And finally done with the first draft of Mario Puzo's original Superman draft. It got wierd, and Superman II was basically condensed to the last ten minutes of the movie. I'll have a general thoughts summary at the end of the plot summary after the "-=-" line.

The news team visits the H-Bomb plant, which also has a nuclear reactor. The reactor is what Luthor and Eve are going after as his second of three terrible things he planned to do. He causes the reactor to explode, exposing hundreds to lethal radiation. Clark Kent gets dressed in radioactive-resistant clothes to help, but instead finds and recognizes Luthor. They fight, and Luthor manages to cut the radiation suit, exposing Kent to a lethal dose of radiation.

Kent is dying, and has less than two weeks to live. He tells Lois to get everyone to the Fortress of Solitude where he can use the molecular chamber to make him a Kryptonian again, this time, forever. The news crew sneaks Kent out of the hospital and fly him to the Fortress, where he's cured of radioactivity and turned back in to Superman.

The news crew celebrates his recovery and the knowledge that Kent is Superman. But Superman has had the champagne they're drinking drugged so they'll forget he's Clark Kent. Lois pours hers out when Superman isn't looking, and feigns amnesia.

As they're all sleeping, Lois wakes up and goes to the molecular chamger and runs it, hoping she'll become a kryptonian. She has a fantasy sequence where she becomes Superwoman with Superman, flying and loving him. They land at a circus where a strongman who looks like Luthor challenges Superman and then Superwoman to a challenge, which they both easily defeat.

Superman wakes her up, and tells her the moilecular chamber doesn't work on humans, and insists she drinks the champagne, which she does.

Luthor unleashes his third evil plan, which is to explode an atomic bomb in Metropolis. Superman goes into Luthor's lair, where he tries to trick Superman again with his hologram duplicates, but Superman figures out the real Luthor and gets him to say where the bomb is: a plane circling over town. Superman finds the plan and drives it into deep space where it explodes.

Clark Kent and Lois Lane accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom for Superman for saving Metropolis when Kent senses a problem - looking into the sky, he sees the Four Kryptonian Villains coming closer to Earth in the Phantom Zone.

It's here that the script's tone changes from a screenplay to more of a general and vague outline. Superman heads to back to the Fortress where Jor-El and Lara tell him that the Phantom Zone could be broken open with a nuclear device and that he cannot defeat the four villains as they will be as powerful as he is. As the four villains completely escape the Phantom Zone, they lay waste to the cities and towns across Earth. Superman decides he can't beat them 1 on 1, and comes up with a plan that involves Luthor. In exchange for full amnesty, Luthor will help Superman defeat the four villains.

A fight ensues between Superman and the four, and he's very much defeated. He retreats to Luthor's lair, where the four villains are surprised to see multiple holograms of Superman. They try to find the real superman when all the holograms dissapear. Luthor has turned them off. He's willing to let the villains know where Superman is if he can join them, and they allow it. Luthor takes them to the Fortress of Solitude.

The four villains struggle to get into the fortress, and Luthor calls out Superman. "You're trapped in there, and that's fine. We can run things out here." Superman lets them in where they fight to the center of the fortress.

At the center of the Fortress of Solitude, is the molecular chamber, and once he has all four there, he activates it, turning them into humans. He then destroys the chamber to prevent the four villains from changing back inside the ten day period. He offers them a solution as humans: drink the same memory erasing chemical and start life anew, which they all do except Luthor. Luthor talks with Superman and says he doesn't want to have his life erased ("without evil, you can't be good!"). Superman assures him that the drink is not drugged for him. Luthor asks him if this is the first time he's lied. Superman says he's not lying. After all, you helped save the world.

The script ends with a newscast by Clark Kent that the current crisis is over, but that humanity is threatened by its own violence and environmental damage.

-=-

This script really is just kind of all over the place, and feels less like a chohesive screenplay as much as it feels almost like a series pitch. "Here are multiple adventures we can have that could be expanded into movies." In fact, the last adventure, with the four villains, is incredibly vague and feels more like an outline than a finished piece.

But the movie is basically here. We have the Kryptonian opening, pretty much intact, and the Kents bringing Superman up. They're super short, but they're there.

From there, we have little bits of Superman I and II scattered throughout the script, mostly Superman II, but not in a cohesive story. Once the Bentons get the script, it's far far far more cohesive as a story.

I do have Puzo's second draft as well...it may be a little more cohesive, but I don't plan to go into too much detail until I've read the whole thing. I honestly expect it to be the same as the first draft with extensions, edits and rearrangements. But if there are differences, I'll post about them once I'm done with reading and comapring it.

IT's a neat little document for one of the best superhero movies ever made, which came from a very scattered episodic script.