Film One: The Man of Steel
This would be an "origin story" in a sense but would try to skirt around the problems that plague the tired old formula of origin films that have become endemic in the last few years of superhero movies. Most people know Superman's origin but he doesn't have that precise moment of origin like Spider-Man where he gains super powers and learns a valuable lesson about responsibility. Instead, we'd touch roughly on pieces of Clark's younger days that shaped who he was.
Our cold opening would feature Clark as a young and idealistic journalism student, doing investigation in a third world Central American nation. The vast stretch of land where a foreign cosmic object crashed about twenty years ago has basically been bought wholesale by the United States government and US contractor Luthorcorp basically owns the land and the people on it outright. The local villagers are being used basically as slave labor in the mining operation for the crashed object, which is now buried deep in the crust of the mountainous region. It's overseen by Luthor's right-hand woman, Mercy Graves. Where we pick up, Kent is going to the dig site to confront the corporate executives who rule with an iron fist, contracting hit squads to keep the locals in line and assassinate any dissidents. In the process, we'd see Clark use his powers discreetly, introducing his power set to the audience and showing his ethical base and his intentions. He is an investigator first and foremost, uncomfortable using his vast power to exact direct change for his adopted people, instead more comfortable exposing corruption to them through the media and trusting them to clean up the messes. This would be the core moral debate that he would return to throughout the series. How far can he go with his powers to help people without abusing the tenuous self-rights they've built for themselves. The opening would end in a scuffle with Mercy Graves' goon squad, one that ends with a mysterious glowing rock being driven through Clark's palm, much to his shock. The discovery we'd reveal later is that the crashed object is really the tail end of Superman's ship, broken off from the capsule in atmospheric entry, couched in kryptonite. Depending on how much time there was in the script, we'd possibly revisit this period of time through flashbacks later on in the story, as a means to flesh out Clark's code of ethics.
The opening credits would completely cover the "crash landing origin". A rocket propels from the gravity of a dying planet and shuttles through the dead of space, in highly accelerated time lapse. The radio transmissions of presumably long dead civilizations warble over the familiar Superman theme until the glowing blue orb of Earth slowly comes into sight and the dead waves give way to the familiar sound of modern day Earth transmissions. The lapse slows as the ship comes into the atmosphere of Earth, breaking apart in entry. The front end comes plummeting into a crash landing in the corn fields of Kansas. As the credits die down, we see a broken-down old pick-up truck crawl to a stop outside the crashed ship. Pa Kent gets out to investigate and as he climbs atop the ship, he calls to his wife. They pry open the hatch at the top of the ship and pull out an infant child, swaddled into a blanket. As their truck disappears into the background, the time lapse speeds back up, as we see hours pass. Night turns to day and we see a convoy of military vehicles appear on the site, loading the massive ship onto a flatbed and driving back off down the road.
And so the film proper would start with Clark Kent's arrival in Metropolis. Following the publication on his expose of Luthorcorp's endeavors abroad, he's something of a wunderkid. We'd open on his interview with Perry White, editor of the one newspaper in town that's not on Luthor's pay roll. In the process, we'd meet the core staff of the Daily Planet and see Clark paired up with Lois Lane, a ruthless reporter equally as interested in revealing Luthor's corruption, although she appears more interested in building her own reputation than anything else. This investigation would serve as the core thread for much of the movie, with Clark and Lois learning to work together and play to each other's strengths and the audience becoming acquainted with the Planet staff and the character of the city. Rather than being modeled on New York, Metropolis would be a sort of archetypal glimmering Midwest city, prominent in the early twentieth century but having slipped into decades of decline. Despite all his flaws, Lex Luthor has provided more for the people of Metropolis than anyone else. His corporation stands at the front of cutting edge technology and as a result, Luthorcorp provides jobs for a startlingly high percentage of the city. Much of the genesis of his success has come from a contract with the US military. A prodigy in the late eighties, Luthor was put in charge of investigating the Kryptonian crash landing in the Kansas boonies. After years of retro-engineering the technology, Metropolis stands at the forefront of 21st century innovation. While much of the city is still derelict and in crumbling disrepair, the financial and industrial center of Metropolis is quite literally a city of tomorrow. Luthor's jet-pack equipped Science Police, captained by John Corben, protect the fine citizens of Metropolis.
When a natural catastrophe strikes the Suicide Slums of Metropolis, Clark feels obligated to help, donning the blanket he was swaddled in as a cape and swooping in to help with disaster relief. In the process, he ends up scuffling with the Science Police, who again startle him with their ability to injure him, equipped as they are with reverse-engineered Kryptonian technology. As Superman begins appearing more and more in the public eye and becomes something of a local hero, he draws both the interest of Lois Lane and Lex Luthor. Lois is neglecting her duties into the Luthor investigation as she becomes fascinated with what she deems the real Pulitzer story: Metropolis' new superhero. Luthor sees a credible threat to his own celebrity status as the hero of Metropolis and sees in Superman an excuse for the citizenry to become complacent, to grow lax in their efforts to construct their own golden future in the presence of this angel that has come to save them all.
We're introduced to Luthor and his inner circle, primarily Milton Fine, the software specialist who is taking apart the Brainiac AI contained in the Kryptonian ship and the vast coded databases hidden within. In the presence of this alien AI, he seems to be growing strange and detached from the real world. Frustrated with his investigations, Clark finally decides to confront Luthor as Superman and in the core of Luthor's Kryptonian research facility, he is weakened and neutralized. Imprisoned in the complex beneath Metropolis, Brainiac communicates with him. The AI tasked with preserving Kryptonian culture and tasked with using their lessons to nurture whatever surviving civilization it finds, has grown insane from countless years of isolation, barraged in deep space with the radio signals of foolhardy and extinct species that had engineered their own destruction. He seeks to create a global order, an authoritarian society maintained by Brainiac intelligence that will insure humanity's survival.
This would set up our final slobberknocker fight scene. Brainiac subsumes Milton Fine's mind and begins assimilating himself into the city of Metropolis, an easy task given that the futuretech wonders that run the city are engineered from Kryptonian technologies. The infrastructure of Metropolis, including the gear of the Science Police and the revolutionary weapons Luthor has been creating for the US Military are taken under Brainiac's control. Supes must break free and tussle with the abominations Luthor has bastardized from his homeworld, in an attempt to save Metropolis from autocratic, robotic rule. He probably has to save Lane from Luthor too. Natch. As Brainiac is defeated, Superman retrieves the AI core from under Luthor's control, a device he sees as his birthright, a repository of vast libraries of Kryptonian knowledge, and the key to understanding his own origins.
Film Two: The Man of Tomorrow
The second film would move Lex Luthor into more of a supporting player as we shifted the focus to Zod and company as principal antagonists and focused on Luthor's handlers in the US military. We'd continue to explore the mythology of Krypton and focus on human misuse of technology they don't understand as a major theme. We'd also continue the premise of having a Clark Kent, reporter thread twisting with a Superman thread, which would be a major pacing point through the whole initial trilogy and play up the Lois/Clark relationship.
Our cold opening would have General Sam Lane in a seemingly endless white room, sitting comfortably, unarmed, as he interrogates the Phantom-like General Zod. He wouldn't acquire much information but we would get the general background, that Zod and his surrogate family are Kryptonian criminals now in American secret custody, that these interrogations have been going on routinely for the last fifteen years with little information recovered, and that Zod is quite furious with what he considers to be his unlawful detainment. Also quite unhinged. As Lane steps out of the Phantom Zone, the theme music swells, and the opening credits start to roll in, we are shown the scope of Cadmus Labs, the vast military bunker housing the Phantom Zone projector and other Kryptonian technology the military has been reverse engineering. The camera would zoom through the lower detainment levels of the facility as convict test subject Rudy Jones AKA the Parasite stages a violent escape, utilizing the powers inflicted on him by Cadmus. As the credits roll to a stop, Jones exits the lab, into the streets of Metropolis' Suicide Slums.
The story proper would start with Lois Lane and Clark Kent investigating a series of murders in which the life seems to have been literally sucked out of the poor victims. The trail would lead them to informant John Henry Irons, a morally conflicted research scientist working for Cadmus who puts them on the trail of Jones and reveals to them the shocking implications of the Cadmus Project's experiments. As they begin to crack the conspiracy, the dots are connected, from Jones' victims (largely personnel associated in one way or another with Cadmus) to the identity of the Project's mysterious benefactor (Gen. Lane, Lois' father, officially stated to have been KIA, but now apparently working within the military in a highly classified capacity), to Jones' own power set as a sort of energy vampire. Most worrisome is that the rate at which Jones is forced to feed is increasing exponentially. The subplot would culminate in Superman intercepting Jones' intended infiltration of Cadmus, in an attempt to find a power source that can feed his ravenous hunger. The high-octane battle would rip through Cadmus Facilities and only be ended with the freeing of the Phantom Zone prisoners. While Jones is detained, Zod and company escape.
We'd play with Zod's origins somewhat but it's still questionable how much of it we'd manage to fit in. General Zod would have been a military man and friend of Jor-El, Ursa his wife and intelligence officer, Non a military scientist who had been working with Jor-El on a Krypton refugee project until the research was dismantled by Kryptonian high command. There might be hints of the project in question (which would allow foreshadowing into the next film), Project Solaris, a living sun that would serve as an ark on which Kryptonians could flee in search of a new homeworld, a living and sustainable artificial mobile sun which could eventually serve as the life source for a new Kryptonian homeworld. The three were eventually accused of treason after conspiring to secretly salvage the remains of the project to bring to Jor-El to operate on clandestinely. All three were sent to the Phantom Zone, an empty and endless space in which those imprisoned are rendered intangible and unable to experience their senses, but left fully lucid and cognitive. Non was additionally given a lobotomy. The relationship would be slightly more complicated than that of the original film series, as Zod and family are quite fond of Kal, who they remember as an infant, and who's father they were willing to suffer imprisonment for.
The newly liberated Zod declares an ultimatum to the United States government, insisting that they try Lane in war crimes for unlawfully detaining foreign soldiers as well as his unconscienable experimentation on prisoners using their birthright and return confiscated Kryptonian technology to their rightful owners (Zod and friends). The US replies in turn that Lane doesn't exist. The General isn't looking to conquer or rule the world but he is perfectly willing to declare war, not on the citizens of the United States, but on the US military. Clark would take a back seat to Superman as the rogue Kryptonians skirmish with the US military and eventually lay siege to Lexcorp, who they know retains a sizable portion of Kryptonian artifacts. The most important of these (which Lex, actually, no longer has) is Brainiac, the Kryptonian terraforming module which also retains archives of Kryptonian history, in essence, providing what could eventually be the core of a New Krypton. The turning point in Zod's defeat, I believe, would be a revelation from his past, that his wife Ursa had been under command and followed through in a directive to assassinate Jor-El. I think the ideal character to drop this bombshell would be Lex. The knowledge of this betrayal makes Zod hesitate, giving Kal an opening to drive the three back into the Phantom Zone. Somewhere in here, we'd try to fit a confrontation between Lois and her father.
We'd have a couple of post-scripts, with Superman's heritage becoming general public knowledge and Lane being arrested and tried in a military court, who were (allegedly) unaware of his activities over the past two decades. The final epilogue would see Kal visiting the other Kryptonians in the Phantom Zone. The meeting is civil, but tense, as they discuss Kal's heritage and his new role among his adopted people. Despite what they'd been through, he says, he'd like them to be close. And as a sign of good will, he brings them a gift, the Brainiac core. While they might not be able to feel within the Zone, the core provides them with a library of Krypton and its terraforming core allows them to construct within the Zone their own nostalgic paradise, constructed from their minds and memories, a sort of palace of the mind hidden within the ghostly dimension.
Film Three: The Death of Superman
This would serve as the bridge between the first trilogy, which is about Superman as the hero of Metropolis, to the final double volume film, which would be Superman as grand, epic science-action hero.
The opening action scene would have the recently elected mayor of Metropolis, Lex Luthor, being targeted by a terrorist assassination attempt. Superman comes to save the day and for his effort, he's attacked by Luthor's security squad, led by Mercy Graves and John Corben (seen earlier as the captain of the Science Police, now Metallo). Clark and Lois begin investigating the group that attacked Luthor, an organization called Intergang, under the suspicion that the attack itself was little more than a ploy to lure Superman into a trap. In other news, a new star has appeared in the sky, one that's becoming larger and larger in sight of Earth, a greatly alarming concern to the scientific community. The investigators eventually drop the lead that Intergang was just a front used by Luthor as they find out that it's larger than they thought, a cultist criminal syndicate that's starting to consolidate Metropolis organized crime under their banner. They believe that the growing star is an omen of the Fourth World of Sin, a new age in which they will rule supreme. Meanwhile, a genuine relationship seems to have developed between Lois and Clark and a date is cut short as a foreign object crashes in the Kansas countryside, in a parallel to Supes' crash landing. We'd have a cute little moment where Clark's ears perk up at the same time Lois' cell gets a message from the Planet about the crash, and they both make their excuses before disappearing in a rush.
In the Kansas cornfields, Superman has a brutal fight with a big, crystalline CGI Doomsday as crews of reporters look on, filming the battle. Superman is repeatedly forced to steer the monster away from the gawking crews, who's reports turn from wonder to horror as they realize that Superman appears to be losing the fight. The monster is vanquished, but Superman lays broken, and as he dies, with Lois looking down on him, he says "Lois, I'm really..." and she says, "I know, Clark. I'm a journalist." They get their sweet kiss, and Superman is buried in the Kansas fields with his Kryptonian ship serving as the mausoleum.
What would follow would be a disaster film masquerading as a superhero flick. With Superman gone, the world is left to deal with the threat on their own. The Doomsday creature was a pod broken off of the approaching star, and as the sun draws closer and closer to Earth, the planet is wracked with a series of devastating natural disasters. Both John Henry Irons, the new scientist of tomorrow, and Mayor Luthor, are investigating potential solutions as the rogue sun draws closer. Luthor proceeds into the Phantom Zone to appeal Zod and family, who have created their own little semblance of a utopia within their prison. Zod reveals the nature of the device. The artificial sun, Solaris, was intended to be a self-sustaining refugee ship for the homeless Kryptonians that was never completed. The "Doomsday" monster was initially a "Post-Doomsday Reconaissance Intelligence", in essence, exploration probes created to sustaining ruthless environments as a means to explore planets which could potentially become new home worlds. How Solaris was completed and reprogrammed is beyond Zod. As the world is slowly torn apart by the presence of two suns, Luthor and Irons begin a global evacuation into the Phantom Zone.
Superman's mausoleum, made out of Kryptonian crystal and now being bombarded by solar radiation from two suns, is rapidly stretching across the Kansas plains, giving us the classic "Fortress of Solitude", which seems to be absorbing the sunlight into some sort of solar tuning fork channeling the light into its heart. Our big epic return moment is our climax. As Superman's solar-recharged self bursts through the fortress, we know everything's going to be okay. He zips across the Earth, rescuing school children from a flood in China, a funeral party from an earthquake in Bulgaria, a sole suicidal girl about to leap from the Daily Planet globe (He tells her it's going to be okay), etc. before tearing into the blackness of space. Here, in deep space, he has to tangle with the Doomsday defenses of Solaris before plunging into the very heart of the sun. Here, he rips out the core of Solaris, and as the rogue sun fades and collapses into itself, he's left with the seedling of a sun in the palm of his hand.
We'd close with the grand wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, with Clark's identity as Superman publicly known and reconciled.
Film Four: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Volume One
We'd close with an epic film split into two volumes, in much the same way as Kill Bill. A framing device would open and close both volumes, with Superman seemingly at the end of time. He appears to be the last living entity in the universe, left alone in his palace in the sun, playing with all the weird sci-fi toys and wondrous creations he's collected throughout his career. Life on Earth is done and the sun is dimming to cinders. A disembodied voice talks to him, taunts him. "I am the Omega," he says, "The inevitable oblivion at the end of all things, the loneliness of life dead. You can forestall it however long you want, but in the end, there will always be nothing, and the rise and fall of life will just be a droplet in the entire ocean."
For the first film, we'd cut between two periods of time. The first would be Superman/Clark and Lois a few years or a decade into their marriage. Sort of a "week-in-the-life" of thing. There would be a tangible tension in the air, as Superman is trying to make time for Lois. There's obviously an undercurrent of something in the air, and the week for some unstated reason is an important one for them. An anniversary maybe? But it's the height of the years of super-science crime in Metropolis and he's frequently having to disappear as a revenge squad of villains, with hints of being tied to this group Intergang, rampage through the city. He just doesn't have the time and it breaks both their hearts. But he's trying to do little things to make it better. Meanwhile, she keeps having appointments and schedules, all of which are quite suspect to the audience, who doesn't know what's going on, since she appears to have retired as a journalist. The story would cut and weave with the other timeline, which I'll outline below, with the bombshell hitting as the second timeline (which would be the big, epic, action-heavy segment) revs into high gear. Lois is pregnant, and the doctors know that if she brings the child to term, she'll die. The alien infant inside of her is a ticking time bomb. The two have a romantic, touching, but morose dinner at the top of the world.
The second segment would take place decades in the future. Superman has largely retired to his Fortress relocated in the Antarctic. Luthor is an old man, possibly the President. And it's here we'd introduce the Darkseid mythology. Darkseid himself would be a presence ominously felt but never seen directly, a voice, an entity, the personification of oblivion and absence. Intergang, the cult of crime which furthers his agenda, has weaved itself through the infastructure of the world. Cadmus Labs has become their evil factory. We'd see film versions of some of the evil Fourth World gods: Desaad definitely, maybe Granny Goodness and Mokkari. Darkseid himself is an entity moving in reverse chronology, living at the end of time and proceeding backwards in a slow crawl as he tries to claim the universe in darkness from the future back. Solaris would be revealed to his creature, complete in the future he conquered and shuttled backwards to devour the present. Superman, then, had pushed his assault backwards, creating a glimmer of hope for the future. What would follow would be the big, dark, dystopian Superman story, as Darkseid tries to claim Earth with the Justifiers and his Anti-Life Equation. We'd draw some inspiration from Morrison's Final Crisis as Superman has to stop the dark god while not hurting these poor people who have been brainwashed into mindless servants.
The framing device at the end would tie up both major stories, as Superman steps into a Phantom Zone projector within his sun palace and on the other side is the pregnant Lois, her physiology frozen in her phantom form. The artificial Kryptonian city itself appears to become a refuge of sorts, an artificial heaven, where those who wish, those stricken by poverty, or at the ends of their lives, or just sick of the pettiness of the physical world, can retire as ghosts, for as long as they desire.
(Whew. Almost done. Just the big finale left)
Film Five: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Volume Two
Superman at the Beginning of Time! The Legion of Superheroes in the Thirty-First Century! Solaris the Rehabilitated Sun!
Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with this. It would probably deal with the Legion. Instead of trying to bring in versions of the comic book Legion, the best idea would probably be legacies of mainstream DC characters. That way, you could introduce some of the lesser known DC heroes in a way that wouldn't intrude on the current continuity of the DC stable of films, as a preliminary to a JL film. It would probably deal with the xenophobia themes of Johns' Legion. Either way, it would explore mankind in the twilight of Earth's final days and the impact of the Phantom Zone as a sort of limbo for earth souls.
But, the big picture would be the framing device that showed up in the last film. Superman at the end of time, Darkseid staring back smugly, affirming that, regardless of what Kal tries to do, life on Earth is extinguished and shortly, nothingness will reign supreme. And as Earth's sun finally dies, Supes puts his Xanatos gambit into effect. The redeemed seed of a sun, Solaris, is placed at the heart of the sun and is baptised as a new, red sun. The redeemed Brainiac, a small globe of expanding Kryptonian crystal powered by an artificial intelligence, is placed into its orbit, and terraforms itself into a living crystalline planet, a new home for the phantom souls of Earth who pour out from the Phantom Zone into their new home. Superman foils Darkseid by creating a time loop. This is the birth of Krypton, a place where Lois Lane can safely give birth to the first infant to be born on the new planet. Life will flourish on the planet. Solaris will expand into a yellow sun and a golden age of superheroics will rise from the genetics mingled between the human immigrants and the El bloodline. It will die eventually and a single infant will be rocketed from the dying planet, and the cycle will continue in endless loop. No end of all things, just a recurring cycle of lives and ages. Boom. Roll credits.
