The Death of Superman Lives: What Happened?

This is very different from similar documentaries like Jodorowsky's Dune and Lost Soul in that it's not about a movie we wish had been made, but one we're glad was not made. The film in question featured Nicholas Cage as the titular character in Superman Lives, ironically retelling loosely the comics story of the death and return of Superman.

I have always loved Kevin Smith's spoken word epic here and here of his time working on this film. His experience, or his view of his experience, is hilarious and endlessly entertaining. The most intriguing parts in this documentary are the bits where Smith retells the tale while Jon Peters tells his side. Much denial, but the parts that sync up are interesting. I still believe Smith.

Interviews include those with Smith, Peters, the unlikely director Tim Burton, and many others. They're interspersed to create a tapestry detailing the history and demise of the Superman Lives project. And while I am usually dead set against messing with the source material (after all, the source material is what made the product marketable and worth making a movie of to begin with), I have to confess that Burton's vision is an intriguing one.

Just as the American 1998 Godzilla was a good giant monster movie, but a lousy Godzilla movie, so it would be with this vision - a good superhero movie, but a terrible Superman flick. That said, I was intrigued enough that I would probably have seen it had it been made, and possibly liked it as long as it wasn't Superman.

There was a lot of talk about the regenerative suit, the Thanagarian snare beast, preliminary sketches, great inside stuff. The potential cast is also discussed, one that included not just Nicholas Cage, but also Sandra Bullock as Lois Lane, Christopher Walken as Brainiac, and Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor, a role he would eventually play wonderfully in Superman Returns.

I found the Brainiac designs the most intriguing, creepy as they came from the mind of Tim Burton, but intriguing. Jon Peters would certainly be pleased as one looked like the "Jonny Quest" eyeball spider with Brainiac's head on top. Freaky. I don't think I would have been happy to see this version of the Superman mythos, but I think I would have liked to have seen it at least once.

Lost Soul

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr. Moreau ~ A friend had recommended this documentary to me, and realizing this writer/director's body of work consisted of a movie I remembered loving, and two I had not seen, I did a bit of homework first. Hardware stood the test of time. Dust Devil was very pretty, but unwatchable. And The Island of Dr. Moreau was, wow, just terrible.

Now it was time to take a journey into the madness of the man's movie-making. There is a solid Jodorowsky's Dune vibe going on throughout. Stanley had/has a big vision powered principally by the source material of the original novel. He felt there had never been a faithful adaptation, but weirdly enough he took the tact of modernizing it, bringing it into the present day. That was one thing I disliked about the finished product. Stanley's ideas and storyboards are stunning however, and might have convinced me otherwise.

One thing I was happy that was brought up, and something I talked about in my review of The Island of Dr. Moreau, was the similarity to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Stanley wanted to pay homage to the connection rather than shy away from it, pulling characters and situations from Conrad and putting them into Moreau. Of course casting Marlon Brando, who played Kurtz and would play Moreau, brought it all home.

Of course that's not what this documentary is really about though. As the film moved into pre-production, we watch the revolving door of the lead actors, the make-up process, and the gradual isolation and edging out of the project of Richard Stanley. The writer/director wasn't all that together either. His belief in witchcraft and superstition made it clear, to him at least, that forces were aligned against him.

Stanley, in the best of possibilities, was in over his head with this film. Everyone on the set knew it. He had a problem communicating with the cast, didn't attend meetings, and was getting more paranoid by the moment. There was a death in Brando's family, and the set was hit by a hurricane. What else could go wrong?

Richard Stanley was fired as director, probably had a bit of a mental breakdown, and was put on a plane off location. John Frankenheimer was brought in, contemptuous of what came before, and basically just got the job done - no vision, just get it done. No one was happy, especially in the end, the audience.

The last third of the doc chronicles the film as a Frankenheimer production, the dueling egos of Brando and Val Kilmer, the parties of the crew and extras, and the eventual destruction of what could have been at least an interesting movie. The ironic part is that apparently Richard Stanley has found his way back to the set as an extra, a perfect end to the doc.

I really dig this, an incisive look at how Hollywood works, how it doesn't work, and how it destroys people and ideas. Definitely worth seeing.

The Island of Dr. Moreau 1996

The Island of Dr. Moreau ~ In prepping to watch Lost Soul, the documentary about writer/director Richard Stanley's aborted attempt to make this very film - I sought out and watched the 1996 version of The Island of Dr. Moreau for the first time. I must confess that I have not read the H.G. Wells novel it's based on, one of more than a few holes in my Wells reading, but I have seen the 1977 version, and I know the basic story.

First, this is a period piece that has been updated to modern times, introducing the idea of genetics into simpler concepts of Wells' beast men. Sometimes change is not good. Other than the idea of genetics this updating does little for the story. I was disappointed in the make-up, primitive even for 1996, face masks not much better than the 1977 movie.

With the inclusion of Marlon Brando as the titular role of Dr. Moreau, comparisons can't help but be made with Apocalypse Now, in both character and story. In fact, these similarities drove a wedge between once friends H.G. Wells and Joseph Conrad, who wrote Heart of Darkness, on which Apocalypse is based. The presence of Brando, as well as his performance, do not help that situation one bit.

I was also very disappointed in the cast, Val Kilmer and Fairuza Balk simply walk through the film. David Thewlis, so wonderful as Remus in the Harry Potter movies, has no charisma as our POV character, and the great Marlon Brando is... is... I don't know what the hell Brando is in this movie. I never realized until seeing this how dead-on the "South Park" parody of Dr. Mephesto was. Wow.

I was also surprised that I saw nothing special or spectacular here visually. I usually enjoy John Frankenheimer's work, in fact, I think this is the only one of his movies I did not love. Now I can't wait to watch Lost Soul, to see what may or may not have gone wrong. Because this, is so wrong.

Hardware

Someone recently recommended Lost Soul to me, the recent documentary about writer/director Richard Stanley and his journey making 1996's The Island of Doctor Moreau. Before I watched it I thought I might revisit Stanley's first mainstream film, Hardware from 1990.

I remember being very into cyberpunk when Hardware came out, seeing it the Friday night it was released, and liking it enough to buy the VHS when it became available - but if I'm being honest, I remember almost nothing else. It was one of those videotapes I owned, put on the shelf, and never watched. Yes, it's time to watch Hardware, but on Netflix, the VHS is long long gone now.

Hardware portrays a post-apocalyptic world some time in the 21st century with nations at war and radiation everywhere. The technology is dated, yet somehow refreshing, even if the fashions are very 1980s MTV doomsday. Written and directed by Stanley, and based on a short story from 2000 A.D., is the story of a sculptor who inadvertently reactivates a killer robot from collected junk, which then rampages.

This is both something we've seen before and yet haven't. Stanley adds a punk attitude and style to old school scifi and horror, then turns the dials up to eleven. Hardware is sexy, dirty, and slick, fastpaced to a eclectic score and soundtrack. I found I still dig this after twenty-five years, and had to scratch my head about why I hadn't seen either of Stanley's other two films, Moreau and Dust Devil.

Stacey Travis, John Lynch, and pre-"Practice" Dylan McDermott are very good and better than the usual for this kind of genre flick, but the movie is quite easily stolen by Motorhead's Lemmy, and Iggy Pop as DJ Angry Bob. Hardware was a pleasant ride through cyberpunk nostalgia, recommended, but not for the squeamish.