Paragon Pundit Hero Movie Review #17

Paragon Pundit Hero Movie Review

#17: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

The Superman movie series took a tremendous downturn starting with the overdose of cheese in “Superman II”. This followed with “Superman III” becoming nothing more than a Richard Pryor movie, and with the spin-off “Supergirl” suffering from bad writing and abysmal reviews. Even though father-and-son super-team of Alexander and Ilya Salikind as well as Superman star Christopher Reeve believed that the whole run was done with, SOMEONE still wanted there to be at least one more sequel. It was, after all, getting close to the fiftieth anniversary of Superman’s comic book debut. So Ilya Salikind sold the rights over to Cannon Films and action-film producers Golan & Globus, and they gave Reeve a sweetheart deal to wear the polyester tights and cape one last time.

“Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” was released by Cannon Films in 1987. It was directed by Sidney Furie, best know for the teen-friendly action movie “Iron Eagle”. It starred (for one last time) the remaining members of the Superman franchise, namely Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Marc McClure, Gene Hackman, and Jackie Cooper, along with Mariel Hemmingway, Sam Wanamaker, Jon Cryer, and Mark Pillow.

Fair warning… if you were thinking about spending some Netflix money on this, I’m going to do you a favor and spare you the effort.

The film starts with Superman (Reeve) saving a team of Soviet Cosmonauts after their ship was hit by a rogue satellite. He somehow can speak in airless space and have the Cosmonauts hear him. (This actually goes back to “Superman II”, so this is really an old story flaw.) Back on Earth, Superman changes to Clark Kent and visits the old Kent farm in Smallville. His adopted mother had long since died and Clark isn’t there to take care of the place, but he still refuses to sell it to anyone except an actual farmer. Once he’s by himself, he goes into the barn and pulls out the trap door that hides his original spaceship (going back to the first movie) and hears a recording from his birth mother Lara (instead of Jor-El, simply because Cannon Films did not want to pay to have Marlon Brando make a cameo) giving him one final gift… the ship’s energy module (which looks remarkably like the same glowing green crystal from the first two movies), which can only be used once and then the last piece of Krypton would be gone. He removes the crystal and makes the ship disintegrate (through a strange god-power he apparently has).

Meanwhile, legendary super-villain Lex Luthor (Hackman) shows his disdain for his fellow prisoners and announces that he has plans to recreate “life itself”. His mutual hate-fest, though, is cut short by the arrival of his dim-witted nephew Lenny (Cryer) in a tricked-out car designed to take out the prison guards to facilitate his escape.

Returning to Metropolis, Clark finds out that the Daily Planet has been taken over by a tabloid tycoon named David Warfield (Wanamaker), who quickly turns the Planet into something resembling the New York Post. The changes don’t sit well with Perry White (Cooper), nor is the fact that he now answers to Warfield and his daughter Lacy (Hemmingway), who has her own ideas of how the paper should look, as well as her sights on Clark, much to the protests of Lois Lane (Kidder).

When diplomatic relations between the US and the USSR begin to break down, a schoolchild named Jeremy writes a letter to Superman via the Daily Planet, asking him to help stop the threat of nuclear annihilation. Superman is torn by his desire to step in and his promise to Jor-El of not interfering with human history, causing his hesitation to result with the Daily Planet leading with the headline “Superman says Drop Dead to Kid”. This headline also causes Perry White to quit. Bye-bye Perry.

Superman seeks guidance at the Fortress of Solitude… wait, wasn’t that destroyed in “Superman II”? Anyway, the floating heads of the Kryptonian elders (all two of them) tell him that he should forget about the Earth and find a new home where war is forgotten. He then invites Lois over to his place, revealing to her in the lamest way possible that Clark Kent is Superman, and then takes her on a whirlwind tour of the world, complete with a resurrection of the first movie’s love theme, before flying her back to his apartment, whereby in her conversation she reveals that she now remembers EVERYTHING about their previous encounters. She gives him a pep talk, tells him that he’ll make the right decision because he always does it, and then he gives her the super-forget kiss (from the second movie) and she once again is back to her “Oh Clark, Poor Clark” self.

As Jimmy Olson (McClure) is giving Jeremy a tour, Superman appears and walks with Jeremy over to the United Nations building, with a whole group of spectators, and Lois and Lacy in tow (who just HAPPEN to have been driving in front of the UN building), where he addresses the delegates and announces he is a citizen of the Earth and that, effective immediately, he will rid the world of all nuclear weapons. Cue the momentous applause and the tears of joy from Lois.

We then get to see several minutes of missile launches from various submarines and mobile launch units. With each launch, Superman soars in and grabs each missile and collects them in a giant net in space. He then hammer-throws the collection into the sun in what is one of the WORST perspective animations this side of a Rob Liefeld comic.

As Superman is enacting his own disarmament policy, Lex is meeting with the arms dealers that are going out of business and brokers a deal with them. Using a strand of Superman’s hair, which he and Lenny stole from a museum with help of some extra-large bolt cutters, Lex has developed a device that will create a clone of Superman called the Nuclear Man, and he will destroy Superman. They agree to attach the device to one of their missiles and allows Lex (disguised as a four-star general) to personally launch it. Superman throws the missile into the sun and the device creates the Nuclear Man (played by Pillow, but voiced by Hackman). Nuclear Man arrives on Earth and Lex reveals that his creation has one obvious weakness in that it must always be in sunlight, or else he becomes useless… like the movie’s writers.

We spend several minutes playing super-speed tag team with Lois and Lacy on a double-date with Clark and Superman before Lex interrupts the gag and tells Superman that he’s going to destroy twenty stories of a nearby building. He really won’t (again, going back to the first movie) but it allows the two of them to chit-chat before Lex tells Nuclear Man to destroy Superman.

We then get several minutes of Superman and Nuclear Man fighting around the world. Nuclear Man destroys the Great Wall of China and Superman rebuilds it with but a stare of his god-glance power. Nuclear Man causes Mount Vesuvius to erupt and Superman caps it with the top of a nearby mountain. Nuclear Man rips the Statue of Liberty off its perch and throws it at the Daily Planet, and as Superman catches it and returns it to its place, Nuclear Man uses his extendable “death nails” to scratch Superman and make him mortal. Nuclear Man then punts Superman off the island, with his cape landing conveniently on Lady Liberty’s torch.

As the Daily Planet launches a new headline announcing Superman as being dead, Lois quits and storms out of the editor’s office with the cape that Warfield acquired “cheap”. She goes to see Clark, who is suffering from radiation sickness. She gives him a good-bye message for Superman and gives him the cape.

Lex has decided to turn on his new financiers after putting them back in the warmongering business and take over their empires. He’s confident that Nuclear Man will keep him in control of things.

That night, Superman uses that glowing green crystal as the voice of his dead mother tells him that once he uses it, he will be completely a child of Earth. (Hey, what about the Fortress? Or did he destroy it AGAIN?)

The next morning, Nuclear Man wakes up to a picture of Lacy Warfield on the front page of the Daily Planet and decides to go visit her. On his way to the Daily Planet, he encounters Superman, no longer looking like a refugee of “The Day After”. Nuclear Man uses his powers to throw several people into the air and cause destruction. Superman sets down the people with his mysterious god-glance power and says he’ll take Nuclear Man to see “the woman”. (Does Superman really know which “woman” he’s thinking of? Or does he think it’s Lois?) It’s a ruse, though, as Superman throws him into an elevator car (in the dark), then hauls it up to the moon, where a sunrise on the moon awakens Nuclear Man and we get a couple more minutes of a lunar battle until Nuclear Man plants Superman into the lunar surface and buries him. Then he flies back to Metropolis and kidnaps Lacy.

Superman pulls himself out from his makeshift grave, then moves the moon into a lunar eclipse. Lacy finds herself in outer space, somehow alive and able to breathe, and her kidnapper is without power. Superman rescues her, takes her back to Earth, then flies back to get the comatose Nuclear Man and drops him into a nuclear reactor, which gives the power plant a power surge and makes everything shine brighter.

Apparently Perry White used his away-time to line up some new financiers so he would become the majority shareholder and fires Warfield and his daughter, so Lois, Clark, and Jimmy are all back in business. (Wait, Jimmy quit too? When was this?) Superman then has a more somber press conference and announces that while he “tried” to make the world nuclear-free, he couldn’t really do it, but that the people of the world WOULD have peace someday, but only when they want it bad enough. Awww…. Then he captures Lenny and drops him off at Boys Town, then drops Lex off back at the rock quarry, where everyone there is pleased to have “Mozart” back. Superman explains how he managed to figure out Nuclear Man’s weakness and tells Lex that the world is where it always is… on the brink of being vaporized. Smile, fly off into a low orbit, and soar into the sunrise. Roll the credits.

There… once again I saved you some Netflix money.

Let me preface this scathing condemnation by saying that this is not THE WORST hero movie. “Batman and Robin” is certainly worse. There are some movies that I haven’t reviewed (yet) that are worse than “Superman IV”, including “Megaforce”, “Masters of the Universe”, and the 1990 movie “Captain America” (here’s a hint: rubber human ears). But it certainly was THE WORST of the whole Superman film series. In fact a Saturday Night Live skit featuring Bill Murray as Superman was better than this movie.

I feel sorry for the late Christopher Reeve for having been talked into playing Superman one last time, being given a sweetheart of a deal with Cannon Films, and then having the studio pull the rug out from under him at every opportunity. At least cape-killer Joel Schumacher and the suits at Warner Brothers both had the courage to say up front when making “Batman and Robin” that they were making a glorified Saturday Morning cartoon.

The overall theme of having Superman save the world from nuclear war is noble. And the scene of him addressing the United Nations General Assembly was absolutely the best part of the whole film. But the idea got lost once Lex Luthor and his comedic troupe came on the scene. Suddenly it wasn’t about nuclear war. It was about Nuclear Man. It was about Lex Luthor dressing up as a gaudy hetero Liberace playing with piles of money. It was even about lame-ass Valley Dud Lenny, who actually did more than bumbling Otis or sultry Eve Tessmacher ever could.

The transformation of the Daily Planet into the (Not New York) Daily Post and the introduction of David Warfield was meant to be a subtle reference not only to DC Comics character Morgan Edge, but also to News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch, who turned the real-life New York publication into his skin-free version of the British Sun, complete with tabloid headlines based loosely on reality and designed to illicit maximum attention. Wanamaker’s portrayal of the tycoon was one-dimensional… grumpy, frumpy, and bitter. Just like the writers wanted the character to be. To that end he did not fail.

Mariel Hemmingway’s Lacy Warfield seemed to be an alternate universe version of Lana Lang… same puppy-dog emotions, just with blonde hair, more money, and a willingness to show SLIGHTLY more skin. Her fixation over Clark Kent combined with Clark’s faux-comedic cluelessness and with a generous dose of reverse-sexual harassment to boot really made her character one-dimensional, and that was a shame given the actress and her film resume.

And I have to give special attention to the whole “world tour” scene with Superman and Lois Lane. If there was any scene that truly deserved to be on the cutting room floor it should have been THAT one. Why, why, why, why, WHY did the writers have Clark Kent reveal himself to Lois Lane, force her to remember EVERYTHING from the second film, and then take it all away again with that lame-ass super-amnesia kiss if it was all just to get her view of the whole nuclear war issue? If the writers wanted Superman to get Lois’ honest opinion, then all they needed to do was have them meet without the subterfuge.

The first “Superman” movie won an Oscar for best special effects. Ten years later, Cannon Films defecated on that Oscar with their not-special effects. Their bargain-basement effects resulted in massive green screen failures, absolutely unrealistic concepts (like Lacy Warfield surviving deep space in a skirt and jacket), and giving Superman a special “god-gaze” power instead of using his KNOWN abilities like super-speed.

I’m not going to end this with a lame reference to the title of the film. Rather I will end with this observation: Superman’s last line of “I’ll see you in twenty” was almost prophetic... because it would be just shy of twenty years before the next film would come along, and thankfully make you forget all about this one.

But that is for another review…

Capes:	Only one out of five capes, and that was for the UN speech.
Cheese:	Full-blown Limburger (5) cheese with a radioactive chaser to boot.
Books:	Just one book out of five. An extremely weak story strung together by a few concepts, a lame attempt at camp, and a desire to link everything to the previous three films minus Richard Pryor.