bowling ball and yet light as a feather," its inventor clicks a small remote and it hovers up and through the crystal forest. "Indicate to me exactly where the creature was last spotted." Susan points out a dark crevice where five short pillars interconnect, the drone hovers into the area, scanning it's surroundings with infrared laser sights— but when it passes through the intersection of the crystal pillars, it disappears!
"Well that is odd." Viktor's control pad displays a live feed, indicating to him that drone is hovering around in SUBSPACE, "It does appear to have crossed over into another dimension." He steers it back from whence it came and it reappears through the invisible doorway then self-docks back into the briefcase, "Another dimension, meaning the N-Zone?" "Meaning you haven't discovered an entrance to Subterranea, you've discovered a portal to hell." He then unpacks a second, larger carrying case, and pulls out a large, metallic PORTAL GUN from it's foam encasing, aims it, and fires without warning, an erratic stream of multi-colored electricity spills out of the barrell and into the face of each conductive crystal collumn, they're now glowing blue as some strange, otherworldy energy tries to fill the space between each beam. Doom changes the setting, this time it fires a reddish bolt that actually fills out a window between them and what appears to be a CELESTIAL REALM. The found footage element manifests itself once again as someone's camera gets magnetically drawn towards the portal and shoots past the characters, the shot dives straight into the portal as the score swells into a triumphant-sounding 'main suite.' Now we begin our opening crawl, one perhaps less reminiscent of the iconic Star Wars and Superman opening crawls, closer to Bryan Singer's X-Men films and Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films, two minute-long special effects shots that literally crawled through winding strands of mutant DNA or spider-webs. But visually this scene has more in common with the crawls seen in Superman Returns and Abrams' Star Trek, a CGI roller coaster ride through a glistening expanse of celestial bodies, globular star clusters, pinwheel galaxies and gas giants, oscillating pulsar planets and 3-D supernovas, icy planetesimals and firey comet trails — then we're assaulted by a flying text that reads:
—+—MARVEL STUDIOS presents—+—
in assocation with 20th CENTURY FOX
— then the title of the movie bursts into view.
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