'Superman IV: The Quest For Peace' Barely Exists

This is the end, beautiful friend...

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was not only the first Superman movie I was old enough to see at the theater, it was the first superhero movie of any kind I saw on the big screen… what a time. I remember the marketing and lead-up to this film, Christopher Reeve on the Today Show shaking my youthful illusions with blonde hair, the standees in the cinema, there was not a lack of publicity for a film that everyone older than six-years old knew had the stink of a failing studio hanging heavy over it.

Superman IV is also the first time I watched a movie at the theater - I’d probably seen a dozen or so at this point - and thought to myself, okay, these things can be bad. The calamitous patchwork and regressive effects weren’t even enough to fool the youngest of Superman fans, the ones who are more in the bag for anything substantive and entertaining than any potential audience. This thing was doomed.

Once again, despite a second lackluster entry into a once proud franchise, Christopher Reeve remains innocent. The failure of Quest for Peace is not on his legacy, he tried his best. He came into Superman IV having co-written an issues-based story dealing with nuclear disarmament, and Reeve was passionate about the message he wanted Superman to deliver. He could not have anticipated that the Cannon Group, who had the rights to this new film, was nearing bankruptcy despite green lighting the film with a $36 million budget. In a desperate attempt to double their potential salvation, Cannon cut the budget to $17 million and used the other half to finance a second hopeful franchise starter, Masters of The Universe, which was probably the second time in the theater I realized movies could be bad.

To add insult to injury, Cannon cut the two-hour film to barely ninety minutes in hopes that more showings per day would equal box-office success. They were trying to sneak one by on audiences, and audiences sniffed it out: it only made $15 million domestically, which is pretty insane for a superhero movie, let alone a Superman movie.

There is very little redeeming about QFP. Where Superman III has some delightful moments and plenty to enjoy, despite being considered a mess, this fourth film looks cheap, sounds cheap, and is a showcase of actors who are either completely checked out or frustrated that things are going so poorly on set. Kidder and Reeve didn’t get along this time, and it seems to be that Reeve was agitated most of the time, which is understandable. He could tell what was happening all around him.

An early draft had Bizarro, an evil version of Superman, as the villain. Once again, Reeve would play dual roles, although this would be different from the confrontation in the previous film because it could be Superman squaring off against an alien/monster version of Superman, not Clark. Nevertheless, that better idea was scrapped and instead we get Nuclear Man, the worst and most generic baddie to don a cape.

Mark Pillow, whose career includes this movie and only this movie, is embarrassing to look at with his silly nails and rubber-faced histrionics. His voice is that of Gene Hackman, who is happily collecting a paycheck to show up and do some mugging as Lex Luthor. Even then, the fun Hackman is having is undercut by the absence of Otis and Miss Tessmacher; instead, we get his nephew, Lenny, played by Jon Cryer as a hip surfer… person? It’s terrible and hard to stomach.

There’s no point in kicking this dog while it’s down, because Superman IV barely exists in the pantheon of superhero cinema. It is the whimpering final cry of a dead franchise, and in two years Tim Burton’s Batman all but erased this movie from existence. It’s just a shame this couldn’t be a bad movie that’s still fun to watch, but even at ninety minutes it feels like an absolute chore.

Don’t worry, twenty years down the road, Bryan Singer will fix everyth… oh…