Nicolas Cage in costume for Superman Lives
In the summer of 1996, Kevin Smith met with producer Jon Peters to discuss the film's script. “Superman Lives” is a blockbuster long in development and eventually abandoned, to be scripted at various stages by Smith, directed by Tim Burton and starring Nicolas Cage.
In Los Angeles At Peters' Angeles home, which Smith likened to Wayne Manor (Peters also produced the 1989 version of Batman), he told Smith that there were three rules to follow in this updated Superman story.
“First of all, I don't want to see him in that suit,” Peters said (according to Smith) of the most iconic pieces in pop culture history. “Secondly, I don’t want him to fly. And thirdly, in the third act, he has to fight a giant spider … “
Twenty-seven years later, this giant spider is like the monstrous embodiment of Superman's battle with Hollywood – a battle not only to get Superman on the big screen, but to properly represent Superman. This is a battle that has left behind a trail of abandoned, unmade films, like a discarded cape.
Chief among them is the legend of Superman's life, embodied as Nic Cage in the leaked test shots – wearing an updated suit, a shoulder-length wig, a sleeker “S” logo adorning the chest, and no red pants – as the biggest “What if ? So what?” in film history.
Thanks to a cameo appearance in DC's latest superhero epic, The Flash, the long-haired version of Cage's Superman has finally made it to the screen – no less battling a giant spider robot – alongside a digitally resurrected Christopher Reeve. But Superman Lives remains the greatest blockbuster ever made—the most powerful and infamous film to die an agonizing and painful death in the fires of developmental hell. So infamous is Superman Lives, about which was released in 2015 a documentary directed by the late Jon Schnepp, The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?
Even now, in the age of the 23-movie Marvel universe, Life of Superman looks like a wildly ambitious film extravaganza in the early days of digital effects. The project, which went through various scenarios and stages, was inspired by an early 1990s Death of Superman comic book storyline in which DC killed and resurrected the Man of Steel – a clever ploy to boost comic book sales.
The film was supposed to have an alien Brainiac – the main villain of the comics – the bald nemesis Lex Luthor and Doomsday, the monster that killed Superman.
The concept of an unfinished, troubled, or cobbled-together Superman movie goes back further than Superman Lives. Before the infamous “Snyder Cut” of the Justice League, there was the “Donner Cut”, a highly publicized alternate version of Superman 2 from the 1980s. Richard Donner – the original director of the Superman films starring Christopher Reeve – was fired mid-production and replaced by Richard Lester. But Donner is back to put together his 2006 DVD version of Superman 2.
There were other near-finished stories by Christopher Reeve. An early draft of the 1983 film Superman III by producer Ilya Salkind features Supergirl, Brainiac, and the interdimensional trickster Mr. Mxyzptlk. It ends with Superman and Brainiac competing on horseback, with Mr. Mxyzptlk turning the world into a giant puzzle game – vastly different, but no less silly than Richard Pryor's car, which eventually became Superman III.
Christopher Reeve in Richard Donner's Superman. Author: Alamy. who are the Masters of the Universe and, uh, Superman IV: In Search of Peace.
The film had budget problems. As the legend goes, about 45 minutes were never seen again. In one of the episodes of the fight, Clive Mantle from “Catastrophe” was shown as a simple-minded supervillain – the prototype of the finished film “Nuclear Man”. Canon announced Superman V, but planned to shoot the film with unused footage of Superman IV.
As the character returned to the hands of father and son producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind, another version of Superman V was introduced that reasonably would ignore Superman III and IV and show Brainiac (him again) squeezing Metropolis into a bottle.
The next figure to take on Man of Steel was Jon Peters, who took the rights away from the Salkinds – apparently stealing the opportunity from under the noses of Warner Bros. Peters is a former hairdresser known for his short temper, yelling at his subordinates, and translating terrible ideas into films.
Peters got into the business through his relationship with Barbara Streisand. “He used to be Barbara Streisand's hairdresser, and then one day he became a producer,” Kevin Smith said in 2002. “Because in Hollywood you just fall through.”
Superman Lives producer Jon Peters Credit: Getty
The whole book – Hit & Directed by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters, the story of how Peters and his partner Peter Gruber (“his soulless soul mate”) rose to high positions at Sony and ran the studio to the ground with excess and ostentation.
Peters project first was called “Superman Reborn” — “You might as well say, 'Superman is being resold for a new generation,'” Smith told Jon Schnepp, “and he went through two drafts of the script.
The first, written by Jonathan Lemkin, would have seen Superman killed and literally reborn, with his spirit attached to Lois Lane's still-bearing child; the second draft, written by Gregory Poirier (a former porn screenwriter who used the pseudonym Hugh Jorgan), was a campy parody in which Clark Kent goes to a psychiatrist to get rid of the problems of being Superman.
At the time—after the success of The Clerks and the release of Chasing Amy—Kevin Smith was the sharpest voice in cinema for nerds and the then king of comics. He convinced the executives to let him write Superman. Kevin Smith recalled how Peters sought some solidarity, claiming that they would make Superman successful because “we're from the streets.”
Smith, a middle-class suburban New Jersey native, questioned the producer's street reputation for perfect hair. But it's an image of himself that Peters maintains. “I was in 500 fights,” Peters told John Schnepp. Funny footnote: Peters was also supposed to produce Under Siege 2, but the disagreement almost led to a conflict with Steve Segal.
Kevin Smith in 2017. Photo: Getty
After writing his first draft, Kevin Smith called in Peters—this time, oddly enough, to read the script aloud to him. Smith recalled how Peters leaned back on the couch and framed the shot in directorial style, creating an imaginary screen on which he could visualize the action he was being told.
In The Death of Superman Alive, Peters denies that told Smith that Superman must not wear a suit or fly (although other writers remembered similar instructions). But Peters readily admits that he demands a fight with the giant spider. Smith reassured Peters and named his deadly arachnid “Thanagarian Trap Beast”.
In two drafts, Smith had to incorporate more of Peters' ideas: a polar bear action scene in the Fortress of Solitude and a gay robot assistant for Brainiac. Peters also wanted Sean Penn to be Superman because he “had killer eyes.”
Smith admitted that his Life of Superman script was pure fanfiction. “It was one of those jobs where you just fuck around, write the film of your dreams,” he told Jon Schnepp. The script was filled with references and characters from DC comics. Batman delivers the eulogy at Superman's funeral. In an age before Marvel movies, such a crossover cameo would melt the average fan's mind.
Smith recommended Tim Burton as director, not realizing that he was actually firing himself. Burton did not like Smith's script and invited Wesley Strick to rewrite the script. New elements included the fusion of Lex Luthor and Brainiac—creating a two-faced monster named Lexiak—and a “K” robot companion for Superman.
Burton was a likely choice. In 1989's Batman, he reinvented the Dark Knight and made half a billion dollars for Warner Bros. In 1996, “Mars Attacks” flopped at the US box office, but Burton was still a curious, fantasy visionary of mainstream cinema – not yet burdened with a “reimagining” of Planet of the Apes.
Burton had little respect for the Superman mythology and seized on the idea of the good-natured, kind Superman/Clark Kent as the ultimate outsider—a literal alien. Twenty-five years later, it's interesting to imagine how Superman's brighter world in primary colors would merge with Burton's twisted gothic style.
Tim Burton's Brainiac sketches for Superman Lives http://t.co/dyqKTNxKAI pic.twitter.com/TptPqnvhHN
– Geek ' with James Hancock (@gknout) August 4, 2015
Burton was wary of Jon Peters, with whom he clashed and kept at arm's length from Batman. Wesley Strick recalled that Burton filmed Batman in England in part to get away from Peters. “Like a force of nature,” Burton said of the producer. “It's like trying to control the weather.”
But it was Peters who came up with the real masterstroke of Superman Lives – Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel. Cage is a lifelong fan (he named his son Kal-El after Supes' Kryptonian birth name) and offered to play Luthor or Brainiac before signing up as Superman.
Cage seems like a left choice – especially now, after decades of his swinging between mainstream movies, weird indies and straight-to-DVD tattoos – but he won an Academy Award in 1996, and in the middle of his act, The Holy Trinity of the Nineties: The Rock, Face/Off and Con Air.
Cage planned to play Nic Cage fully as Superman. “I was going to turn this character upside down,” he later said.
Other actors lined up: the now exiled Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, the role he played in 2006's Superman Returns; Chris Rock as Daily Planet photographer Jimmy Olsen; and Christopher Walken as Brainiac.
As Jake Rossen recalls in his book Superman vs. Hollywood, Warner Bros executives had their doubts about Cage, and doubters from the fan community climbed onto geek-oriented message boards— a harbinger of the frenzied internet negativity surrounding modern franchises.
Most controversial – and indicative of how Burton intended to change Superman – was the outfit. In the scenario, the companion robot is attached to the now-dead Superman like a suit, changing as he regenerates and evolves until finally Superman dons an upgraded version of his threads. Several suits were made: silicone biomechanical suits, muscle suits, vacuum formed suits with laser fiber optic light – with the obvious absence of red pants. />Nicolas Cage in his Superman costume with no pants, as seen in the documentary The Death of Superman's Life: What Happened?
The Superman Lives story is best remembered for that test image of Cage in the upgraded suit, but the other test images – of Cage in a more traditional Superman outfit – are undeniably enticing.
Burton had a small army of ideas. artists and effects masters working on pre-production. As seen in the Death to the Lives of Superman document, the design work is vast and otherworldly: monsters, robots, spaceships, bizarre Kryptonians. Jake Rossen noted that the linking of goods is of great importance – characters and gadgets are focused on potential toys.
The design team experienced the full force of Jon Peters, who rushed in, usually accompanied by women and children, and showed off his new jiu-jitsu moves. “Sometimes he grabbed somebody by the head,” Burton told John Schnepp. “One day he kissed me on the lips. Now what's better? I don't know. I think I'd rather have a headbutt or a kick in the face.”
Peters attributed his manly posture to “creating the energy of an action hero.” He had crazier ideas: he wanted Superman to use his cape as a deadly boomerang, and Brainiac to be able to fly through space in a giant skull.
Burton recalled the pressure to turn on Superman fighting kung fu against the group. ninja, which definitely sounds like “Biff!” and “Ka-pow!” cartoon violence from the 1960s Batman series
A $20 million set was built in pavilions, and Pittsburgh was chosen as a replacement for Metropolis. But Warner Bros. was nervous about the script, and another screenwriter was brought in, this time Dan Gilroy, who wrote and directed the Oscar-winning 2014 film Nightcrawler.
Warner Bros has suffered a string of flops – money-losing ones like Kevin Costner's The Postman and the embarrassing Batman & Other franchise. Robin. The studio estimated that Superman Lives would cost $140 million, although Jon Peters estimated closer to $300 million in marketing and other expenses, forcing Gilroy to scale back. Finally, at the end of 1998, Warner Bros closed Superman Lives.
Subsequently, there were other attempts to resurrect the Last Son of Krypton: Wolfgang Petersen's Batman v Superman project, which at one stage assumed that Jude Law would play Superman and Colin Farrell would play Batman; and a J. J. Abrams-written project called Superman: FlyBy, which was directed at various times by McGee and Brett Ratner. In one version of the script, Lex Luthor was a CIA agent and secret Kryptonian, and the Superman costume came from a tin can.
Warner Bros finally rebooted Man of Steel with Bryan Singer's Superman Returns in 2006. – not a rethinking, but a sentimental allusion to the films of Christopher Reeve. Singer reportedly kept a photograph of Nic Cage as Superman close at hand and pulled it out to defend himself against criticism – proof he narrowly escaped.
In my opinion, Superman Returns is an underrated gem, although not everyone agrees. “Remember the first movie where 'Would you believe a man can fly?'” Kevin Smith said live. “This movie is going to be 'You Won't Believe How Damn Boring This Man Is'.”
A sequel to “Return” was sort of planned, but was cancelled. In 2007, Warner Bros developed the then-discarded Justice League: Mortal directed by Mad Max maestro George Miller, with DJ Cotrona as Superman and Armie Hammer as Batman.
Jon Peters didn't get his reinvented version of Superman, but he did get his giant spider. A giant mechanical spider was supposed to appear in Peters' climactic Wild Wild West battle that flopped in 1999, a year after Superman Lives was cancelled.
Brandon Routh in Superman Returns
Speaking at the 2017 Toronto Film Festival, Nicolas Cage shared his thoughts on Superman Lives. “I would say that the movie that Tim and I would make in your imagination is stronger than any of the Superman movies,” he said. “I didn’t even have to shoot the movie and we all know what that movie would be like in your imagination. This is Superman. This is a movie. Even if you've never seen it, it's Superman.”
Superman Lives' reputation is all the more powerful because it was never created. It's hard to imagine that the film that Burton came up with in the early days of digital effects has stood the test of time. Attempts to reinvent, redefine or make Superman “real” – the worst offender was the one who actually hit the big screen, Zack Snyder's dreaded “Man of Steel” – missed the point of the character.
Superman has to be the purest, easiest to adapt of all superheroes, which is why the original Superman starring Christopher Reeve has never been better – no superhero movie. He remains a template, with a big heart and ingenuity. As Man of Steel, who took a cue from Life of Superman and ditched red underpants, proved, Superman needs pants.
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