#91 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (Wes)

#91 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Firstly I should point out that I’m a massive comic book geek, so you’d think that this movie would be right up my alley. Unfortunately I absolutely HATE Superman. Sure he’s had his moments, the first Superman movie and the death of Superman storyline being the two best. I enjoyed Superman 2 (but only because General Zod was awesome), Smallville and even The New Adventures of Superman TV show (although that was mostly due to Teri Hatcher). But as a Superhero he’s too invulnerable, he has too many powers. Writers have always struggled to come up with decent stories for him and this film is a perfect example of that.

After Superman (Christopher Reeve) rescues a Soviet space mission (whilst somehow knowing how to speak Russian), Clark Kent returns to the Daily Planet. He finds out that a tycoon has taken over the newspaper and is trying to turn it into a sensationalist rag (much like The Daily Mail). Then the news breaks that the USA and the Soviet Union have failed in a peace summit and that the USA are ensuring to be first in the arms race, so a schoolboy writes to Superman asking him to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Being conflicted about what he should do, Superman consults his Kryptonian elders in the Fortress of Solitude and Lois Lane (Margot Kidder). Eventually Superman decides to destroy all the missiles and collects them up and hurls them into the sun. While this is happening Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) is broken out of prison by his nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer) and together they steal a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum. Using this they make a genetic gloop that when attached to a missile that Superman throws into the sun, somehow creates the new villain Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow), whose only weakness is that he becomes useless when there is no sun to power him. Nuclear Man and Superman fight and I long for X-ray vision to see if there’s anything more to this plot.

Once again we have a dreadful plot that just doesn’t excite in the way a superhero movie should. From a little research, I found out that about 45 minutes was actually cut from this movie after the test screenings that may have tied up some of the plot holes. Of course it may have just left me to get angrier and angrier as nothing much happened for a further three quarters of an hour, and I should probably be really thankful for this (I was).

Of course there are moments when Superman has to save the day, but these are just tired and formulaic. Stopping a runaway subway train, plugging a volcano and preventing the Statue of Liberty from being dropped on New York. Wait, no. Metropolis. That’s it. That’s the city that this is based in. It even had its name in a caption at the bottom of the screen when New York was first shown. No, wait, when Metropolis was first shown…..

Worst of all the disaster saves, involves Superman repairing the Great Wall of China with telekinesis, this seriously has to be seen to believe how bad it is, so I found it on YouTube for you all https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfwHe0NqVvY . He also uses this power to save some people that Nuclear Man makes float for some reason, since when was Superman able to do this? Doesn’t he have enough superpowers as it is? Absolute tripe.

This movie has some absolutely baffling moments in its story too. Not least is the moment where Nuclear Man decides to kidnap Lacy Warfield (Mariel Hemingway - granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway) and fly her into space. Now this would possibly make sense if he was trying to kill her by freezing her to death or suffocating her, but it seems that all the alcohol that Ernest Hemingway drank was passed onto her genetically and she was wearing the most effective beer jacket ever made. Also it seems to give her the ability to breathe in space.

 

So here comes one of the biggest problems with Superman, and something I just can’t get over... Why can nobody spot that Clark Kent and Superman are the same person? This has bugged me throughout all the movies and the comics and really is just a terrible plot hole.

Superman’s disguise is wearing glasses and pretending to be weak and clumsy. That’s it. Some of the comedy moments in this film where Clark shows how weak he is involve him not being able to lift weights or hit a baseball. Despite having grown up on a farm, where people would naturally think somebody (of quite a big build) would have at least a moderate strength. Seriously, he works at a major newspaper, none of the investigative journalists there can make the connection that he’s always missing from work whenever Superman is missing? The people that The Daily Planet hires make the writers of The Sun look like Joseph Pulitzer.

To further confuse people that Clark and Superman aren’t the same people, a sort of love interest for Clark is introduced, Lacy. Well she likes him, he bumbles his way around her in a way that makes you wish for the first time ever that you was watching a Hugh Grant film. Of course Superman’s love interest is still Lois, who seems to remember and forget about Superman’s identity on the same regularity that I “forget” that it’s my round when I go to the bar.

But surprisingly Superman isn’t the actual problem with this film, Reeves plays him pretty much the same as he did in previous movies, and he’s watchable. The worst part in this movie is Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man. Not helped by one of the worst costumes a villain has ever had to wear. He looks like somebody doing a really bad cosplay of an 80’s wrestler, complete with a god awful cock rock mullet (in fact when he is “born”, he looks like somebody had set Sting on fire and told him to look moody). He’s acting is pretty much on par with most muscle bound 80s actors, but he just doesn’t have the screen presence that helped others have a lasting career. In fact an inanimate carbon rod would have made more of an impression on me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfTgxrxL9ug

On of the weirdest things about Nuclear Man is his Superpower to grow his fingernails slightly. I guess this could really come in use next time Luthor’s back really itches, or when he just can’t reach a coin that’s fallen under a vending machine…

The rest of the cast look like they’re only really there for the paycheck. Gene Hackman, once great as Lex Luthor, now just drifts through the movie doing as little as he can, whilst Margot Kidder lives up to her name as we all try to work out who she’s kidding still trying to convince us that her heart is in playing Lois Lane.

It doesn’t help this movie that it had its budget slashed just before it was filmed. Of course this doesn’t excuse the script or acting, but it affected the special effects in a big way. The green screen effects, which this movie relies heavily on, are just awful. Superman’s flying scene’s are without a doubt the worst seen in any of his movies. Milton Keynes doubles as Metropolis with the cunning use of fire hydrants and the special effects team behind The Land That Time Forgot seem to have been in charge of making the models used to show the destruction that Nuclear Man caused.

At least this movie did one good thing, and that was kill off the Superman movie franchise for a while. Unfortunately like most superheroes it did come back to life with Superman Returns, but as bad as that movie was, it was still The Empire Strikes Back compared to this. It would be wrong to say this is the worst superhero movie ever made, but it’s definitely in the top ten of them.