Thoughts on The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?

The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?

Written and Directed by John Schnepp

I've been waiting on this one for a good long time.
Launched as a Kickstarter on January 24th 2013, John Schnepp's documentary examines the genesis, pre-production and eventual implosion of Warner Bros.' aborted Superman Lives project. Through interviews with most of the major players, the film outlines how the project fell apart so dramatically just weeks before shooting was due to begin.

The screening took place on May 15th in a large conference room on the first floor of the Excel Centre in London, as part of the MCM London ComicCon. The film ran off a laptop to a digital projector, so although it wasn't exactly a cinema screen, it was definitely bigger than your average TV. There was a brief Q&A afterwards with Schnepp and producer Holly Payne.

The film
The idea for the film originated when Schnepp started seeing leaked concept art on the internet in 2001. It intrigued him because it looked completely different from the previous cinematic interpretations. He collected about 3% of the art that's shown in the movie, and they had to cut 30% of what they had to keep the running time down.
By chance, Schnepp met Steve Johnson in 2012; but when he asked him about Superman he didn't want to talk about it...
The film took two and a half years to make, and the sound mix still wasn't quite finished for this screening. At a point in the middle the sound and picture noticeably fell out of sync for about 20 seconds.

What I learned from the film:

Jon Peters

• Peters claims he secured the movie rights from the Salkinds back in the early '90s, post Jones/Bates draft. He took some delight in telling Warner Bros. they didn't have the rights they thought they had, and from that point they worked together. It's all a bit vague, and suggests that either there may have been some separated rights issues or that Peters is being economical with the truth. Regardless, at some point WB managed to lever him off, because despite being credited as Producer on Superman Returns (2006), by 2013's Man of Steel he was merely Executive Producer, which is significantly more vague. He was also allegedly forbidden on the set of Zack Snyder's movie. If he solely owned the rights to the character on film, would they have been able to sideline him that efficiently?
• Peters seems to imply HE came up with the Thanagarian Snare Beast, though it's hard to believe he would know Hawkman lore and not know who Kal-El is, as Smith claims.
• He also denies enforcing the "no flights, no tights" diktat.
• He thought Smith's script(s) were "amateurish".
• He wanted Superman's cape to be its own character (?!)
• He has the skull-ship model which mysteriously disappeared from the production office days before the project went belly-up.
• Peters wanted to make a film where the characters could "taste the blood in their mouths"!
• Peters claims to have been in around 500 street fights, and would routinely show up at the art department to (literally) wrestle the staff.

The story

• It's implied that the Batman cameo was Smith's idea, but The Dark Knight appears in the very first of Poirier's drafts.
• Lots of the participants knew their own parts of the story inside out, but not the whole. Smith has admitted in Fatman on Batman he was astonished at how little he knew, despite being on the inside.
• The recreations of key scenes aren't the strongest part; they were produced for a just a couple of thousand dollars, and the film wouldn't feel weaker without them. Interestingly, one of them is the restaurant scene where Clark taps his foot nervously, smashing every glass in the place. As presented, he's nervous because he's about to propose to Lois… but that was never the case in any of the scripts I read. He was nervous because he'd decided to reveal his secret identity to her. He does produce a diamond but he does so by squeezing a lump of coal to prove he's who he says he is.

Production design

• A lot of concept art was produced; the artists were encouraged to come up with as many crazy ideas as they could. Sylvain Despretz and Michael Jackson (not that one) feature heavily, as does Steve Johnson (whose team designed and built the fibre-optic light suit, amongst other things). Jackson had originally signed to create concepts for The Matrix just a few days before he got the call, but quit to join Superman.
• Burton drew the initial "many faces" version of Doomsday.
• In some concept art K was conceived as a hi-tech clockwork teddy bear (which wasn't in the scripts I've seen).
• At another point K was depicted as a strigine (or owl-like) machine (again, this isn't in any of the scripts I've seen).

Casting

• Before Burton came on, Peters Entertainment drew up a shortlist of actors to portray Brainiac. Christopher Walken was on the list, but top of it? Howard Stern.
• Sandra Bullock was top casting choice for Lois, but Courtney Cox was also on the list. Burton denies all knowledge of this, saying he must have been out of the office the day that was circulated.

Costume design

• The film features some costume test footage, including Cage's take on Clark Kent in a suit jacket and Mickey Mouse t-shirt. 
• Some of the Superman costumes looked great, some not so much. The costume with the low-cut neck and newly-stylised S actually looks a lot better in motion than the the infamous, bleary-eyed Cage photo indicates.
• There was also a costume with raised, armour-like shoulders which didn't look so great.
• A series of polaroids of a more toned-down costume (like the panther suit equivalent of the classic red and blue) actually looked really promising.
• Everyone is at pains to point out that the fibre-optic suit was designed specifically for the regeneration scenes; Cage wouldn't have been flying around in it the whole movie. Anyone who'd read the scripts would assume that was the case, but, you know... the internet.
• The flying effects test looked fine.

The long, slow death

• As confirmed elsewhere, the budget was slashed significantly towards the end of pre-production. This is evidenced in Gilroy's second draft, where there's no Fortress, and the Doomsday battle is confined to one floor of LexCorp.
• Batman and Robin hadn't been Warners' only recent bomb; the previous year had seen a series of poor performers, which suddenly made WB very cautious about mega-budget event pictures.
• When they finally pulled the plug, the money ended up going to Wild Wild West, on which Peters was also a Producer. And which ended up featuring a huge mechanical spider.
• Peters claims he threatened to throw Terry Semel out a window if he didn't change his mind.
• Burton refused to take Peters' calls after the project was shut down.

What I learned from the Q&A:

• Peters is edging back into front line producing and had to be persuaded by his attorney to appear, concerned that he would be portrayed in a negative light. Though he's a self-confessed hermit who wants to be "unreachable", the film-makers found him "charming, entertaining, disarming". Schnepp confessed to Peters' attorney that he's not exactly the hero of the movie, but that the goal was to present him as they found him, rather than simply looking to confirm the stories. Schnepp contends that without Peters' side of the story, the film isn't balanced or democratic.
• Wes Strick was the first major player to agree to be interviewed. Dan Gilroy was one of the last.
• It took around eighteen months to secure Kevin Smith's participation.
• It took the same amount of time (eighteen months) to get Burton on board; Schnepp basically stalked him through his contacts and approached him through his rep. Burton didn't know if he wanted to talk about it and Schnepp had to wait eight months. After that came an email asking him to wait six more. By that point the production was out of money, and Schnepp sold half his comic book collection to keep it going. Once Burton agreed to be interviewed, many others followed (mostly from the art and technical departments like Coleen Atwood, Jackson, Despretz and Johnson). 
• Although in contact with Cage's manager for over a year, the actor ultimately declined to be interviewed, but has heard good things about the film. They hope to be able to talk to him at some point but he won't be cut in; anything he contributes would be a supplement. Cage's presence is still very much part of the film because of the extensive use of test footage and old interviews.
• Asked which of the scripts he prefers, Schnepp replied that certain parts of all of them are great, and other parts are not. He referred back to the constant hiring/firing process, meaning there's no cohesive vision from a single writer.
• Schnepp has previously alluded to seeing a second Strick draft but I wasn't able to ask him about that, nor whether he'd come across the rumoured drafts by Ron Bass and Akiva Goldsman alleged to have come between Strick's and Gilroy's.

Conclusion
TDOSLWH is the most comprehensive look at this dead project we could have hoped for, and is well worth your time if you're interested in Superman and/or how franchise blockbusters are made (or not, in this case). Despite focusing primarily on visual aspects such as production design, story isn't neglected, with all three (confirmed) screenwriters of the Burton era participating.
The only reason I'm not more superlative is because I've already learned so much from researching these scripts, much of what the film showed me wasn't a surprise. There are plenty of interesting nuggets, but they'll perhaps be better appreciated by those who know nothing about the project going in.

Nontheless, it's a well-crafted, patient film made by dedicated people who are clearly in love with the very idea of Burton's Superman. If there's one weakness, it might be that very enthusiasm. Schnepp risks getting carried away with the imagined beauty of the finished film, and might have been more analytical about the crazier elements of the script and story which ultimately undermined the entire project. This tends to gloss over the fact that even Gilroy's second draft (probably the best of them to this point) was built on the fundamentally flawed foundations of previous ones.

Over-flowing with information, I've found there are things I simply haven't been able to recall, and it'll be interesting to revisit the film to see if I feel differently (not to mention dive into the extensive bonus features) when The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? goes on sale July 9th. Pre-orders are available now.

Superman Unmade #7: Superman - The Man of Steel (Take 7)

Here there be spoilers

"We sent it to my agent and he liked it. He called some people and told them he had a completed script if they were interested.  They paid me for the draft because it did have elements they liked and if they used any of them, it clears them from a lawsuit. In this case, the script was written for kicks just to know it could be done and I was paid later for it."

"They were very nice and told us they liked parts but as a whole, it wasn't what they wanted."

"I can tell you they don't know much about comics. It is a business and what's more important, the $150 million at the box office or the $600 million in merchandising?"

"I read the Smith script and a synopsis of the Gilroy script and they do nothing for me. It's people tinkering with perfection."

Alex Ford on Superman - The Man of Steel

Who wrote it?

Alex Ford (Script)
Alex Ford and Jet Ellison (Story)

When was it written?

The draft is dated 9.4.98.  The "original" PDF widely found online is 122 pages, dated 14.9.08, and seems to have been created from an original text source. Its provenance is unclear, but it's an accurate reflection of the text versions available on the web, down to grammatical and syntactical errors. However, it's Courier font size is actually 11.96, not 12.  I used the text file available here to create another PDF that comes in at 121 pages, and on which this breakdown is based.  Without a hard copy of the script we'll never know if this more accurately reflects the original page count.

How long is it?

121 pages.

What's the broad structure?

Act 1 = 1-30

Act 2a = 31- 60

Act 2b = 61- 88

Act 3 = 89-121

What's the context?
If we looked at all the Superman fan-fic scripts on the Internet we'd be here a very long time. But this one has a place (albeit fleeting) in the development process, so it's worth dwelling on.   
We're back in a relatively dark period of development on the project. Tim Burton had departed, and though Nic Cage was still attached, there was a huge question over exactly what he was attached to. Warners had burned through at least five writers and ten drafts (not counting rumoured, never-seen drafts by Ron Bass and Akiva Goldsman), spending a big chunk of change with no end product.

Fed up with the lack of movement towards the end of 1998, Alex Ford, a twenty-two-year-old comic book fan and repped screenwriter, decided to submit his own script on spec.  Widely considered more faithful to the source material, this actually pre-dates Dan Gilroy's last draft. At least one source states that Ford's script was "accepted" at the WB production office in September 1998. Not only did he manage to get it read, he ultimately got paid for it too.  
Yet it seems Ford was never officially on board, and this illustrates how desperate things had become; the production paid a writer they'd never heard of, for a script they weren't ever likely to use, simply because they liked some of the ideas.

Why didn't it happen?
Jake Rossen's Superman Vs Hollywood notes that Lorenzo Di Bonaventura was interested enough in Ford's script to invite him to a story conference, where the writer proposed a seven-picture series, each featuring a different antagonist (and Lex Luthor as an over-arching nemesis), with Superman's death and resurrection across films six and seven.  He was then sent over to meet John Peters...
Only the two of them know what transpired, but by May 1999, Ford's script was definitely out.

What does Superman want at the start of the story? 
He doesn't really want anything. It could be argued that he's struggling to balance the demands of his heroism with the desire for a normal life, but this isn't really dramatised, merely spoken of. It isn't even addressed until he gets home to Smallville and Lana Lang, his childhood sweetheart. Up to that point there's little sense of the dichotomy Clark describes; that he's saving a city full of strangers and ignoring those he truly loves back home.

What happens next?
Superman's powers begin to wane sharply, just as a mysterious hero named Metallo appears to pick up his slack. When a power failure at a crucial moment almost kills him, the Man of Steel retreats back to Smallville and the promise of a normal life. Meanwhile Metallo, revealed to be a Kryptonite-powered cyborg created by Lex Luthor, grows tired of being on the billionaire's leash and seizes control of the ghetto known as Suicide Slum. In the final act, a weakened Superman returns to Metropolis to face down an enemy whose very proximity could kill him.

Does Superman resolve his conflict, and if so, how?
There isn't really much conflict to resolve. Lana's waiting for Clark, but only when he's ready to come home, implying that he'd have to stop being Superman... which he can't do. It's who he is. There's no more true conflict here than in Kevin Smith's drafts. Clark talks about how he spends his time saving strangers but there's never a sense that he's unhappy, tempted to walk away, or that he wants to come back permanently to the idyllic Smallville. It's embarrassment and fear that forces him back. Lana and Smallville represent the temptation of the normal, but there's really no reason Clark (able to fly from Metropolis in about thirty seconds flat) can't have both lives, and so there's never any tension between his two existences.

What works?

• Reverence - Ford clearly has an enduring love for the character and his world, essayed in his Golden Age opening. He assumes that most of the audience know Superman's origin, but quickly re-caps it in a stylish, to-the-point credit sequence.
• It isn't the "Death" storyline - and that means it's free of the constraints forced upon the previous scripts and writers. Ford ignores the foundations of years of (re)writing and production design, and the script is more refreshing for it.
• Lex Luthor is the probably strongest character. Not the bumbling, megalomaniac mob boss and comic relief of preceding scripts, but a cunning sociopath; smart, rich, and very, very jealous of Superman. Ford argues that Luthor is smarter than his nemesis; so smart that he consistently underestimates him. The boardroom scene where he's told by one of his lawyers that he "can't" sue the Man of Steel would, in previous iterations, have ended with the lackey grotesquely dispatched. Here, it deepens Luthor's character beyond that of a rich murderer with impulse control issues, whilst simultaneously throwing out some necessary exposition.
• The Kents - Previous scripts made it hard to believe Clark was raised in the kind of home that could tame an inclination to abuse his power. But these Kents are everything one might imagine a golden age couple to be; a family who raised a god not to believe he was better than us, and more than that, to sacrifice his own hopes of a normal life for the benefit of others. They aren't at all realistic; their only real purpose is to enshrine Clark's basic goodness. But in those confines they work, in a way the previous iterations never really did.
• A shared universe - When Wonder Woman shows up, it looks like the script might have nodded towards a larger continuity one time too many. Thankfully, she's used sparingly in an extended cameo as "Diana". Evoking another side of Superman's life outside Metropolis and Smallville, the pair ponder the morality and mortality of heroism. It's a fun cameo, even if it's more or less the same conversation he has with Lana, and both are ultimately reducia of the Mount Rushmore scene from Smith's script; why does he do what he does? There are other nods to the DC universe (the Justice League is alluded to) but none are heavy-handed enough to derail things.
  
• The villains' relationship - In so many comic book movies to this point, the antagonists are thrown together haphazardly, with little unifying motivation but hatred of the hero. This pairing is different; Luthor created Metallo, and so their relationship makes a lot more sense than teaming him with a god-like being such as Brainiac, which creates a power imbalance that repeatedly left Lex looking absurd.
• The post-credits "stinger" - This may well have been the first of its kind for a comic book movie.

What doesn't work?

• Style is a matter of personal taste, but there are ten line blocks of text that could be trimmed to make it leaner. The syntax and grammar are often maddening, and it's too reliant on parentheticals. When minimum words should have maximum impact, paring vital information from throwaway stuff is key. Do we really want to use a whole action line specifying the font of the newscast graphics? Points which can be communicated with one line of dialogue (e.g. the real purpose of Metallo's bimbos) are often supplemented by needless action lines performing the same function.
• Golden Age Superman - Ford said he wrote with Chris Reeve in mind, but it's hard to picture his Superman indulging in some of the casual cruelty he displays here. He crushes a bank robber's hand, and burns another's with a hot bullet. He actively avoids letting his parents know he's survived the reactor meltdown. He belts Metallo in the face while he's holding Lois. Then he tears out Metallo's heart, carves off his arm with heat vision and shoots him with a really big gun. Sure, he acknowledges this "murder" afterwards, and it turns out Metallo's brain is still alive, but does that excuse the intent?  We're not in the Golden Age anymore. Was Ford suggesting that authoritarian jerk might be needed in the '90s?
• The ladies - In preceding scripts the romantic focus has largely been on Lois, so usurping her with Lana is a potentially interesting move. Unfortunately they're both utterly one dimensional. Lois is a big-city bitch (again, Golden Age be damned) whose relationship with Superman feels perfunctory because they barely interact. Her rivalry with Clark is more substantial but still unsatisfying; she seems to actively dislike him because he's a faster writer and an all-round good guy. Lana, by contrast, is a small-town idealisation; virtuous, loving, kind and patient, except when she's passive-aggressively reminding Clark that he should have married her, and that he still can, if he abandons his calling. Diana actually works well as a counterpoint to these wildly divergent female characters.
• The tone - This isn't a period piece, so it's jarring to have a Golden Age opening in the same script as the lewd perp in the police station, cop-killer Metallo and a Lois who spits in his face. It's tough to subtly blend different tones, and these are so disparate that they end up feeling awkwardly bolted on to each other.
• The "death" of Superman - Despite excoriating the previous scripts for their mishandling of the death storyline ("To kill the character in one movie and expect people to feel anything is ridiculous"), TMOS has him apparently perish in a nuclear reactor. Except it transpires he didn't die. It's an odd, confusingly written sequence that just doesn't work.
• It isn't really ABOUT anything - A bunch of stuff happens but there's little thematic through-line and little conflict to resolve. Like Metallo, there's a structure and a brain but only a mechanical approximation of a heart.
• Logic problems - 
• Why is Metallo instantly known as... Metallo? He looks human, so why does nobody think to ask him how and why he got his name? How does Angela Chen interview him remotely? Why does nobody from his past life recognise him on national TV?
• Who gets on a monorail to flee an impending nuclear meltdown?
• If Luthor's plan is to supplant Superman, why doesn't he simply prevent Metallo saving him from the nuclear meltdown? With Superman dead, Luthor's problems are over, and that far outweighs the PR value of Metallo's rescue. (Which is negligible anyway, because nobody knows Luthor is behind Metallo.)
• Why does Metallo decide to destroy Suicide Slum? Hamilton theorises he's trying to hide his radiation signature by staying close to the nuclear plant, but he's already appeared all over Metropolis, and Hamilton has the corresponding radiation spikes to prove it.
• Would Luthor really take the time and effort to explain his grand plan to Superman after it had failed? And why use the device designed to mask a lying heartbeat if he's telling the truth? Superman now knows exactly what he did and how... It's a bluff that's not a bluff. 

Conclusion
Parts of The Man of Steel's approach are oddly prescient; in the last decade we've all become familiar with stinger scenes and cinematic shared universes. But these solid, ahead-of-their-time ideas are let down by frustrating writing and a story that doesn't actually feel like it's going anywhere or doing anything captivating enough. Where previous scripts were often too epic for their own good, The Man of Steel swings too far the other way; it could have made a half-decent double episode of Lois & Clark, but it doesn't feel big enough to be a Superman movie.
 
Man of Steel preventable death and destruction rating: 5
Suicide Slum has been more or less cleared by the time Superman and Metallo throw down. But Superman effectively murders his opponent (the intent clear despite Metallo's brain surviving) and he injures two others; a bullet burn is one thing, but shattering a man's hand? Dick move, Superman.

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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.