An oral history of the launchpad abortion that would’ve asked us to believe Nic Cage can fly. _Superman Lives_ was such a bizarre near-production, so stuffed with intrinsically weird players and ideas, that I’m not sure if I’m glad it was canceled or disappointed to have been denied the spectacle. In the late ‘90s, it came awfully close to reality. Cabinets’ worth of concept art, screen tests, casting ideas and shooting scripts were already finished and a release date had been penciled into the studio’s schedule for the summer of ’98. Then... it all fell apart, scuttling years of work and redirecting its capital to another disastrous flop: Will Smith’s _Wild Wild West_.

Here we shadow Jon Schnepp, nerd culture aficionado, as he sifts through old assets and chats with those responsible. Although this documentary was funded through Kickstarter and is obviously a very low-budget production, its access is all we could’ve asked for. Schnepp sits down with everyone from studio execs to comic book writers, even spending a puzzling afternoon with the eccentric Tim Burton (filmed in the would-be director’s creepy, echoey attic space), providing us with a very thorough (if not cohesive) idea of where the film was trying to go. The artwork, at least, is excellent. Many members of this team went on to high-profile gigs elsewhere in Hollywood, and it’s fascinating to enjoy this peek into their creative processes. The most entertaining bits, though, involve an indirect back-and-forth between screenwriter Kevin Smith, who’s made a nice secondary career of shit-talking producer Jon Peters in his comedy specials, and Peters himself. Actually, Peters is mesmerizing even when he isn’t trying to justify his lust for giant spiders; a living embodiment of the snobby, vapid, fake-ass producer stereotype, he embraces every last one of his insane eccentricities. Is this guy for real? I’d love to hear a few more lies about his days as a young, street-fighting hairdresser.

Surprisingly, for a film that was never actually realized, there’s probably too much material to cover and the documentary seems reluctant to overlook anything. So it goes long, and Schnepp indulges in a bit of ego, framing himself into the picture and nodding like a bobblehead during each answer. I appreciated the insight, enjoyed the lunacy of it all, but was ready to wash my hands thirty minutes before the closing credits.