Production Hell - Superman Lives

you know it never ceases to amaze me the kind of [ __ ] that can go wrong behind the scenes in hollywood whether it's nightmares shooting conditions the clashing egos of [ __ ] actors or just bloated productions that descend into generalized insanity certain movies have become almost legendary for how difficult they were to make and damn i've had a great old time pointing and laughing at them here but the one thing they all had in common is that they at least managed to get made in the first place for better or worse the director was able to put a finished product up on the big screen for us to laugh at it might not have been the one he wanted but at least it was a film of some sorts but there's one movie that's gone down in infamy as the most expensive film that never was a bloated chaotic creatively unfocused misbegotten attempt to reinvigorate a classic comic book character brought down by a combination of poor hiring choices constant studio interference conflicting ideas and ridiculous casting decisions i'm talking of course about superman lives or superman reborn or batman versus superman or superman flyby depending on how far you want to go down that particular rabbit hole but whatever shitty name you want to slap on it the point is that this movie was an absolute disaster from start to finish wasting five entire years and tens of millions of dollars without shooting a single frame and since it's fun to look back on some of hollywood's most embarrassing failures let's kick off the next installments of production hell to understand how exactly this cluster [ __ ] came to be i need to take you back in time to 1987 with the release of superman 4 the quest for peace i mean i could probably make another production hell video based entirely around that movie but the short version is that it was a bomb desperately shouted out by a studio that was both creatively and financially bankrupt pretty much everyone hated it including christopher reeve and it basically killed the prospect of further superman films for at least a decade in fact the character in general was going through some pretty tough times roundabout then having been around for more than 50 years he was seen as tired dated and unfashionable by the early 90s and sales of the comics were plummeting clearly something needed to change and as it turned out that change came in the form of the death of superman storyline where he basically got killed in an epic battle with doomsday and ultimately resurrected it was a pretty smart move and it provided the shot in the arm needed to revive the character needless to say hollywood saw an opportunity to do the same thing with the movie version so warner brothers snapped up the rights in 1993 and set about writing a new script based on the death of superman this time called superman reborn nice one chaps unfortunately the guy they chose to write it had no [ __ ] experience with comic books and even less understanding of the superman character amongst the creative gems in his script you would have seen clark kent visiting a therapist getting into relationship problems with lois and wearing a robotic suit to fight doomsday after losing his superpowers it was pretty [ __ ] to be honest and warner brothers knew it so they brought in more people to try to rewrite it but instead of cutting out the bad stuff and replacing it with something better all they really managed to do was add in more characters and subplots which further muddied the waters and after plugging away at this ship for three years it was pretty obvious the project was going nowhere but cometh the hour cometh the man and in this case the man in question was a talented young screenwriter named kevin smith now these days old kevin is best known as a shameless disney show desperately hoping to score a gig with them and endlessly dining out on the uh glory days of jay and silent bob but back in the mid 90s he was a rising star fresh off the success of mall rats and say what you want about the guy but he knows his [ __ ] when it comes to comic books discarding the completely unworkable script for superman reborn he pitched a whole new idea to john peters the head of warner brothers it was still based on the death of superman comic featuring brainiac and lex luthor teaming up to destroy superman but it was much more focused and true to the characters according to smith peters loved his ideas and commissioned him to write a new script on three conditions one superman doesn't fly two he doesn't wear his red and blue costume three he has to fight a giant spider in the finale what he also demanded the inclusion of a robotic dog for merchandising reasons and an android assistant for brainiac that he described as and i quote a gay r2d2 with attitudes by the way if you ever need help figuring out whether something was designed in the 1990s just look for the word attitude it'll be in there somewhere trust me needless to say all this stuff wasn't great news for smith instead of writing his own story he was basically just there to implement john peter's increasingly [ __ ] ideas but if you're a comic book fan and you've got the chance to write a superman script well i guess you find a way to make it work and that's exactly what he did his finished script was called superman lives and somehow he managed to incorporate all the studio demands while telling a mostly coherent story peters and the rest of the guys at warner brothers were satisfied and the movie went into pre-production now what they really needed was a director and that's where things started to go wrong kevin smith pitched the idea of tim burton directing because he'd done great work with batman and directed a string of hits so he was red-hot in hollywood at the time it's a nice sentiment but in retrospect it was a bit like a turkey proposing the idea of thanksgiving tim burton took one look at his script and refused to work with it so smith was politely asked to leave the project while burton brought in his own people to rewrite the script pretty soon the whole movie took on a darker edgier tone superman was reimagined into a broody angsty socially awkward outsider pondering existential questions about the nature of humanity and his place in the world needless to say this isn't the kind of character that a guy like christopher reeve could play reeve was too old by this point and a tragic accident had left him paralyzed from the neck down so a new actor was gonna have to be brought in to play superman and as it turns out the actor they wanted was nick cage these days he's basically a walking meme churning out 10 direct-to-dvd movies a year in a never-ending quest to dig himself out of that tax hole those bavarian castles aren't going to pay for themselves nick but back in the late 90s he was still a big box office draw and he was already a big fan of the superman character so he had no problem signing on especially since he was guaranteed 20 million dollars whether the film even got made or not the point is this combination of gothic art house director questionable actor and a general culture of trying to make everything cool and edgy created the perfect storm of pretentious late 90s shittiness leaked footage of nic cage screen test in different superman costumes gives you some idea of what they were gonna do with this it looks cheap and plasticky and goofy as [ __ ] and the idea of this guy playing the world's most iconic superhero just seems well as laughable as it sounds michael keaton managed to get away with his clunky bat suit because he was shot in virtual darkness but with superman there would be nowhere to hide from it to make matters worse burton's new script called for a budget of 190 million dollars which in today's money is around 300 million making it easily one of the most expensive movies ever made naturally warner brothers were starting to get a bit nervous about this not only was the film years behind schedule but it was also shaping up to be their biggest financial gamble of all time and as they just recently learned from batman and robin these gambles don't always pay off further script rewrites were ordered to trim the budget by about 50 these rewrites combined with constant interference and demands from peters pissed off burton and forced repeated delays they'd already spent about 30 million dollars by this point and apart from a few half-hearted screen tests they basically accomplished [ __ ] all sets were built and dismantled without warning or explanation art and costume departments produced wild concepts for alien monsters antagonists environments and equipment without being told what they were for or how they'd fit into the story it was a production trapped firmly in development hell unable to move forward but with too much invested to be shut down eventually it was all too much for tim burton and he dropped out of the project to direct sleepy hollow instead the studio briefly considered an entirely new script called man of steel before going back to the original tim burton version the problem is that it was a very tim burton kind of script and nobody else was willing to direct it michael bay oliver stone brett ratner and simon west were all approached and all of them turned it down the departure of nick cage in june 2000 was the final nail in the coffin for superman lives and production was shut down completely it would be another six years before a new superman movie finally got made in the form of superman returns funnily enough it contains none of the elements that would have been in superman lives because apparently the studio were so [ __ ] disgusted by the debacle that they refused to even talk about it again honestly when i think about the time money and creative energy that must have been wasted on superman lives it's hard to think of a better example of studio mismanagement miscommunication and sheer [ __ ] hollywood hubris it feels like a movie that everyone wanted to see but nobody really understood how to make a film spawned from a single good idea and then blown on the winds of whatever seemed cool and edgy at the time they used the death of superman comic because it was a cool and edgy story they hired tim burton because he was a cool and edgy director they hired nicolas cage because he was a cool and edgy actor they even retooled superman's personality and appearance to make him what they considered to be cool and edgy now that's great in everything but the problem is that one decade's cool and edgy is another decade's dated and cheesy and truly there are a few things more dated and cheesy than late 90s comic book movies superman as a character is supposed to be timeless and classic that's the reason he's been around longer than your [ __ ] grandad and trying to make him fit in with whatever fashions and fads happen to be in vogue at the time just proves that you can only bend the character so far before he breaks of course the one question we'll never be able to answer is could superman lives actually have been any goods i mean i'll be honest with you here as a film critic the idea of tim burton directing nick cage in a robotic superman costume as he fights the giant spider set by christopher walken just sounds [ __ ] awesome man but probably not in the way warner brothers intended tim burton certainly has a niche as a director and he did a lot to erase the campy adam west tv show from the batman legacy but honestly i really can't imagine him directing an epic superman film likewise nick cage was a great performer in his day and as much as i respect their willingness to cast unconventional actors in well-known roles the sad fact is not everyone can play every character that's why you don't see melissa mccarthy as wonder woman could nick cage play a [ __ ] alien struggling to fit into human society absolutely he's been doing it his whole life but could he convincingly play superman are you serious also this film would have come along at a pretty rough spell for comic book movies when the batman franchise was busy being joel schumachered into campy cartoonish oblivion in fact i actually heard rumors that they were planning to tie superman lives into some kind of [ __ ] up shared dc universe a full decade before the mcu was even a thing and if that's the case damn the mind boggles at what gems might have come out of it could you really imagine the joel schumacher batman teaming up with nick cage to fight cosmic super villains not a great plan ultimately then regardless of what it might have become superman lives should probably be remembered as a cautionary tale for movie producers today it's exactly the kind of mess that happens when there's too much money too much interference too many competing ideas and no strong creative vision to tie it all together and drive it forward to completion and the end result is 30 million dollars spent on well nothing at all damn i could think of better ways to spend that kind of money anyway that's all i've got for today go away now

Channel: The Critical Drinker

Views: 880,237

Keywords: kevin smith, superman reborn, the death of superman, nicolas cage, batman, tim burton, review, retrospective

Id: AjvrojdqQRw

Length: 13min 5sec (785 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/IE49er]

The documentary they did showed this was going to be one strange version of Superman.