Dear James Gunn - Superman 2025 Review and Plot Holes Plugged by a Script Doctor

Eric Clermont Player
Panther Pictures, LLC
Fargo, ND 58104
(424) 341-5508

To: James Gunn
c/o United Talent Agency
UTA Plaza
9336 Civic Center Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310) 273-6700

Re: Last Minute Script Notes and Coverage

Mr. Gunn,

James, thank you for the opportunity to review an early cut of your next big film at Warner Brothers, Superman. It's been 12 years since they tried a reboot. So this time you didn't even try. All you did was reboot the world around him. Good call. I do have a few notes. After all, that's what you pay me for. (At least, I think somebody does. The checks come, and I cash them.)

First off, I find it ironic that having made such a fuss over the importance of a script before the movie gets made, story over substance, that your new film contains way too much plot and way too little character. Both of those things are actually quite good when they are there, but your film's so disorganized that every good bit gets undercut and upstaged by, well, itself.

I've always said that a movie fails when it can't stand on its own, or requires homework before you go in. In a world of movie "universes" that line becomes blurred, but--like television--each individual movie still needs to be episodic as well as serialized. That should mean that everyone is primed and ready to just drop right in to the story, right? Well, yeah, except when you fast tracked the worldbuilding you over-corrected on the storytelling. The script wasn't ready, even if the audience was.

Still, nobody should complain about a problem without offering a solution, so here's my rewrite. Feel free to go back in time with the truckload of money that you're about to make and implement these changes:

You've heard this already, but there's too much going on. If you really believe that you don't need to do a lot of setup with these characters because of how much backstory they all have, then commit to that lack of backstory and give them less things to do and much less to talk about. No need to explain who's financing their actions, for instance.

You'd get more time in the plot if you take out:

1) The Godzilla monster. Of all of the things Lex Luthor just happens to have or happens to be able to do, it's really actually the most nonsensical. It's supposed to be a distraction to keep him from heading over to the Fortress of Solitude and finding out what's going on with the hacking, but why exactly does that need to happen? We all know Superman only goes up there infrequently, and actually spends most of his downtime at his apartment in Metropolis. He said so in Christopher Reeve's Superman 2.

2) The size of that prison thing. If people associated with Lex Luther have been disappearing on that scale, he's going to be under investigation by the FBI at least.

3) In fact, lose the whole pocket universe. It's an unnecessary way to explain the portals. Literally anything else would suffice, and then you can have your secret prison somewhere else.

Those gone, here are my plot fixes:

You can keep the Justice Gang, But make them loyal from the beginning, and not farting around wondering whether or not they are going to believe Superman is on their side. As part of their crisis of faith, Metamorpho should already be a part of the Justice League, but on Luthor's side during the period where everyone's questioning Superman. This also eliminates any need for Luther to be kidnapping Metamorpho's son in order to get his cooperation. And it gives him a real penance to go through as his arc.

Having deleted the Godzilla thing, replace it with more intrigue between Lex and the head of that fake Ukrainian country. There's nothing wrong with us knowing his plot ahead of time, it actually would create more suspense around the question whether or not Superman would figure it out, and how to stop it.

Regarding the dog: Krypto is fun up to a point, but it is unrealistic for any dog to obey someone they don't respect as an Alpha. He cannot be under any kind of control by Superman, if he's not listening to him from the beginning. I know you joked that he was modeled after one of your own dogs, but just because you can't control a dog doesn't mean Superman can't. Superman has enough presence to give Darkseid pause. He can get respect from a dog. And for your climax to work, he needs to.

Putting Superman at the mercy of his cousin's dog may be a fun running gag--and it is a fun running gag--but it's at the expense of the dignity Superman is supposed to carry. Also, the climactic moment where Krypto ruins all of Luthor's cameras doesn't work because Krypto has spent the whole movie not listening to Superman. Now he does? You can still establish his frenzied pursuit of Mr. Terrific's orbs, but his pursuit of them should be overshadowed by his obedience when Superman tells him to stay away. (Even though he really really really wants to get them.) Then, when Superman sets him loose on the similar devices of Lex's, it's much more of a "Heck yeah I will!" moment for Krypto when he gets to do it. (Also without being subject to Superman, Krypto would have killed Lex.)

Finally, getting rid of the pocket universe allows the conflict that Superman is trying to stop in Europe to take the center of the movie. It's a more direct confrontation with Luther than the pocket universe is anyway. And this completes the arc of the Justice Gang trusting Superman too, because they can come in and be helping him, instead of being his replacement, which was really disappointing. Superman needed to answer the call of that kid.

And I thought he needed actual air to stay alive, that was the threat of the nanites wasn't it? How could he just be chilling on the moon in the post credit sequence?

Also, too many "s" words.

I understand that the movie already represents a significant investment up to this point. Please understand these changes are meant to help with the long-term viability of the project. And afterwards, if you think further preparation is necessary, I'm available for script doctoring at very reasonable rates.

Yours,

ECP

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Eric C. Player is an independently poor filmmaker, and the president of Panther Pictures, LLC, in Fargo, North Dakota. He is a father, fan, storyteller, "Picker," Corvair driver, and Super8 camera fan. A graduate of BYU and Chapman University film schools, his films have played in theaters all across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and movies to which he was a contributing writer or producer are available on Netflix, Amazon, and Roku. He has written and produced film and video content for over thirty years, and has been writing chapter-fiction since the sixth grade. His 2007 production, Nothing But The Best, was an Official Selection of the 2010 Newport Beach Film Festival. His 2016 short, Moment of Anger, received multiple honors including Best Short and Best Director at the Road House International Short Film Festival in Santa Monica, California. His 2023 short film, Stay With Me was an Official Selection of the Boston Film Festival. He currently has two shorts and a feature in post-production, and a half dozen feature scripts just waiting for him to finish them already. Eric Player on Imdb.

The Best (well, not the worst) Movies of 2024

2024 was terrible for a lot of people. I won't elaborate on why--you've probably got your own ideas about what that means. I have things that I could complain about, but I would rather look for reasons not to. Many of those reasons came from the movies. And I still believe that a theater is the best way to experience motion pictures. I saw about half of them that way this year. I think I'm up there with the national average--maybe even above it. In any case, Hollywood is doing its best to deal with that new reality in the moviegoing audience. And, like every time it comes to a crossroad--from projection to sound to color to 3D to Dolby--the answer the industry came up with was, Spectacle!

Well spectacle is all well and good, but sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. The spectacle--heroic running gorillas and such--didn't really connect with me this year, which is why three of my selections are documentaries (a record), only two are made from an existing property and six are non-IP original films. If you're counting, that means I have 11 on the list. You'll see what I mean.

As always, I am trying to make this *my* list, no one elses. I have tried to avoid award season talk. I don't even know what the Golden Globe nominees are, as of this writing. I have my reasons. In the end, I want to explore what I really think and feel about today's pop culture. So here I go again. On my own. Going down the only road I've ever known.

Remember, each film has a link to where you can watch it, or find out more about it. Just click the title. It's hotlinked. Check it out. Seriously, people always seem to miss that.


So: Best Movies (American, single-shot stories) of 2024:
#PPLLCTenBest2024 #TenBest2024 #TenBest

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The Fall Guy, 87 North and Universal Pictures, Directed by David Leitch

As light and forgettable as the TV show that inspired it, and just as much fun. Stocked full of cliches, like the secret recording of the bad guy confessing to everything, and fun surprises--even if we've seen those surprises before. A romantic comedy with explosions--I'm pretty sure there's a genre there somewhere. A bonus with this film was the way it reaffirmed my connection to my older brother. The two of us watched it on the same night separately in our own little worlds without realizing it until afterwards. Movies can do that.

Conclave, Indian Paintbrush, Directed by Edward Berger

At some fundamental level, every organization in the world is just like high school. Conclave is a slow-burn action movie. Seriously. The leaps of faith and mind games that Ralph Fiennes navigates are no less harrowing and complex than those that Tom Cruise takes on in his Mission Impossible movies. Every silent hallway was exploding with tension, every vote a leap from a cliffside. I'm not kidding. And like any action movie, I figured out pretty early what the big reveal would be and who the bad guys were, but getting there and watching Ralph get there too was riveting. And for good measure, there was a twist ending that came out of nowhere but connected cleanly back to the bread crumbs (and my original guess) that were left along the way.

Now....[looking it up]...how do you spell hermaphrodite?

Juror #2, Dichotomy Films, Directed by Clint Eastwood

There's nothing I enjoy more than a movie that keeps me thinking about it after the end credits have rolled. Many of the films I think about, are ones where I take apart the story. In 2009, before I even started making top 10 lists, I did an small blog post about what was wrong with the movie, "9." (And about my Grandma.)

I like doing that. Most great movies will have me gushing about them and their characters and structure, such as my 2015 review of The Revenant. But that's still me engaging with the film's writing, as a writer. The even better movies don't engage me that way. The better ones get me thinking, not about how I would handle the story, but about how I would handle *myself* if I were in fact in that story.

Clint Eastwood does moral dilemma stories better than anyone else. And in his best films, this being one of them, he poses the question without providing the answer. There were so many times I thought I understood what was going to happen next or what--if I were there--my responses would be, but I soon saw that I understood nothing at all. And Josey Wales, bless him, wasn't going to explain it to me.

Jim Henson: Idea Man, Imagine Documentaries, Directed by Ron Howard

When I first went into film, studying at BYU, I made documentaries more than I made any other genre, even though I was studying screenwriting. Fellow students, not to mention a couple of professors, thought I was mixing formats. They thought I should concentrate more on being a writer. But I instinctively knew that making a documentary was a fabulous lesson in writing: you don't just showcase a series of events when making a documentary; a series of events is simply a newsreel, but a documentary is storytelling. And you can't just point the camera to find it. You're a watcher, a waiter. Be patient, listen, and the story finds you. Often, it doesn't come until the editing room, when you reflect on everything, and see what it means. Documentary film is reflection, it's seeing the small moments where great things came to pass, after they have already passed.

Jim Henson took green cloth and a ping pong ball and did great things.

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Spaceman, Netflix, Directed by Johan Renck

I don't usually like "serious" Adam Sandler movies, or any Adam Sandler movies. But this isn't an Adam Sandler movie. This is a piece of existential art by the director of "Chernobyl," Johan Renck. Apparently he's Swedish, very Swedish. Somehow he convinced Isabella Rossellini to play the head of a Czechoslovakian Space Agency.

This is, I kid you not, a movie about an extraterrestrial trying to get a man to understand his feelings about the breakdown of his relationship with his wife during a mission to Jupiter. To tell you any more than that, particularly the nature of the alien, is to ruin it. It shouldn't work, not as entertainment. It should be as incomprehensible as the student project of my Norwegian classmate at film school. Instead, it is beautiful and haunting--despite sharing a very specific trait with said student film project. BUT DARN IT IF I SAY WHAT IT IS I'll RUIN IT.

This film tells the story of a man who doesn’t truly see the woman he married, he’s focused on himself--very shallow for being lonely in space and stuff--his journey to enlightenment is not only beautiful to watch but eye opening as well. AND DARN IT I WANT TO SAY MORE.

How about this: Frodo would not be surprised by what this Spaceman saw inside his claustrophobic spaceship.

Carry On, Dylan Clark Productions and DreamWorks Pictures Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

A new and fun entry in that ever so specific film genre of the Christmas Movie Action Film. I watched it uninterrupted the day it came out, and I can't tell you anything more about it than that, because I don't remember. That's okay. Movies should be fun, and don't have to leave you with anything more than a smile.

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Nosferatu, Universal Pictures and Focus Features, Directed by Robert Eggers

Every so often I will include a film in my list that I must admit I haven't seen yet. This is the one for this year. Because of the fact that I know I will not find a chance to see this one until after the new year, I also broke my usual "no spoilers" approach and read/watched reviews from people and publications I respect. It apparently is as simple and fantastic as a 1-1 retelling of the original film....with added bonus of the heroine doing what she does out of choice, not just out of desperation. And Count Orlok is pure evil, just so. No backstory or sympathetic childhood. Sometimes that's all you want.

And it looks amazing.

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Civil War, A24, Directed by Alex Garland

As far as I'm concerned this isn't a war movie. It's a disaster film. And it's a rare disaster movie that can make it personal. That is, feel like there are any stakes. Watching a film, when I speak to the screen then I know it has affected me. When Sammy died, and his colleague said he didn't die for anything. I immediately shouted out, "He died for you! He died for the girl!" In all the chaos, that was personal. That's not nothing, buddy.

Some people in critical circles questioned Alex Garland as to why he would make his main characters journalists. And why there wasn't some clear understanding of which side was right or wrong, good or bad. Seems pretty simple to me: the press is supposed to see both sides. And both sides did terrible things in this movie. A Civil War was not the way to fix it.

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Heretic, A24, Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods

I'm a Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). This movie caused quite a stir among my people when it was announced. I wanted to be offended (admit it, it's fun); I was worried about the portrayal of something very dear to me. But then I told myself to get over it, because they've been making horror using nuns from here to eternity. Geese and Ganders and all that.

To the filmmaker's credit, I was happy to see that the heroines in this film endure their confrontation through their faith. Even as they stood in that basement surrounded by a hopeless situation, Sister Paxton looked around and said that she was there to help. And her courage was bolstered and echoed by her missionary companion, Sister Barnes, who helped her think of ways through the situation, and also encouraged her to act rather than to be acted upon. Sister Barnes, the obvious skeptic, seemed to find her faith in her response to the challenge, thinking through what she believed. Whereas Sister Paxton was a confident minister, but had always allowed herself to be led; this time she had to stand up and say for herself who she was and what she believed. Her testimony.

Oh, and Kudos to the producers for hiring an unknown to play the lead. I have no idea who that guy was, but he was brilliant. Sidenotes: I hope the magic underwear bit makes people stop using that phrase, and the classic shot of glasses caked in blood is always an effective one.

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DOUBLE FEATURE: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Music By John Williams, HBO Documentary Films and Amblin Television, Directed by Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui, and Laurent Bouzereau

These two films remain intertwined in my head, and so I present them as a double feature entry.

The story of Christopher Reeve always seemed simpler than it was. He was Superman, he made an heroic show of it after his accident, and so on. Something I gleaned from watching this story of his tragedy, was that he wasn't so super in his personal life--until his wife Dana showed him what real love was. While playing Superman, Christopher basically abandoned his first relationship and his two kids for his career. I didn't see it when I was a kid, but there's a lot of cynicism in the way he expresses himself in those early press tours for the Salkind films. Then, after his body was broken, the relationship with his wife and his family changed for the better; blessed with a new perspective, he had ten years with his loved ones until his body just wouldn't let him stay any longer.

As for John Williams, composer of so many iconic films including "Superman: The Movie," it's hard to believe how much of American life, my life, is tied into the sounds that came from his head. The best part of the whole Williams documentary, was seeing a dad with kids stick with the daily slog of supporting his family, until he found his calling composing movies.

Yep. There's always more to every story than what you see with your eyes or hear with your ears.

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Okay, as Delmar says in "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" That's all I got.

But if you'd really like something extra, how about one of mine?

Stay With Me, Panther Pictures, Directed by Graeme Finlayson

Stay With Me is a story of love, loss, and love lost. We all think we've gone too far; we all think there's no going back. But it's never too late to let love be your legacy.

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Eric C. Player is an independently poor filmmaker, and the president of Panther Pictures, LLC, in Fargo, North Dakota. He is a father, fan, storyteller, "Picker," Corvair driver, and Super8 camera fan. A graduate of BYU and Chapman University film schools, his films have played in theaters all across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and movies to which he was a contributing writer or producer are available on Netflix, Amazon, and Roku. He has written and produced film and video content for over thirty years, and has been writing chapter-fiction since the sixth grade. His 2007 production, Nothing But The Best, was an Official Selection of the 2010 Newport Beach Film Festival. His 2016 short, Moment of Anger, received multiple honors including Best Short and Best Director at the Road House International Short Film Festival in Santa Monica, California. His 2023 short film, Stay With Me was an Official Selection of the Boston Film Festival. He currently has two shorts in post-production, a feature in pre-production, and a half dozen feature scripts just waiting for him to finish them already. Eric Player on Imdb.