Man Of Steel Story Rewrite

fan4stic

Sidekick
Joined
Oct 25, 2017
Messages
2,711
Reaction score
658
Points
73
I've posted a variation of this idea before, but this is more a retrofitted version, changing up some things. I suppose all this goes without saying that I'd prefer a lighter color palette and less, what I think is, over complicated designs for things like the suit and such. Here are the ideas God blessed me with:

Open on Krypton in turmoil, the planet's crust quaking, ground opening up, infighting in the chaos.

And in the middle of it all: Jor-El, Lara and their baby, Kal-El. Trying to escape.

They reach the hangar kryptonian ships.

Lara asks if there's anything they can do for everyone else.

Jor-El says he's 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.

Jor-El has a plan though: 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 a special command key that he says will guide them when they get to earth, a planet he tells her will let them live safely from harm due to the planet's yellow sun, telling her that only he can operate the phantom drive in the control area to send them through the portal to allow them to escape in the probe.

Lara begrudgingly, tearfully, says goodbye after kissing Jor-El.

Lara gets to the probe, but seen by soldiers, led by Faora. They open fire at Lara to stop her. Lara shields the baby and is hit, fatally. She manages to just barely crawl into the probe with Kal-El and escape.

Jor-El reaches the phantom drive control room, where he sets the coordinates of the portal and activates it, then being confronted by Zod and his battalion.

Zod approaches Jor-El almost respectfully, asking for his help to save their race by giving him the codex, as he knows Jor-El took it, even complimenting his foresight to get it out of the incompetent hands of the council before they could do something foolish with it.

Jor-El fires back that he massacred the council.

Zod responds that they both know that it's the fault of the council's weakness that they lost everything, that they're near extinction, saying that a rebuilt krypton needs to have those weaknesses purged and that Jor-El once felt the same.

Jor-El says that he still does, for truth and justice, that it's Zod that's lost his way. That's why he's made sure the codex will never make it into his hands so another world won't pay for the failures of krypton.

Zod says that he knows Jor-El would never destroy the source of their history.

Faora informs Zod that a woman and her baby are escaping. Zod puts two and two together, realizing that the codex is with them and takes Jor-El prisoner, gets on a large ship with his army, and has the shields grid around krypton deactivated, so he can track the ion trail of the probe going through the portal before it dissipates.

Jor-El, though, has thought ahead, and damaged the phantom drive device, making it so it would alter the 'phantom zone' between the portal destinations, shooting Zod's men across the universe, so that they'd never find his family. Zod, furious, kills Jor-El. Immediately after they're sucked into the phantom zone and shot across the universe. As krypton implodes.

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, still holding the command key. The Kents find her. Jonathan tries to save her, but she dies, handing him the command key, her last words asking them to protect her son. Martha, saddened, sees the baby in the probe, bundled in a red blanket.

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 the recent snowstorm.

As a child Clark 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.

Jonathan 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, as the building would be older and have lead in it. 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.

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

Lois Lane (Played maybe by Lauren Cohan) 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. We see a glimpse of him working an obnoxious job, getting a check, which he mails to Martha. 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 isn't as much like him being there as in the movie. 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 dad 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 Daily Planet 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, something more personal developing between them.

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. And about Zod in general. Jor-El tells Clark his backstory:

That Zod was once a decorated General in the Kryptonian forces, a protector of their planet. But a creature came to Krypton and pillaged their knowledge for himself. The council bowed their knee to this creature and it wiped out their most precious city, Kandor, killing Zod's child and wife in front of him using it's drones, before leaving. When Jor-El and Zod both discovered that not only did the creature do this, but it also infected their scanning systems for Krypton's core, making it so by the time they realized their planet's implosion was coming it'd be too late, Zod snapped and blamed the council for it, raging a rebellion against the council to take back control and waged war against them for their weakness to gain control of the codex, which he could use to rebuild krypton and preserve their race. Only by using the codex, which holds all kryptonian knowledge, including the proper code for terraforming and genetic code of Krypton's child harvesting, can the world engine be activated to terraform a planet and use the genetic codes to rebuild krypton's race as Zod sees fit, being a programmed soldier himself. Zod killed the council to get it, but Jor-El stole it first. Unwilling to let the knowledge of krypton be abused, but also unwilling to destroy their knowledge, he gave Lara the codex in the form of the command key, which he encoded his brain scan on to guide his wife and child on earth.

Jor-El explains that Krypton had become a sterile society, lost in stripping their people of their humanity and ability to have choice. That if krypton were to live again, he and Lara thought that the right way for it to live would be through natural birth, which Kal-El is the first of in generations.

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 pray and 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 Lois 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 give Lois the command key, telling her to go to the ship, which is at the farm.

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 the Smallville fight still has damage, and Clark has emotional consequences for that:

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, outside of time.

Zod and Clark 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 Jonathan 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 dad 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 review and tell me what you think!
 
Not bad, definitely an improvement over canon ( low bar, ahem ).
I still have very mixed feelings about the use of flashbacks. They can serve a powerful dramatic purpose when used properly, but here, I feel like it would be a much better idea to save flashbacks for when the POV character learns something new. Which, since it should be Clark for 90% of the movie, means flashbacks would be used for when his parents tell him about his arrival on Earth, and for when Zod and/or Jor-El tell him about Krypton. Everything else about Clark's youth and upbringing should be in linear narrative, so the audience experiences it with Clark.
 
Not bad, definitely an improvement over canon ( low bar, ahem ).
I still have very mixed feelings about the use of flashbacks. They can serve a powerful dramatic purpose when used properly, but here, I feel like it would be a much better idea to save flashbacks for when the POV character learns something new. Which, since it should be Clark for 90% of the movie, means flashbacks would be used for when his parents tell him about his arrival on Earth, and for when Zod and/or Jor-El tell him about Krypton. Everything else about Clark's youth and upbringing should be in linear narrative, so the audience experiences it with Clark.
But I feel like that's been done before, in Superman The Movie. I can see doing something different with it.

What are your thoughts as a whole?
 
Honestly bro, the rewrite is good but the story as it is would be wayyy better with some minor tweaks:

- After saving the school bus Pa Kent confronts Clark, and when Clark says
" What was I supposed to do, let them all die ?"

Pa responds "No. But you still have to try to keep.this part of yourself a secret...... "
Just swap the word "no" in for "maybe" and the scene reads very differently.

- Clark saves Pa Kent from the Twister, but Pa dies from a heart attack anyway, showing Clark that there are things beyond his control.

Before/ during the battle of Smallville Clark takes a moment to try and get people clear. Eg when he and Faora land in the IHOP he tells something like " Everyone get out of here NOW !"

- As soon as the Kryptonian ship descends, Metropolis starts evacuating its citizens ( especially before the air force jets start firing missiles over the city). Perry White starts the evac as soon as the ship appears.

- During the battle with Zod he knocks Zod up into the atmosphere ( rather than the other way around) and it is Zod who slams Superman back to Earth ( even if they land in the train station).

After the destruction in Metropolis Superman appears to assist with the search for survivors and clean up.


The neck break is a tough one, because in the context of the story it actually makes sense. Although it was rough of the writers to put Superman in that position. All in all, it would be a better outcome for Superman to find a way to trap Zod back in the Phantom Zone.

Anyways, a lot of what I've said is on the same page as your suggested rewrite , which certainly would have made for a better movie.
 
Anyways, a lot of what I've said is on the same page as your suggested rewrite , which certainly would have made for a better movie.
Thanks for the review! Any other thoughts you'd like express, I'd like to hear them.
 
Honestly bro, the rewrite is good but the story as it is would be wayyy better with some minor tweaks:

- After saving the school bus Pa Kent confronts Clark, and when Clark says
" What was I supposed to do, let them all die ?"

Pa responds "No. But you still have to try to keep.this part of yourself a secret...... "
Just swap the word "no" in for "maybe" and the scene reads very differently.

- Clark saves Pa Kent from the Twister, but Pa dies from a heart attack anyway, showing Clark that there are things beyond his control.

Before/ during the battle of Smallville Clark takes a moment to try and get people clear. Eg when he and Faora land in the IHOP he tells something like " Everyone get out of here NOW !"

- As soon as the Kryptonian ship descends, Metropolis starts evacuating its citizens ( especially before the air force jets start firing missiles over the city). Perry White starts the evac as soon as the ship appears.

- During the battle with Zod he knocks Zod up into the atmosphere ( rather than the other way around) and it is Zod who slams Superman back to Earth ( even if they land in the train station).

After the destruction in Metropolis Superman appears to assist with the search for survivors and clean up.


The neck break is a tough one, because in the context of the story it actually makes sense. Although it was rough of the writers to put Superman in that position. All in all, it would be a better outcome for Superman to find a way to trap Zod back in the Phantom Zone.

Anyways, a lot of what I've said is on the same page as your suggested rewrite , which certainly would have made for a better movie.
All of this!

plus no Codex. That was a stupid addition.
 
I personally would have started the reboot with absolutely no mention or 'history lesson' of krypton. I don't want it even featured, I want this story earth based, as realistic as possible - keep it a mystery.... he doesn't know his heritage, neither do we... all we know is he landed in a ship, there is a codex - that's it. Just feels this makes him more man, in superMAN.

The boat scene, I wanted banter around the table... we see character development - he is thanked for saving the sailor earlier - clark has given a fake name, to cover himself, too, one fo the crew goes through his bag and see's fake id, he then asks why - Clark explains he is hiding from his past, the guys all sympathetic and can relate - then a distress call - they head out, clark goes missing, they assume he fell off. He saves the day on the rig.

He then gets to the shore, realises he has no credentials - see him in a sonic boom flight back to smallville... he's there on a fleeting visit, his mom calls up he has a visitor - it's Lana (played by Amy Adams). She explains he can't keep hiding - as the news report comes on of the oil rig - he gives her a look, she is excited for him and so proud. They walk about town, he see's the spot the bus crashed.. get that flash back.

Turns out Clark stays in town for a bit, works in a bar, with Lana - her husband is a jerk to her - clark doesn't destroy his truck/livelihood but instead defends her honour - he calls him out, as a freak, clark is a secret to smallville, only a few know, that he is gifted.. but not to the extent Lana knows.

At this point Lois shows up in town asking questions and eventually finds clark - she followed leads for years, the last lead was the confirming one, for her, with he guys saying he was called clark - she has a heat map of sightings and narrowed it down to smallville.

We see the confrontation, he doesn't wear a stupid hat that doesn't fit.. he denies all she says. They soon realize they have chemistry - even in that short moment, she is smitten, like seeing a celeb and he feels something. He does invite her to dinner, tho.

In a cosy smallville cafe, the news report interrupts their meal, clark looks and see's a factory fire in a neighbouring town - he makes his excuses and leaves shortly. Lois looks up and puts 2 and 2 together, she watches the report... see's Clark run out with survivors. She smiles, bingo!

Clark returns, with flowers - he has changed - Lois notices and teases him, he says no, but obviously he knows she knows.

She invites him to the city, to stay and she wants to know more - how she can help him. He comes clean, But says he doesn't want it to be told.

They start a relationship and he filters back to the farm to work and stay with Lois, she discovers he is great at writing and sets him up for a job at the Daily Star, as a runner. He gets it.
Then we have the Zod invasion, rest goes on in a similar vein - just not as much of a destruction to the city
 
I like it a lot! Is anyone in Hollywood reading this? Because they should!
 
@fan4stic

Loved the introduction of Jimmy Olsen into the story-- I think that was something sorely missing from Supe's origin in the original. I also like the Brainiac tease too.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top
monitoring_string = "afb8e5d7348ab9e99f73cba908f10802"