Superman Reboot Writers Workshop

[Clayface]

I like it.

Nightwing? Hm. Small world.

 

[Webhead2006]

sounds like an interesting take.

 

[Krug3r]

Few points I think is essencial nowadays:

1 - make superman look cool and the movie will sell and be awsome and all of that....cool fights...cool flights...cool poses...Change the suit...I don't know where that lady that design the new costume learned modern...but that is not modern...stamping superman shields all over does not make the suit look cool and they removed the shield where it would look good which is on the cape...serious thinking must be made.




2 - Lex as a corporate tycoon....and pleaseeee no more wigs...make him proudly bald ...expensive suits....ego bigger than the world...and sees superman not only as a menace to his plans but also envy of the god status of superman and wants to take him down to prove he is bigger than a "god". He is the most powerful man in metropolis...one of the most powerful in the world....he can manipulate presidents.....wtf is this land/ estate deal? he wants to control the world!!!! he wants to start world war 3 and sabotage the US government in order to force the american people to ask him to step in and give him total control. Make lex believe he is lika a god....no respect for human rights...making secret experiences with soldiers or whatever and just dumping bodies all over the place...whatever....he doesn't care he s above all that he feels that the rest of the human kind are inferior to him (just an idea)
give lex a bad ass look...a bad ass personality... stop the retro look...no more kitty...no more stupid thugs....bring missy (a cold hearted ***** ursa-like personality but with brains that follows and adores lex as a god).

3 - Special effects...I don't think the special effects in superman returns were that great...the flight seen in the end with the cgi dummy looked fake as hell...the slow flying looked fake...the cape was the fakest looking off all..the flying into the camera was sooo Superman IV and flash super flight is just to stupid to even coment, was it suppossed to give speed to the flight? for me just felt like cutting corners...Iron man showed speed and did not need blurs.
was everyone blind? they couldn't see that?

4 - Sidney is NOT metropolis...Chicago...NY...Hong Kong..yes

5 - the music..I love the superman march...if it stays then great...if not then bring someone that can deliver an epic score...do not make the same mistake of leaving such an important part of an epic film be so mistreated like the SR music. That is NOT epic music that is not music fit for a superman movie. but he was friends with the director...what can we do.



Don't get me wrong...this is not a bashing of SR..is a bashing of the people behind it...I liked SR...but did not love it because I felt that it could have been much much more if people just applied and thought it through a bit more. To improve they must be critical about their own work...be humble...see what went wrong and correct it...


Warner Bros must do something...unfortunatly I guess they are not that interested.

 

[Nightwing1983]

Few points I think is essencial nowadays:

1 - make superman look cool and the movie will sell and be awsome and all of that....cool fights...cool flights...cool poses...Change the suit...I don't know where that lady that design the new costume learned modern...but that is not modern...stamping superman shields all over does not make the suit look cool and they removed the shield where it would look good which is on the cape...serious thinking must be made.

Disagree that Superman's costume needs to look cool. Agree that the costume in Superman Returns is anything but. I'm surprised anyone likes it.

2 - Lex as a corporate tycoon....and pleaseeee no more wigs...make him proudly bald ...expensive suits....ego bigger than the world...and sees superman not only as a menace to his plans but also envy of the god status of superman and wants to take him down to prove he is bigger than a "god". He is the most powerful man in metropolis...one of the most powerful in the world....he can manipulate presidents.....wtf is this land/ estate deal? he wants to control the world!!!! he wants to start world war 3 and sabotage the US government in order to force the american people to ask him to step in and give him total control. Make lex believe he is lika a god....no respect for human rights...making secret experiences with soldiers or whatever and just dumping bodies all over the place...whatever....he doesn't care he s above all that he feels that the rest of the human kind are inferior to him (just an idea)
give lex a bad ass look...a bad ass personality... stop the retro look...no more kitty...no more stupid thugs....bring missy (a cold hearted ***** ursa-like personality but with brains that follows and adores lex as a god).

Lex obviously needs to be a more serious villain. I'm not as married to the CEO Lex as some people, but I agree that it's the best version.

3 - Special effects...I don't think the special effects in superman returns were that great...the flight seen in the end with the cgi dummy looked fake as hell...the slow flying looked fake...the cape was the fakest looking off all..the flying into the camera was sooo Superman IV and flash super flight is just to stupid to even coment, was it suppossed to give speed to the flight? for me just felt like cutting corners...Iron man showed speed and did not need blurs.
was everyone blind? they couldn't see that?

Thought they were fine, but overrated. All-in-all, I have faith that they'll handle this all right.

4 - Sidney is NOT metropolis...Chicago...NY...Hong Kong..yes

I think Joe Shuster was looking at Toronto for his model. I think it could be worse than Sydney, but it wasn't ideal.

5 - the music..I love the superman march...if it stays then great...if not then bring someone that can deliver an epic score...do not make the same mistake of leaving such an important part of an epic film be so mistreated like the SR music. That is NOT epic music that is not music fit for a superman movie. but he was friends with the director...what can we do.

Agreed.

Don't get me wrong...this is not a bashing of SR..is a bashing of the people behind it...I liked SR...but did not love it because I felt that it could have been much much more if people just applied and thought it through a bit more. To improve they must be critical about their own work...be humble...see what went wrong and correct it...

Yup.

Warner Bros must do something...unfortunatly I guess they are not that interested.

Well, this guy on the imdb... oh, I'm sure you guys are all sick of that. Still...

 

[Webhead2006]

Few points I think is essencial nowadays:

1 - make superman look cool and the movie will sell and be awsome and all of that....cool fights...cool flights...cool poses...Change the suit...I don't know where that lady that design the new costume learned modern...but that is not modern...stamping superman shields all over does not make the suit look cool and they removed the shield where it would look good which is on the cape...serious thinking must be made.




2 - Lex as a corporate tycoon....and pleaseeee no more wigs...make him proudly bald ...expensive suits....ego bigger than the world...and sees superman not only as a menace to his plans but also envy of the god status of superman and wants to take him down to prove he is bigger than a "god". He is the most powerful man in metropolis...one of the most powerful in the world....he can manipulate presidents.....wtf is this land/ estate deal? he wants to control the world!!!! he wants to start world war 3 and sabotage the US government in order to force the american people to ask him to step in and give him total control. Make lex believe he is lika a god....no respect for human rights...making secret experiences with soldiers or whatever and just dumping bodies all over the place...whatever....he doesn't care he s above all that he feels that the rest of the human kind are inferior to him (just an idea)
give lex a bad ass look...a bad ass personality... stop the retro look...no more kitty...no more stupid thugs....bring missy (a cold hearted ***** ursa-like personality but with brains that follows and adores lex as a god).

3 - Special effects...I don't think the special effects in superman returns were that great...the flight seen in the end with the cgi dummy looked fake as hell...the slow flying looked fake...the cape was the fakest looking off all..the flying into the camera was sooo Superman IV and flash super flight is just to stupid to even coment, was it suppossed to give speed to the flight? for me just felt like cutting corners...Iron man showed speed and did not need blurs.
was everyone blind? they couldn't see that?

4 - Sidney is NOT metropolis...Chicago...NY...Hong Kong..yes

5 - the music..I love the superman march...if it stays then great...if not then bring someone that can deliver an epic score...do not make the same mistake of leaving such an important part of an epic film be so mistreated like the SR music. That is NOT epic music that is not music fit for a superman movie. but he was friends with the director...what can we do.



Don't get me wrong...this is not a bashing of SR..is a bashing of the people behind it...I liked SR...but did not love it because I felt that it could have been much much more if people just applied and thought it through a bit more. To improve they must be critical about their own work...be humble...see what went wrong and correct it...


Warner Bros must do something...unfortunatly I guess they are not that interested.

Those are things i would like to see in a reboot myself too.

 

[elgaz]

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[elgaz]

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[elgaz]

...

 

[Jochimus]

I posted this on another site, so...

My idea of rebooting would probably start in a fashion similar to "Batman Begins", with a late-20-something Clark Kent - bearded behind sunglasses, a rucksack slung over his shoulder, wearing a black hoodie and a red-with-blue-sleeves varsity jacket with a big chenille yellow S on the back - already on his way north. He stops at a greasy-spoon in Barrow, Alaska - one of the northernmost points of the U.S. - owned by an Inupiat fishing family whose former business has been severely curtailed by increased oil drilling operations, hence the Lexco tanker trucks parked outside (yeah, I know it's called Lexcorp in the comics...). You can tell the dad at the register isn't used to this kind of work; the daughter waiting tables even less so. It doesn't help when a group of ice road truckers walks in with one in their number who apparently is having a very bad day; indeed, after Clark begins carrying on a conversation with the owner (and then his daughter) about being far from home, the daughter returns to the truckers' table with coffees and slips on the ice they tracked in with them, spilling coffee all over the grumpy one, who promptly cusses her out and in turn prompts her dad to kick him out, which compels the surly one (against his buddies' protests) to make a snide comment about the one thing she probably could do right and he grabs her, and this ends with Dad coming to her rescue and getting knocked to the floor for his trouble.

Clark can no longer stand this and tells the bloke to apologize, so the fellow responds by thrusting a good right jab - against Clark's wishes - into Clark's jaw...which shatters every bone in the guy's fist. Clark decides that might be as good a time as any to hightail it out of there, and sneaks aboard the first ship heading for the Arctic, literally jumping ship and hopscotching Fleischer-style from one iceberg to the next.

Unfortunately, disbelievable though the account of his presence at the diner is, there is at least one person who believes it...CIA senior operative Nathaniel Hardcastle. Hardcastle, we discover, has been tailing Clark for the better part of 30 years, ever since NORAD's North Warning System detected the craft that brought the infant to Earth as it entered airspace just shy of the Arctic Circle, especially after seismic disturbances in the area at that same time indicated that something else - something much bigger - smacked into the snowy white and is still obscured by a seemingly-eternal freak whiteout. An attempt by some of Hardcastle's junior associates by helicopter to pursue Clark across a glacier doesn't end well for them (they do survive), but for Hardcastle this only affirms the threat posed by an unchecked extraterrestrial presence. Although I must admit that in this story Hardcastle would ultimately prove to be more of a nuisance than an out-and-out villain; I'd save that for a certain charismatic bald industrialist and his latest creation, a robot powered by low-level-radioactive meteorite fragments and operated by one's neural engrams via remote-control...

Anyway, Clark pierces the whiteout and reaches a sprawling crater in which rests a massive Arctic lake, and at its center...a towering two-hundred-foot spire of blackened ice leaning at a bizarre 45-degree angle; the biggest honkin' stalagmite you've ever seen. Freezing a walkway toward the structure via his ice-breath (as he's not keen on flying - we later discover that his unconscious brainwaves become magnified every time he uses his powers, thus enabling Hardcastle to track the alpha waves of his brain), he ventures into the monster icicle and discovers a bisected orb that lights up in concert with a small, pentagonal crystal pendant strung around Clark's neck - a pendant embossed with a familar S-looking shape; a bolt of energy crackles from the medallion into the levitating orb as the orb twists in opposite directions at increasing velocity, and Clark reaches out to touch it, engulfed in white light, which dissipates to reveal a massive cathedral-like sanctum whose stained-glass windows betray a cityscape of pyramids and obelisks, columns and coliseums, small twin-engine chariots floating between buildings and armored robotic centurions on guard...a futuristic pastiche of ancient Rome and Egypt, medieval England, and feudal Japan all in one; the lost civilization of tomorrow - Krypton.

And as the approaching simulacrums of Jor-El and Lara explain, all of it sadly no longer exists, save for this pocket-dimension virtual-reality created by Clark's biological parents, newly-updated on his life among Earthlings as the result of the recent download from his medallion, which has analyzed, decrypted and archived Clark's own neural engrams from day one.

That's as far as I've gotten with this idea; I suppose I could extract and rework elements of my previous reboot idea to fit into what I wrote here, with some more improvements, but the idea is to get the origin out of the way and move on to a villain capable of taking Superman hand-to-hand as quickly as is reasonably possible - not that I want a brainless actioner; the humanity and fun spirit would still be paramount to the whole deal...case in point: there would have to be an obligatory moment going back to Smallville where Clark reunites with Ma after having been all over the world amassing experiences (and a priceless scene of him using his heat vision and a couple bathroom mirrors to shave and cut his hair), but I haven't got that worked out yet.

Some other details that are mentioned in this story, although not all would be that well touched upon in a first film in a series:

- Lana Lang is a Kansas Senator in this version; as Hardcastle knows she graduated from high school with Clark Kent, he's pretty sure she's in on the secret.
- General Zod sacrificed his life to ensure the survival of Kal-El's escape ship back on Krypton; however, this does not exclude the possibility of a General Zod from an alternate 'mirror' universe, goateed and thusly evil a la Star Trek (and akin to the first post-Crisis Zod), showing up in a later film.
- Krypton had a sister planet called Argo that was tossed askew in the blast, nodding to the DCAU (and keeping open the possibility of Kara showing up in a later film).
- Doomsday is already on Earth, frozen over deep in Antarctica hundreds of thousands of years ago.
- Brainiac is a Coluan cyborg, Vril Dox, and has already been on Krypton and gone (not surprisingly, the chief city-state of Kandor was mysteriously obliterated during that time...); physically, he resembles the DCAU Brainiac on the outside and the '80s version on the inside.
- A lot of the nostalgic references/homages in this film would be less to past versions of Superman and more to the classic sci-fi movies that I've been exposed over the years - there'd be a lot of Vulcan from the Star Trek films in Krypton and its culture (aside from the historical influences); Metropolis would very much be the Metropolis of Fritz Lang, with the Lexco corporate headquarters as our Tower of Babel (and yes, I know it's called Lexcorp in the comics...); Emil Hamilton would be the founder/owner of Star Labs and would be heavily influenced by Doc Brown in "Back To The Future"; and if we ever got to it, Doomsday's introduction would very much be in homage to Carpenter's THE THING, with an Antarctic research team chopping him out of ice with bloody consequences.

Oh, and I'd call the whole first film LAST SON OF KRYPTON.

 

[SuperDaniel]

You wasted your time since there won't be a sequel to SR and this is pretty much confirmed.

 

[Webhead2006]

I posted this on another site, so...

My idea of rebooting would probably start in a fashion similar to "Batman Begins", with a late-20-something Clark Kent - bearded behind sunglasses, a rucksack slung over his shoulder, wearing a black hoodie and a red-with-blue-sleeves varsity jacket with a big chenille yellow S on the back - already on his way north. He stops at a greasy-spoon in Barrow, Alaska - one of the northernmost points of the U.S. - owned by an Inupiat fishing family whose former business has been severely curtailed by increased oil drilling operations, hence the Lexco tanker trucks parked outside (yeah, I know it's called Lexcorp in the comics...). You can tell the dad at the register isn't used to this kind of work; the daughter waiting tables even less so. It doesn't help when a group of ice road truckers walks in with one in their number who apparently is having a very bad day; indeed, after Clark begins carrying on a conversation with the owner (and then his daughter) about being far from home, the daughter returns to the truckers' table with coffees and slips on the ice they tracked in with them, spilling coffee all over the grumpy one, who promptly cusses her out and in turn prompts her dad to kick him out, which compels the surly one (against his buddies' protests) to make a snide comment about the one thing she probably could do right and he grabs her, and this ends with Dad coming to her rescue and getting knocked to the floor for his trouble.

Clark can no longer stand this and tells the bloke to apologize, so the fellow responds by thrusting a good right jab - against Clark's wishes - into Clark's jaw...which shatters every bone in the guy's fist. Clark decides that might be as good a time as any to hightail it out of there, and sneaks aboard the first ship heading for the Arctic, literally jumping ship and hopscotching Fleischer-style from one iceberg to the next.

Unfortunately, disbelievable though the account of his presence at the diner is, there is at least one person who believes it...CIA senior operative Nathaniel Hardcastle. Hardcastle, we discover, has been tailing Clark for the better part of 30 years, ever since NORAD's North Warning System detected the craft that brought the infant to Earth as it entered airspace just shy of the Arctic Circle, especially after seismic disturbances in the area at that same time indicated that something else - something much bigger - smacked into the snowy white and is still obscured by a seemingly-eternal freak whiteout. An attempt by some of Hardcastle's junior associates by helicopter to pursue Clark across a glacier doesn't end well for them (they do survive), but for Hardcastle this only affirms the threat posed by an unchecked extraterrestrial presence. Although I must admit that in this story Hardcastle would ultimately prove to be more of a nuisance than an out-and-out villain; I'd save that for a certain charismatic bald industrialist and his latest creation, a robot powered by low-level-radioactive meteorite fragments and operated by one's neural engrams via remote-control...

Anyway, Clark pierces the whiteout and reaches a sprawling crater in which rests a massive Arctic lake, and at its center...a towering two-hundred-foot spire of blackened ice leaning at a bizarre 45-degree angle; the biggest honkin' stalagmite you've ever seen. Freezing a walkway toward the structure via his ice-breath (as he's not keen on flying - we later discover that his unconscious brainwaves become magnified every time he uses his powers, thus enabling Hardcastle to track the alpha waves of his brain), he ventures into the monster icicle and discovers a bisected orb that lights up in concert with a small, pentagonal crystal pendant strung around Clark's neck - a pendant embossed with a familar S-looking shape; a bolt of energy crackles from the medallion into the levitating orb as the orb twists in opposite directions at increasing velocity, and Clark reaches out to touch it, engulfed in white light, which dissipates to reveal a massive cathedral-like sanctum whose stained-glass windows betray a cityscape of pyramids and obelisks, columns and coliseums, small twin-engine chariots floating between buildings and armored robotic centurions on guard...a futuristic pastiche of ancient Rome and Egypt, medieval England, and feudal Japan all in one; the lost civilization of tomorrow - Krypton.

And as the approaching simulacrums of Jor-El and Lara explain, all of it sadly no longer exists, save for this pocket-dimension virtual-reality created by Clark's biological parents, newly-updated on his life among Earthlings as the result of the recent download from his medallion, which has analyzed, decrypted and archived Clark's own neural engrams from day one.

That's as far as I've gotten with this idea; I suppose I could extract and rework elements of my previous reboot idea to fit into what I wrote here, with some more improvements, but the idea is to get the origin out of the way and move on to a villain capable of taking Superman hand-to-hand as quickly as is reasonably possible - not that I want a brainless actioner; the humanity and fun spirit would still be paramount to the whole deal...case in point: there would have to be an obligatory moment going back to Smallville where Clark reunites with Ma after having been all over the world amassing experiences (and a priceless scene of him using his heat vision and a couple bathroom mirrors to shave and cut his hair), but I haven't got that worked out yet.

Some other details that are mentioned in this story, although not all would be that well touched upon in a first film in a series:

- Lana Lang is a Kansas Senator in this version; as Hardcastle knows she graduated from high school with Clark Kent, he's pretty sure she's in on the secret.
- General Zod sacrificed his life to ensure the survival of Kal-El's escape ship back on Krypton; however, this does not exclude the possibility of a General Zod from an alternate 'mirror' universe, goateed and thusly evil a la Star Trek (and akin to the first post-Crisis Zod), showing up in a later film.
- Krypton had a sister planet called Argo that was tossed askew in the blast, nodding to the DCAU (and keeping open the possibility of Kara showing up in a later film).
- Doomsday is already on Earth, frozen over deep in Antarctica hundreds of thousands of years ago.
- Brainiac is a Coluan cyborg, Vril Dox, and has already been on Krypton and gone (not surprisingly, the chief city-state of Kandor was mysteriously obliterated during that time...); physically, he resembles the DCAU Brainiac on the outside and the '80s version on the inside.
- A lot of the nostalgic references/homages in this film would be less to past versions of Superman and more to the classic sci-fi movies that I've been exposed over the years - there'd be a lot of Vulcan from the Star Trek films in Krypton and its culture (aside from the historical influences); Metropolis would very much be the Metropolis of Fritz Lang, with the Lexco corporate headquarters as our Tower of Babel (and yes, I know it's called Lexcorp in the comics...); Emil Hamilton would be the founder/owner of Star Labs and would be heavily influenced by Doc Brown in "Back To The Future"; and if we ever got to it, Doomsday's introduction would very much be in homage to Carpenter's THE THING, with an Antarctic research team chopping him out of ice with bloody consequences.

Oh, and I'd call the whole first film LAST SON OF KRYPTON.

Some interesting ideas you have going there. I would like to see what else you have to say.

 

[Jochimus]

Well, like I said, I haven't got everything else ironed out. There are some character dynamic things I considered though that I'd probably lean toward:
* 'Metropolis' Clark could be considered nerdy only insofar as he doesn't do anything to present himself as anything more than what he appears - he isn't klutzy or bumbling; rather, he's the quiet guy in the corner who people don't pay a lot of attention to. He's the kind of character who works better alone - he's a lot more amiable and assertive left to his own devices than he is in any sort of tag-along situation; he's not the kind of guy who speaks up at staff meetings, but then conversely, he's no slouch in interviewing or questioning subjects one-on-one. I myself tend to work better alone than I do with others, so I think maybe there was a bit of that creeping in. I guess the only other thing that would make this depiction of Clark anything close to 'nerdy' was that I toyed with the somewhat self-effacing idea of him sort of making himself out to be just a tiny bit of a computer/comic-book geek...when others walk by a local newsstand to grab a copy of the Planet or Newstime, he's picking up the latest issue of THE GREY GHOST (which would have to pay off in an obligatory moment where Perry pokes into Clark's cubicle to remind Clark of something...and rolls his eyes at the sight of a comic book next to Clark's notepad. )
* His relationship with Lois is also somewhat influenced by the DCAU - she takes one look at Clark Kent at pretty much thinks what you see is what you get; by contrast, the first time she meets Superman she's rather leery - I mean, realistically, I think most women would probably not be quite so taken at the first sight of some man flying down out of the sky able to shake off explosives like they were dust and shoot lasers out of his eyes. But as the story progresses, she begins to realize that Superman is indeed the gallant white hat he makes himself out to be, and that there's more to Clark Kent than meets the eye. This is also a sort of set-up for later films because, invariably, at some point she's going to suspect that Clark and Superman are one and the same - but the way I figure it, she has to figure out conclusively on her own rather than have him make a slip-up that gives him away, so that by the time she figures it out and he knows it, she's frustrated because she's fallen so in love with him that she can't bring herself to report it even though it might be the biggest single story of her entire career.
* Luthor is a sort of independent scientific and engineering consultant whose aims extend beyond establishing a multi-billion-dollar corporation - he's more Howard Hughes than Gordon Gekko, more at home at the controls of an experimental jet fighter than he is behind a desk, albeit more charismatic than either one of them; the charm of Tony Stark and the ambition of Obadiah Stane in one character. He's not above military contractor work and a little weapons trafficking on the side, but he's not so much out to make money and spill blood as he is to be in control of everything he sees...when Donner's Luthor tossed a couple of nukes at the San Andreas Fault, he did it to push up the value of dirt-cheap land; if my Luthor were to do the same (highly doubtful, as he would have bigger fish to fry), he'd apply his genius to the rescue and rebuilding efforts while spearheading a witch-hunt to show the idiots in charge of protecting those missiles the door, and fly back and forth repeatedly in-between to show how unafraid he is to get his own hands dirty. He'd kill millions to be a hero and enslave the rest by endearing himself to them for his efforts. In that respect, I suppose certain people would read political overtones into the character, but I'd prefer to not go there and just let them have their little arguments over it because any such talk would be publicity regardless, so I suppose maybe that manipulative aspect of myself would probably again be creeping into the character.
* In the Fortress simulations, both Jor-El AND Lara would be represented, as would pretty much anybody of note on Krypton since as I established it the Fortress would in this case be a sort of virtual-reality pocket-dimension - a sort of cross between the the late '90s/early 2000s Fortress and TRON - encompassing a complete computerized replica of Krypton in all its glory. This is also about the closest to any sort of "Return To Krypton"-styled story I would want to go, though I suppose we could always add an extra element of suspense to it by having Brainiac trap them in the simulation and remove the safety protocols or some such holodeck nonsense. Instead of a Superman Robot, there'd be a variation of Kelex - a holographic AI which monitors the simulation as well as what else is happening in the world, keeping Superman in touch with what's going on elsewhere, and programmed by the central orb using a combination of its data archives and Kal-El's neural engrams as encoded in his medallion, approximating what Kal-El would probably have acted like had he been raised to adulthood on Krypton - a sort of "Kal-X", if you will.
* Oh, and the messianic overtones would get kicked to the curb. We don't need to beat the audience over the head with that club anymore. We get it. He's Space Moses. Let's move on.

 

[elgaz]

Realised my last effort was too much of a novella so here's the shorted version of my idea for a sequel to Superman Returns...

• Brainiac's ship is floating in the depths of space; he is weak and needs energy. His ship's sensors pick up the radiation signature from the huge stockpile of Kryptonite on New Krypton, which is still in an orbital pattern near Earth where Superman threw it in SR. He heads towards it
  
• On Earth Superman continues to carry out heroic acts around the planet. Lois follows these with interest but the whole issue of Superman has become an increasingly bigger problem between her and Richard, who has come to realise she is more in love with Superman than him. He has also begun to have suspicions about whether he is Jason's father or not
  
• Brainiac reaches New Krypton and begins to refuel himself and his ship by draining the energy from the Kryptonite on it. NASA detect his spacecraft and within hours the arrival of the spacecraft begins to make the News
  
• Superman heads into space to investigate but is detected by Brainiac, who seems shocked that a Kryptonian still exists. He dispatches a weapon called the Eradicator to kill Superman
  
• Superman and the Eradicator battle briefly in space before their battle carries them to Earth and Metropolis. Brainiac is mentally connected to the Eradicator and views everything; he realises that Superman's weakness is defending humans.
  
• Superman manages to overcome the Eradicator and renders him unconscious. He notices House of El symbols on the Eradicator and flies him to the Fortress of Solitude
  
• Richard finally gives Lois an ultimatum; she has to commit to him or its over. She can't answer him and he packs his bags before leaving
  
• In the Fortress, the Eradicator is imprisoned in stasis and Jor El is briefing Superman. He explains that the Eradicator is a Kryptonian energy weapon which was designed to defend the planet from attack. When an alien called Brainiac arrived at Krypton, he pretended to share his vast knowledge with scientists but was secretly draining energy from the core of the planet. He was banished, but before leaving he stole the Eradicator and reprogrammed it as a weapon for him to use. Whilst this is happening in the Fortress, Brainiac re-establishes his mental link with the Eradictor and shuts it down for good.
  
• NASA reports show the alien craft has disappeared, so Clark heads back to the Daily Planet where he encounters Lois, Jason and Jimmy. Lois and him have a moment; she seems to recognise there is more to him than meets the eye.
  
• Brainiac's ship suddenly re-appears and enters Earth's atmosphere before hovering over Metropolis. He can detect Superman's bio signature and locates him in the Daily Planet. An attack takes place during which Clark's glasses are knocked off and Lois recognises him.
  
• Brainiac emerges from the ship and battles Superman in the street. He is able to manipulate any technology which is in the vicinity. Although Superman is more than a match for him, Brainiac remotely fires huge blasts of Kryponite energy from his ship which leaves Superman badly injured.
  
• Lois attempts to help Superman but her and Jason are targeted by Brainiac. Richard appears and saves them, but sacrifices his own life in the process. Brainiac taunts Superman and reveals that Krypton's destruction was largely down to his efforts to drain power from the core, leaving the planet unstable. Superman is angered and attacks him again.
  
• Superman manages to inflict some damage on Brainiac but can't take much more. Suddenly the Eradicator re-appears, reprogrammed and restored by what power was left in the Fortress, and engages Brainiac. Together him and Superman start to gain the upper hand until Brainiac releases one last huge blast of Kryptonite towards them. Programmed to protect Krypton at all costs, the Eradicator saves Superman and absorbs the blast, processing the kryptonite and releasing it towards Superman as energy his body can absorb. In doing so the Eradicator is destroyed.
  
• Back to full power, Superman uses all his abilites to destroy Brainiac and his ship, smashing them into thousands of pieces which rain down on the Metropolis streets.
  
• A shadowy figure in a hat who has been watching the battle scoops up some of the remains of Brainiac's central computer in his ship and carries them away.
  
• Days later, Lois and Clark speak about what has happened. She accepts who Clark is and tells him that he will never be alone now that he has a family on Earth.
  
  The shadowy figure is revealed to be Lex Luthor. He begins to reverse engineer what is left of Brainiacs ship and we learn that it will soon be used to produce new technologies under the name of LexCorp.

 

[Frodo]

Metropolis

Here's my vague description of the story that I have so far . It still needs alot of work but this is the general idea for a plot.

The story begins with reuters idealistic journalist Clark Kent covering ethnic clensing in a war torn nation. The world lords who run the country have advanced weaponry . Clark saves a some people from being massacred . On hand is the man doing buisness with the war lords John Corbin. During Clarks encounter with Corbin and the war lords Corbin is gravely injured and pressumed dead. Clark reports the suffering and carnage of the event and his story gives him the attention of the struggling Daily Planet. To his friends amazement , Clark takes the job at the Daily Planet due to it's former glory. Clark's travels have shown him that the world needs a help , a guardian, someone to lead them into a better future. He plans on changing the world on city at a time. However his idealism is soon put to the test .Lois Lane is working her way and still cutting her teeth doing fluff stories, , sports and advice columns. She's got talent and drive but the staff consider her a rookie and light weight by the current Editor and staff. She wants to cover the city beat including the massive increase in high tech related crime. However one of her mundane stories leads her to Morgan Edge , Intergang and the international arms market.

That's about all I have right now. I'm not sure if Lex will even be in the first one. The story would feature flashbacks to Clark's relationship with Johnathan Kent and his Tutoring with Jor El but there wouldn't be a flashback to Krypton's destruction in the first one. I would show the ship landing though. I picture the flashbacks being somewhat like Batman Begins where they wouldn't be in order. Jor El disagree's with Clark's mission believing that his fate is to preserve the Kryptonian legacy as opposed to taking what he's learned to save humanity. Johnathan believes Clark needs to make his own choice about his future .The first part would be more a character piece which shows the Meeting of Lois, Clark, Perry and Jimmy and how the four of them form an unlikely Bond. Lois would be skeptical of Superman at first until he proves to her they are on the same side. This film would basically be Superman's debut in Metropolis and his battle for the soul of the city against Metallo and Morgan Edge. It's a story about how some one becomes a hero and how sometimes that path is not a lonely one . Ultimately Superman realizes that he can't change the world alone , that it takes the help and support of people like Lois Lane . Lois's faith in people and herself is restoryed by this idealistic young man who's come from nowhere. They're two people who both had their lives planned out for them by their fathers but have realized that they make their own fates and are not bound by their pasts.

That's it for now.

 

[Webhead2006]

Sounds interesting, though i wouldnt have the daily planet be a failing/crap paper it should be the pillar of reporting the world's best paper. Same goes with lois she should be the great star reporter for the paper or is just on the raise and is one of the top reporters and when supes shows up that pegs her as star reporter.

 

[Frodo]

Yeah I originally had that idea but I wanted to do something different from the usual versions . In my version , the Daily Planet was a great newspaper in the past but has fallen into the red like many newspaper's recently. It's a paper struggling to be relaivent in the age of blogging and the internet. The Superman and Intergang stories by Lois Lane and Clark Kent puts the paper back on the map again . For Lois, I wanted to show her before she is known as the famous Lois Lane and show how she became the Lois we all know. It's different then the way it's always done , but I actually think it'd be interestong to see her as a grunt reporter working her way up by doing the foot work and making a reputation. The story is as much about how Clark grows into being Superman as it is about how Lois Lane grows into being the world famous Lois Lane. When Clark shows up there's real competition between the two of them because they are both young hungry turks competing for the same job. Here Lois has put in the hours and is working her way up when they hire this upstart from nowhere as far as she's concerned. Along with that they both have different pieces to the intergang puzzle that the other needs. At first they engage in one upsmen ship until they see that they need to work together hence the beginning of their partner ship. By the end they'd have a new respect for each other and the beginnings of a friendship. I wouldn't have Clark beginning to fall for her until part two. I like the idea that his feelings for her would develop over time as opposed to having him fall in love first sight. When he falls for her he begins to realize she's in love with Superman which totally catches him by surprise and makes his feelings much more complicated.

 

[The Guard]

Though it's sort of like the opening of Kevin Smith's SUPERMAN LIVES, I really like the idea of Braniac using New Krypton as an energy source if there was a sequel to SUPERMAN RETURNS.

Even the best papers in the real world are starting to "struggle". I kind of like that angle as well in introducing The Daily Planet. It would allow the Planet itself to evolve throughout the franchise. Good idea.

I have got to stop coming in here. It makes me want to start writing a Superman script.

 

[protocida]

We should write one.

 

[The Guard]

Or three.

 

[protocida]

hmm...

 

[Nightwing1983]

Here's my revised version of my story from earlier. I wrote this a few days ago and I'm kind-of adjusting it on the fly, so I acknowledge that it sucks to an extent. Basically what I'm doing is turning it into a full-on reboot, but still keeping major things like Jonathan Kent's death the same. I'm also implying that Lex performed his evil deed in the first film; but that he's still an evil businessman and that he somehow got off on it.

The best way to start the film is with Superman putting out a fire. Lois asks him a bunch of questions of the “who could do such a thing?” variety and he responds, “I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s someone with your initials, but I can’t say.” Lois runs off to talk to someone else while Superman goes off to save a child trapped on the sixth floor and comes back.

When he returns, we introduce Cat Grant who is basically Lois' rival like she was in the early Post-Crisis comics. In reference to his refusal to implicate Luthor, She asks something like, “so even the mighty Superman is afraid of Lex Luthor?” He says, “it’s not that, but even someone with that many skeletons in his closet doesn’t deserve to be convicted on the air like this.”

Cat wonders why Superman is so afraid to touch him and Lois informs her that he once busted him and it was ruled a false-arrest. Superman goes off to confront Luthor and he basically denies his involvement. That scene ends with him ominously lighting a match.

As Clark Kent, he returns to the Daily Planet. Cat hits on Clark and Lois gives him the cold shoulder. Basically, the dynamic of Lois loves Superman but not Clark and Cat loves Clark but not Superman is established. We also learn that Cat is a single mother. I was also thinking of establishing that Jimmy is in on his secret identity, but I'm not sure. This is a workshop, what do you guys think?

Meanwhile, scientists working for Lex catch wind of an alien vessel approaching Earth. This is Brainiac, skullship and all. Lex demands that they find out about it and they learn that it is on its way to Earth. He decides that he can get the adjulation from the public that he craves by "proving" that it is a threat.

It might break the ice if there's a seemingly-pointless action scene here, so that his powers can be established (e.g.: if he saves the day by using his heat vision, his heat vision should be used by now).

Lex convinces the government that this ship is a threat. Feeling pressure to not be feared—since he is an alien himself—Superman joins up with Luthor and the government.

When the alien vessel comes, Superman—accompanied by a bunch of tanks and helicopters attacks it and everything around it. It’s like if Independence Day was actually good. Lex arranges to meet with the alien in charge and talk peace. He boards and we meet Brainiac (though he wouldn’t be called that like Venom in Spider-Man 3. Lex somehow escapes (bear with me) but not before learning two things: Brainiac really is a threat, and he has roots in Krypton.

Lex considers stating that Superman is in on the invasion, but thinks, “too obvious. Too neat.” Then, he realizes that it’s odd that he would join their counterstrike before knowing all the facts, so he convinces people that it was some sort of alien war. Little by little, the people blame him for the martial law and everything else. In fact, he tries to stop a hostage situation at a school where Cat’s son is attending, but he’s unable to but an overzealous cop stops him but the hostage-taker gets scared and wastes Cat’s son. Obviously, some blame Superman. Incidentally, he should be older than he was in the comics. After all, one argument against just killing Jason is the unpleasantness of a small child being killed.

When Clark returns to the Daily Planet, there’s a heated discussion between Cat and Lois over Superman. Shouldn't he have stopped the killer? Have we grown too dependent on him? Could the invasion have been his fault? Most importantly, isn't he partly to blame for the state of martial law they're under? Clark plays devil's advocate and the more he does, the more he realizes he's been doing the wrong thing.

Later, Lois & Clark are working late by themselves. The Brainiac ship comes and says Clark is the last Kryptonian and he needs to take him. After a fight, he and Lois end up on the ship. Now that she knows, Clark tells her all about how and why he became Superman. Basically, after Pa died (he still dies in this version, sorry), realized that people needed someone to look up to like he looked up to his father. Also, I thought it’d be cool to establish an onscreen DC Universe that Clark was taken to the circus to see Little Johnny Grayson and that’s where his costume came from.

This is getting too long, so basically, he fights Brainiac that it’s not worth keeping him because there are no female Kryptonians and he won’t be able to mate. Brainiac says he can go as long as he grabs Luthor and a female. So he grabs Luthor and a female assistant. Weak, I know, but I didn’t just want him to save the day by putting his fist in someone’s mouth.

Okay, so better? Worse? I don't know. I just thought I'd get back to my reboot-roots on this one.

 

[SuperDaniel]

The problem is that i don't think your story is about Superman really or how he become who he is. It sounds like it is not character centered and thats a BIG problem in my opinion. A reboot needs to adress it all, especially the Smallville part.

 

[protocida]

Basic idea:

Superman - Superman's origin is retold, based in "Secret Origins", "Birthright", "The man of steel" and the Siegel/Shuster stories. Lex Luthor is the main villain, and Metallo is the secondary villain. Other characters are Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Lana Lang, Pete Ross, Mercy Graves, Jonathan Kent, Martha Kent, Jor-El and Lara.

 

[Nightwing1983]

The problem is that i don't think your story is about Superman really or how he become who he is. It sounds like it is not character centered and thats a BIG problem in my opinion. A reboot needs to adress it all, especially the Smallville part.

Well, that's a fair assessment. It was originally a sequel, because I think the audience has seen enough of Smallville. I mean, it has its own show.

See, after debating with people for a while, it occured to me that any time I'd try to write a version of his origin, it was just uninteresting and I couldn't think of why other people would be interested. It was basically a case of making one movie to make another one.

 

[Webhead2006]

Yea i said it before with a reboot and other have said it too there is so many ways they could go about showing it and how it plays along with the movie. I do say yea we should take all the best elements from byrne reboot, stas,smallville and some of the other top superman reboots from the past few yrs and some how mix them up to work good together.