Man Of Steel Rewrite

[fan4stic]

I’d change the opening, develop Zod more, make a cleaner Krypton. Kal is born, they name him. We cut to Zod who is sitting in his home alone, having violent flashbacks of robotic creatures with symbols on their foreheads attacking krypton, killing people, even Zod’s family, the flashbacks are brief, but just enough to see the Kryptonian council surrender to their attacker, a dome enclose over Kandor and make it disappear, Zod is haunted and angry.

Jor-El is studying problems in the planet’s core, but their computers say everything is fine. Jor-El asks Zod to come with him to check a fault line, as a scientist needs to be accompanied by a soldier when going to like the outer lands, access military equipment or whatever, just as a soldier needs authorization by a scientist to access scientific equipment. They talk, it’s clear they’re friends, Jor-El tells Zod about his son, Zod tells Jor-El that he knows a natural birth is illegal. Suddenly a violent earthquake erupts, causing Jor-El to quickly check his readings. They’re off the charts.

Jor-El and Zod quickly rushes back to his lab to check his main computers, which are all reading things as fine, he digs deeper into the programming and finds the same symbol that was on the robotic creatures head embedded into the computers programming, corrupting it. Jor-El is horrified, Zod is furious, yelling about how that thing destroyed their families, their brightest city, and now it’s destroyed THEM, Zod blames the council for bowing to the thing and proclaims them weak.

Jor-El warns the council, as Zod rallies any soldiers loyal to him to save their world while they still can, he does so easily, they attack the council headquarters and take them out, Zod finds Jor-El, and asks him to help him save their world through allowing access to the Codex.

The codex is a computer chip, essentially it’s the brain, it has info on everything, from the genetic code from which all kryptonian children are created, to the entire history of Krypton and all its knowledge, and the how to build and operate a terraforming device called the World Engine, as such a thing has been illegal for a long time due to it requiring a planet with an already habitable environment and thus life.

Jor-El refuses Zod, saying he will not allow Zod to destroy a entire race. Jor-El escapes, accesses the codex, steals it and goes to Lara, telling her they have to leave. Jor-El has set a warning for the planet to give them time to escape, but doubts they’ll be able to as a military security system destroys any ship entering or leaving krypton, but Jor-El has a plan: A space probe, small enough to sneak past the security systems, but big enough to carry maybe one person, or one person and a baby. The probe was designed to send robotic drones to other planets and test the planet’s atmosphere and environment. He sends Lara and Kal-El to the probe, and she goes, begrudgingly, as Jor-El gives her the codex and a special command key for the probe that will guide them when they get to earth, telling her he has to distract Zod’s men to keep them from the probe.

Lara is wounded fatally, maybe by Faora, but she gets into the probe with Kal-El and takes off. She hides the codex in the main engine of the probe just before this happens.

Zod captures Jor-El, and sees the probe teleporting away, he puts two and two together and takes Jor-El prisoner, gets on a large ship with his army, and shuts down the security systems, so he can track the ion trail before it disipates.

Jor-El, though, has thought ahead, and damaged the teleportation device, making it so it would trap them temporarily in the “phantom zone” between the teleportation destinations, giving the trail time to dissipate so they can’t track it. Zod, furious, kills Jor-El.

The majority of the first part of this could be told via hologram by Jor-El in the middle of the movie, if needed. Personally I like the idea of it being played chronologically for character purposes, but for pacing I understand why it would need to not have so much Krypton stuff at the beginning. So, we could start on the birth of Kal-El, cue Title and then cut right to them trying to escape at the opening. Or start with them trying to escape.

And we cut to Earth, where the probe crashes in Kansas at night, near a farm in winter, Jonathan and Martha come out. Lara, barely alive, opens the probe, by pulling the command key out, and they find her, Jonathan tries to save her, but she dies, her last words asking them to protect her son.

Jonathan and Martha lie to a friend of theirs in the hospital by telling them that the baby had been left on their doorstep and asked him to write down that Martha had given birth to the baby over the winter, during a recent snowstorm.

As a child he still has the superhearing and x-ray vision problems, with the same scene where his mom talks to him.

Clark still saves the bus. But the scene with Jonathan is different after, with Jonathan giving off a frustrated emotional response about Clark risking himself to save the kids. Clark questions this about if he should have just let them die, Jonathan just tells him that people will want to exploit him for what he can do and that saving people will always have a cost. He shows him the ship and tells him that he'll be defined by it to those that know where he came from, that they'll see him as the answer to their questions, but then he tells Clark that one day it'll be up to him what he does with his powers and that he's afraid he'll make a choice that will get him hurt, in more ways than physically.

Jonathan dies a different way, a tornado collapses a building, which a teenage Clark holds up, Jonathan’s wounded, but he tells him it’s not serious, he’s lying so Clark won’t try to save him and compromise the stability of the building which could endanger anyone else alive under it, this could be how Clark also discovers his x-ray vision can’t see through lead. This could also be after an argument where Clark says he wants to help people after 9/11, and gets angry at Jonathan.

This causes Clark to feel guilty. Martha gives him the command key to the probe telling him that Jonathan wanted to find out where he came from but he was afraid something would happen to him if he did. She tells him that the only way he’s ever going to be able to live his life is if he discovers the truth. Clark agrees reluctantly and places the command key in the probe, which causes the probe to show a hologram of readings from one other kryptonian ship on the planet. Clark, with Martha’s encouragement, decides to go looking for it. Clark finds the codex in the probe as well.

All these scenes could still be parceled through flashbacks, like in the movie.

Lois Lane (Played maybe by Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is a bit of a low level reporter, a bit of big skeptic, maybe the whole story could be told through the words of Lois writing the story. Her arc could be about her seeing how someone like Clark can show the world that hope for being a hero does exist. She could also win her first pulitzer because of the story. Lois is ignored as a reporter, mainly given bit things in the paper. But she begs Perry to give her a chance with the story on what the government is investigating in the arctic. He agrees.

Clark has spent years searching for leads on aliens. The latest lead coming to him after he finds out about a secret government operation in the Arctic and using his super hearing to listen and gets onto the base where the army is looking for the ship at by sneaking onto the base with his superspeed. The government is giving a false story about what they’re looking for, which is what causes Lois to try and go out to look for herself, which is when she sees Clark and follows him.

When Clark gets inside the ship he finds a 30 year old decapitated robot body in front of the area of the only jettisoned escape pod. The command key is what Clark uses to activate the ship, which activates the Jor-El hologram. But the hologram is more like a recording than being there. Same basic stuff with Lois happens, but Clark doesn’t just leave her on the ice. He drops her off at the army base. When Clark leaves he turns on the cloaking device, which prevents the ship from being tracked by human means.

The activation of the ship causes a beacon to go out and it alerts Zod to the location.

Clark gets the tutorial from Jor-El and the suit, but is reluctant to expose himself to the world. He even argues that his father died to protect him from the world. He’s conflicted, but he tries flying and when he finds some people in trouble he can’t not help them. He decides to help, but avoid being seen. The S on the suit stands for peace and togetherness. It was meant as a show of peace to any planet they encountered.

Meanwhile no one believes Lois about what she saw in the Arctic, because the government has released false statements about it, but when she hears about someone saving people she’s convinced that it’s the same person based on the statements about his powers. But she’s not permitted to do the story. She ignores that and turns the information over to Jimmy Olsen played by Dylan O'Brien, an ex DP photographer, who runs a website about stories. Jimmy mentions that he was fired for his conspiracy theories about aliens.

Lois then decides to go look for the truth herself to find more info. This leads her to as far as Kansas, but she does not discover that Superman is Clark at this point, she gets close, but Clark comes to her asking her to stop. She does. This is where we can develop the Clark/Lois relationship some more, a talk over coffee maybe.

Lois decides to keep the story underwraps. But that’s blown apart when Zod hacks into the satellites and outs Superman as an alien.

Because Jimmy has already posted the story on his website, the government breaks down his door and forces him to tell them who gave him the info.

Lois is taken in by the government to get her to tell them where he is. She’s locked up with Jimmy, who apologizes profusely. Lois responds that it’s okay.

Clark, after seeing all of this, asks Jor-El what he should do, who tells him that he's more important than the life of single human.

Clark then talks with the priest, who tells him that he can’t in all good conscience tell him that he should give himself over, just that he should listen to God to show him the way of what’s good and right.

He turns himself over. But he asks to speak with Lois Lane first. He tells Lois about his planet, what happened to it and that he just wants to help.

Faora doesn’t request that Lois come on the ship. But Clark does give her the command key just in case and tells her where his ship is so that it can be hidden from Zod, because he realized that the codex is what Zod is after, after his talk about Zod with Jor-El.

Lois goes and finds the ship, and has the government take it in.

Zod tells Clark how they got here and about the phantom drive and mentally interrogates Clark by peering into one of his memories where he sees Clark find the codex.

He goes after it and Clark is able to escape, because he told them where the Artic ship was and they scanned it from the mothership and remote linked to it, allowing the Jor-El AI to hack into the mothership computers and release Clark from his restraints.

Clark is able to stop Zod from killing his mother when he discovers that the probe and codex is gone.

Same basic stuff. Less damage. There should be a ramp up. But SV is still damage.

The General afterwards gets in Clark’s face about the damage, blaming him for it. Clark feels guilty about the destruction.

Clark comes up with plan to use the phantom drive in his probe and the information he learned about it from Zod to open the phantom zone up and suck the kyptonians into it, holding them there as prison forever.

Zod maybe dies differently, make a big deal out of it.

Zod and Clark could begin their fight as Zod sees his ships being sucked into the phantom zone. Enraged, he would say that if Kal-El wishes to betray his own people and not see krytpon reformed on earth, then he will kill Kal-El and then destroy those he has betrayed them for.

The fight wouldn’t be so widely shown. It would be more in close ups, as we see Clark struggle to keep the fight away from people and Zod go for people. Zod would slam Clark through the bottom of the building, crippling it. Clark would try to keep the building from being taken down by Zod so the people inside could get out in time. When Zod is about to destroy the main support of the building, Clark is forced to decide to save the people and he fights Zod into the now closing vortex of the phantom zone and he hurls Zod into it, which without a ship, destroys his body, killing him.

Clark is horrified that he killed someone and he is more horrified as he looks around, seeing the destruction that the fight, the terraforming device and the phantom zone brought. He begins helping clean up the destruction.

Show a montage of him helping with that and helping with the rebuilding as we hear people say that they should give him a chance because he saved them, others saying they’re afraid, other saying that they blame him for the damage that the other aliens caused, some saying that he’s apart of that group and him saving them was just a ruse to gain their trust and the government declaring him against the interest of the people and the United States Of America.

He and Lois afterward have a talk on a roof about how he doesn’t know what to do now after everything. She consoles him.

They kiss.

He leaves.

Clark is contemplative later on and talks with Martha, saying that he failed and Martha responding by telling him that he saved the world, to which Clark replies saying that look what he had to do to accomplish it. He says that if he wants to be hero he can’t be that and he wants to be a hero. He says that he’s never felt more at peace than he is by using his powers to help people. He says that he’s sorry to Martha and his father that he can’t hide like that anymore like they wanted now that he’s shown himself to the world.

She says that they never wanted to him to hide, that all her and Jonathan ever really wanted for him was to be happy and have a life. He says he wishes that his father could have known that he could use his powers to save people. She said he did and that he will.

Show flashback of Clark as kid with Jonathan playing with him, holding him up, Clark laughing as Jonathan holds him up as if he were flying.

Clark says that he can be apart of both worlds and that he needs that and wants to live in the normal world with people, so he won’t allow himself to lose sight of life like that again, so he will have more conviction than ever to preserve it no matter what and won’t think of himself as above life and humanity.
Lois’ story about Superman is printed.
Perry White offers Lois the job of lead reporter and Lois accepts, but with the condition that he rehires Jimmy Olsen as her personal photographer.

He reveals himself as Clark Kent to Lois at the end of the movie when hired to the Daily Planet by introducing himself and she recognizes him as Superman. They share a knowing smile. Same end line. Welcome to the planet.

And two post credit scenes, one for Lex, implying they found another kryptonian (Kara) and kryptonite. The other scene for Batman.

Please tell me what you think!

 

[Tg11]

I love it...how the DCEU should have been built and this would have been the perfect Superman film and it could have been used as a platform to further build the DCEU. Love even more that you incorporated post credit scenes too because it follows the Marvel model but better.

 

[Rorschach2012]

I'm honestly not that big of a Zod fan beyond Stamp's fantastic performance.

I would've used Brainiac as the villain of a Superman origin story. Do it like STAS. Brainiac is such a better villain for an origin story over Zod who is basically just a darker version of Superman.

You can only do so many alien invasion movies in one cinematic universe before it begins to feel stale. Wasting two of those few chances on villains like Zod and Steppenwolf was a f***up

 

[Boy Scout]

Sounds pretty good. I’ll never love the idea of Superman killing someone, but I find your version of the event to be a lot more tolerable.

 

[DrCosmic]

I like it! A lot actually. It addresses all the major thematic issues with Man of Steel.

I think though Man of Steel is a fundamentally broken movie. Every bit of it needs to be rethought in order for it to really be a great *Superman* movie. Brainiac as a villain would be a much better continuation of Krypton's systemic entropy than Zod, for instance, but that's just one example. Zod could work, but Zod as a sort of demanding alien invader without the thoughtfulness of a superior first contact film... man. This movie just needs to be reformatted entirely.

 

[Tg11]

Another reason I like it is because you basically introduce Supergirl into the DCEU as well as reintroducing Batman into the DCEU through mid-credit and post credit scenes

 

[OutOfBoose]

I like many character beats in this. MUCH better Kents, MUCH better final confrontation. Superman is more fleshed out too.

Lois is still kinda meh in this. Overly busy Krypton stuff. Zod is rather disposable, because his heavy background with Jor-El doesn't lead anywhere. I mean, giving so much background and origin to Krypton - it's not a history lesson. It needs to have profound impact on future events in terms of character development. If there's none, it's waste of time.

 

[fan4stic]

Another reason I like it is because you basically introduce Supergirl into the DCEU as well as reintroducing Batman into the DCEU through mid-credit and post credit scenes

Did you catch the references to brainiac too? And thanks!

I like many character beats in this. MUCH better Kents, MUCH better final confrontation. Superman is more fleshed out too.

Lois is still kinda meh in this. Overly busy Krypton stuff. Zod is rather disposable, because his heavy background with Jor-El doesn't lead anywhere. I mean, giving so much background and origin to Krypton - it's not a history lesson. It needs to have profound impact on future events in terms of character development. If there's none, it's waste of time.

For Zod, it's important for his character in showing how the controlling aspect of breeding on krypton creates someone inhuman like Zod, where once everything is taken from him, he has no ability to move on. He's simply not truly someone with free will. He becomes simply a tool of destruction, to lash out at everything Clark cares for. It's about breaking Zod's character down more and more until there's nothing left of him but that. Take away his family, krypton, his people and he becomes a monster. It helps to show how far he'll go, without the ability and soul to choose different. I understand about the overly busyness of the krypton part, which is why I said that most of it could be explored in the Jor-El hologram scene. As far as Lois, I can see that criticism.

Thank you as well for you kind words!

And the same to everyone else too!

 

[Tg11]

Besides Zod makes perfect sense for an origin film and here in the rewrite perfectly illustrates the message for the DCEU that it can start again. Not to mention Brainiac makes perfect sense for a sequel anyway too because of the fact that he in the grander scale of things is a much bigger villain than Zod, so why not save him for a sequel?

 

[Lead Cenobite]

The biggest thing I would change about Man of Steel is adding an act where Superman is introduced to the world sometime before Zod's invasion. It rubs me the wrong way when an alien supervillain is introduced before Superman ever makes his first public appearance(I wasn't a fan of it in Superman: Earth One).

I think I'd also leave out Lois knowing Clark is Superman even before he starts work at the Daily Planet and wearing the glasses. The reporter/glasses persona would be introduced much sooner rather than being tacked onto the end of the movie. The fact is, that even in spite of the supposed realism of Lois seeing through the disguise, Batman v Superman still depicted the glasses disguise as effective enough to fool most of the rest of the human race.

I'd leave most other things about the same, although I think Zod's plans and motivations need a little work. I felt like his insistence on Earth having to be terraformed was undermined by Zod adapting to the environment so quickly. Plus there wasn't much explanation for why it had to be Earth specifically.

During the final battle, Superman would attempt more rescues and also to lead the battle out of Metropolis while also trying his best to avoid collisions with buildings.