Nicolas Cage as the Man Of Steel, polar bears guarding the Fortress of Solitude, Brainiac transforming into a massive spider creature at the end... Kevin Smith must have been smoking more weed than Jay and Silent Bob combined when he came up with the screenplay for Superman Lives. This ill-fated undertaking is the most famous aborted Superman film, a project that spent years in limbo after undergoing more than 150 script rewrites and once had Tim Burton attached to direct. The story behind its demise is so drawn out that it has an entire documentary dedicated to it - The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened? Smiths script for the project was bonkers and fascinating in equal measure. The plot was loosely based on the Death of Superman comic book story arc, with extraterrestrial menace Brainiac serving as the primary antagonist. It had the malevolent android teaming up with Supermans long-time nemesis Lex Luthor to launch a dastardly scheme that involved blocking out sun to sap the Man of Steels strength (old Mr Burns would have been proud), before unleashing the alien behemoth Doomsday on an underpowered Superman. Supes perishes in the battle, but is later resurrected by a Kryptonian robot based on the Eradicator from the pages of DC Comics. Naturally, he manages to rise from the dead, regain his powers, and see off the combined threat of Luthor and Brainiac, all in time to declare his undying love for Lois Lane before the credits roll. This would have been Superman as we had never seen him before. Cages Man of Steel was set to don a black costume after returning from the grave and at no point in the script does he fly per se. Smith described the hero as surging across the screen in a blur of red and blue, leaving a sonic boom in his wake. Sandra Bullock, Courteney Cox and Julianne Moore are rumoured to have been approached for the role of Lois, Christopher Walken was fancied for Brainiac, Jack Nicholson linked with Luthor, and Chris Rock was reportedly cast as Jimmy Olsen. Photographs of Cage in costume from his screen tests are widely available online, and its safe to say he would have been the most unique version of Superman ever to appear on screen. Well never know whether that means Superman Lives would have been good or not, but it certainly would have been original.
