Saw the documentary the other day. I didn't walk away feeling like I missed out on not having the film made.
I enjoyed the documentary mainly because I've been fascinated by this ill-fated Superman project for years. It was cool to see all the artwork and the pictures of Nic Cage in the final version of the suit.
Having said that, I think Jon Schnepp went about telling this story the wrong way. He went in expecting the change everyone's mind on what this movie would have been. He kept telling that the movie would have been fantastic and that Nic Cage would have made a great Superman.
Unfortunately, Schnepp didn't understand, or didn't want to understand, that the movie was never going to get made.
The project started off with a few idea from a horribly misguided producer who didn't understand, much less liked the character, and had no coherent vision for the '"film". Plus using the death of Superman as a template to reintroduce the character on film was a horrendus idea, and one that didn't work.
The most interesting assessment on why this movie wasn't made came from Sylvain Desprtez in the bonus footage. He was a concept artist who jumped ship when the production was shut down for the first time in the fall of 97. He knew that there was nothing too coherent or cohesive about the project. They weren't even able to pull the script together. Tim Burton had a cool take but he also had to deal with Jon Peters, and the two of them fought over everything.
Peters just wanted to sell toys and design what, in his mind, would be cool action sequences. The problem is that this is no organic way to make a film. It's basically the Batman & Robin approach, and we all know how that turned out.
True, when Tim Burton signed on he was promised a great amount of creative control. The studio promised that they would reign Jon Peters in. But basically Tim's job was to take all of the elements dictated by Peters (death of Superman, Giant spider, robotic suit, Skull Ship, etc.) and make a film out of this.
Problem was that what Peters had in mind and what Burton had in mind didn't gel, and the studio realized, and they placed the film in limbo in the fall of 97, though they had planned to begin shooting around that time.
They couldn't fire Tim Burton because studios don't dare break up with famous directors like him. So all they can do is treat him like **** and hope that he walks away.
If you look at what they were doing after they had fired Welsey Strick and brought in Dan Gilroy to "fix" the script, they were basically running around in circles creatively. They churned out design after design after design, but a few cool designs do not amount to a film.
My opinion is that Superman Lives was set off wrong to begin with. They created a line toys and tried to write a script around it. Tim's take also scared the studio, and they basically let it linger in development hell for fear of pulling the plug. Then, finally, they had no choice but to shut the project down because they had come to a point where they couldn't continue to push it back.
They were 3 weeks from shooting and they didn't even have a Lois Lane!!!
Also Derek Frey said that it was still "very initial" when the plug was pulled.
Does it really look a movie that was coming together?
When Jon Schnepp said if the movie had come out in 99, it would have been amazing and a massive success, that's just stupid.
Warner Bros. never intended to make this film, they had to PRETEND for political and financial reasons.
Superman Lives, as it stood in April of 198 when it was cancelled, was a giant mess.
It would have been cool if Tim Burton had been allowed to take on this project with TOTAL creative control, not having to answer to Jon Peters. But unfortunately, this was not the case on SUPERMAN LIVES...
