Review of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987) by William B — 29 Jun 2009

This movie is pretty terrible, but you know what? I'm gonna say it's better than SUPERMAN III, if only because it's terrible in some really awesome ways. SUPERMAN III sucked because the director and writers just had a terrible vision for the movie (let's take the Man of Steel and team him up with a safe-for-kids Richard Pryor-- that's what people want to see!). SUPERMAN IV, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to have ANY idea at its core-- aside from, "What if we had Superman fight Rocky Horror?" Oh, sure-- there's the "nuclear weapons are bad!" argument too, but the big draw is watching Superman fighting this mute blond Adonis that Luthor's created.

As the story goes, this was going to be the movie that revitalized the Superman franchise, and you can see how some of the actors might have thought they were in a good movie. The scenes on the Kent farm at the beginning of the film remind us of Richard Donner's iconic work with the character. We get more scenes at The Daily Planet. Gene Hackman's back and chewing up scenery. Even Jon Cryer as Luthor's Keanu-esque nephew is... Well, I'm not going to lie. He's terrible. But he could have been the worst part of a good movie, like Ned Beatty in the original.

Alas. Apparently, they ran out of time. Or money. Or time and money. Regardless, the decision was made, apparently, to release the movie before they'd actually finished filming all of the scenes in the script (or so Wikipedia indicates-- and this interpretation makes sense, given how little sense the film itself makes). And the special effects aren't all that special-- though, again, if you imagine that the final battle is taking place between Superman and Dr. Frank-N-Furter's latest creation, it's a lot more enjoyable.

Oh, also, try to watch it drunk, if you can.