Kistler's Thoughts On: Film Adaptations - Part 2
Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 04:22PM The last column before this was a special New Year's Eve message.
Okay. So you’re one of those folks who thought Superman Returns was just plain boring and that Tim Burton's Batman was an insult? Well trust me, boyo, they could've been a lot worse. Hollywood's been full of awful ideas for comic book movies.
For instance ...
The original plot of Superman III was going to involve the living robot conqueror Brainiac as the villain, since he's one of Superman’s arch-foes. Great, you're saying. Brainiac would be fantastic on-screen. And the film was also going to have Superman's teenage cousin Kara Zor-El, known more widely to the world as Supergirl. Fantastic. Two heroes for the price of one and an enemy powerful enough to give them both a good fight. Sounds like a plan!
Here's the thing, though. In the original version of Superman III, the story had it that Supergirl was not Superman’s cousin but was actually Brainiac's foster daughter (why a robot would feel the need for a foster child, I don't know) and that she would first be a reluctant villain before later changing sides after falling in love with the Man of Steel. As if this weren't creepy enough in that it involves Superman and a teenage former villain, it reminds me of an
old Pre-Crisis story where Supeman basically told Supergirl that the only reason he didn't marry her was because that cousins weren't allowed to do that on Krypton, a planet he had left as a baby and whose values he wasn't really raised to believe in (?!).
Sadly, there are worse stories about what could have happened in some comic book movies. And several of them revolve around producer Jon Peters, a man who began his career as Barbara Streisand's hairdresser and who has sometimes seemed determined to ensure that characters I love would be corrupted into pathetic parodies.
First of all, let's talk about Neil Gaiman's Sandman movie. In Gaiman's critically acclaimed and award-winning comic book series The Sandman, the main character is Dream (who often prefers the name the Greeks gave him, "Morpheus"), the lord of dreams and stories, the literal mythological sandman. Dream is one of the Endless, a group of seven beings who are "older than gods" and each of them represents an aspect of the universe for which they are named. For instance, Dream's older siblings are his brother Destiny and his sister Death.
In the first issue of The Sandman, the saga kicks off when a group of human occultists, led by a malevolent fiend named Burgess, decide they want immortality. They gather in secret and perform a ritual that is intended to capture Death herself. But Burgess screws up the spell apparently because they wind up capturing Dream instead. Not wishing to get in trouble and have the guy punish them for capturing him in an attempt to cage his sister, they keep Morpheus weak and locked up for decades until the "King of Stories" finally frees himself. Afterwards, Morpheus must return to his kingdom of the Dreaming, the land of stories and ideas, and restore order to the chaos that has happened during his absence.
Obviously, this is a deep story rich with fantasy and metaphor and comments about the human spirit and the nature of reality itself. A script adaptation was written by Terry Rosio and Ted Elliot, the two screenwriters who brought us The Mask of Zorro and Pirates of the Caribbean: Legend of the Black Pearl. Neil Gaiman saw it and said it was excellent. I myself read a copy many years later and I can tell you, my friends, that this script was wonderful. It held the atmosphere and the heart of the original series, the changes made to the story were all for the better, and it had what I think would have been one of the best kisses caught on film.
The script was pitched to Jon Peters, who’d been involved with Tim Burton's Batman. The following statement is from Terry Rosio’s own column at Wordplayer.com regarding Mr. Peters:
"Ted and I rarely speak ill of anyone... but... how this man continues to find work in this business escapes me. Working on Neil Gaiman's Sandman Project, we started our pitch with the following: 'So Burgess casts a spell, trying to capture the personification of DEATH -- but instead, gets the personification of DREAM (the Sandman) instead!' Peters didn't get it -- how could Death be a person? -- and we spent almost half an hour on just that sentence. The next half hour was spent with him telling us the opening séance should be people playing with a Ouija board."
Let's reflect on that a moment, gentle readers. Peters wanted to replace the malevolent, greedy occultists who dabbled in the black arts with teenagers at a sweet sixteen party screwing around with a Ouija board. And I’m sure the rest of the story would have involved Dream having his hair done and learning how to dress and accessorize with color rather than always wearing those black cloaks and coats that he's so fond of. Perhaps he could have helped the girls get the boys of their dreams.
"How could Death be a person?" I guess Peter also never understood Meet Joe Black or that wonderful Twilight Zone episode with Mr. Death or, Hell, ancient mythology in general.
Ah, but we're not done. Ever head of a little film called Superman Reborn (sometimes titled Superman Lives)?
This was to come out in the 1990's and was meant to be an adaptation of the Death of Superman storyline from the comics. In the original comic book story, Doomsday (a monster that is revealed to have been genetically engineered on ancient Krypton as a biological weapon) winds up on Earth. He does what he does best which is killing everything in sight. After a battle that crosses several state lines and lasts many hours, Superman finally beats the creature to death, but then dies himself moments later due to serious injuries and extreme exhaustion. A funeral is held in Metropolis for the Last Son of Krypton, attended by many super-heroes and world leaders (and astute readers may notice that Superman's wounds have somehow healed post-mortem, hint, hint). A few new heroes show up in the following days, including a cyborg who claims that he’s Superman back from the dead. This cyborg later nukes an entire city and declares that he's going to take over Earth.
Things seem bad and then the real Superman shows up in a new black costume (worn only for the end of the story), revealing that he hadn’t died but that his body had been shocked into a death-like state, essentially a coma that Earth technology was unable to distinguish from actual death (that’s why his wounds healed later, natch). Just a couple of weeks after his death, a Kryptonian artificial intelligence known as the Eradicator had activated and took Superman's body, placing it in a chamber built with Kryptonian technology that bathed our hero in intense solar radiation (the source of his powers) until he was finally restored.
Revived, Superman returns to the battlefield in order to protect the planet from the cyborg villain who is wearing his shield and using his name. Some great action happens and in the end the cyborg is defeated and Superman dons his original outfit again, secure that his name has been cleared and the world knows who their hero really is.
Pretty sweet story. And a movie could be great, especially if you played it out over two films or as a trilogy shot back-to-back.
But Hollywood wanted some changes. In one version of the script, Superman would indeed die after his battle with Doomsday, cradled in Lois Lane’s arms just like in the comic books. But in this script, Lois would find herself inexplicably pregnant all of a sudden and days later would give birth to a child who grew up to adulthood within weeks. Superman had somehow used a Kryptonian method of transferring his life force into Lois and thus Superman was now literally reborn. Which means he and Lois could never kiss again, because now he’d be sort of her son and that’s just icky. Thankfully, Hollywood looked at this and said "yeah, there are too many religious fans we would tick off" and discarded the idea completely.
Kevin Smith (writer/director/actor of Clerks, Chasing Amy) came onto the project to re-write the script. I have read his script and it was pretty fun. I’m not sure he and I agree about how Lex Luthor should behave, but it was fun. In Smith’s story, Doomsday is created by Brainiac, who teams up with Luthor to cut off Superman from all sunlight and then have him killed by the creature. The plan seems to work out pretty well, leaving the world vulnerable to Brainiac and Luthor's agenda. One fun thing that Smith added was that, during Superman's funeral, Batman suddenly appears on everyone’s television screens and tells folks that Superman was a hero and anyone who thinks his city will be an easy target now will have to answer to Gotham's own Dark Knight. Most importantly, Kevin Smith tried to emphasize the human nature of Superman, that he doesn't always know whether or not his plan will work but has to try because lives are in danger and he can't 
sit by and do nothing. Smith wanted to touch on Superman's drives and motivations and he wisely opened the movie with Lois already dating Clark Kent and aware of who he really was, letting movie audiences see some touching and frank dialog between the two lovers.
And any movie where Brainiac flies around in his famous headship space-craft can't be half-bad anyway, right? Love that ship!
Of course, Jon Peters had to alter a few things. When Smith met with Peters, the producer had three rules he wanted followed:
- Superman was not to have the ability to fly.
- Superman would not be allowed to wear the famous costume.
- In the third act, Superman had to fight a giant spider (alternately, it could be a giant robot/mechanical spider).
Yeah. So Kevin Smith did his best to accommodate this (even suggesting that instead of a literal giant spider, Superman could fight an alien monster known as a "Thanagarian snare-beast"). But Peters kept asking for more and more changes. He wanted Superman's powers removed for the second half of the movie, meaning that the Man of Steel would have to rely on advanced Kryptonian technology to make up for his lost abilities. Basically, the idea was that Warner Bros. could later sell toys of these weapons. Why let Superman have heat-vision in his eyes and only have one action figure when you could also sell a Kryptonian heat-ray gun as a separate accessory?
Peters also felt that a certain part of the script needed more action. Specifically, a scene where Brainiac invaded Superman’s arctic Fortress of Solitude following the Man of Steel’s apparent death. Peters suggested that Superman could have guards who defended the Fortress and would engage Brainiac, something Kevin Smith questioned when he pointed out that his belief that it was silly to imagine a man with Kryptonian strength and invulnerability needing guards and that this also seemed anti-thetical to the idea that it was called his "Fortress of Solitude."
Peters insisted on an action sequence though and told Smith to write in that two polar bears attacked Brainiac outside of the arctic Fortress (later he decided it would be better if they were robot polar bears, fearing criticism from PETA).
After seeing Smith’s film Chasing Amy, Peters was impressed with the character of Hooper X, a gay comic book creator who hides his sexuality because pretending to be a black militant is better for his sales. Peters decided the Superman film needed a character with a similar voice. He asked if Brainiac, psychotic world-conqueror living android that he was, couldn’t have a small robot sidekick who sounded like a gay, street-smart black man. Specifically, he wanted "a gay R2-D2."
The worst part possibly was when Peter wanted Smith to cut out the one scene where Lois and Clark talked about his motivations as Superman, saying the movie was running overtime. Smith insisted he could shorten some of the action sequences, saying that this scene was the most important round of dialog for the entire film and was the heart of the story. Peters argued, "Kevin, what you don't understand about this is that this is a corporate movie. It doesn't matter how good the dialogue is between Lois and Superman; it's about how many toys we can sell."
When asked who he thought should direct the film, Smith suggested Tim Burton due to the man's success with the 1989 Batman. Tim Burton later came on and the first thing he did was say he wanted a new screenwriter. He would not even meet with Smith to see if Smith agreed with the direction and story he was planning. Smith left the project and is happily willing to sign copies of his script that people have found on the internet.
Burton’s Superman was going to be angst-ridden and dark, wearing a black version of the costume for most of the movie. There was also talk about redesigning Doomsday to have cyborg parts and kryptonite blood. Producers were talking to Nicholas Cage about donning the famous cape and rumors flew of Tim Allen possibly playing Brainiac and Chris Rock possibly portraying Jimmy Olsen.
But eventually, the project was put away. Years later, Jon Peter produced Wild Wild West and finally got to see his vision of a giant mechanical spider on-screen.
Years passed. Batman Begins showed the world that DC was once again able to do a great super-hero film. Superman was up to the plate again, this time in a new film that would eventually be called Superman Returns. Before Bryan Singer was signed on to direct, JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost, the new Star Trek movie) had his own ideas for the film. Sadly, Jon Peters asked him to make a change here and there and what we got was the following.
In Abrams' revised script, baby Kal-El is sent to Earth by his parents Jor-El and Lara because the planet Krypton is being taken over by the tyrannical Zor family. The evil Zors want Kal-El because there’s apparently a prophecy about the child. Before sending his baby boy to Earth, Jor-El travels there himself and selects a farm couple known as the Kents, telling them it will be up to them to raise his son to control the powers he will develop on their planet and to uphold the values of life and justice. Jor-El then returns to Krypton and he and his wife Lara are captured just as Kal-El rockets away to his new home.
I want you to realize what just happened. Krypton didn't blow up! This is likely due to Jon Peters' influence since Kevin Smith himself commented that when he'd been writing Superman Lives, the producer had asked him "Does the planet have to blow up?"
The movie would then show how Kal (now named Clark Kent) grows up a very troubled and angsty individual, terrified of the injuries he could cause others if he ever slipped up with his powers. The only thing he has of Krypton is a strange uniform that stands upright when its not in use and which wraps around Clark’s body (ripping off his clothing underneath) when he summons it. The uniform also has the unusual quality of disguising Clark’s real appearance from human senses, thus no one recognizes him when he wears it.
Superman meets a cool chick in college named Lois Lane. He later joins the Daily Planet and befriends Jimmy Olsen, a good-hearted young gay man from Brooklyn. Soon afterwards, Superman makes his debut to the world and is embraced as a hero. Around this same time, CIA agent Lex Luthor, a guy in charge of finding UFOs, reveals the discovery of a rocket-ship that crashed to Earth only recently, a ship that looks suspiciously like Kal-El’s.
Superman is then attacked by Ty-Zor who has come to kill the "child of the prophecy" at last. They do some mid-air martial arts attacks against each other. During the fight, Superman learns about his parents on Krypton, of how his mother was killed during an interrogation and how Jor-El is still a prisoner of the Zor's. When Ty-Zor traps Lois in a tank of water with kryptonite in it, Superman saves his love from drowning but dies from radiation poisoning in the process.
On Krypton, Jor-El senses his son’s death. He then guts himself in the stomach, forcing his own death. In the land of death (or whatever), Jor-El’s spirit approaches Kal-El’s spirit and explains that if Kal dies now he can’t fulfill the prophecy of the alien champion who will endure a great trial on a faraway world and then return to free Krypton. Kal-El agrees he will do what he must and so his spirit returns to his body and he digs himself out of his own grave.
Jor-El literally talked Kal into resurrecting. Now, there was a similar scene to this in the comics when Pa Kent had a heart attack and had a vision of speaking and pleading to Superman’s spirit, but at least in the comics there was also the explanation that outside factors (the government Cadmus Project using energy beams on Superman’s body) that kept him somewhat alive and later we saw the Eradicator restoring him with Kryptonian technology. Here, it’s literally as simple as Supeman deciding he wants to live again.
So Superman wakes up and apparently some time has passed since his death because the Kryptonians have taken over and Luthor has been named the local human warlord/liaison for them. Superman engages in huge super-human battles that involve him once again displaying a strange style of mid-air martial arts. Finally, Luthor himself joins the battle, revealing that he’s actually been a Kryptonian spy living secretly on Earth for years.
That's right. The guy who in many comic books has espoused that his true motivation for defeating Superman is to prove that human beings don't need him and that he can overcome Kryptonian might by the sheer power of his intellect ... is revealed to be just another alien super-villain.
Alien Luthor and Superman fight, our hero wins, and then Superman takes Luthor into custody and flies off to Krypton, ready to take on the rest of the Zor family. Thus would end the first of a trilogy.
Think about that. Think about how dumb that would have been. And now be grateful that the biggest complaint about Superman Returns seems to be "not enough happened" or "there wasn’t enough action." I'm not saying it was a fantastic movie, but it could have been so much worse, kids. Especially because Jon Peters was there.
I'm sure that without the presence of Peters, Abrams will be allowed to do much better work on the upcoming 
Star Trek film. So cross your fingers, kids. And we’ll speak more about film adaptations next Thursday.
My thanks to Moriarty at Ain’t It Cool News (a wonderful professional news site worthy of much respect) for making his review of J.J. Abrams’ Superman script available to the public.
- Alan Kistler ...
Preview for Next Week: The conclusion of my discussion of comic book film adaptations. We shall discuss movies a comparison between the Hulk TV show with Bill Bixby and Ang Lee's movie from a few years ago.
Quote of the Week: "No sucker-punches to the stomach. That's how Houdini died and I ain't going down like that!"
(Last Week's Quote was from the film A Few Good Men)
The next column can be found HERE.
Reader Comments (8)
And dude -- you're gonna list Smith's credits and include <I>Chasing </I>frickin <I>Amy</I>? Couldn't you have listed, y'know, one of his <I>good</I> films?
KISTLER'S RESPONSE:
I was unaware and shall quickly correct my last statements.
As for Chasing Amy, I enjoyed the film. Sorry. :-)
And that you're not wearing pants.
KISTLER'S RESPONSE:
Most people are indeed amazed by the pants thing. Then they grudgingly accept it.
KISTLER'S RESPONSE:
No problem, friend.
KISTLER'S RESPONSE:
I actually agree with you on that. Personally, I always liked the idea of the robots Kelex and Ned guarding the Fortress. But Kevin Smith himself found it ridiculous and whether he was wrong or not it is rather silly to imagine Superman would build robot polar bears to act as watchdogs. :-P
KISTLER'S RESPONSE:
As well you should be. But that's no reason not to try if the people behind it are fans of the original product. :-D
I'm probably just over-thinking the whole thing, but some aspects of the comic just don't seem like they'd be able to translate well. Specifically the voices of the Endless.
It's also what I'm worried about with Dr. Manhattan and the "Watchmen" movie. How does "blue background" sound?