The Death of “Superman Lives” : What Happened ? (“1999”) : It’s a Bird. It’s a Cage. It’s Superman [Mike’s review]
Today on Cage Club we get a glimpse into what might have been when we watched “The Death of Superman Lives : What Happened” . This is the first true documentary we have covered at Cage Club and it’s about the time Nicolas Cage was almost the Man of Steel ! I can’t even begin to imagine how Cage Club and my life in general would have been different if this movie existed. I remember, in the age before the internet, hearing about this project possibly happening but pretty much chalking it up to rumors and lies. I was a comic fan and hung out in the comic shop listening to the opinions of seasoned geeks, but not a huge Superman reader. What I liked about him came mainly from the original movies, but I was up to date with the whole “Death of & Resurrection Of Superman storyline this film was to adapt. I was a fan of Nic Cage as well, but I think at the time I was more a fan of Time Burton and the idea of him tackling the material that got me real excited. I wanted to see him bring his twisted visual flair to the city of Metropolis as well as the cosmic setting of Krypton. Superhero movies were in a bad place with the stigma Batman & Robin cast over the genre and Superman seemed like the character to fix everything about how we perceived not only comic book films but big action summer blockbusters. Alas this is the story of how it was never meant to be.
This documentary is very in-depth. We hear from concept artists, producers, writers Kevin Smith and Dan Gilroy, and even Tim Burton himself ! They all talk candidly about their experience working on the show. The only person that is not interviewed is Nic Cage, but we get to hear from him in video from costume tests and some archive footage. It’s pretty great to see how much work and how far along this movie was to actually happening. I had always sort of considered this story a myth and never imagined they were only 3 weeks away from rolling cameras. I really enjoyed the behind the scenes look at such putting together a movie of this scope. This was gonna cost over one hundred million dollars, summer blockbuster meant to rival them all.
In recent years, before this documentary was in production, some images of this failed production have surfaced, most notably the horrible polaroid picture of Nic Cage as Superman in a costume test. It is very unfortunate because that picture did a lot of damage regarding the potential of this movie. In actuality, the costume tests were much farther along and the Superman outfit was not nearly the disaster that people though it was. I’m really happy this movie exists to set the record straight. The glimpses of Nic Cage that we do get in the suit convince me that he would have been a terrific looking Superman, all doubt was erased from my mind after seeing this. You get a sense of how Cage may have stood or walked as the Man of Steel while testing out the suits and he looks cool. Then there is the footage of Cage as Clark Kent, or at least one possible version. His Clark would have been brilliant as well, an over-caffeinated mis matched geek that trips over his own feet. The little we get to see of him as Clark proved to me Cage would have brought two entirely different energies to the role, reinventing both characters for a new millennium.
I get a good sense of what the movie could have been watching this documentary. Between all the production art and break downs of the script I felt like I could pull together a semi-good idea of what this film may have been like, there is just that much material to mine. You can also recognize some of the re-used concepts that appeared down the line in other superman movies. For instance, Kevin Spacey was going to play Lex Luthor and he actually did wind up playing him in Superman Returns. The skull ship design that was going to be Brainiac’s mothership is a skull that looks almost exactly like the one used in Man of Steel as the Codex on Krypton at the start of the film. At least not everything was a complete waste but still I wonder how many more films out there spent more money and never rolled camera.
Once again I take solace in the thought that somewhere in an alternate universe on some episode of FRINGE, Joey and I are watching this movie on repeat. Next up on Cage Club we get back to business with “Bringing Out The Dead” directed by Martin Scorsese who happens to be a close personal friend of Uncle Francis.
Mike
@the_mikestir
