10 Things You Need To Know About Tim Burton's Superman Lives

6. Kevin Smith Wrote A Draft Of The Script

The Mallrats scene is what Kevin Smith believes got him not only in the room to discuss the Superman Lives script, but a crack at writing his own.

The director of nerd comedies like Clerks and Mallrats doesn't seem like the most natural fit for a multi-million dollar superhero blockbuster and he's since admitted as such. He's also admitted that his script was mostly an attempt to return Superman to some of his more classic comic book storylines and characteristics, despite the best attempts of producer Jon Peters €“€“to derail it.

Amongst other things, he introduced the idea of Superman flying not as a dude on wires against back-projection, but as a lightning-fast "red blur", like in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. At times Smith's treatment was a little too faithful to the source material, but it still did a pretty good job at covering all the bases.

The origin story was revisited, it introduced some major villains, Lois and Clark were together and she knew his secret identity, the death was still in there but handled better, and there were cameos for both Batman and Deadshot.