DBWI: Tim Burton Doesn't Make "Superman Lives!"

In 1998, Tim Burton's "Superman Lives!" was released into theaters worldwide. Starring Nicholas Cage as Superman, the film was Burton's attempt to explore the iconic character after having abandoned the Batman franchise six years earlier. The film had a rocky pre-production period and came close to being cancelled. What if "Superman Lives!" had never been made?
 

gurgu

Banned
probably we won't be persecuted in nightmare by a superman with nicholas cages face
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Superman Lives is horribly overrated if you ask me, yeah it had its good moments and Hopkins was a good Lex Luthor but the film suffered from Cage's schizo Superman, Kevin Smith's all-over-the-place script, no really can somebody explain what was he thinking with that giant spider-I'm sorry "Thanagarian Snare Beast" in the climax? It came out of nowhere and it wasted valuable time we could've spent resolving the plot. It didn't matter in the long run anyway since the Michael Bay-directed sequel Superman Returns was so badly hated the Superman franchise was reburied until Rian Johnson brought it back as part of the DC Cinematic Universe.

Who knows what the film franchise would've been like if Burton's film didn't pan out. Maybe Bryan Singer would've directed it later, he was hoping to direct a sequel to Superman Returns before WB pulled the plug on the whole thing. Although that does mean that the X-Men film series would become very different if he left the series after the first or second film, sure the third one was a bit of clusterf@ck with both the Phoenix Saga being adapted into the same film that introduced the Hellfire Club and there were way too many characters, but Cyclops actually got sh!t to do this time around, Sigourney was awesome as Emma Frost and Famke Janssen was great as Dark Phoenix.
 

gurgu

Banned
Superman Lives is horribly overrated if you ask me, yeah it had its good moments and Hopkins was a good Lex Luthor but the film suffered from Cage's schizo Superman, Kevin Smith's all-over-the-place script, no really can somebody explain what was he thinking with that giant spider-I'm sorry "Thanagarian Snare Beast" in the climax? It came out of nowhere and it wasted valuable time we could've spent resolving the plot. It didn't matter in the long run anyway since the Michael Bay-directed sequel Superman Returns was so badly hated the Superman franchise was reburied until Rian Johnson brought it back as part of the DC Cinematic Universe.

Who knows what the film franchise would've been like if Burton's film didn't pan out. Maybe Bryan Singer would've directed it later, he was hoping to direct a sequel to Superman Returns before WB pulled the plug on the whole thing. Although that does mean that the X-Men film series would become very different if he left the series after the first or second film, sure the third one was a bit of clusterf@ck with both the Phoenix Saga being adapted into the same film that introduced the Hellfire Club and there were way too many characters, but Cyclops actually got sh!t to do this time around, Sigourney was awesome as Emma Frost and Famke Janssen was great as Dark Phoenix.
The other problem is also how Burton put Doomsday as side-antagonist when the character itself in the comics is almost unstoppable...
When the movie batman vs superman came out and they used the same idea for doomsday created from lex luthor i almost left the theater
 
Is anyone going to talk about the damn merchandise this film had? Seriously the only thing I can remember from a young age about the film was all the damn toys and especially the various Superman costumes they had, had they not learned anything from Batman and Robin? I'm sure that little robot sidekick for Brainiac (which even then I could tell was an R2-D2 ripoff) was made purely for toy sake than the story, did anyone get that one?
 
Is anyone going to talk about the damn merchandise this film had? Seriously the only thing I can remember from a young age about the film was all the damn toys and especially the various Superman costumes they had, had they not learned anything from Batman and Robin? I'm sure that little robot sidekick for Brainiac (which even then I could tell was an R2-D2 ripoff) was made purely for toy sake than the story, did anyone get that one?

F@ck me I forgot about that R2 knockoff. Yeah, Superman Lives was a mess, too many villains, a slapdash adaptation of the "Death of Superman" storyline leading to Superman Returns being an equally slapdash adaptation of the "Reign of the Supermen" storyline with Steel and Cyborg Superman getting zero development prior to just showing up in the film and getting very little character. Ehren Kruger's script was terrible, much worse than Smith's script for the first film, Michael Bay's direction made the fights impossible to follow and the 9/11-esque finale less than two months after 9/11 pretty much guaranteed that the film would bomb at the box office.

I'm so glad that Bay never got his hands on the Transformers film series, yeah J. J. Abrams wasn't a great director and you can give him all the sh!t you want for his overuse of lens flares but his Transformers trilogy would've been much worse with Bay's direction and trademark dudebro humor.
 
I don't know I liked Country Cox's portrayal as Lois Lane. it's a shame that because of the hectic schedule her character was written off of Friends, the show probably would have lasted another season
 
Well, one highlight of the film was Michael Keaton returning to play Bruce Wayne. He had a limited but important role in the film's second half. Many critics noted that Keaton carried himself better than Cage, and wished that he and Burton had instead collaborated for a third Batman movie.
 
Well, one highlight of the film was Michael Keaton returning to play Bruce Wayne. He had a limited but important role in the film's second half. Many critics noted that Keaton carried himself better than Cage, and wished that he and Burton had instead collaborated for a third Batman movie.

Rian Johnson's World's Finest was a so much better version of this movie, Oscar Isaac and Armie Hammer were a better Superman and Batman than Cage and Keaton respectively, Heath Ledger was a phenomenal Joker as was Bryan Cranston as Lex Luthor and Doomsday actually had a narrative point as part of Luthor's attempt to both kill Superman and make himself the hero since he knows Doomsday's weakness and can kill him. The DCCU is just great overall, better than either the Burton/Bay Superman duology and Darren Aronofsky's shockingly bad adaptation of Batman: Year One, could they really not get someone other than Frank Miller to write the script?
 
Tim Burton is a great filmmaker who hasn't made a great film, that is because he has never really had a good script to work with and that was the same thing with this movie.
As it was posted by others the studio was more concerned about merchandising, the potential for more sequels, and reaching the foreign markets especially China and that caused some controversial changes in the script where Superman confronted the antagonist and made a speech about freedom and free will that the PRC wanted out.
There was also some controversy over the cut scene where Nicolas Cage as Superman talked to the hologram projected head of his father Jor-El played by an uncredited Christopher Reeves while very moving stoped the movie cold and you could see that on the Special Edition Blu-Ray and DVD.
What Warner Brothers should have done is get a young director who had a couple of hits with low or moderate budget films and let him out his or her own personal stamp on the project.
The only good thing that came out of it was that the glorified haircutter Jon Peters never had anything to do with movies ever again except for cashing checks from his other movies.
 
What Warner Brothers should have done is get a young director who had a couple of hits with low or moderate budget films and let him out his or her own personal stamp on the project.

And that's what they did with Rian Johnson and Superman: Man of Steel and it was awesome. Ben Whishaw was a very tragic Toyman, a solid contrast to Clark Kent's childhood which made him super relatable and he was a great starter villain for Superman and it actually set up World's Finest by having Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne appear in minor roles.
 
And that's what they did with Rian Johnson and Superman: Man of Steel and it was awesome. Ben Whishaw was a very tragic Toyman, a solid contrast to Clark Kent's childhood which made him super relatable and he was a great starter villain for Superman and it actually set up World's Finest by having Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne appear in minor roles.
As much as I dislike Rian Johnson as a director, Man of Steel and World's Finest were great.
Wish I could say the same for The Last Days of Superman. That was subversive for the sake of being subversive.
OOC: Basically the Superman equivalent of The Last Jedi.
 
As much as I dislike Rian Johnson as a director, Man of Steel and World's Finest were great.
Wish I could say the same for The Last Days of Superman. That was subversive for the sake of being subversive.

I actually really liked it, the ending reminded me of my two favorite Superman stories, All-Star Superman and Superman: Red Son and it was a fitting end for the Clark Kent Superman in the DCCU. I don't think it's as good as either Man of Steel or World's Finest but it was good, it was better than Superman Lives.
 
I actually really liked it, the ending reminded me of my two favorite Superman stories, All-Star Superman and Superman: Red Son and it was a fitting end for the Clark Kent Superman in the DCCU. I don't think it's as good as either Man of Steel or World's Finest but it was good, it was better than Superman Lives.
The character assassination of Lex and Lois didn't bother you?
 
Rian Johnson's subversion of Lex being a Kryptonian sleeper agent the entire time

To give Johnson credit, the twist that Luthor was actually a powerless Zor-El this whole time was a novel one and when you look back at his behavior in World's Finest and how his actions contributed to the creation of the Justice League, it sort of makes sense, almost. Like I said I liked the film, I didn't think it was perfect. But the ending was amazing and Oscar Isaac and Scarlett Johansson made me cry when Superman gave Supergirl his cape before his heroic sacrifice, this is how Superman needed to go out. By being a hero and saving the world. Even if the rest of the film sucked (and it didn't, there are plenty of good moments, such as every scene between Kara and Lex) I still would've liked it because of how great the finale was.
 
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