| Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) | |
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Rating: 3.7/10 (52,600 votes) Director: Sidney J. Furie Writer: Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Christopher Reeve Stars: Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder Runtime: 90 min Rated: PG Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi Released: 24 Jul 1987 |
| Plot: The Man of Steel crusades for nuclear disarmament and meets Lex Luthor's latest creation, Nuclear Man. | |
As the film kicks off with a Warner Bros logo, and a cheap imitation of the classic Williams score to a series of dubious opening credit names swooping in, you know something isn’t right straight away. The Salkinds are no longer involved (which, after the mistakes of the last film could have been a good thing, but sadly turned out to not be), and the production was handed over to Golan & Globus. Without a script in place, they approached Reeve asking him to reprise his role. He was unsure if he wanted to return, having been disappointed with the farce approach of the third film. So, a deal was struck – if he returned, he could have input into the story. However, with so many other films in the pipeline at the time, there was not enough budget for the Superman film and so corners were cut, resulting in a film which is pretty much the prime example of how not to make a comic book movie.
The basic story sees Lex Luthor wanting to make a clone of Superman, whilst the big-S himself is convincing the world to get rid of its nuclear arsenal. The two plans combine and result in the creation of Nuclear Man. Cue fights and action. Sounds intriguing enough, but the lack of budget means that the result is a poor looking production, and many of the ideas have vanished. On the DVD commentary, Mark Roesenthal (one of the writers) offers quite a bit of insight into where the film went wrong, and highlights that many ideas in the script were dropped by the time of filming (Nuclear Man was to have had shape-shifting abilities, being able to turn into strange beasts), or even cut before release (he mentions that the finished film was 45 minutes longer than the released version – and that was after editing – which resulted in much of the plot being hacked away, explaining why it is so muddled).
The effects are extremely low budget, and flying shots are very static and grainy, lacking dynamics everyone seems to move from left to right or straight ahead. The soundtrack is extremely intrusive on scenes, with dialogue exchanges between Lex and Superman lacking menace due to the light and jokey music cues beneath it. Nuclear Man lacks menace, looking like an 80s soft-rock singer, and the costume (which seems to clone from nowhere along with him) is so bad that even Freddie Mercury would have refused to wear it.
Even Reeve seems out of sorts in the film, looking completely like he doesn’t want to be there his interactions with Margot Kidder (back as Lois Lane) and Gene Hackman (returning as Lex now the Salkinds were not involved) feel flat and lacking the emotional impact of earlier films. Only a short scene which sees Clark return to the now empty Kent farm seems to have any warmth to it.
Superman IV performs one positive role – it makes you appreciate the third film a great deal more. Feeling more like a TV movie, it beggars belief that this film was given a big screen outing, and it is no wonder that it led to an almost 20 years break for the franchise.
