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Superman V: The Sordid Story
ThePuceGuardian writes "With Superman Returning from development hell next summer, perhaps Slashdot's readership would appreciate this summary of the 10+ years spent in development, and the sequel that never quite was.
Years of stupidity and outright seething contempt for the fans who were expected to shell out for the franchise are detailed, from the Kevin Smith era, through Tim Burton and including 'McG's short but not short enough association with the project. The summary ends in mid-2004, which is about a decade after the whole sordid affair should have been capped off, and right before the current production started up.I just have to include this quote:
"Michael Bay was offered to direct the film again, but he felt the script violated the essence of Superman and refused the offer."
WhenMichael Bay declines your project for reasons of artistic integrity, I think it's time to consider a new line of work.."
When Michael Bay declines your project for reasons of artistic integrity
What's the problem with Michael Bay? Let me see.
# Armageddon (1998)
# Pearl Harbor (2001)
# Bad Boys II (2003)
# The Island (2005)
Oh, now I understand...
--
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Ok, so here's a better link to the aforementioned video blogs: http://www.bluetights.net/bulletin_list.php
because we can all agree that the top grossing films ever had absolutely no artisitc value? note, that link goes to inflation adjusted box office numbers. Looking at it the other way, while not a level playing field, would have me agreeing with you.
Top 3 billing:
Kevin Spacey .... Lex Luthor
.... Clark Kent/Kal-El/Superman
.... Lois Lane
Brandon Routh
Kate Bosworth
Posted anonymously 'cause I don't need the karma.
marlon brando will be in the new movie, they're using footage from the older superman films, hes playing the same part (jor-el)
http://www.superdickery.com/
Superman is a dick.
(Now I'd LOVE to see a movie that contains a good compilation of events from this site.)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Ironically, the book Gladiator on which Superman was most likely based (written in 1930 by Philip Wylie) featured a "superman" archetype going to congress and trying to strongarm them into disarming. Kind of a naive, idealistic view for 1930...
I don't recall two and three even showing up in theaters.
Superman II grossed over 100 million. It was a hit by all accounts and is considered by many to be one of the best superhero movies of all time. The franchise jumped the shark with Superman III which co-starred *Richard Pryor*.
Try sorting by the domesting box office returns... not the 'adjusted' ones.
It's not pretty. Moviegoers are, by and large, dumb.
(the world box office returns aren't much better, but at least LOTR gets second...).
He's yet another music video hack turned big-budget feature hack -- and possibly the worst of that dismal breed.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Actually, I think Smallville is in it's 5th season.
And they have done a pretty darn good job actually. They have several villain type situations:
a) Superman encounters regular criminal mob often jeopardizing his friends. He is also trying to keep his powers underwraps and out of observation.
b) The meteorite rocks that came from Krypton with Superman cause mutations in humans. Often resulting in super-powered villains. (Or more usually people who's emotional instabilities become super-powered.) The overweight girls who gets such a super-high metabolism that she loses 100lbs overnight. But it keeps speeding up. So she starts sucking the fat directly from other people's bodies.
c) The third and most interesting villainry was done so with ingenius intuition. They made Clark Kent and Lex Luthor "best friends" and the strain of the divergent relationships and conflicts and dishonesty on both parts makes for some interesting tension and episodes.
d) The last set of villains are his kryptonian influences (father, sexy kryptonian wanna be girlfriend, etc) who tend to have a low regard for humanity.
I found this online: the stange and evil tale of the production of Superman V. It spans decades, $50,000,000 is spent before they even have even settled on a writer or director. It's so horrible. It's out of date as it stops in the middle of 2004, but it's so horrible, you have to read it.
The whole thing started in 1987. The Israeli producing team of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (who were cousins, by the way) had bought the film rights to Superman from Alexander and Ilya Salkind, the obnoxious father-son duo who made the first three films. WB gave Golan and Globus' production company Cannon Films $40 million bucks to make Superman IV, and Golan-Globus took the money and spent it all on their other pictures. They only spent $17 million on Superman IV, chopping out key plot sequences (a grand total of 45 minutes' worth of critical story material was excised) and gutting the FX in order to keep the costs down. Anyway, Superman IV bombed because of the hack job Golan-Globus did on it. But since they still had the rights to Superman, they decided to make a fifth film for release in 1989, with Captain America (the one with Matt Salinger and Ronny Cox) director Albert Pyun at the helm. They also planned to reuse all the edited material from Superman IV and to recast Superman with another actor (their antics on IV left Reeve outraged with them). However, Cannon fell on hard times and Golan left to make his own company, 21st Century Films (which went under in the early '90s--he's since re-founded Cannon), and the rights to Superman reverted back to the Salkinds. This was when Superboy was in full swing on TV, and the Salkinds decided to restart the Superman film series using Superboy as the prequel. Hence, Superman comic scribe Cary Bates and his Superboy writing partner Mark Jones were drafted to write a script pitting Superman against Brainiac in a story set in the bottled city of Kandor. Under the working title Superman: The New Movie, this film was to have been released in 1994, with Superboy star Gerard Christopher taking over for Reeve as Superman. (To this day, the deleted footage from Superman IV remains unaccounted for.)
Well, 1993 rolled around, and WB bought all the non-comics rights to Superman lock, stock, and barrel. WB forced the Salkinds to pull Superboy from the airwaves completely so as not to interfere with the planned Lois & Clark series (which Gerard Christopher auditioned for, and was turned down because he'd played Superboy--that's how Dean Cain got the part), and scrapped the Bates/Jones script. Deciding to base the movie on the "death and return" story from the comic books (they figured that the big sales figures the story racked up would translate into box office success), WB turned the project over to their pet producer Jon Peters--an illiterate, violence-prone wild man (I wish I was making this up, but I'm not--this is all true, every word of it) who got his start as Barbra Streisand's hairdresser/lover and produced the Tim Burton Batman films. Peters, who hates the classic Superman in every way imaginable, set out to reinvent Superman in the "sex, killing, rock & roll, and whatever movie was a hit last weekend" style that all of his movies are based in. So he hired Jonathan Lemkin to write the script.
Lemkin's draft had Superman dying in battle with Doomsday, but managing to impregnate Lois as he's dying by way of Immaculate Conception. Lois is killed off later in the story, but not before giving birth to a baby who grows 21 years in three weeks' time, and takes over as the new Superman and saves the universe from Armageddon. Lemkin's script--which even he proudly boasted was campy and silly--was scrapped because WB thought it was too similar to Batman Forever. So Peters hired porn veteran Gregory Poirier--who scripted Peters' Rosewood, and has since written the bomb See Spot Run and served as writer-director on the much-derided Tomcats--to start over. Poirier's script had an angst-ridden Superman visiting a shrink in order to
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I'm not a Superman reader, but what little I've read ("Kingdom Come", a few others) showed me that Superman's story potential is based around his ability to do pretty much anything versus his unwavering willingness to do good and never let anybody die.
The best stories seem to be built around villains who can manipulate Superman's desire to protect everyone from harm--good, bad and bystander--while they do whatever else they want to do. Superman will torture himself looking for another way in order to avoid killing people, no matter how villainous they may be. It's a bit cliche, but it does make him vulnerable.
Anyway, the Strick script--which Burton adored--was rejected by WB. (In fact, low-level WB execs--then-WB head honchos Bob Daly and Terry Semel were in total support of Burton-Peters--were calling up Kevin Smith and complaining about how Burton and Peters were screwing up the project.) So Burton hired Akiva Goldsman--one of the writers initially considered to replace Kevin Smith--to rewrite Strick's script. Goldsman's rewrite was rejected. Then Burton hired Ron Bass to rewrite Goldsman's rewrite of Strick's script. Bass's rewrite was rejected. Then Burton hired Dan Gilroy to rewrite Bass' rewrite of Goldsman's rewrite of Strick's script. For the moment, WB was appeased. Meanwhile, Burton kept changing his mind about the film's design scheme, and was constantly ordering the art teams to change whatever it was they were doing every day and telling them they weren't doing things the way he wanted. Cinefex Magazine ran an article about Burton's slave-driving the art team, and concept designer Sylvain Despretz went on record as saying that the designs Burton and Peters wanted had little or nothing to do with either the comic books or with the traditional Superman image.
[However, Despretz thinks that movies based on comic books are what's dumbing down cinema--he doesn't believe comics deserve to be translated to film--and he said flat-out that the fans' complaints about Burton's attempted changes to Superman were petty and unimportant. "It's just a movie, everything they were complaining about was inconsequential," he claimed. So really, he and Burton-Peters were on the same page the whole time. Ditto for his fellow concept artist Rolf Mohr, who shared his lack of respect for the Superman character and stated that he went out of his way to avoid being influenced by the comics. Concept artist James Carson was even more anti-fan, asserting that if the fans don't like WB's intended radical changes to Superman, they should pony up the money and make their own Superman movie. Toy designers for Hasbro who were working on the film also complained about the fans, asserting that they should just get over the changes and accept them. Another designer, Brian Lawrence, justified the changes by saying that it was best to think of Burton's Superman as a completely new character who just happened to share the same name as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creation. The only member of the art team who had any respect for the material and the fans was the aforementioned Pete Von Scholly, who openly stated that Burton and Peters were going about the project the wrong way and that it should have been turned over to fans of the comics from the start. He still feels that way, especially in light of the recent developments on the film.]
Nicolas Cage, having been fighting tooth and nail against Burton and Peters' vision of Superman (even though he'd been putting on a happy public face about working with them), angrily demanded that he be allowed to wear the classic Superman costume and fly. So WB relented much to Burton's dismay, ordering up a rubber Superman suit and flying FX tests. (According to Superman CINEMA, a chintzy, Sam Jones-as-Flash Gordon-type Superman suit was dished up as well, but it went over like a lead balloon.) However, when Cage tried on the rubber suit, it looked stupid. And when they stuck a long-haired wig on him, it looked even worse. And after Burton and Gilroy were finished with their rewritten script, WB looked it over and loathed it. Even worse, all of Burton and Peters' screwing around and causing trouble resulted in the film being budgeted somewhere between $140-190 million. So, in April 1998, just weeks before the film was to start shooting, WB put the film on indefinite hold. By this time, about $30-40 million (including the pay-or-play contracts for Burton and Cage--$20 million for Cage, $5 million for Burton) had already been spent on the project, with nothing to show for it. [It's well over $50 million now, given all the stupidity that occurred beyond this.]
It was at thi
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At any rate, this script sparked a horrific backlash in which the feedback was 95% negative (very, very, very few people liked it). An Internet petition was soon set up, garnering over 12,000 signatures and angry comments to date (including outraged responses from comic book pros Mark Waid, Stan Lee, Ron Lim, Kevin Smith, Tom Sniegoski, Ian Hannin, Tom Orzechowski, Mike Allred, and Larry Hama). But the outrage was swiftly silenced when WB dispatched Abrams to call up AICN sitemaster Harry Knowles--who himself reacted negatively to the script--and spin-doctor him into supporting the project. (An October 1, 2002 scoop at Superman CINEMA exposed Abrams' call as a PR stunt by WB to shut the fans up.) In his call, Abrams admitted that the script was the real deal, and claimed that the negative reaction to his script was due to Moriarty "having an axe to grind." The reason he gave for the script's poor quality was that he wrote it in four weeks, and he justified the changes he made to Superman by claiming that he doesn't want to "plagiarize Richard Donner's Superman" (which is a pretty neat trick, as every other incarnation of Superman followed the source material just as much as Donner did, and since the destruction of Krypton and the like is in the comics). At any rate, he claimed that the death scene was cut solely for time and pacing reasons, that WB ordered him to change Luthor back into a human, and that the "gay Jimmy" stuff was intended as verbal humor. Otherwise, he dismissed inquiries about the script's most visible flaws (Krypton not exploding, Superman's costume being alive, etc.) with a "We'll see."
Well, his "we'll see" turned out to be a "screw you," when WB sent out press releases touting the new script as a bold "re-imagining" of Superman and lavished praise on Peters and Abrams for masterminding said "re-imagining" together. (Abrams later bragged that he wasn't the least bit bothered by the negative feedback, and that he'd gotten far more accolades for his script than brickbats.) Furthermore, AICN's 10/2/02 "Weekly Recap" reported that WB immediately began pre-production on the film, with more talk of the film being the first in a trilogy. Even worse, the spin-doctoring worked, as Harry Knowles sold out Moriarty and reversed his stance completely, praising the Abrams script to the skies and bringing the fan uprising to a screeching halt. In fact, the fans did a total 180 and started supporting the script, proclaiming that change is good and so long as Superman himself stays the same personality-wise, any change WB makes is OK by them. Pretty soon, those opposed to the "re-imagining" were reduced to a much-mocked and derided minority. (The fans also started voicing claims that the traditional Superman "has had enough of a chance and is now a failure," and that these changes were just what the doctor ordered to make the character a sensation again. Any criticisms of the project were condemned by the fans as ignorant, ignoble, needlessly negative and faithless, and "being afraid of change." Worse still, many fans adopted the attitude that anyone unhappy enough with WB's plans to avoid the Superman movie has no right to utter one word of complaint about the project, that you can only complain about the movie so long as you go to see it anyway--in simpler language, you must be a two-faced, spineless WB tool in order for your opinions to be respected. This attitude is still in full swing, most notably on the message boards at Superhero Hype and Superman CINEMA.) As a capper to this whole mess, Superman CINEMA reported in a 9/27/02 scoop that the current brass at WB knows absolutely nothing at all about Superman; not only have they never read the comics, but they've never even seen the Christopher Reeve movies or any other incarnation of the character. This is why they're so supportive of the Peters/Abrams script; they're every bit as ignorant about the character as Peters is. Anthony Hopkins signed up to play Jor-El in the film soon afterwards, but admitted that he had yet to read th
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BTW, the author of "Ubermensch!" wasn't Kim Stanley Robinson, it was Kim Newman.
"We shall party like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean." - HedonismBot
However, Variety and Superhero Hype painted a slightly different picture of the casting/budget fracas (while confirming the reports of Peters and Ratner going at it, complete with threats of gunplay and bodily harm), reporting that the casting was down to Fraser and Bomer (with The Count of Monte Cristo's Henry Cavill emerging as a dark-horse candidate), and that the budget for the movie was as high as $225 million, with WB trying to scale it down to $200 million (still a Titanic-level amount of money, but WB is 100% convinced the "re-imagining" is a sure thing). As far as the Superman costume, Superhero Hype reported that at the time, the suit--designed by Batman veteran Bob Ringwood--was dark blue, had a red and black S-shield (much like the Max Fleischer cartoons, Kingdom Come, and the post-"OWAW" Superman comics), would have muscle padding similar to the Spider-Man movie costume, and had no cape. Additionally, The Hollywood Reporter's March 17, 2003 scoop reported that Ratner's option to direct Superman expired the previous Saturday, and WB was planning to replace him on the project...which, of course, sparked Peters-puppet/AICN guru Harry Knowles to resume his campaign for Michael Bay, asserting that Bay was the answer to all the film's woes and Ratner was "WB's road to destruction." Then The Hollywood Reporter reported the very next day that Fraser and Bomer were both dumpstered, and that the casting process would be starting over from scratch. As if that wasn't enough, the film's targeted release date was pushed back from Summer 2004 to Summer 2005. According to the LSOK site, the replacement director list of Tarsem, Joseph Kahn, David McNally, and Antoine Fuqua was floated about again, this time with former director McG--who co-authored the offending "re-imagining" with Peters and Abrams--being listed among the hoped-for replacements (shades of Tim Burton being re-considered post-Sleepy Hollow). The Abrams script remained, though, and according to the LSOK site, "WB's dream Superman film is Michael Bay directing from a JJ Abrams script with Jon Peters and Joel Silver producing and Josh Hartnett as Superman." Never mind that Bay and Hartnett already turned them down hard, never mind that Peters and Silver hate each other and have totally incompatible sensibilities, and never mind that Alan Horn has already slammed the door in the faces of any and all potential producers not named "Jon Peters." However, MTV's website ran a scoop that same day where Ratner said that he wanted to cast Ralph Fiennes (Burton's pet choice for Superman, ironically) as Jor-El, Christopher Walken as Perry White, and Anthony Hopkins as Luthor...very bizarre, given that Hopkins was already locked in as Jor-El to begin with. Even weirder, The Westmeath Examiner reported that Steve Martin was in talks with WB to play Perry White. The Moviehole site confirmed rumors that Aussie actor Joel Edgerton (the young Owen Lars in the Star Wars prequels) was being offered one of the Kryptonian villain roles, and even Edgerton found it odd that WB was re-writing the Superman canon. Also, with Bomer's Guiding Light contract expiring later in the year, rumors abounded that he could still be in contention for the title role.
Ultimately, Ratner admitted to Variety that he was off the film, and Superhero Hype! ran a story where Billy Zane was rumored to be one of the candidates for Luthor. In a June, 5, 2003 report, WB told Esquire Magazine that it was Ratner's fault the budget ballooned to $225--not counting the $50-75 million marketing plan or the pre-production costs Peters and his various cohorts incurred over the past ten years. (Of course, WB went out of their way to slant the story to make Ratner look like the bad guy....) And in a weird twist of events, the LOSK site's final update before closing down included the following:
"By the way, I hear the script is gradually improving. Krypton blows up, but a part of it survives and Luthor is a millionaire businessman--not CIA."
Of course, given the way thi
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Slashdotted already, I guess.
---- "A programmer is a person who solves a problem you didn't know you had in a way you don't understand."
KNEEL!
dude, you're totally right.
Hollywood understands its audience very well.
I work in the industry, and the quandary they face is an interesting one. Smarter people shout the loudest, complaining on the grid about what they like and don't like, but their dollars aren't as compelling. The critical maqss audience is pavlovian - market a blockbuster in a familiar way with the familiar effects, etc... and that audience is there.
Do they listen to the geeks who speak with their high speed internet connections? Or to the less than geeky, who speak with their cash. Hollywood has made its choice.
Actually, infrequently, Hollywood appeals to the geeks and smarter folk by making smarter movies - more varied an intelligent (if flawed, movies). The audience responds by not seeing them at all.
The downside of the popular formula culture is that entire generations are otherwise unaware of anything existing otherwise, further reducing the chance of new and novel shit getting done by the institutions of Hollywood.
un burrito me trampeó.
Original article.
Superman was created by 2 kids in 1933. One of them, was born in Canada, but moved to America 10 years earlier at age 7. That is he grew up in America from age 7->17 prior to co-creating Superman. They other creator was pure American. You seem to want to always have half-truths in just about everything that you say.
So in your words, nice anti-truth troll.
And modders, Just remember that Google (and his past postings) is your friend, when it comes to this guy.