Superman Unmade #12: Superman - A screenplay by J.J. Abrams

Here there be spoilers

"There is no one document that defines (the) character - there have been so many permutations, additions and changes... I understand that people are scared of seeing another bad movie, but everyone involved on this one... is desperate to make it good." 
J.J. Abrams on his first draft of Superman.

"I thought it really was loaded with action, loaded with heart, and loaded with humor, but needed work... It's not just a big studio latching on to a trilogy so we can make a billion dollars."

Alan Horn on Abrams' first draft

Who wrote it?

JJ. Abrams, at that time best known for creating TV's Alias, as well as writing credits on Armageddon, Forever Young and Regarding Henry.

When was it written?

This draft is dated July 26th 2002.

How long is it?

139 pages

What's the broad structure?

Act 1  = 1-38

Act 2a = 39-68

Act 2b = 69-113

Act 3 = 114 -139

What's the context?
Developed concurrently with Batman vs Superman by competing camps within Warner Bros., this is the script that won the hearts and minds of senior WB executives, and brought to a head the schism between Alan Horn and Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
Abrams had been announced as the writer (with Joseph McGinty Nichol, AKA "McG" directing) in February 2002. At that point, it seems Andrew Kevin Walker had already turned in a first draft of Batman vs. Superman (The New York Times says WB had read a draft in October 2001) but had yet to turn in his second (dated March 2002). Akiva Goldsman's revision wasn't turned in until June 2002. The first 88 pages of Abrams' script were delivered July 5th 2002, with the complete draft dated 21 days later.
With this in mind, it's tempting to think Goldsman was brought in specifically to lighten the tone of the team-up script, with di Bonaventura knowing that a competing - and potentially lighter-hearted - project was competing for production. The kind of internal machinations and resources necessary to pit one Superman project (and its proponents) against another in this way boggles the mind. Welcome to Hollywood.

Why didn't it happen?
Long before he and Abrams had been announced as Director and Writer (February 2002), McG was already committed to making Charlie's Angels 2 (later Full Throttle). With that sequel scheduled for release in June 2003, he'd be unable to turn his full attention to the Man of Steel for at least a year. di Bonaventura apparently cited this as one of the reasons WB should move ahead with Batman vs. Superman first...
But six weeks later the newly installed EVP, Worldwide Motion Pictures was gone, bundled out with a production deal that was effectively a golden handshake. An alleged power-play against Horn to their Time-Warner bosses had failed. Without its champion, the team-up project imploded.

With its competition vanquished, the solo project was placed on the fast track and McG exited as Full Throttle moved into production. In August, talk surfaced that WB had its eye on Brett Ratner, and in September 2002 he was officially attached. Surely, finally, Superman would fly again?

The next year would make the turbulent development of Superman Lives seem like a warm, fuzzy memory.

First, there was no budget, which meant no official green light. Warners hadn't pulled the plug on the wild costs of earlier iterations simply to blow more cash now. di Bonaventura had guesstimated Abrams' script would cost $250m. Sources suggest Ratner's team were told to aim for $180million. When the figure finally came in, in January 2003, it was $225 million... in production costs only.

Second, the internet hated the script. The then-influential Ain't It Cool News posted a scathing review of Abrams' draft titled "You will believe a franchise can suck", which led to an online petition demanding his removal from the project, and threats against the writer and his family. This wasn't the first such protest, and it wouldn't be the last, but for five or six years AICN's coverage seemed to matter. Before the internet became honeycombed with its clones, AICN was considered an outlier, willing to speak truth to Hollywood power and able to call upon a network of moles to back up their aggressive approach. Abrams was scrambled to explain, and called AICN founder Harry Knowles personally, claiming the script was written in four weeks (a dubious assertion given what we know of the project). He tried to allay fans' concerns, assuring them he was hard at work on the next draft.

Third, there was no star. Ratner simply couldn't cast a lead, and part of his deal was a stipulation that he do so by January 2003. When that came and went, speculation that he was about to be replaced by Michael Bay had to be strenuously denied by all parties. The earlier problem of securing a lead actor but no satisfactory script had effectively flipped, and for a year the trades were full of the names of both newcomers and more established stars, including Josh Hartnett, Jude Law, Ashton Kutcher, Brendan Fraser, Victor Webster, Paul Walker, and Matt Bomer.

The gist seemed to be that none of the more established actors wanted to sign on for three movies over the better part of a decade, and WB was unwilling to rest its flagship franchise on the shoulders of a newcomer.

Fourth, Jon Peters. Ratner had never been Peters' guy. It seems the producer had set out to befriend McG as he blazed his hot streak across town, and the two had then turned their attentions to Superman. McG's visual presentation got him the job, and he recommended Abrams as writer. When Ratner replaced him, the geometry of that creative triangle changed. With no lead actor locked, Peters and Ratner allegedly clashed in a heated (and widely reported) parking lot altercation when Peters attempted to fire Ratner's casting director.

On March 15th 2003, Ratner's option as Director expired, and he departed the project. Despite acknowledging Peters as a "pain in the ass", he denied the producer was behind his exit, and instead laid the blame on his fruitless search for a lead.

Once again, the project died on the vine. Warners' best hope now was Abrams' second draft.

Where does Superman start the story? 
Exiled to Earth from a still-intact Krypton to protect him from his evil Uncle. Thanks to his adoptive parents' caution, he spends most of his life controlling himself to the point of neurosis. He knows he doesn't belong here, but has no idea where he's actually from.

What happens next?
Pretty much his entire life. He meets Lois Lane. Goes to work at The Daily Planet. Encounters Lex Luthor, and in a moment of panic reveals Superman to the world, becoming a phenomenon...

Then four Kryptonians arrive demanding his surrender. Carnage ensues.

Where does Superman end the story?
Coming into his own. Not only has he discovered where he's from and what his destiny is, he's become a leader of the free world, corralling the United Nations into action against the Kryptonian invaders...
Oh, and he's also come back from the dead.

The script
It's a strange beast, beset by the circumstances of its birth.

Someone was so desperate to head off the competing Batman vs Superman project that they attached McG as Director, knowing he'd already committed to another film. So desperate that they had Abrams deliver a draft only two thirds complete (the day after a national holiday).

Knowing he was coming back with more, Lorenzo di Bonaventura countered by officially announcing BvS just three days later.

Abrams had needed to work fast before, but he now came back with the final 51 pages in just three weeks. Unfortunately the join shows, and things fall apart in the last act. Abrams simply didn't have the time to make most of it work.

Still, the first part of his job was done. At this point it didn't have to be great; it just had to be good enough to knock its competitor out of the race to production.

What works?

• Abrams navigates Jon Peters' demands, for the most part. Instead of a giant spider we have Rousers. Superman's cape is described as "a living thing" but isn't actually its own character... yet. He applies creative solutions to make the Producer's infamous notes more palatable.
• Multiple species on Krypton. The planet is presented as home to not just humanoids, but many other types of life. Let's skip over the fact that a humanoid seems to rule them all...
• Superman is still an orphan. For all the furore about Krypton not being destroyed, the "end of Krypton" beat is functionally the same; it's just the end of Krypton as we know it, not the planet blowing up. It doesn't have quite the same impact for us, but for Superman the effect is largely similar.
• It flips the old dichotomy. Unlike so many of the to-date interpretations, nebbish Clark is not the act; Superman is. Abrams writes that he's "acting the part of the confident man for the first time". Superman represents the courage to do things you feel are beyond you; even for Clark. The point at which he embraces this fully is the realisation that he was sent here for a reason, which is how he ends up at the U.N. organising and leading an all-out attack on the Kryptonians. (Yes, the whole negative space metal S revelation is clunky as fuck, but it's plot mechanics that can be hidden or refined later. That's the purpose of a first draft.)
• He's the ultimate immigrant. There's a theme through most of the reboot scripts that's carried forward here, and is perfectly illustrated by the rooftop interview; Superman doesn't know who he is. Reeve's Superman answered all Lois' questions because he knew the answers, but the certainty of that Superman is gone. This one goes out into the world not knowing where he's from, or why, and because he can't answer, eventually people mistrust him. He experiences the classic immigrant's treatment; he's not one of them, and they fear what he's brought with him.
• The Kents are human... Fortunately they aren't paragons of virtue, nor are they the isolationists of Man of Steel. They're apparently the only reason Clark isn't an angry, vengeful god, because almost everyone else is horrible to him. Eventually we're also introduced to Clark's college room mate (with a nice little nod to Superman's creators), who up to that point seems to be the only other decent person in his life.
• Lois and Clark's relationship. They're both alienated in different ways. Nobody likes her because she's "abnormal", but she has focus and purpose. Clark, conversely, is considered abnormal but is is in limbo, having neither direction nor place in the world. In his uncertain state, her surety and determination are beacons, and she becomes a model for the next stage of his development.
• Luthor is an outcast too, and presented as the third point of this "abnormal" triangle. Making him CIA is hardly canon, and doesn't make any more sense than having him be a crazy-rich private individual, but it's no worse than him being a crime boss... and it's definitely better than what comes later.
• Lois' arc. Lois has as much to learn as Clark does about becoming what she needs to be. The power she wields as a journalist is not the point; it's the responsibility she has to use that power wisely which she hasn't yet mastered, and Perry demands of her.
• It's not just punching stuff. Abrams gets that there's almost nothing that can physically harm Superman, so his psychology must be mined for conflict. Clark has a panic attack immediately after revealing himself because it goes against his conditioning. There's no joy in it. To compound this, he knows that his father's death was probably caused by hearing about him on the radio. Once the Kryptonians arrive, of course, Abrams knows people want to see the Man of Steel punch stuff, but not only is he outnumbered and inexperienced, he's hamstrung by the restraint he's grown up with. He's a god, but now among other gods.
• Kryponite poisoning has more pronounced physical effects than just coming over all woozy; try a deathly pallor and blister rash. That visually sells the danger much more succinctly.
• The rescue montage, whilst clunky in places, is at least varied in scale. This isn't just a guy for exploding volcanoes. He'll grab your cat out of a tree too.
• The huge exposition dump midway through the second act works because Abrams blends it with the suspense of Lois' surveillance. It's not just Gray and Burk learning stuff, she is too.
• Abrams repeats sequences from the Kryptonians' battle later in the script, but he does it from a different perspective, which keeps things fresher.

What doesn't work?

• Some demands can't be navigated. Even Abrams can only do so much with Jon Peters' proclivities. So we get Superman seeming "like a savage hunter, hungry for a kill". At one point Abrams actually has to type "Kal El, who will one day become Superman". Presumably because, as related by Kevin Smith, Peters didn't know this.
• Kal-El is royalty. Being an alien with god-like abilities clearly isn't special enough. And just to throw some more kindling on the trope fire, there's a prophecy too. It's boring. The "chosen one" narrative had already been done to death.
• Jor-El is perfect, and utterly uninteresting as a result. A great King, warrior, scientist... and yet still unable to save the planet from his own brother. He also seems to have disappeared from Krypton for years on end in the search for an adoptive home for his son... and nobody noticed. That's a feat for such a beloved leader. Perhaps if he'd spent the time at home, the civil war could have been stopped.
• It's the death of Superman... Again.
• It's tries to do too much. There's an origin, a death and a resurrection in the space of one movie. It's why the script is too long (it takes 38 pages to get to the "present"), and it's why we struggle to care about Superman's death. We've barely met the guy.
• First draft problems. There are failures of basic logic that aren't fundamental to the story and could easily be fixed in the next draft. For example; 
• Cause and (non) effect. What happens when the Kents' landlord makes his heralded visit and finds an alien pod bisecting their field, and a baby who's appeared from nowhere? 
• The suit in a bottle is never really explained. Does Jor-El intend Kal-El to become a hero on Earth? What's its purpose? 
• Lara's exile. Has she just been living out in the desert with Taga for 19 years?! If she's such a badass why hasn't she tried to fight back?
• Abrams' chronology is confusing. It wouldn't harm the film too much, but it causes more than one double-take when reading. Jor-El's age keeps changing, for one thing.
• Dubious sexual politics, including:
• Another attempted rape, of the sort you just can't get away with writing so lazily anymore. Yes, it helps build Clark's character because it reinforces that he has to retain control at all times... It's the event by which he defines his childhood. But it feels gross because that's its only purpose. The aftermath focuses on Clark's trauma and completely ignores Martha's.
• Demeaning Jimmy. You want to make him gay? Go ahead. Effeminate? It's cliched, even back then, but... don't sneer.
• Clark's borderline obsession with Lois. Following her to The Daily Planet is a little creepy, but Clark clearly needed a steer at a sensitive time, and Abrams heads it off by having him admit it to her. The trouble is there's more, because Superman only reveals himself thanks to Clark's feelings for Lois. He tries to save Air Force One because she's on board. There must have been other disasters he could have averted over the years. He'd tell her who he is right then and there, but she doesn't recognise him at all, and so again, we feel like she's the source of all his decisions. When she's fired, he grants her an interview just to get her job back, intimidating Perry in the process. It's... uncomfortable.
• Lois devolves. She's starts as a fearless shit-kicker who takes down huge jocks with Krav Maga. By the end she's afraid of rats, and desperately seeking reassurance from powerful male figures like Perry, Superman and Dressler. The Lois from the start of the script would have aggressively grilled Dressler on why he hadn't taken action against Luthor earlier. This one simpers under his approval of her work.
• The last forty pages. As the script plunges into the third act, internal consistency starts to break down, surely a sign of the rush Abrams was in.
• It reaches for the iconic without earning it. Lois argues that Superman has taught us the right thing to do, but this Superman hasn't yet faced any kind of dilemma that would illustrate that. This is not the Superman of sixty-odd years of comics, and attempting to bundle that in feels incongruous.
• It takes easy paths. When Lois convinces Perry to let her take his car it's the first indication of an underwritten scene. Despite his previous concerns about her recklessness, he doesn't put up a fight; he just trusts her, even though she's given him no reason to.
• The public perception of Superman goes from hero worship to fear and loathing, then back to hero worship very quickly. Did the world want Superman gone but not dead? He's only been in the public eye a couple of weeks.
• The Afterlife... From which not only does Kal return, but does so with his strength doubled and the martial arts skills of a super soldier. These skills haven't been learned or earned. Where does he go from here if he's to grow at all in the next two movies?
• Clark who? Once again, nobody at The Planet has missed Clark at all.
• Why do the Kryptonians stick around? Superman's dead. They've given the planet to Luthor. The plot calls for them to stay, so they can be offed in the most perfunctory fashion imaginable. Baz-Al and Caan's demise in a single paragraph on page 126 is barely a beat. Ty-Zor's demise is hardly more fleshed out, but if Abrams leaves it there, closes the story and goes back ten pages to flesh things out it's completely salvageable. That doesn't happen. There's a good scene with Lois and then...
• Luthor is a Kryptonian. And boy, is the point driven home. It's a twist that sets up and pays off nothing; a worthless, rushed version of a potentially decent idea, and it's really hard to know if it was a late development or if Abrams always had it in mind. There are certainly hints at Luthor's otherness earlier in the script, but the fact that some ground work was done and the twist still doesn't work is testament to its clunkiness.
• The final scene between Lois and Superman, where she all but guesses his secret because he replies to something she told someone else once. She doesn't put together that Clark has also left, or that he disappeared while Superman was dead... nope. She remembers telling Clark that she loved Superman, and Superman saying he loves her too is what finally makes the scales fall from her eyes. It's desperate.

Conclusion
There's a lot of work to do here. Some of it is great, some not. Its DNA permeates the films that were actually made afterwards. The plane rescue, rooftop interview and theft of museum Kryptonite, as well as Martha's exile to the outskirts of the funeral all survived into Superman Returns. The Rousers are clear progenitors of the World Engines in MoS, and the arrival of his enemies survived too; but unlike MOS, there's no dilemma. He knows he has to give himself up to them. He doesn't agonise over it. Nor does he hesitate to leave if he thinks his presence will bring more harm to Earth.

Still it's a long, jarring, unsatisfying script.

Man of Steel preventable death and destruction rating: 7

There's due dilligence in Superman telling everyone to leave the area just before he faces off with the Rousers, and Abrams also makes pains to point out the Defense Department's concern for the public...

Having said that, the script that killed Batman vs Superman, the script Jon Peters deemed full of "hope" is actually more violent. Batman can only do Superman so much damage in terms of scale. The four Kryptonians are a whole other problem. If the film had been made, it might well have had to scale down the destruction or risk the kind of post-9/11 backlash levelled at Man of Steel.

I'll wager Peters' aversion to the Batman vs Superman script was more about his name not being on the title page than any grand ethical stance. Apparently it was fine for our hero to smack bad guys into next week, and create a huge amount of collateral damage in the process, so long as there's "hope" at the end of it all.

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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.)

Superman Unmade #11 - Batman vs Superman: (AKA "Asylum")

Here there be spoilers

Who wrote it?

Andrew Kevin Walker, most notably credited at that time on Se7en, 8mm, and Sleepy Hollow. Revisions on the script were by Akiva Goldsman (Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Lost in Space, A Beautiful Mind).

When was it written?

This draft is dated 21st June 2002.

How long is it?

120 pages

What's the broad structure?

Act 1  = 1-27

Act 2a = 28-61

Act 2b = 62-89

Act 3 = 90-120

What's the context?
With no apparent movement on Paul Attanasio's solo Superman project, Variety reported in August 2001 that Andrew Kevin Walker would script a Batman/Superman team-up movie for Wolfgang Petersen (In The Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm) to direct.

Why didn't it happen?
In the ten months between Variety's August 2001 story and receiving this revised draft, WB gave another solo Superman project the go-ahead. Written by J.J. Abrams for Joseph McGinty Nichol (AKA McG) to direct, the projects were developed concurrently (along with Darren Aronofsky's Batman: Year One), with none considered "mutually exclusive".

Abrams delivered the first 88 pages of his script in early July 2002. Jon Peters was bowled over, calling it full of "hope". Given the bloodlust he'd previously evinced, this was something of a volte-face. Christopher Reeve suggested that, having seen a documentary about the actor's struggle with paraplegia, Peters was a changed man, no longer beholden to the visceral thrill of seeing superheroes draw each others' blood. It should be noted, however, that Peters Entertainment isn't the production company credited on the Walker/Goldsman script, and that perhaps he had a vested interest in seeing a solo film move forward at its expense.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura and his boss, Warners President and COO Alan Horn, were split on how to proceed, bringing to a head an allegedly long-running animosity originating from Horn's appointment. In what can only be construed as a power-play, di Bonaventura officially announced Batman vs Superman's move into pre-production three days AFTER Abrams delivered his first pages, knowing he was coming back with more. (A day later, di Bonaventura was officially promoted to EVP, Worldwide Motion Pictures). When the writer returned with his third act in late July, di Bonaventura suggested both films could be made, with Batman vs Superman first. Abrams argued that a team-up was putting the cart before the horse.

Horn wasn't sure either way, and canvassed opinion from ten of his top executives. They favoured Abrams' effort, and Horn agreed. With Spider-Man shattering box office records, it was felt that an optimistic trilogy-opener was simply a better bet on all fronts. Abrams was given the nod to continue.

On August 13th 2002, Wolfgang Petersen announced that, although he would still direct Batman vs Superman, he would make Troy first.

In early September, di Bonaventura left his new post after two months in the role.

Batman vs Superman was dead. For now.

What do Superman/Batman want at the start of the story? 
Superman, once again, feels at a remove from humanity. He's doing truth, justice, etc., but his parents are long dead, and the ideals they instilled have come between him and Lois. Their marriage has fallen apart and he's debating whether to drink vodka or milk when he goes home at night.

Batman doesn't exist. Dragging himself back from an almost psychotic break after Robin's murder, Bruce Wayne has retired his alter-ego, and is about to marry his perfect fiance, Elizabeth, with Clark as his best man. He's left vigilantism behind and wants to get on with his life.

What happens next?
Foiling the bombing of a Metropolis skyscraper, Superman rescues the lone perpetrator from a bloodthirsty mob. When the terrorist - who turns out to be a resurrected Joker - escapes and murders Bruce's new wife, the Dark Knight returns to Gotham. Blaming Superman for Joker's escape, he resolves to track down the Clown Prince of Crime and put him back in the ground. Shaken by Batman's vitriol, Superman retreats to Smallville, questioning his right to interfere in human affairs.

But with a Batman/Joker showdown looming, and neither hero able to abandon his idea of justice, the former friends are manipulated into a head-on collision by a mysterious player whose only goal is their mutual destruction.

Does Superman/Batman resolve his conflict, and if so, how?
Superman realises that he can't abandon his mission; it's not just his power that gives him the right to intervene, but his willingness to stand for his ideals. He decides it's better to take responsibility and make the wrong decisions than step aside and let bad things happen.

Batman, too, comes to accept who he is. Ultimately, he's able to remind himself of the difference between justice and revenge.

The script
The New York Times contends that Walker's original script was delivered in October 2001. Walker's web site lists a draft dated March 2002. Assuming both are correct, it seems that Walker wrote two drafts.
By June 2002, the script had gone through a revision by Goldsman, titled Asylum. It was apparently Goldsman who added Clark and Lois' divorce. Though some claim to have read one of them, neither of Walker's drafts are freely available. It would be interesting to see the differences; Goldsman's work tends towards goofy, optimistic, heart on sleeve to the point of preachy. Walker's work is introspective, dark, obsessive. The two halves should complement each other perfectly, right?

Right?

What works?

• We open with a mystery. Sure, it relies on the old "I meant to get caught" trope (it wasn't such a cliche then) but as a setup, it works. Who is the mysterious terrorist? What's his endgame?
• The heroes' initial dynamic. Clark and Bruce's relationship is full of snappy camaraderie. Batman's retired, so their alter-egos aren't coming into conflict, and Clark's chickens have come home to roost. With Lois gone and his parents dead, the only person he can really rely on is Bruce.
• Dichotomies, parallels and mirror images. Clark lives alone in a city apartment; the price of accepting who he is. Conversely, Bruce has settled into the country around the Manor, suppressing his true self. One of the themes at play is metaphorical masks; in the second act, Clark puts his on just as Bruce takes his off. They travel the same path in different directions, each returning to the source of their ideals (Smallville, the Batcave) in order to re-examine their role in the world. There's a wonderful parallelism as each hero conducts his own investigation and is forced to literally unbox his greatest fear (Kryptonite, The Joker). Ultimately, each is forced out of his reverie by a woman.
• Dealing with the power gap. Superman's retreat to Smallville is an elegant solution to the problem of his physical superiority. If these two throw down at the earliest feasible point, the movie's thirty two minutes long and Bruce gets his ass kicked. Superman has to be taken out of the picture for a while; shaking his faith in his mission is the key to that. By the time he's pulled himself together, Batman has gotten his hands on a big green rock...
• Superman's dilemmas are explored. Can he ignore people who need help? Does he have a responsibility to intervene? He tries to convince himself otherwise and is drawn in by the lure of normality. His twenty four hours with Lana is as much a fantasy as the intact Krypton in Alan Moore's "For The Man Who Has Everything". Deep down, he knows he can't turn away from his calling. He tries to will himself into selfishness and can't do it, but at least it feels like a genuine dilemma for a while.
• Symbols and allegories. By the final act, both heroes' lives are full of ghosts; all they really have left is each other. There's also a plethora of 9/11 undercurrents. Superman has long represented the American Way, but what does that mean in a world where many people hate and fear such a thing? And what does it mean in America, increasingly identifying more with the vengeful tactics of The Dark Knight than the hopeful idealism of The Last Son of Krypton?
• Lana. All that's alluring about normal life back in Smallville, she's not passive-aggressive like Alex Ford's version. Unlike Lois, who knew the two halves of Clark separately and had to integrate them later, Lana's known who he is since they were kids; she only views him as one man. She functions as Clark's conscience, sounding board, and lover... But there's more to her than that. She knows he can't turn off Superman, and couldn't live with herself for asking him to. She understands his intrinsic conflict. She's unrealistically perfect, but she's supposed to be. What else but an ideal could tempt Clark to give up who he is?
• The Joker; more than any live action iteration, this Joker's syntax and energy bear the imprint of Mark Hamill's bonkers clown from The Animated Series. He's nothing like Nicholson's Joker, and his enhanced physiology enables him to go toe-to-toe with a rusty Batman. He's almost like a stalker, and there's a weirdly erotic undertone to the way he thinks about Batman and death.
• The Jeeves are creepy. We were in that period where mouths being sewn shut was a thing. But there's no way they stay in a movie the studio wants kids to see.
• Lex as Bruce's reflection. Luthor is problematic, and yet the initial sketch of him as a dark reflection of Bruce is quite profound. He's always seen Superman as Bruce now begins to; a single being who shouldn't hold the fate of a race in his hands. What right does this alien have to pull humanity from the mire, and how are we ever to evolve if he keeps doing so? Luthor reveals that the U.S. Government shared his concern, and came up with a plan to stop Superman should he ever go rogue. However, Bruce's attitude is simply a function of his grief, and is quickly put aside when it becomes expedient for the two heroes to team-up again. Leaving him with some doubts, even though he has little choice but to accept Superman's help, might have made the story more resonant.
• The fight between the two heroes, once we get to it, is sustained, inventive and fun.

What doesn't work?

• The logic of the Bruce/Clark friendship. City-beat reporter Clark Kent is billionaire Bruce Wayne's best man... and nobody bats an eyelid. These men are not only from different social spheres, they're from the different social spheres of completely different cities. Does anybody wonder how they became best friends? Has it never been a conflict of interest for Clark when reporting on, say, Lexcorp? And doesn't a public friendship run the risk of exposing them both if one is unmasked?
• The mob scene. Yes, it serves the story, but it also goes out of its way to make a point so heavy-handedly that it brings out the worst in Superman, making him judgmental and preachy. It's designed to illustrate that he's making decisions about who lives and who dies, but it's so self-righteous we're almost encouraged to side with Batman.
• The Batman/Joker dynamic is... "reinterpreted" by the assertion that they're constantly trying to kill each other. Yet even in the backstory the script builds on, Batman has had a resolute no-kill policy, and The Joker admits that seeing his old enemy again was like a bolt of lightning. Are we to believe he'd give that up, that he'd have to be restrained from killing Batman when torturing him is so much more his style?
• Page 78 onwards. Once Luthor is introduced, the already scruffy logic really starts to fray. Hannibal Lecter-esque, parts of Luthor's rationale ring true, but having a point of view can't change the fact that this is where things start to go downhill. Not only does his "how I did it" scene halt the story's momentum at a critical point, his subsequent escape is absurdly engineered. There are so many flashy, inorganic things shoe-horned into the last forty pages that it's hard to believe they were written for any other purpose than selling toys. Consider: the jet-pack, the camoflage batsuit, the Bat-copter, the Bat-plane, the entire Kryptonite theft sequence, the government Super-suit. And why would a top-secret underwater storage tank for a lethally radioactive extraterrestrial substance have windows?!
• The heroes' conflict feels false. Here's the major problem. The conflict is based in Superman having saved Joker's life, thereby allowing him to go on and murder Elizabeth; but there's no way Batman would have let the mysterious "terrorist" be killed either. We're asked to believe that he's lost sight of this in his grief, but it's not as though he goes out on a murder spree; he's clearly in control, though only just. Would he really aim his rage at his best friend, his single remaining close ally, because he did what both men have sworn to; preserve life? The contortions necessary to bring the pair into conflict are ridiculous. 
• The villains' plot is absurdly intricate, relying on layer after layer of circumstances occurring just as they need to. Luthor's plan hinges on his control of a cloned, psychotic Joker, whose own plan in turn hinges on Elizabeth, an entirely unknown quantity. Things have to get so bad that the heroes' clash is inevitable. Yet come the fulcrum at the end of the second act, the last point at which they can turn back... the whole thing crumbles. The inevitability of complex systems is that things go wrong. People don't behave the way they're supposed to. Except here they do, because...
• Plot dictates character. At the end of Act 2, the script wisely hangs a lantern on the fact that Bruce is walking into a trap. But with Superman having overcome his doubt, he could simply stop his friend when they meet in the graveyard; without Kryptonite he'd win easily. Instead he tries to appeal to Bruce's common sense, which he knows has deserted him. The plot requires the heroes to behave uncharacteristically in order to advance. Come the final act, Superman demonstrates a tactical naivety that beggars belief, and Batman goes completely off the rails into what can only be described as sadism; he actually seems to enjoy inflicting pain on his friend. But don't worry, because...
• The heroes just make up. Come page 110 and a mutual threat, they're buddies again. Despite Bruce blaming Clark for his wife's death, cutting him out of his life, and then trying to kill him. It would be more believable if the script played up the fact that they only have each other, but the relationship simply resets, and their deep, scarring conflict seems to end up meaning nothing.
• The second set of Jeeves somehow acquire Capoeira training. As a result, they start out creepy and end up ridiculous. Maybe that's a direct response to the idea of having mouth-sewn zombies in what was to be a "family" film.
• "Luthor time". No, this doesn't mean Lex in super baggy hip-hop pants. It means studios weren't finished flogging the idea of bullet-time to death.
• The death cop-out. Having spent the whole story wanting to kill The Joker, Batman can't do it. Yet when he's forced to bundle Luthor off a rooftop to save Superman, the script refuses to own it. Instead it reveals that the suit is empty, despite Luthor being in it when it hit the ground from half a mile high and blew up. There's a very definite justification for Batman's actions. Isn't it better that he's forced to kill against his better judgement, having done everything possible to prevent it, than employing hand-wavey nonsense to exonerate him?
• Elizabeth is not a character; she's a plot device. She'd have to be a sociopath to keep up her charade, yet there's no insight into her other than Joker's assertion that she was "unburdened by morality". Who was she? Where did she come from? Why did she do it? How did she keep the pretence up for so long? She clearly knew The Joker, so did she know that Bruce was Batman? Why is she so loyal? Did she know Luthor's part in all this? Did she know her intended fate? So many questions spring from the revelation that it completely dulls the impact. While the notion of Bruce's happiness being one big practical joke is a neat one, it's constructed on such a flimsy foundation that his grief ends up meaning very little. The script gets away with it to a point by holding the revelation until the last moment, but twists have to make sense in the context of the rest of the story, not just the moment of revelation. We're supposed to empathise with Bruce's realisation that his happiness was a sham engineered by his greatest enemy, but it's blunted by sheer implausibility.

Conclusion

In many ways Asylum is a product of its time. The horrific fallout of 9/11 ripples through the script, and it's hard not to read the heroes' ethical dichotomy as a treatise on America's approach to such threats. However, their conflict has to be believable, and this is where Asylum falls down. We'll buy the two as friends, but the way their relationship falls apart is unconvincing. As things escalate this becomes harder to reconcile, until Batman's sadism in the final battle ruptures any sense of emotional truth. After that, the manner in which the friendship is swiftly put back together is glib. You don't try to kill your best friend and then slope off for a beer with him like it never happened, even if you were both manipulated. When the story is about how two friends begin to disagree, and the effect it has on their relationship, but there IS no lasting effect... what's the point of the story?

Irrespective of this, J.J. Abrams was right; the notion of Batman vs Superman at that point in time feels like an endgame, the Hail Mary play when all other options are exhausted. The story opens with both heroes well established; it ends with their relationship having been stretched to breaking point and survived (however unconvincingly). Where do you go from there? The only way to escalate is with a Justice League movie. WB execs supposedly preferred Abrams' script because it was the better bet for ancillary markets, but they must also have recognised it as a beginning. Asylum simply feels like the end of something.

Man of Steel preventable death and destruction rating: 3
There's a huge amount of destruction wrought by The Joker in the opening sequence, but come the superheroes' throw-down in the final act, Metro PD have pretty much shut down the city with a curfew, meaning plenty of property damage but no loss of life. Given the shuddering echoes of 9/11 through the script, that's hardly a surprise.

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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.)

UPDATE 30.4.18: Andrew Kevin Walker has just posted a deleted scene from one of his early drafts. It's four pages (pp.69-72) in which we catch the tail-end of The Joker's leaflet advertising his showdown with Batman in Metropolis (which occurs around page 80 in the revised Goldsman draft).

A Batterang thunks into one of the leaflets, and Batman tells Alfred a story about The Scarecrow, which illustrates the risk of indulging in the very madness he's fought for so long. It's very much "if you stare too long into the abyss", and though I can see why it was cut, it suggests that perhaps Bruce retired because he started to see the beauty in Crane's work, and feared for his sanity because of it.

Alfred is very much alive, though unbeknownst to Bruce he's about to leave (presumably because of the path of vengeance Bruce is on). After the conversation he unpacks, deciding to stay.

It's a fascinating snippet of insight into the differences between Walker's drafts and the revisions by Goldsman. It's also quite gruesome in places, entirely in keeping with Walker's work.

Hopefully one day he'll release some more pages, if not an entire draft.

Superman (Doesn't) Live

Because they couldn't call it "Superman Aborted" without offending a lot of people.

To celebrate/commiserate (depending on your point of view) the release of Man Of Steel, I finally got around to doing something I'd been promising myself for months.  I started reading Superman scripts.  It also helps that I borrowed an iPad.  If you read scripts and you don't have a tablet, get one.  It makes things so much easier.

Superman movies post-1987's Quest For Peace is one of, if not the most complicated development hell story ever to come out of Hollywood.  Given the history, the legal battles and the sheer amount of money spent on iterations that never got off the ground, it's a wonder Man Of Steel got made at all. 

You can read more about the Kryptonian convolutions over at David Hughes excellent blog. He tells it like it was, so I don't have to.  If you're into this sort of thing (and if you're not, I've gotta ask; why are you here?) I also highly recommend his book, The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made. 

For geeks there's a power to these unmade movies, an alternate universe of possibilities and never-weres that's capable of blowing our hive-mind.  But the truth is, it's also fun to read these stories; not just the fictional ones which never played out on-screen, but the true ones that prevented them from doing so.  It allows mere mortals to dabble in the (occasionally outrageous) behaviour of some of the players, to experience the turn-on-a-dime mercuriality of the film business.  These tales play to the same parts of the brain that find raw, unprocessed stimulation in gossip and rumour.  They're fun stories told about fun stories that never got to be told. 

It was David's book that first highlighted, for me, the long and torturous gestation of Superman Lives, a movie so unfortunately titled it may as well be the dictionary definition of the word "ironic".  I remember being aghast at the web of press speculation during the mid to late 90s, the cavalcade of allegedly "locked" Lois Lanes which seemed to lengthen by the week as the film geared up to production and Nic Cage cashed his cheque.
And then... nothing.
Superman did not live.  Hollywood threw the sheet over his corpse and walked away.

Scripts for various iterations of the project have been available on the web for ages.  I dabbled occasionally (sticking a toe into the murky waters of Kevin Smith's draft) but never really committing to the read in any way.

That all changed when Wes Strick's draft of Superman Lives got into the wild in early 2013. I couldn't refuse the call anymore.  In fact, I live tweeted my reactions to it.  I was kinda hooked; and that's when I had the idea to do this; read, strip down, analyse, report.  
Learn.

And I found that it goes deeper than just "Lives"; before that, Kal-El was supposed to be Reborn, and a number of scripts came to light in 2009 (as part of a deposition in the legal battle over the rights to the character) which outline exactly how this was supposed to happen.  It went beyond the 90s, too: after "Lives" died, there was still spark in old cadaver yet if someone was willing to work hard enough to nurture it.

The 12 scripts I'm reading span 21 years, from the abortive 1992 attempt by the Salkinds to rekindle the big blue boy-scout's film career to J.J. Abrams infamous and ill-fated 2003 "Flyby", the backlash to which allegedly startled him so badly that he became a one-man directing Alcatraz, locking down his scripts, his films and their secrets with a religious fervour from that point on.

Why am I doing it?  I'm a screenwriter.  The best way to learn screenwriting is to watch movies, read scripts, and write pages.  This little project fulfils one of those three criteria, and though it used to be two, ask Meatloaf now and he'll tell you that in tough times, one out of three ain't bad anymore.

I won't be linking to the scripts.  Far too many people have got into trouble for that kind of thing and I've no desire to bring that kind of heat on myself.  If you want to find them, they're out there.

The polarised reactions to Man Of Steel, not to mention the apparently revisionist view which has grown up around Superman Returns, indicate two things to me:

1. How people react to interpretations of Superman often reflects their outlook on the world.
2. For that very reason, Superman is tough to get right.

At their best, these scripts are treasure-troves of wild, often unworkable ideas with very occasional moments of genius.  A glimpse of what could have, but, for the most part, should not have been. 

At their worst?  Well, we'll get there.