Superman Unmade #3: Superman Reborn (Take 3C)

Here there be spoilers.

Less of an incremental post, this time we look at some major revisions in Gregory Poirier's third draft of Superman Reborn. I'll try not to repeat myself; for more background, see analysis of the first and second drafts.

Side note: I've also been reading up on Brainiac, particularly Alan Kistler's profile, which is well worth a read for those interested in the history of the character, given his heavy use in these unproduced screenplays. What's interesting to me is that the Brainiac presented in these drafts is neither the living computer of the pre-Crisis DC universe (and the 1992 script) nor the alien-possessed mentalist of the post-Crisis era. The notion of him upgrading himself is still front and centre, but it's all about biology, not technology.

Who wrote it?

Gregory Poirier - credited on (amongst others) The Lion King 2, A Sound of Thunder and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

When was it written?

This draft is dated 22.2.96

How long is it?

120 pages (longer than draft 2 at 119, shorter than draft 1 at 122)

What's the broad structure?

Act 1: 1-26
Act 2A: 27-56
Act 2B: 58-93
Act 3: 94-120

What's the context?

This is the third and final draft Poirier wrote for producer Jon Peters. With two months to revise and rewrite, he changed some things considerably. There's next to no information available about this process, and whether the rewrite was driven by Peters' notes, the studio's, or both.

What's changed (and works better)?

• Brainiac's methodology. From the outset it's now established that rather than picking random individuals (or Princess Leia surrogates) he's deliberately targeting each world's strongest individual from whom to cherry-pick DNA. 
• There's also a much earlier acknowledgement that he needs a Kryptonian specifically, rather than his apparently random desire to head to Earth in the previous two drafts, which left Cadmus to explain his motivations.
• Silver Banshee is retooled as a Brainiac-created sidekick from the outset. This may not please fans of the existing DC Universe character (assuming there are any), but it introduces her quickly and effectively negates the need for an origin story. She's also a far more interesting sidekick than the alien Hestes (present in the first two drafts and now relegated to a cameo). The dynamic between Banshee and Brainiac is simply better; there's hints of a patriarchal/sexual relationship, but also allusions to that relationship becoming abusive, which is a little dark for a Superman movie but is at least aiming for a degree of complexity.
• The dynamic between Superman and Lois is better articulated.  They meet on her balcony three or four times a week and flirt around the furniture; just how serious they are about each other is what Lois wants to know.
• Clark's sloppiness is telling better; Perry chews him out for ignoring the drug lab fire which creates Parasite.
• Cadmus' computer now delivers our exposition, laying out the facts; without Kryptonian DNA, Brainiac will die in 122 hours.  The countdown, for him at least, is established much earlier.
• For the first time, Superman's earth family is acknowledged, with Lois calling Martha to tell her that Clark is missing. You can't exactly feel Martha's agony dripping off the page (Superman Returns' play on the same kind of scene works much better) but it's a move in the right direction.  To be fair, it's a difficult scene to make play; when Martha knows he's dead, how can she convincingly tell Lois she's sure he's fine?  By the same token, saying "I'm sure he's fine" comes off, at least to Lois, like she barely cares at all. There's a tragic dichotomy implicit in the set-up which doesn't quite make it into the scene as written.
• Brainiac is no longer the destroyer of Krypton. It simply isn't needed for emotional depth, and it makes nothing more personal for Superman.  Having him driven off by Jor-El, though, does make the story more personal for Brainiac, though it's not much explored as a motive because its overridden by his genetic needs.
• Lois joining the army insertion team makes a lick more sense; she trades her lipstick-camera photos of the inside of Brainiac's ship for access. It's still not exactly feasible but it's the best effort yet.
• Brainiac actually leaves his ship for the first time in any of these drafts, making him slightly more dynamic in the final act.
• Poirier better develops the real doubt as to whether Superman wants to carry on. He's being pulled in two directions; a normal life in which the world faces imminent destruction because of his unwillingness to act, or a return to his old, hyper-kinetic, lonely existence in a world free of Brainiac's tyranny. In many ways this is classic drama; he can't have it all, so which is the lesser of the two evils? It's trite and conceited but his moment of resolution, when he takes off the suit and flies off under his own power, is the sort of visual dramatisation of an internal struggle that movies can convincingly sell.  It could have been a heck of a crowd pleaser.

What's changed (and still doesn't work?)

• Parasite has changed from a lab-janitor to a lawyer. Unfortunately his origin remains ridiculous (he's now the product of a drug-lab fire) and his presence unnecessary.  Even if his origin is tied better to the consequences of Superman's crime-fighting, it's undercut by Kal-El's decision to simply let a mid-town drug lab explode (endangering thousands) rather than blowing the fire out. Not to mention that his super-hearing uncovers a cat amid the flames, but misses a live man. If they'd tied this failure of his hearing to the notion of his powers waning as he loses faith in his calling (an idea which the explanation of Phin-Yar flirts with), it could have had more emotional resonance. Superman would almost have been responsible for Parasite.
• Lois Lane, dynamic reporter, one of the great female comic book characters, is introduced... asleep. Not superhero cinema's finest feminist hour.
• Therapy.  This scene has been shifted around, and despite not changing much, there is one telling inclusion; Clark admits he doesn't feel part of the city.  He feels above it.  Is Poirier trying to explore what it feels like to be a god?  The trouble is it's still played for laughs, which renders the whole thing limp when the gravity of his problem demands more.
• Brainiac changes the statue of liberty to a statue of himself. His power is that enormous. He's a telepath, a telekinetic, and can apparently manipulate reality itself. What's so damned hard about finding one body?
• Parasite presents himself to Brainiac and offers to lead the hunt for the body in exchange for the annihilator.  It's the same movement, but with slightly different starting positions, but I'll say it again; Parasite does not need to be in this movie.
• There's things which are obvious holdovers from the previous drafts and make no sense in the context of this one. The logic behind Carillean orbs has been suspect from the start, but it's now reached a different level. How can Cadmus have recorded Krypton's last moments if all he does is follow Brainiac around, and in this draft Brainiac is no longer responsible for the planet's destruction? It's a cheap narrative trick for flashing back to Krypton in a bid to impart emotional significance. Poirier tries to explain it later on with a throwaway line that makes things worse, not better.
• Brainiac offers to take the Kryptonian DNA he needs and leave Superman human, promising he'll stop the countdown. He argues that the alternative will result in all their deaths. The trouble is it's nonsensical. Superman knows he can't trust Brainiac to keep his word. His other choice is to try to stop him, and the worst case scenario out of that is that he fails, whereupon the same fate befalls them all anyway. It's not a dilemma when the worst case scenario is the same no matter which path you choose, and one path has no up-side.

Conclusion
The theme of Superman Reborn is that you can't escape who you are, even in death. However, exploring this means it's more like Batman Forever than Lemkin's draft, which was supposedly abandoned for those very reasons. (You can read about why I think that's a crock here.)

While this draft improves upon the first two in a number of significant ways, there are still huge failures of logic and too much reliance on ideas seemingly cribbed from other movies and self-help philosophies. It's a 90s Superhero movie, laden down by old, lazy assumptions about spectacle trumping character. With ideas thrown at the wall in a bid to see what sticks, its blanks are begging to be painted in with Hollywood's increasingly sophisticated CGI paintbrush.

Knowing what we know of Jon Peters, it's incredibly difficult not to see his hand at work in many of the ideas, but this is just interpretation, based on others' recollections of him before and after this period. Neither Jonathan Lemkin nor Gregory Poirier has ever given much voice to their experiences working on these scripts, through either lack of desire or opportunity.  The quotes attributed to them seem to have come, mostly, from those articles attributed by David Hughes in The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made. As a result, they've been held implicitly responsible for the many faults, and we're none the wiser as to the compromises forced upon them by studio and producer notes. It's a common situation with assignment screenplays; the work rarely reflects a single writer's intentions because there are too many fingerprints on it, but it's the writer's name which ends up on a script (and sometimes a movie) which people hate. It's that disdain which endures.

Fortunately, this draft marks a watershed for the on-life-support franchise. The "dark" period of Superman on film, with deals done and scripts written in (relative) anonymity would come to a brief end when Warners hired the fearlessly verbose Kevin Smith to start again, from scratch.

Even if he didn't tell tales out of school at the time, Smith would become a master of the art in the not-too-distant future. He, along with the Internet (and the evolution of fan culture it set in motion) would begin to throw some light on the scuttling clusterfuck of Superman's development hell.

Superman Reborn was about to be reborn... as Superman Lives.

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(All sources have been linked to except the script: if you are the creator or originator of any material you feel has been misappropriated, please let me know and I'll do my best to correct the problem.)