Lost
Son Of Krypton
by Mike Russell
Read the web-only "Director's
Cut" here.
creenwriters
Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty worked 24/7 to help Bryan
Singer resurrect the Man of Steel, pitting Superman against
his mightiest foe:
roiling angst!
uperman’s
return to the big screen is one of the most convoluted — and expensive — development
stories in Hollywood history.
After 1987’s “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” cold-cocked
the franchise that Richard Donner launched so reverently
in 1978, the Man of Steel went into a 17-year development
coma.
The behind-the-scenes saga is long, silly
and mind-bogglingly pricey.
•
There were abortive drafts (including a few by “Clerks” writer-director
Kevin Smith) that tried to adapt the 1993 “Death of
Superman” comic-book storyline, with producer Jon
Peters allegedly suggesting the inclusion of giant spiders
and/or
computerized archvillain Brainiac fighting polar bears
at the Fortress of Solitude.
• Tim Burton (“Batman,” “Planet of the Apes”) subsequently
developed a version that reportedly jettisoned both the classic costume and Superman’s
ability to fly, with Nicolas Cage donning whatever replaced the cape and tights.
•
Wolfgang Peterson (“The Perfect Storm”) developed a “Batman
vs. Superman” film.
•
McG (“Charlie’s Angels”) and Brett Ratner (“Rush Hour”)
were at different times attached to direct a controversial script by J.J. Abrams
(TV’s “Alias”) that completely re-invented the Superman
mythos against the backdrop of an interstellar war.
Enter director Bryan Singer — and Michael
Dougherty and Dan Harris.
Dougherty and Harris had some experience with
chaotic superhero franchises: They cut their teeth as a screenwriting
team
on the set of “X2” — working
around the clock to help director Singer find a third act mid-shoot.
And when Singer came up with a clever (and
more traditional) idea to resurrect the “Superman” franchise in 2004, he brought Dougherty, Harris
and much of his “X-Men” production team with him.
With Donner’s blessing, Singer chose to continue, rather than re-boot,
the “Superman” series — aiming to capture the spirit (if
less of the slapstick) associated with “Superman: The Movie” and “Superman
II.” The film follows Clark Kent’s (Brandon Routh) return to Earth
after a multi-year trip to the cold remains of his original home, the planet
Krypton. He comes back to a more complicated world — one where Lois Lane
(Kate Bosworth) has a fiancé (James Marsden) and a son, and where a
just-out-of-prison Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is plotting an elaborate revenge
that may or may not involve technology stolen from Superman’s Fortress
of Solitude.
In Focus talked with Dougherty and Harris
about Superman, the late Marlon Brando, Lex Luthor, Bryan
Singer, Richard Donner, 24/7 screenwriting — and whether “Superman
Returns” really is the unofficial “Superman III.” An
edited transcript follows.
_____
SUPERMAN’S
EMOTIONAL RESCUE
IN FOCUS: We’ve read in the official release that
Superman’s adventure “takes him from the depths
of the ocean to the far reaches of outer space.”
DAN HARRIS: And that’s literal.
MICHAEL DOUGHERTY: Well, you know, he has to perform certain
kinds of rescues and go underwater.
DH: Just wait and see. We’re taking him places he’s
never been before. We have the technology.
Q. It must be tough to talk about this film and not be able
to say anything.
MD: Actually, it’s kind of fun. Everybody wants to
open their Christmas presents early these days.
Q. The online production documentaries have done a nice
job of showing us a lot without telling us everything.
MD: Mm-hm. It gives people a lot of small appetizers. But
it also calms people’s fears — because there
was definitely a concern that we were gonna take things in
some weird, wild direction after all the other incarnations
[of this project].
Q. Because Superman
is essentially invincible, his best crises tend to be spiritual — whether
or not to use his powers for selfish ends, his love life,
his adoptee status.
What are his spiritual struggles in your movie?
MD: Well, they’re not so much spiritual as they are
emotional.
We’ve seen Superman go up against every imaginable
villain, weapon and obstacle in the movies, TV shows and
comics. So we knew we had to attack him from an emotional
point of view — to give him an emotional obstacle to
overcome, in addition to the physical.
What he’s dealing with [in “Superman Returns”]
is that he’s come back to a world that’s changed
in his absence — and what’s worse, the person
he wants to build a relationship with, Lois Lane, has moved
on.
Q. And has a kid.
MD: And has a kid. It’s a situation that completely
throws him for a loop.
DH: We have this problem, where the guy’s indestructible
and stands for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”:
very strong moral values that aren’t necessarily outdated,
but we’ve seen them before. And you can’t change
that about Superman — [those values] are as indestructible
as he is.
But the world has evolved since Superman was
last on the big screen — it’s more contemporary, edgier and
scarier. It’s in dire need of a hero more than it was
in the ’70s.
It was Bryan’s big idea to send him away for a number
of years, then bring him back — and have the world
kind of move on and change. Bringing Superman back into a
world he doesn’t fit in was the heart of the drama.
Lois Lane has moved on. His mother has moved
on in certain ways. He comes back to situations that aren’t cats
in trees.
Q. His motto is “Truth, Justice and the American Way.” But
what is “Truth”? What is “Justice”?
What is “the American Way”?
DH: It’s been distorted in the last 20 years. That’s
at the heart of Superman’s struggle.
And he’s a good person who doesn’t lie — he
doesn’t break up relationships. It’s the problem
that’s almost impossible for him to solve.
His motivation in this one isn’t entirely the same
as it was in “Superman: The Movie.” He’s
a man with history this time around. He’s been through
years of fighting Lex Luthor. And he’s been away, so
he’s lost his sense of identity. He’s lost his
motivation to be who he is, and he has to re-discover it.
_____
SUPERDAD RETURNS
Q. Fans of the “Superman: The Movie” were gobsmacked
to hear that Marlon Brando’s in “Superman Returns.”
MD: It was really important to us. Bryan’s original
pitch involved bringing Brando back. It wouldn’t feel
right to have some other actor or sound-alike appear as Jor-El.
DH: He was so iconic. If we could work him in without faking
or denigrating anything, how special would that be?
Q. Did it take a lot of negotiating to get the Brando footage?
MD: There was the typical hassle, but it wasn’t a drawn-out
process. I think we were all surprised how quickly things
worked out.
Q. Did you have
to write around the old Brando footage, or?…
DH: There’s no faking or voice-alikes. There won’t
be any of that.
Q. But he does speak in the film?
DH: Uh, in a sense. It’s very cool the way it’s
done; I can’t really get into it. It’s partly
things we remember Jor-El being part of.
_____
IS THIS
‘SUPERMAN III’?
Q. Is “Superman Returns” the unofficial “Superman
III”?
MD: [sighs] OK, um, it’s funny — I think Bryan
and Dan and I need to sit down and discuss this answer.
My personal belief — and I know Bryan has been quoted
as saying differently — is that this is not “Superman
III.” I don’t feel like it’s appropriate
to discount “Superman III” and “IV,” because
a lot of people put a lot of hard work into them, and even
if you don’t think they’re up to a certain quality,
they’re still “Superman” movies.
DH: It’s complicated. If this is a sequel to “I” and “II,” then
everything in “I” and “II” happened.
But if we’re picking and choosing what we want — which
is what I think is what happened, using our memories of “Superman:
The Movie” to build our back story — then it’s
not the specifics, but the broad strokes of those movies
that are part of the “Superman” we’re making.
MD: The comparison I like to make is that they’re closer
to James Bond films. We had a series that starred Sean Connery,
and then the torch is passed to another actor. But they don’t
call a sequel “James Bond 19,” and they don’t
necessarily refer to events that took place in the previous
film. But you do have certain conventions and supporting
characters you’re expected to use well.
DH: We’re trying to have our cake and eat it too — we’re
remembering things we loved about “Superman I” and “II,” and
moving forward at the same time. And we’ve used a big
plot device to let us do both.
MD: But I think I have to sit down with Bryan and discuss
this with him, because he went to a comic-book convention
and said, “Yeah, I guess you could think of this as ‘Superman
III.’” I just slapped my head and said, “Oh!
No! No!”
_____
SCREENWRITING
24/7
Q. Dan, you’ve said of Singer: “Bryan works
with people who develop 24 hours a day. The idea of the draft
goes out the window.” Has that applied to “Superman
Returns”? Any 3 a.m. writing sessions?
MD: Oh, God, yes.
DH: [snorts] God, have we had any 3 a.m. writing sessions….
I spent two birthdays in Australia working, and the majority
of those nights were 3 a.m. sessions. And, you know, we’re
all better people for it.
MD: When you’re working on a film like this, you have
to be available 24/7. Even now that we’re in post,
there are always new ideas creeping in. I’m not surprised
if I get a random phone call.
Q. What’s
the secret to keeping your energy up for that?
MD: Red Bull. It’s that simple. Red Bull, Red Bull,
Red Bull.
DH: The difference between “Superman Returns” and “X-Men
2” is that the three of us nailed out the story of
the movie very early on.
We took a vacation on July 4, 2004, and we
started coming up with the idea. And we were all in such
agreement that
it all kind of poured out at once. We put together 80 or
90 percent of the movie in three days.
We worked all weekend, and on the plane ride
home, we worked on the treatment. The good news is that it
really hasn’t
changed much since then. We had a strong backbone. So from
one draft to the next, it wasn’t like “X-Men
2,” where we were constantly re-writing the third act.
It’s mostly character work, trying to get our story
as clear as possible, trying to get our dialogue as witty
as possible.
And ultimately, Superman isn’t just one character.
You’re not just writing for Superman. Superman is different
from Clark Kent, who’s different from Kal-El. And when
he’s alone, what’s the voice in his head?
Q. The scene I’m most looking forward to seeing is
the one featured in the teaser trailer — where he’s
floating alone, above the Earth, listening to the planet.
DH: Yeah. It’s turned
into one of the more iconic moments in the movie. It was
in the first treatment.
The question was, “How does Superman know who to save?
Let’s clarify those rules.” And so we decided
he has a perch where he goes, high above the Earth, and he
hears every single sound on the planet all at once, and he
whittles them down by importance, basically — until
he finds that once sound he’s gotta go after.
It solved a logic issue for us, and became
a beautiful kind of metaphor.
_____
THE JOY OF LEX
Q. Many people love
the first hour-and-a-half of “Superman:
The Movie,” which is somber and reverent — but
have mixed reviews for the more overtly comical second half.
Which leads me to ask how you guys are handling Lex Luthor.
MD: That was always one of the hardest parts about the film,
finding the right tone for Lex. Because as much as we enjoyed
Gene Hackman’s performance, there was a large segment
of the population that was like, “Can we get a more
serious and menacing villain here?”
DH: We know Hackman’s classic performance, and when
he was on, he was really on — but some of the comedy
doesn’t work nowadays. How do we change that character
and move him forward?
Well, Lex Luthor’s been in prison, because of Superman,
for five years — and it’s really hardened him
and darkened him. There’s still that hint of witty
Lex, but this time around he’s a sadist out for revenge.
It’s a much scarier side of Lex Luthor.
MD: But at the same time, he enjoys what he does. You want
to like the guy. He’s not as grim as someone like Magneto,
say, or as serious or heavy-handed. We had to throw in a
dash of comedy — but black comedy.
Q. Some recent comics
have given Lex Luthor a very valid point of view: Superman
is an alien
being. Maybe we shouldn’t
trust him.
DH: Yeah. In this movie, someone says, “Well, you’re
not a god, Lex.” And he says, “No, I’m
not a god. Gods are selfish little beings who fly around
in red capes and don’t share their powers with mankind.”
I think people are going to be afraid for
that confrontation between Superman and Lex Luthor that finally
happens, because
it’s so built up.
_____
FLEISCHER-ESQUE
Q. Michael, with
your animation background, the classic Max Fleischer “Superman” cartoons
have to have been somewhere in the back of your mind as
you were writing
this.
MD: Yeah, they were. Fleischer had a way of making Superman
move that I don’t think we’ve ever seen on the
big screen in live action. Only now, with today’s technology,
can we make him move as fluidly as Fleischer did. There’s
a certain … ease that he has when he’s flying
in this film.
Donner did an amazing job with what he had
in the late ’70s — but
Superman was almost always flying in kind of a straight line,
or landing, and that’s as far as he got. But getting
that sense of stopping in mid-air, and then darting in an
entirely different direction? We can do that now.
Q. It’s great
to have a former animator writing this.
MD: We’d be watching the pre-viz — which is kind
of an animated storyboard — and I kept finding myself
giving criticisms or advice. Bryan would say, “His
takeoff doesn’t look right!” And I’d say, “That’s
because he has no anticipation — that’s when
a character bends his knees before jumping in the air.” That’s
an animation term. “His cape needs more secondary action.”
_____
‘THIS
TOWER OF
VIVID COLOR AND RIGHTEOUSNESS’
Q. From the production
stills I’ve seen, it looks
like this might be the first “Superman” movie
where Superman and Clark Kent actually look like two different
people.
MD: That’s a first.
Yeah.
When we dealt with Brandon on-set, it was
like we were dealing
with two different people. When he was Clark, he was approachable.
But when he was Superman, he had such an imposing presence,
it was hard to make eye contact with him or even talk to
him. I think we felt like the characters in the film — Superman
is this celebrity who makes you nervous.
DH: The second he walked in the makeup room — and he
had the curl done, and he was like 6-foot-6 with the boots — we
all went, “Gad. Holy shit.” He was this tower
of vivid color and righteousness in that all-white room with
grey floors. Ever since then, it’s been a whole other
movie.
I felt myself reacting to a character, not
an actor. I think the only other person I’ve felt that
way around was Patrick Stewart as Xavier. There was something
reverent about
Patrick in that wheelchair.
_____
READ MY LIPS:
NO NEW POWERS
Q. One problem I
had with the “Superman” sequels
as they went along was that they kept adding ridiculous new
powers to the Man of Steel’s repertoire. I’m
thinking specificially of that big cellophane “S” he
threw on Non.
Was there a conscious effort to pare down of that sort of
thing for this film?
MD: There was never any effort to pare down his powers — but
we definitely did stay away from trying to introduce any
new ones — like, say, telekinetic finger rays and cellophane “S”es.
His powers are being used in, I guess, a realistic fashion.
So no. No strange new abilities.
Q. No magic amnesia kiss?
MD: Yeah.
Q. Singer had a
yen for explaining every comic-book convention in his “X-Men” films — even seemingly silly
elements like Magneto’s helmet always had a purpose.
I’m dying to see how he explains the Super-suit and
the “S.”
MD: Well, you know, we didn’t really try to go out
of our way to do that. The suit, we all agreed, has a Kryptonian
origin, but we didn’t go into detail about that. And
as for the “S,” it’s definitely a family
symbol.
Q. Yeah, that was pretty clearly established in the first
film.
MD: In fact, I believe that was Donner’s idea. And
we just continued that.
DH: It was just a matter of exploring it. When we see the “S,” is
it just something we saw on a tinfoil suit? [laughs] Was
it part of the architecture somewhere? What does it mean?
Thank God there was that swath of fabric in
the baby’s
pod [in “Superman: The Movie”]. That’s
the suit. He didn’t make it himself.
Q. Yeah, Donner laid a lot of good groundwork. He really
was the man for his time and place.
DH: He really was. And in our development of this movie,
we happily echoed what he was doing. 
_____
