It ended up being a good 26 years before Christopher Reeve's second exemplary turn as the Man Of Steel got a proper follow up, in the form of Bryan Singer's 2006 film Superman Returns. And, Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor aside, it wasn't really worth the wait. If only the stars had been in alignment a decade earlier, though, and we might have got the Superman sequel we really deserved. Or at least the most crazy, unique and off-book Superman sequel possible, at least, since it involved Nicolas Cage paying his superheroic idol, Tim Burton moving on from tackling the Batman movies and Kevin Smith (see, it paid off!) being hired to rewrite a script in order to put a giant mechanical spider in it, by request of producer Jon Peters. Who was a maniac. Amongst the other elements Peters demanded appear in the film were an all-black suit for the hero - who wouldn't fly, FYI - a scene involving supervillain Brainiac fighting polar bears at the Fortress of Solitude, a cuddly dog sidekick for Lex Luthor, and "a gay R2-D2 with attitude". Yep. That's a sentence that left another human being's mouth. Peters eventually got to recycle the giant mechanical spider, at least, for the climax of Wild Wild West, but the rest of the concepts have been lost to the sands of time. Which is a shame since, for all of his meddling, Smith handed in a serviceable script. His fanboy credentials definitely came in handy in crafting a story which adapted various storylines and characters from the comic books, with Brainiac sending Doomsday to kill Superman, as well as blocking out the sun to make him powerless. Smith's casting choices included Ben Affleck as Superman, Linda Fiorentino as Lois Lane, Jack Nicholson as Lex Luthor, Famke Janssen as Mercy, John Mahoney as Perry White, David Hyde Pierce as the Eradicator, Jason Lee as Brainiac and Jason Mewes as Jimmy Olsen. Which...honestly, we'd've been okay with. We would have been even more okay with Nicolas Cage in the title role but, sadly, it was not to be.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
