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.

Superman Unmade #8: Superman Lives! (Take 8)

Here there be spoilers

Who wrote it?

William Wisher Jr., at that point credited on The Terminator (additional dialogue), Terminator 2, Judge Dredd and The 13th Warrior. Wisher is also noted for uncredited contributions to Die Hard: With A Vengeance.

When was it written?

The draft is dated 3.2.00, 17 months after both Dan Gilroy's last draft and WB's purchase of Alex Ford's spec.

How long is it?

116 pages

What's the broad structure?

Act 1  = 1-32

Act 2a = 33-59

Act 2b = 60-91

Act 3 = 92-116

What's the context?
We're back in a deathly quiet period for the Superman project after Tim Burton's departure. Warner Bros. had hit genre paydirt in the spring of '99 with The Matrix, and hired Wisher in June of that year to turn out a new script that would "Matrix-up" the Man of Steel. Superman Vs. Hollywood's contention is that this meant using bullet-time to make his flight patterns more viscerally thrilling. Wisher's script, with input from the still-sort-of-possibly-attached Nic Cage, allegedly attracted the attention of Oliver Stone.

Why didn't it happen?
We don't really know. Wisher's draft came and went without much fanfare outside of scuttlebutt in the Hollywood Reporter (February 17th 2000) that Cage and WB were "very happy" with it. Variety reported talks with Dinosaur co-director Ralph Zondag (June 22nd 2000) that never went anywhere. Wisher never seems to have gone on the record about his time on the project.

What does Superman want at the start of the story? 
Firmly established in Metropolis, and in a no-secrets relationship with Lois Lane, he's having an existential crisis; he doesn't know who or what he is, or why he's here.This creates a rift with Lois, who wants to settle down and get married.

What happens next?
Brainiac, the energy-hungry AI responsible for Krypton's destruction, teams up with Lex Luthor to destroy the Man of Steel by unleashing the creature known as Doomsday. Weakened by their titanic battle, Superman is finished off by Brainiac with a Kryptonite spear through the heart.

Does Superman resolve his conflict, and if so, how?
Yes. Revived by the Kryptonian knight Mal-Ar, to whom he was entrusted as a baby, Superman discovers that he is heir to the throne of Krypton, and that only he can unite its survivors. Stripped of his powers, he uses Mal-Ar's high-tech armour to confront his nemeses, who are busy double-crossing each other over the fate of the planet.

The script
Why Wisher? Perhaps because he had genre "previous". In truth, he was probably less out of left field than Dan Gilroy, and at a relatively lean 116 pages, this draft maintained the promise of a manageable budget. Wisher strips out some of the broader elements from previous drafts, but with input from Cage and the other remaining players presumably consistent, how much had actually changed?

What works?

• Wisher's sparse style is almost like poetry. It's not Walter Hill, but sentences rarely run to more than one line, and it's easy to imagine each as a shot. Each block of text looks more like a stanza than a paragraph so it's a "vertical" read.
• Kryptonite does more than just kill Superman. It amplifies energy and becomes the source of power for all Luthor's gadgets.
• Streamlined exposition. The script makes a decent fist of catching Superman up on his origin late in the second act. Because we've seen it happen already we don't linger, but we know he gets it.
• Second act complications. In previous drafts, K/Eradicator tries to persuade Superman to leave Earth and save himself. Superman declines, provoking much debate about the nature of sacrifice and heroism. Wisher tries the same thing, but with one key difference; the revelation that other Kryptonians survive, and are waiting for Kal to come back and lead them, makes this more than just about saving himself and leaving Earth to his enemies. Kal has always pondered his purpose. Now he has one. It means the script ends with...
• Scope for more. Superman resolves to go out and find the remains of his race. Lois is intent on going with him. Everything doesn't just go back to normal; there's the potential for lasting change. It's almost the jumping on point for the idea behind Superman Returns. There's a little overlap with J.J. Abrams' Flyby too.

What doesn't work?

• "Edgy" Superman. By edgy, once again we mean "a bit of a douche". He's passive aggressive, a little sweary, tries (and fails) to get drunk, and threatens to kill the Lexmen (who are essentially under Brainiac's mind control). If you want to make Superman less of a boyscout, there has to be a reason beyond the vague notion that modern kids think he's uncool.
• Brainiac. Jeez, am I tired of talking about, writing about, thinking about Brainiac. It's never entirely clear why Jor-El decides to shut him down; perhaps he was bored of him too. I think it's something to do with him coming over all Skynet and evolving his own sub-programs. Where previous scripts set him up as Superman's rejected older "brother", here his motivations are tweaked so he's more akin to Jor-El; a father who wants to take care of his "children". Unfortunately, it makes almost no difference. He's just... so... dull.
• Metaphysical claptrap. Once more, Superman wakes up without his powers, and once more he's told they won't return straight away. Not because he's been dead, and had no opportunity to collect sunlight, but because his mind is full of hate for Brainiac... Sigh. It's The Force by another name again. Look, Superman's powers are grounded in a fictional "science" that exists in his world, so why on earth would his feelings hamper them? Why do they suddenly return when Lois is thrown off a building by Brainiac? Does that make him hate the guy less?! Maybe we're to believe that his love for Lois overwhelmed his hate, but I just don't buy it. For a start, how would Mal-Ar know any of this? He's a Knight, not an astrophysicist, or even a metaphysicist. Superman is the first Kryptonian to come to Earth young enough to gain powers; there's no precedent for his diagnosis.
• Superman's "want". There's a hole in Superman's life. He has a feeling that he's here to do something else, but this feels manufactured rather than organic. It always felt odd that he wouldn't marry Lois simply because he didn't know where he came from. Most people go their whole lives without ever knowing why they're here.
• Luthor. After the (mostly) intelligent, ruthless and erudite Luthor of Alex Ford's draft, Wisher's Luthor swings back towards previous iterations; rich, successful, pathetic. A figure of fun, he doesn't even function as comic relief; he's too much of an insufferable whiner. It's unclear whether he's truly behind all his fabulous creations, or if he uses theft and subterfuge to fool the world. The script tries to contextualise him by name-checking Steve Jobs, Ted Turner and Bill Gates but all this serves to do is date it. Despite being fabulously wealthy, he constantly complains about his lot, and is generally treated with disdain by everyone. He's a loser, and it's hard to imagine him ever being a capable foe. He shoots for a redemption of sorts in the final act, trying to stop Brainiac's energy draining mechanism, but that's just self-preservation. He disappears after this, and his fate is never explored. If he had any smarts, he'd have tried to turn Brainiac's machine off earlier rather than confronting him. And what's his ultimate plan? To dominate the internet; a conceit which is so '90s it's almost painful. This Luthor may be the worst yet.
• Superprince. Lois & Clark toyed with the idea of Superman as a potential ruler of a new Krypton, and the idea would be reused in J.J. Abrams' aborted take, but... Superman is generally supposed to be the last of his kind. Sure, other Kryptonians have popped up, and you could argue that if anyone were chosen to survive the destruction of a planet it would be the wealthy elite, but Jor-El is not only benevolent King of the entire planet, he's a scientific genius. Kal-El is thus so special that it makes him less special. It smacks too much of the "chosen one" narrative popularised by Star Wars and reinvigorated by the script's new target...
• The Matrix. The Wachowskis' sophomore effort won hearts and wallets in the spring of '99, so it's not a shock to stumble across several "nods" to it; every other action movie was doing the same. The problem isn't that WB looked at The Matrix. The problem is what they saw, or what they chose to focus on. Not compelling, diverse characters battling through a dramatic story, built on the same kind of timeless, epic framework as Star Wars. No. They looked at The Matrix and saw an aesthetic; revolutionary effects and black leather. They saw the idea of "cyber", which is such a vague concept it doesn't even qualify as a theme. Wisher never uses the term "bullet time", and the assertion that WB intended to use it is all hearsay. But what we do have is a black-suited Superman in a lone assault on an impregnable building, taking on hordes of inter-connected "Lexmen" in suits and dark glasses, running up walls and generally using hitherto unseen martial skills in the pursuit of his goal. Draw your own conclusions.
• Mal-Ar. Although he makes more thematic sense than Cadmus, and would be cheaper to realise than K/Eradicator, he performs much the same function. He arrives at the same time as Brainiac, stalks Superman and mutters dark prophecies at a distance about the time being near. Perhaps if he'd made some effort to engage, Superman could have avoided death altogether? Like Cadmus and K/Eradicator, Mal-Ar, too, ultimately has to go to that great Kryptonian mentor club in the sky. He has no place; all he has is a function.
• The Doomsday throwdown still feels too scaled back, probably for cost. Much of it takes place off-screen, underground. It simply isn't epic enough for what's supposed to be the death of a god.
• Random nitpicks:
• If Brainiac wants Superman's body so badly, why doesn't he just take it? If he's offended by the funeral, why leave a body to bury?
• Why did nobody remove the Kryptonite spear tip from Superman's chest?
• Mayors don't get to outlaw things just like that.
• Is burying an alien Knight in a clearly marked grave a terribly good idea?

Conclusion
Christ, this one was depressing.
17 months had passed with no discernible movement since Gilroy's second draft. WB had bought Alex Ford's spec, but had they used the time to re-examine their options, think about what had gone wrong with the project, and correct course by giving Wisher a clean slate to work from?

Not a bit of it.

Wisher, too is forced to kneel before Zod (or Jon Peters and WB) by adhering to the same basic structure as every writer since Lemkin was handed his P45:

Superman dies.
Superman comes back.
Superman wins.

In fact, they should probably have called the project Superman Wins.

It's almost like the writers didn't matter; plunk any old word-monkey in a chair, give him the (unchanged) beats and wait for the money to come rolling in.

The problem is that this approach produces fundamentally the same story they decided not to make two years previously, when cast, crew, production design and locations were more or less in place. When they were weeks away from shooting. If you don't come back with something different from what you opted not to shoot because it wasn't working, what's the point? It's highly unlikely that the movie would have become significantly cheaper to make in the interim.

So why, WB? Why?

Perhaps because the studio was under new leadership. In July 1999, co-Chairmen/CEOs Bob Daly and Terry Semel stepped down, replaced in August (though not like-for-like) by Barry Meyer and Alan Horn. Given how much time and money had already been invested in the project, could it hurt to try one more time?

It's not that the writing is bad (though some of the dialogue is awfully clunky). It's that there's NOTHING new here. Parts of older drafts are bolted back on, and that means it's just another hybrid of hybrids.

I had high(ish) hopes for this, but it proved a huge let-down.

Man of Steel preventable death and destruction rating: 5
Once again Superman detonates Brainiac's ship over a major metropolitan area. Once again he throws down with Doomsday in the centre of the city (even if much of the battle takes place underground), and he more or less murders Brainiac in a suicide run at his ship.

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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.)

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.