WB Archive Collection - Supergirl Blu-ray

[AndyDursin]

I noticed the back cover credit "Based on the DC Comics Characters Created By Jerry Siegel/Joe Shuster" with the newly added line "By Special Arrangement With The Jerry Siegel Family". Must have been a condition of that lawsuit settlement?

[Eric Paddon]

I had a chance to go through the first version of the script written after Reeve bailed out on the film (which was supposed to be an integral part of the storyline). There were some dramatically different elements that ultimately clarify why the final version has a bit of a schizo quality to it, because the shadow of the earlier draft was hanging over it.

1-The villainess Selena was supposed to be a "good girl, turned bad" by the Omegahedron. This is why they were first trying to get Dolly Parton for the role. Because she's a novice to being a witch, she is thus inept at times and this is why we get the schizoid quality of Dunaway, who is formidably evil, but still has the comic elements of the earlier version of the character.

2-There was better pacing at the beginning. Kara doesn't jump right away to go after the device, instead the accident happens when she's a child and the loss of it just weakens the city, not threaten it with destruction. So ten years later as an adult she prepares herself to retrieve it and by then she has learned about her cousin and has made her own costume. So she arrived on Earth fully briefed in a comprehensible fashion.

3-There was supposed to be a bigger role for the school principal. His character, Mr. Danvers, in the comic book is the ultimate foster father of "Linda" so he had a bigger role and he and his wife become Selena's prisoners in the cage at the climax. Peter Cook's Nigel wasn't a teacher at the school (his classroom dialogue was originally for Danvers), he was just the head of a coven that Selena had taken over.

4-There was a lot more black magic of Selena taking over the coven that I'm sure made the Salkinds tell Odell to tone things down or else they would have kissed off the family audience. Her plot on world domination was put more into effect by going beyond the town but then I think someone must have pointed out that if she became more than a local threat, then the absent Superman would have no excuse for being away in another galaxy! (if Superman were her prisoner they could do that, but now they had this new problem caused by Reeve's unexpected backing out).

Some other elements of the script were better (dopey Ethan falls in love with Supergirl, not the alter ego). Some were worse. It gets back to how they just couldn't get the parts to blend together for the right sum leaving us with only some good parts held together by Slater.

[AndyDursin]

Thanks for the rundown Eric. There are certain components in the film, to me, that don't feel that they were well thought out, and your analysis of Odell's screenplay bears evidence of that. Sounds like the original conception of some of the characters/elements (Selena especially; the Argo city scenes) were better in their initial conception.

I watched a fair amount of the Blu-Ray the other night and my review is up. Hart Bochner is just terrible in the film. Not that it's all his fault, but that whole end of the movie doesn't work at all.