Superman II: Green Cut
Back to the name "Green Cut." Comic book fans are familiar with colored covers for unique copies of books. Special "Gold" and "Silver" editions are pretty common. So the fan edit was given it's title "Superman II: Green Cut," which boiled down to it's basics means "the fan version of the film with the green opening, that has the green re-powering scene in it." Simple huh?
So what happened? During the making of "Restored International Cut" work on "Green Cut" kept moving along as well. The most difficult aspect of the project was getting brand new special effects made. Different effects artists were tried, and scenes were attempted with varying degrees of success. It was a tall order getting someone who was willing to do the work, and able to pull off good looking effect shots that matched the original style and time of the film. Some people dropped out, and others simply became unavailable, but progress was being made. Finally an artist was found, and the real work began. RIC was getting closer and closer to completion, so when an artist was finally locked in, the very first shots were needed for the trailer. The RIC trailer was designed around two themes, RIC is finished, and also coming soon GC, complete with glimpses of new effect shots. So it was an RIC trailer and GC teaser trailer all in one.
The process was slow, but new effects shots were being finished for the trailer. Around that time RIC finally got completed, and copies started going out to contributors who helped make the project happen. The first batch was small in case the DVD's had problems, and all involved were asked to keep it quiet until the trailer was finished. The trailer took a bit longer than expected, but was turning out very nice. In the meantime people were itching to talk about RIC, but thankfully all involved kept quiet. The trailer was always designed to be the official announcement. The RIC / GC teaser trailer was finally near the completion stage. The last shots needed were finally complete, all that remained was minor final tweaking, and a little help from the amazing audio pro. It was at that time very interesting news came in. I'm sure many will be disappointed and not like this explanation, but simply put, something of a personal nature made getting GC finished absolutely impossible. No one is bankrupt, or had a terrible car accident, but what did happen is a personal matter, and needs to remain that way. People probably believe that GC was killed when the WB got angry about RIC, but the truth is the project was already halted.
So what now? With the help of Dharmesh at Superman Cinema the decision was made to showcase the unfinished GC work. When the trailer was finished, it was decided that even though it promises "Coming Soon," and that is no longer true, it was completed in the way it was originally intended to be seen. The trailer contains two complete pieces, both of which were probably going to be redone because they needed to be made in higher resolution, and the original artist was no longer available. Specifically those are the opening green WB logo, and the shot of Zod with the bullets bouncing off of him. Two other shots in the trailer only show a small portion of the entire sequence they come from. Both "The Green Scene," where Clark gets his powers back, and the "Fortress Destruction" where Superman destroys his Fortress with heat vision, are complete sequences, and being presented here in their final polished state, visually speaking. The audio pro was going to be brought in at the end, so the audio in those scenes is still temporary.
Also presented here are two examples of other shots intended for the film. One of them shows how the new title sequence would get a much needed face-lift. A wonderful artist finally cracked the code to making proper swooping titles like the original film. This is an example of the direction those titles were taking. By the way, the test is blue for a reason. Now that the titles were no longer the "stolen" ones from the first film, they also no longer needed to be green. The final film would not only match the style and tone of "Superman The Movie," but also give original director Richard Donner his long overdue credit. The opening WB logo (also borrowed from the first film very deliberately) would be the only thing left in the beginning of the film that was given the green treatment.
