The Death Of Superman - A BNN Special Report

The Birth Of A Legacy

“You’ll believe a man can fly” was the bold but simple statement of intent 24 years ago when Warner Brothers released what was to become the single greatest superhero movie of all time – Superman. Under the guidance of director Richard Donner, writers Mario Puzo & Tom Mankewicz and producer Alexander Salkind, one of the comic world’s best loved action superheroes was given a movie worthy to bear the red and yellow ‘S’ emblem. The movie turned into a franchise and created an icon of Christopher Reeve, a man who seemed to slip effortlessly into the twin roles of nerdy Clark Kent and the Man Of Steel himself.

The last Superman movie was the relatively poor fourth instalment, Quest For Peace back in 1987, Ever since then there have been rumblings and wrangling about another outing for the Last Son of Krypton. Then in 1995, amidst rumour that a fifth movie was close to becoming a reality, disaster stuck as Reeve was cruelly paralysed in a riding accident.

But that was not to be the end for the Superman franchise that many believed.

In 1996, Jon Peters, the producer behind the first two Batman movies has gained control of the project. Tim Burton is in talks to direct, cult writer & director and self-confessed comic nut Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma) gets hold of the rights to pen the script and Nicholas Cage (Con Air, Face/Off) is in talks to play the title character. The plan was to base the movie on the Superman Lives comic arc which featured the death and resurrection of the Man Of Steel. But by May the following year, Smith’s treatment has been rejected and Wesley Strick (Arachnophobia, Cape Fear) had been brought in to create a darker story. It was at this point the project hit trouble again and production was halted.

A Franchise Is Not Forever

In 1997, Warner Brothers suffered one of it’s worst humiliations. The Ain’t It Cool News website got an exclusive advance viewing of Batman and Robin and exposed it as rubbish way ahead of it’s release. On finally being released the movie made a lot of money, but it was mauled by critics and public alike for its muddled plot, garish production, bad performances and general departure from it’s origins. The franchise was essentially killed off.

Around the same time, Tim Burton left the Superman project and in an interview gave a vital insight into the workings of the minds of the Warner Brothers execs which would still be relevant 5 years on;

“"I worked hard on Superman". I 'made' the movie only I didn't film it. You'd have to ask Warner Bros. why. It was going to be expensive, and they were a little sensitive that they had screwed up the Batman franchise. Corporate decisions are all fear-based decisions. They were afraid."

Bearing in mind the first two and, in this reporter’s opinion anyway, best Batman movies were the first two, featuring offbeat director Tim Burton at the helm. Burton was given a lot of creative control over Batman and the end results were highly entertaining and made a lot of money. The latter entries relied on mainstream director Joel Schumacher and obviously had much more studio input and tampering with regards to casting decisions and scripts resulting in movies that still made more money but at the end of the day were received more poorly.

In another interview, even Burton himself comments on this, saying;

“The movie industry is worried about designing characters for merchandising, not good storytelling. McDonald's was fuming about the black stuff that came out of the Penguin's mouth, and that in general, the film was just too dark for their tastes. Schumacher films didn't take the character seriously at all, and looked like 'a gay ice escapades'.

And when talking about the development of the Superman suit;

“(I) knew it was all over when the producers, upon looking at the test shots of Cage in various suits, said 'We don't like the red underpants. We were thinking he could have shorts sort of like Michael Jordan. Also, we think the suit should incorporate corduroy. And you can keep the boots, I guess, but we'd like some flames or something on the side of them.'”

Superheroes Become Vogue

February 2000, and Terminator 2 co-writer Bill Wisher is brought in to write the script and apparently both the heads of WB and Nic Cage are allegedly happy with the results. But rumblings are coming from insiders who say the script takes a different approach to the plot, citing Matrix comparisons and a lack of tights. Oliver Stone (Platoon, Any Given Sunday) and Ralph Zondag (Dinosaur) are interested in directing. Shortly afterwards, Nic Cage leaves the project and moves on to other things, obviously bored of so little progress in such a long time.

Around this time after the success of Bryan Singer’s X-Men, in another camp called Columbia, plans were afoot to create a new superhero movie based on another blue and red superhero – Spider-Man.

Come early 2002 and a new director is now firmly attached to the project, Joseph McGinty Nichol aka McG. Fresh from his success with the vacuous but entertaining Charlie’s Angels, Warners hired him with a view to ditching the whole dark Superman Lives angle and create a new “funnier, lighter” Superman movie. Also a new scriptwriter is hired, Jeffrey (J.J.) Abrams (Forever Young, Joy Ride) to work closely with McG to create a whole new story.

Summer of 2002 saw the release of Spider-Man, directed by off-beat director Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, The Gift) and written by David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Panic Room). Astounding everyone, it made over $110 million in it’s opening weekend alone and was given the thumbs-up by the critics. Very quickly it was elevated to “Best Superhero Movie Since Superman” status by those who saw it. The studio lust for superhero movies in Hollywood went into overdrive.

Inspired by this, a bizarre weaving winding road was being played out at Warner Brothers. They sidelined Superman 5 and favoured a crossover movie featuring both their major superhero icons – Superman Vs Batman. The SVB project snowballed with the movie being announced, a director being hired and major casting rumours being thrown around within a matter of weeks of each other. Then just as suddenly as it had come, SVB was put on the backburner and Superman was fast tracked. Abrams had supposedly handed in his latest draft of the script and that had convinced the execs to favour it over their ‘Versus’ movie. Rumours went wild. Just how good was this script that it justified sidelining a whole project just as casting was due to be announced? Who would direct this “amazing” script?

Fans soon had one of their answers. Hot on the heels of good favour coming from around the set of Red Dragon, on September 12^th Brett Ratner (Rush Hour 1 & 2) announces that he was the new director for Superman and that shooting would commence within the year. He also made a comment that in retrospect should have drawn more attention;

“Kids today don't know those movies; they [movies] were done 20 years ago. 10-year-old kids know SUPERMAN, but they don't know the mythology.”

This should have been the warning toll, but no one knew just what was about to come next…

Superman is Dead, Long Live $uperman

23^rd September 2002 and Ain’t It Cool News strikes again. One of it’s regular and reliable contributors, Moriarty, gets hold of the J.J. Abrams script and immediately posts an in-depth analysis and review of it. This is not a good script. This is possibly the worst script ever. Worse than Batman and Robin. Not only that, it’s not even Superman (as we know it).

The mythology of Superman, contrary to Brett Ratner’s beliefs, is known the world over and has remained largely unchanged since it’s conception way back in 1938;

Superman is an orphan of the destroyed planet Krypton. This we know. He crash lands on earth and is adopted by a kindly farm couple in Smallville who raise him as human. This we know. As a result of the sun, he develops superpowers and chooses to use them to do good, and thus Superman is born. We all know the story inside and out, young or old.

Well, this script chooses to ignore that COMPLETELY and just go and do it’s own thing. Mooted as, and hold me back with shock, the first movie in a trilogy (The Matrix et al have a lot to answer for!), it goes back and rewrites it’s own version of the Superman mythos just for the sheer hell of it.

Krypton doesn’t explode. That’s right, sure there's a civil war thing going on, threatening the destruction of Krypton, but Kal-El isn’t sent to earth to escape certain doom, he’s sent there as part of a Prophecy with the Kents already being prebooked as foster parents by Jor-El on a previous jaunt to Earth.

Prophecy? What prophecy you cry? Well apparently Kal-El is fated to take part in a massive trial on another world (read: Earth) and then return to Krypton to be their saviour. That’s right, he’s not doing good for good’s sake on Earth, it’s all just part of the bigger picture.

What else could they have changed? Well, unsubtle nods are made towards the sexuality of Daily Planet snapper Jimmy Olsen. That’s right, apparently old Jimbo is gay. Why? No-one really has a problem with gay characters popping up in movies but when you suddenly make an established character that way just for the sake of it, it stinks of pandering. It’s the 21^st Century answer to the unfortunate “token black guy” phenomenon of old and it’s political correctness at it’s worst.

But back to less socially controversial issues and more story related madness.

Superman’s suit is no longer concealed beneath shirt and tie for easy phone booth/revolving door convenience. It’s now in liquid form in a handy metal canister with a life of it’s own. Wrong comic, that was Venom in the Spiderman stories last I checked, but still it’s here all the same.

Along the way we also find out that Lex Luthor isn’t the crazy businessman we all thought he was. Oh no, Lex is a CIA agent! But wait, it gets better - in a cunning twist, Lex is also from Krypton. Are these facts scaring you yet? It gets better…

The single most ridiculous scene in the film is the “Death Of Superman” sequence. Superman is killed in an unfortunate kryptonite-related incident. His father on learning of this, kills himself. Not out of grief you understand, but so he can talk to his son in the afterlife. He explains to Superman that because he is part of a prophecy, he cannot die. After considering this, Supes does the honourable thing and agrees so returns to life, digs himself out his freshly laid grave and returns to work. Say what? Yes that’s correct humble reader, I jest you not, Superman’s dad kills himself and talks his son out of being dead like it’s some negotiable deal. Not even my own creative writing projects for school as a small boy featured such a painfully ill-conceived, illogical and let’s face it, just down right stupid, plot development.

There are other pointless and stupid plots holes and alterations here and there, but basically nothing is as it was, save character names and places. Moriarty points out in his review; remove all the Superman elements from the script and you might be able to scrape a reasonable NEW superhero out of it. But the fact that it trys to pass itself off as Superman is an insult not only to fans, but movie-goers in general and most importantly, to the late Siegel and Shuster.

The Fall Of $uperman?

Warners are now in the midst of their second and possibly largest AICN-related public humiliation. An online petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/sprmn5/petition.html) has been created to see the script binned. I signed it (signer 988) and when I visited the site only 20 minutes later, over 100 more people had signed. 12 hours later the number of signatures has quadrupled. Every movie news publication on the net and in print is bringing fresh news and controversy over the motivations behind decisions being made regarding the project.

Latest word suggests the current heads of WB have never seen Richard Donner’s original movie, have no concept of Superman’s origins and therefore are under the false impression that the Abrams script is gold. Also it has been mooted that for every change made to major characters, a larger slice of the subsequent merchandising money ends up in WB’s pockets as opposed to the original rights owners - in this case, the families of Siegel and Shuster, Superman creators who 4 years ago won a legal battle to a larger share of all Superman related profits. So by changing Lex Luthor from a megalomaniac businessman to a CIA agent/Kryptonian, a larger slice of all Lex related money generated goes to WB and a smaller cut goes to the family estates than if they had kept with the original portrayal. It has also been suggested that Warner Brother’s hit Superman spin-off Smallville would be terminated simply because it would interfere with the new mythos being created in the movies and the studio believes it stands to gain much more financially from the all-new movie franchise than the truer-to-origins TV show. This has understandably upset the producers of that show. But this same franchise money-spinner theory was also one of the over-riding factors in putting Superman Vs Batman on hold. Starting to see a pattern?

Warner Brothers themselves, however, seemed in staunchly in denial during the official announcement of Brett Ratner’s involvement a couple of days ago. Warner Exec, Jeff Robinov had this to say;

“J.J. Abrams and Jon Peters were given the daunting task of re-imagining the Superman epic and J.J. met the challenge, delivering a terrific script with emotion, depth and scale that bring new dimension to this legendary character. We couldn't be more pleased to entrust the next chapter in the Superman mythology to Brett Ratner, a dynamic director whose skilful blend of action, comedy and drama has captured the imaginations of audiences worldwide."

About 24 hours too late they publicly announce their “re-imagining” intentions and are still insisting it’s a terrific script. Describing Brett Ratner as a director who has “captured imaginations” probably qualifies as overstatement of the year no matter how Red Dragon turns out. A man who has, to-date, only 2 Rush Hour movies under his belt is being made to sound like he’s Steven Spielberg.

Latest news at time of print though is that WB has gone into damage control overdrive. They’ve realised they’ve got another potential Batman and Robin on their hands and are raging that AICN have again embarrassed them and potentially put the whole project in jeopardy. The good word is that someone with some sense in WB HQ read the script, realised what a steaming turd it was and slipped a copy to AICN to counter all the false positive energy being given out over it.

Abrams’ agent has spoken out against the script review saying it is an early draft bound for re-writes. But re-writes cannot save a fundamentally flawed concept. Restyling a Yugo to look like a Ferrari still doesn’t stop it from being a Yugo.

WB is now faced with a dilemma. Do they press ahead with the project, painfully aware that they have already suffered public humiliation and that from this moment forward every single piece of information gained about the production of the movie will come under close, and very public scrutiny? Or do they scrap an already green lighted project completely, costing them even more money, and go back and try yet again from scratch? 

Final Thoughts

One thing is clear through all of this debacle. The light at the end of the tunnel for Warner Brothers isn’t to make a good movie. It’s not their motivation for making Superman. Their only goal in making Superman is to supersede Spider-Man’s $400 million domestic/$1 billion worldwide takings. But they have made a vital and fatal error. They have misjudged how the competition did it. For examples just look at the two highest grossing and critically acclaimed movies of the last year, Spider-Man and Fellowship Of The Ring, then compare them to Superman;

• Both SM and FOTR were big money projects
• Both SM and FOTR producers took a big risk and hired left-field directors for the projects (Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson respectively)
• Both movies gave the director and writers a lot of creative control over the projects.
• Both remained true to the origins of the story being told while enhancing it by bringing in their own elements that helped the story - for example, Peter’s web shooters as Sam Raimi pointed out, are more feasible as a genetic spider-mutation than as a super adhesive made by a 17 year old college student.

Warner’s doesn’t have the guts to take a risk on a creative director (M. Night Shyamalan wanted to direct at one point but WB baulked at his demand for creative control) so instead they hire a young journeyman director that they can basically control as they see fit. They don’t have faith in anyone but their own overpaid selves. This is not the way to do it. Let’s face the one painful truth that the heads of WB don’t quite get. Studio Execs are not film makers, they are businessmen. Yet the execs in Warner Brothers are determined to stick their noses into as much of the development of their latest output as humanly possible. Rather than having the good faith to trust the people who know what they’re doing to get on with the job and deliver the goods, á la New Line and Columbia, Big (Warner) Brother must always be looking over the shoulder of the film-makers - making sure enough demographs are covered, enough product placements are achieved and enough merchandising potential is created in the hope that it will generate enough money to beat it’s rivals. From rumblings on another WB picture in production, Terminator 3, the same may be happening there too.

If Greed is indeed one of the seven deadly sins, all signs indicate Warner Brothers is surely on the road to self ruin.