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 Unmade #10: Superman: Destruction

Who wrote it?

Paul Attanasio. Oscar-nominated for Quiz Show and Donnie Brasco, creator of Homicide: Life on the Street, and credited on Disclosure and Sphere (ironically, one of the poorly-performing films alleged to have scared Warner off mega-budget blockbusters like Superman Lives.) Attanasio also had The Sum of All Fears in production at Paramount.

When was it written?
We don't know for sure that it was. If complete, it almost certainly wasn't dated April 2001, unless Attanasio had written it on-spec (highly unlikely for a professional screenwriter using someone else's IP) or the actual deal had been done much earlier. If the latter, why wasn't it announced at the time?

What's the context?
According to the Hollywood Reporter's April 19th, 2001 story ("Attanasio has words for two Warner films"), the writer would receive $3.4 million for two scripts; Superman, and an adaptation of Joseph Kanon's then-upcoming novel The Good German. It was not known which he would tackle first.
"Attanasio will sift through the three or four "Superman" scripts, but he will focus on his own, original take on material based on the death and rebirth of Superman."

If true, this seems to mark a sea-change in the studio's attitude to the project. Though still mired in the "death" storyline, Attanasio would be the first writer trusted to take them beyond the established paradigm in a full script for almost six years.

Variety, meanwhile, echoed the major points of the story but cautioned that the writer's Superman deal had not been closed.

What's the story?
No idea. None. Not the faintest inkling.

Why didn't it happen?
And then... silence.

Superman: Destruction (as the script was allegedly known) has never materialised online, and I've been able to find out almost nothing about it. 

Given how long WB had been trying to get a Superman film off the ground, it's not hard to imagine them prioritising a script for it over a relatively obscure (though expensively acquired) project like German (which wouldn't appear for another five years). But after April 2001, there's nothing. No word on how it was received, or even that it was received.

Five years later, The Wall Street Journal (June 23rd 2006 -  "Getting 'Superman' off the ground") would assert that Attanasio's deal was never actually done.
Glen Weldon's Superman: The Unauthorized Biography claims it was no more than a treatment.
Cashiers du Cinemart went as far as assigning the script a completion date (27th June 2001). They also floated one theory which conflates it with Keith Giffen's Superman/Lobo treatment from late 2000, and another in which it was an unconnected fifty page treatment.

I like the Attanasio-revising-Giffen theory for two reasons:
A) We know Giffen's treatment was deemed too expensive. Could Attanasio have been brought in to take it to script stage at a lower cost?
B) It might explain the not-very-Superman-but-very-Lobo title "Destruction", the origin of which is unclear. It isn't in either of the two trade stories, but it's a little detail that either lends credence to the script's existence, or was made up by someone for that very reason. It depends on your point of view.

Unfortunately, liking a theory doesn't make it right. There's no proof Attanasio revised Giffen.

Although David Hughes asserts that Joseph McGinty Nichol, AKA McG, was attached to Attanasio's script/treatment, I wasn't able to find any evidence of this. The Hollywood Reporter does note his attachment to J.J. Abrams' draft a year later.

And that's all she wrote. It's possible an Attanasio treatment exists, and that the deal to script it was never done. It may or may not have been based on Giffen's Lobo/Superman treatment. It's also possible a partial or complete script exists, either of Attanasio's sole devising or based on Giffen's treatment.
We have almost no facts about this one. Nothing of Attanasio's was included in the WB vs Siegel and Shuster deposition, which leads me to think it doesn't exist... but Giffen's treatment wasn't in the deposition either, and there's good evidence it's real.

Unless something surfaces which sheds new light on this, it looks Superman: Destruction will remain a myth. If anyone out there knows better... educate me.

Superman Unmade #9: Untitled Superman vs Lobo project

Who wrote it?

Keith Giffen, co-creator of DC's "anti" anti-hero, Lobo.

When was it written?

It appears to have been turned in to Warner Bros. in or around September 2000.

What's the context?

Despite rumoured interest from Oliver Stone and reported talks with Ralph Zondag in the early months of 2000, nothing ever came of William Wisher's script.

In July 2000 Nicolas Cage made it plain to The Sunday Herald he'd given up on the project. "I was very excited about it for a while, but then I decided the time had come and gone."

Any heat generated by Wisher's script fizzled out. Superman did not live.

According to Superman vs Hollywood, Giffen (among other DC writers) was approached by Jenette Kahn, publisher of DC comics, on behalf of Lorenzo Di Bonaventura and Alan Horn. Giffen says WB was already keen on using Lobo from the get-go. He agreed to submit a treatment (a detailed summary laying out the story in prose form.)

WB and Joel Silver had been unsuccessfully trying to adapt Lobo for the big screen since the mid-'90s (read more about that here). Jerrold E. Brown's 1998 draft is out there on the web if you know where to look (as is a draft by Don Payne from 2009).

Prior to boarding the Superman project, Kevin Smith claims he'd encouraged WB to consult DC creatives; they'd demurred, citing the differences between comics and film, implying the DC guys didn't "get" movies. Apparently Meyer and Horn were trying to change that mindset; they were finally ready to listen to those who spent their days neck-deep in the mythologies.

For a while.

AICN broke news of the 17-page treatment's existence on October 18th, 2000. Harry Knowles, never knowingly less than hyperbolic, called it "the most ambitious and thrilling concept I've yet seen for a Superhero film."

Giffen confirmed its existence to Comics2film a week later, but added that contrary to Knowles' report, the project hadn't advanced to script stage yet. He declined to go into any more detail.

What's the story?

Intent on mining Earth of a mineral which induces an unparalleled high in select alien species, an intergalactic drug cartel hires Lobo to kill the planet's protector; Superman. Planet-hopping high-jinks ensue.

Why didn't it happen?

The official line? Cost. Despite being told to write without constraints, Giffen says his take was nixed because it was just too expensive. If Knowles' synopsis is accurate, it would have involved multiple planets, an asteroid, and at least one knock-down, drag-out fight on Earth. Those things don't come cheap, and it's odd that the studio (which had already scaled back the titanic battle with Doomsday in previous drafts of Superman Lives) thought it could substitute an equally physical antagonist and not pay through the nose for realising him on-screen.