Blog
My Favorite Superman Movie Pitch
11/04/2022
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With the reveal that Henry Cavill is back as Superman in some upcoming Superman project, suddenly we're seeing opinions about what a new Superman movie might look like starting to show up on what's left of twitter. I thought it might be fun for us to look back on one of my all-time favorite takes on a possible Superman movie. There are some contriversal ideas here and while I don't necessarily agree on every point, I think this is the headspace we really want to be in if we're going to consider continuing to plum these characters for movies when there's already perfectly good comics to read.
This is by freelance writer Sean Kelly, who did this thread on his twitter back in 2020, when we all had a lot of free time. I've never tried to share someone's tweets before so I'm just going to present them here as one long document, but please head over to his actual twitter and like his stuff. |
Pictured: Henry Cavill looking at warhammer figures.
He is precious and must be protected at all costs. |
"So apparently the studio thinks a standalone #Superman movie would be impossible to make nowadays, and as someone who spent many a day in childhood running around the house with a towel tied around his neck way too tightly, I Have Thoughts:
Here's now my movie would go:
Our boy Clark gets off the bus, be-flannel-shirted. The big city, finally. It's time to enact his plan: get a job at the Daily Planet, the greatest newspaper in the world. Keep a dual identity, to speak truth to power, find where his help is needed.
His first step is taking a tour of the Planet's historic building with a bunch of tourists.
Shit's grim. There's a Zumba studio renting out space on the ground floor. Elevators are out of order. Floors 2-6 are unoccupied. People are leaving with boxes of stuff from their desks.
The first time Clark uses his superpowers is in the printing press room, when he acts quickly to stop a machine from flying apart and killing an overworked pressman who has fallen asleep.
Clark walks into HR and he's trying to get a job, and surprise, showing up at the biggest paper in the world with an unexplained gap in your resume doesn't net you the best options. So he gets an unpaid internship managing "Shoutout," the Planet's youth-oriented poll website.
Lois Lane is the Planet's star reporter - not because of the amazing stories she's breaking; those are getting spiked by the publisher because shareholders are skittish. No, Lois is the star reporter because she has no life. She works 80 hours a week.
Journalism was her dream, and it's a dream that's failing her. Her job is mostly secure because nobody else will do as much free work as she's doing for them, literally taking up the workload of any four other employees.
Her big story she really wants to run is on LexCorp: specifically, the worker conditions at his facilities. They're being run ragged. Peeing in bottles. Sleeping in their cars because they're terrified of being late. No breaks. No overtime. No benefits.
Lex Luthor has become the richest man in the world because of the horrible, brutalizing ways he's treated his workforce, and it's all technically legal. Naturally, Lex is a partial shareholder in the Planet and she can't get the story to press.
She's also got an ongoing piece about crime, and there are starting to be weird stories coming out of the bad parts of town. People getting saved suddenly, by someone moving too fast to be photographed.
For Clark (and the audience) nothing is what he expected it to be, and everything is worse than he hoped. There are bright spots, though. People like Lois, and Jimmy, who are nice people working hard and trying their best in difficult times.
Clark's plan, in general, is to keep a low profile. Help where he can, but not make a big splash or anything like that. He's not doing this for the attention, after all, he's doing this because he can help and wants to help.
One day, Clark arrives at work, and Jimmy Olsen is being laid off. He's walking out of the door, camera in hand, while Perry White is explaining that on Tuesday they've got a guy coming in to teach all the reporters how to take photos with their iPhones.
Jimmy is taking the elevator down. Lois is secretly crying about it in a supply closet. Clark can hear this. Clark goes up to the roof, pulse thumping in his ears, looking at the rusting globe on the roof, he has to do something, right now, but what?
He looks up into the sky, and he can see it: a gleaming LexCorp satellite, twirling through the stratosphere. He's been reading Lois's notes, he knows who and what Lex is.
He shoots the thing with his heat vision.
Just at the right angle.
The satellite starts to tumble out of the sky, right towards downtown Metropolis, right towards the Daily Planet. Jimmy has just emerged out onto the sidewalk, people are pointing and screaming and running and Jimmy... points his camera at it.
It's going to be a good shot, maybe the last picture he ever takes but he's not thinking about that.
Suddenly, motherfucking Superman enters the frame.
He catches the satellite in his bare hands, cape red and billowy, the sun just behind him in a shaft of sunlight. It is The Shot Of A Lifetime. Jimmy takes that goddamn picture.
Clark was going to work in the shadows, he was going to keep a low profile, but now he knows what he has to do.
He has to save the Planet.
Jimmy gets his job back, of course, because the Planet needs that photo. Clark starts timing his rescues and arranging for Jimmy and Lois to be around to bear witness. The circulation for the Planet starts to creep back up.
We get a montage: Great newspaper covers. Issues flying off the shelves. Perry White shaking Clark's hand, he's giving him a real job. People are carrying boxes of stuff back IN to the desks.
Luthor is angry. His satellite lost him a lot of money, and he's convinced that this "Superman" made it fall from the sky.
Not only that, but he was planning on buying out the Planet on the cheap so that he could strip it for parts, but now the share prices are going back up.
Lois Lane is starting to get leeway to investigate him. He can't have that either.
So Luthor is at war with Superman, and with the Daily Planet.
Meanwhile, the little old lady who owns a 51% stake in the Planet is getting older. She won't be around much longer. Who will buy up her shares when she's gone?
Luthor hatches a plan to bump off the old lady and Lois at the same time. Superman intervenes, and during the ordeal the little old lady is so impressed with Lois that she remembers what newspapers are supposed to be about.
Instead of selling her shares or letting them go on the open market, she passes her shares to the employees of the Daily Planet, so that they own their own business, unionize, and form a firm bulwark against Lex Luthor's attack on journalism.
I'd call it "Superman Saves The Planet."
Anyway, I got a lot of these ideas thinking about how the traditional portrayals of Superman and Lois totally biff the parts about being a reporter:
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/clark-kent-and-lois-lane-are-terrible-journalists/
But also, I want a story that remembers what Superman's non-super friends bring to the table. While he might be around inspiring everybody else, Lois and Jimmy are the ones who inspire him through *their* courage and effort.
Also also, Superman is used ineffectively when movies make him just a battering ram to knock out asteroids or whatever, because he's always strong enough for those tasks.
The way you make Superman interesting is by giving him a problem that's *difficult,* and to do that you have to give him something *complicated.*
Like standing up for the plight of the worker."
Here's now my movie would go:
Our boy Clark gets off the bus, be-flannel-shirted. The big city, finally. It's time to enact his plan: get a job at the Daily Planet, the greatest newspaper in the world. Keep a dual identity, to speak truth to power, find where his help is needed.
His first step is taking a tour of the Planet's historic building with a bunch of tourists.
Shit's grim. There's a Zumba studio renting out space on the ground floor. Elevators are out of order. Floors 2-6 are unoccupied. People are leaving with boxes of stuff from their desks.
The first time Clark uses his superpowers is in the printing press room, when he acts quickly to stop a machine from flying apart and killing an overworked pressman who has fallen asleep.
Clark walks into HR and he's trying to get a job, and surprise, showing up at the biggest paper in the world with an unexplained gap in your resume doesn't net you the best options. So he gets an unpaid internship managing "Shoutout," the Planet's youth-oriented poll website.
Lois Lane is the Planet's star reporter - not because of the amazing stories she's breaking; those are getting spiked by the publisher because shareholders are skittish. No, Lois is the star reporter because she has no life. She works 80 hours a week.
Journalism was her dream, and it's a dream that's failing her. Her job is mostly secure because nobody else will do as much free work as she's doing for them, literally taking up the workload of any four other employees.
Her big story she really wants to run is on LexCorp: specifically, the worker conditions at his facilities. They're being run ragged. Peeing in bottles. Sleeping in their cars because they're terrified of being late. No breaks. No overtime. No benefits.
Lex Luthor has become the richest man in the world because of the horrible, brutalizing ways he's treated his workforce, and it's all technically legal. Naturally, Lex is a partial shareholder in the Planet and she can't get the story to press.
She's also got an ongoing piece about crime, and there are starting to be weird stories coming out of the bad parts of town. People getting saved suddenly, by someone moving too fast to be photographed.
For Clark (and the audience) nothing is what he expected it to be, and everything is worse than he hoped. There are bright spots, though. People like Lois, and Jimmy, who are nice people working hard and trying their best in difficult times.
Clark's plan, in general, is to keep a low profile. Help where he can, but not make a big splash or anything like that. He's not doing this for the attention, after all, he's doing this because he can help and wants to help.
One day, Clark arrives at work, and Jimmy Olsen is being laid off. He's walking out of the door, camera in hand, while Perry White is explaining that on Tuesday they've got a guy coming in to teach all the reporters how to take photos with their iPhones.
Jimmy is taking the elevator down. Lois is secretly crying about it in a supply closet. Clark can hear this. Clark goes up to the roof, pulse thumping in his ears, looking at the rusting globe on the roof, he has to do something, right now, but what?
He looks up into the sky, and he can see it: a gleaming LexCorp satellite, twirling through the stratosphere. He's been reading Lois's notes, he knows who and what Lex is.
He shoots the thing with his heat vision.
Just at the right angle.
The satellite starts to tumble out of the sky, right towards downtown Metropolis, right towards the Daily Planet. Jimmy has just emerged out onto the sidewalk, people are pointing and screaming and running and Jimmy... points his camera at it.
It's going to be a good shot, maybe the last picture he ever takes but he's not thinking about that.
Suddenly, motherfucking Superman enters the frame.
He catches the satellite in his bare hands, cape red and billowy, the sun just behind him in a shaft of sunlight. It is The Shot Of A Lifetime. Jimmy takes that goddamn picture.
Clark was going to work in the shadows, he was going to keep a low profile, but now he knows what he has to do.
He has to save the Planet.
Jimmy gets his job back, of course, because the Planet needs that photo. Clark starts timing his rescues and arranging for Jimmy and Lois to be around to bear witness. The circulation for the Planet starts to creep back up.
We get a montage: Great newspaper covers. Issues flying off the shelves. Perry White shaking Clark's hand, he's giving him a real job. People are carrying boxes of stuff back IN to the desks.
Luthor is angry. His satellite lost him a lot of money, and he's convinced that this "Superman" made it fall from the sky.
Not only that, but he was planning on buying out the Planet on the cheap so that he could strip it for parts, but now the share prices are going back up.
Lois Lane is starting to get leeway to investigate him. He can't have that either.
So Luthor is at war with Superman, and with the Daily Planet.
Meanwhile, the little old lady who owns a 51% stake in the Planet is getting older. She won't be around much longer. Who will buy up her shares when she's gone?
Luthor hatches a plan to bump off the old lady and Lois at the same time. Superman intervenes, and during the ordeal the little old lady is so impressed with Lois that she remembers what newspapers are supposed to be about.
Instead of selling her shares or letting them go on the open market, she passes her shares to the employees of the Daily Planet, so that they own their own business, unionize, and form a firm bulwark against Lex Luthor's attack on journalism.
I'd call it "Superman Saves The Planet."
Anyway, I got a lot of these ideas thinking about how the traditional portrayals of Superman and Lois totally biff the parts about being a reporter:
https://www.escapistmagazine.com/clark-kent-and-lois-lane-are-terrible-journalists/
But also, I want a story that remembers what Superman's non-super friends bring to the table. While he might be around inspiring everybody else, Lois and Jimmy are the ones who inspire him through *their* courage and effort.
Also also, Superman is used ineffectively when movies make him just a battering ram to knock out asteroids or whatever, because he's always strong enough for those tasks.
The way you make Superman interesting is by giving him a problem that's *difficult,* and to do that you have to give him something *complicated.*
Like standing up for the plight of the worker."
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The only part of this pitch that might just be too far for me is the moment Clark actually zaps the satellite out of the sky. I think it's an interesting idea to include... that he's actually taking action, rather than just passively reacting to his enviornment... but my headcannon version of Superman just wouldn't do that.
It's a cool pitch, right? Like I said, head to his twitter and give him a like. He also has an even more controversial Batman pitch that could never be made in a million years, which makes it all that much more compelling. It kind of makes you wish that superhero moviemaking was actually an artform of some kind rather than just a machine that cranks out boilerplate widgets and slaps a label on them with the intention of milking our nostalgia for profit. Still... I AM happy Cavill is back! Let's take this moment to enjoy his mustache. |
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