Premise: The hierarchy in Krypton is dismantled as king Jor-El is overthrown by his brother Kata-Zor in a civil war of sorts. In a last ditch effort, Jor-El sends his son Kal-El on a pod off of the planet to a secret trusted location on Earth. This is the story of Superman's upbringing and his rise to power.
Details: written in 2003; 125 pages.
So, this is a first. I think I've alluded to my passion of reading screenplays a few times before, but I haven't written a screenplay review yet. I'm pretty sure there are legal issues to reviewing work that isn't released in theatres, so that's why I haven't written an article like this before. However, given that Star Trek Into Darkness was just released and the fact that this screenplay will never come to fruition, I figured it would be a cool time to finally crack this open and give it a read.
When I think of J.J. Abrams I think of this amazing writer and director because right now, whether you love him or hate him, his presence can't be ignored. He's slated to do Star Wars Episode VII, he rebooted Star Trek in which I thought he did an amazing job, the sequel which I'm going to see tonight has amazing reviews, MI:3, his TV show Lost has a huge cult following, Super 8 was loved by many, and there's Alias too. This is the Abrams that I think of when someone mentions his name. But, when you go back in time to when he wrote this draft in 2003, what had he accomplished with his writing? Well, it was pretty much just Alias at the time. I actually had no idea that this Hollywood blockbuster juggernaut actually wrote Gone Fishin' and a few other odd looking movies starring Mel Gibson, Jim Belushi, and Harrison Ford. He also wrote Armageddon and Joy Ride. I actually had no idea. If you look at his movies though, is this the type of guy you call up and ask to write the next Superman movie and put all the faith in? Apparently so. And it's weird looking back from right now, because anything Abrams is attached to currently is automatically assumed to be something big, so clearly they had the right idea about him.
Review
Ok, so enough of the J.J. and Superman production backstory. Was this screenplay actually any good?
Like he did in his Star Trek reboot, Abrams begins his story with some pretty cool action scenes. We have the world about to come to an end at the hands of Ty-Zor, son of Kata-Zor, with a Superman that's all bloodied and beaten up. They begin a pretty cool fighting sequence and just as something significant is going to happen, the story jumped back 29 years.
The planet Krypton is enduring a civil war. Kata-Zor breaks through barriers that had never been broken before with huge mechanical Buzzards in attempt to overthrow his brother, King Jor-El. Jor-El senses defeat and sends his son Kal-El, who we later come to know as Superman, on a pod to planet earth. Jor-El is captured and Krypton is taken over and partially destroyed by a spike bomb.
Cut to Jonathan and Martha Kent's farmhouse. They're peacefully having dinner when this pod shows up out of no where and crashes right outside of their kitchen window. They investigate and find Kal-El. They're afraid if they report it then something could happen to the baby. Plus, you know, reporting that a UFO landed on your lawn and dropped a baby off might just buy you some time in the loony-bin. So, they take it in as their own and name him Clark Kent because he looked like a movie star, Clark Gables. The following scenes of Clark growing up are rather humorous.
Example:
INT. KENT’S LIVING ROOM - DAY
As Clark runs around the coffee table, escaping his“monsters”. Martha and Jonathan enter -- Jonathan moves to him, feigning a scary monster:
JONATHAN
You can’t get away from the tickle
monster, CAN y--?
Suddenly CLARK TAKES OFF -- FLYING THROUGH THE CEILING.
For a beat, Jonathan and Martha are frozen, stunned.
JONATHAN (CONT’D)
... well, that’s new.
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Anyways, Clark grows up and graduates from college. One night his roommate begs him to come to a party just once before they're finished school, so he agrees to go with him. There, he meets Lois Lane. She's a weird person, alienated from society just like he is. They talk, she gives him a whole speech on how she wants to write for The Daily Planet and then tops it off by saying his fly is undone. He quickly does it up. Her friend wants to go to another party, she says no, her friend's boy grabs her by the arm and she kicks his ass. The girl means business.
Flash cut another so many years, Clark is now working for The Daily Planet and so is she, but she doesn't recall working with him. They begin their story on the soon-to-be villain of the script Lex Luther, the rich and scheming scientist, businessman, and politician. He'd found a pod earlier with kryptonite in it that had killed the pod's pilot, so he'd made a fortune off the technology he attained from the machine and its components.
Lois is really getting on Lex's nerves with the constantly hassling, so he decides to kill her. He finds out she's going to be on Air Force One, so he figures, why not kill everyone on the plane? Becoming president would be much easier then. Two birds with one stone, so they say. He cuts all the power to AFO and it begins to nose dive. It quickly reaches the news and Clark hears this from the shower.
The following scene is epic. He runs to his chest he'd been keeping and pulls out his suit. He ponders, knowing that Lois is on that plane, he puts the suit on quickly and bursts through the air at the speed of light. He holds the plane on his back and lands it to safety in the middle of a baseball field with a sold out crowd. Everyone looks in awe, shocked at what just happened. Lois is in love.
Clark reaches her the next day and tries to tell her to stay away from Lex because he reached out to him and told him his manifesto of evil deeds he planned for the future. He's about to tell her that he's Superman when she stops him and says that she knew he liked her, but she was in love with someone else. Superman? He asks. Of course, who else? So he tells her that Superman called for her to meet him on the rooftop at 8. They have a romantic fly together.
Enough with the mush. Lex has been in contact with Kata-Zor and they bring Ty-Zor to earth to kill Kal-El/Superman after years of searching for him. Lois gets snoopy at a nearby observatory that's been reported for suspicious actions and since the owner of it was Lex Luther, of course she'd be there checking it out. She gets captured and her friend reporter that kind of plays as a comedic relief throughout, reports back to The Daily Planet and Clark hears the call. Immediately Superman is on the scene.
Lois is thrown into a water-filled testing tank and she has very little time until it fills up completely. Superman goes in after her and discovers a piece of kryptonite on the bottom. His skin blisters, his eyes turn blood shot. This is it. He grabs her and starts punching the glass to break out. Just as it seems like they'd both die, the glass breaks with his last effort. Unfortunately he was too late. Lois lived, but Superman died.
In kind of a Transformers 2, Deathly Hallows kind of way, Superman goes to Heaven and talks to Jor-El who is kind of dead, but not really, back on Krypton. His father tells him that his time to pass hasn't come yet and that he needs to go back.
Superman comes back to life, has an epic battle with Ty-Zor who is on a mission to destroy Earth for helping hide Kal-El all of these years. Superman wins.
He has a last minute engagement with Lois who wants him to stay, but ultimately he knows he has to restore stability in Krypton. His mother meets him before he takes off, they have a touching moment, and bam - he soars into the sky and THE END.
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I absolutely loved this screenplay. I'm not very familiar with the comics, so I don't know how this lines up with the source material. Judging this as its own piece of art, I think it would have been amazing. It's funny to begin, romantic in the middle, and epic in the end. I think with a couple more rewrites and the elimination of the heaven scene, this could have revamped the Superman franchise.
It's funny because it seems from the trailers that Man of Steel is going to open in the same fashion with Krypton in trouble and Jor-El sending his son off to Earth. I guess only time will tell.
Loved it & it's a shame I'll never get to watch it.
7.8/10
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