Superman IV
Back when I was younger, a little boy, I remembered when my family was still together, and we went to the theaters to watch this movie. I was hyped up and couldn't wait to see my first superman movie in the actual theater. Well, after the movie, as we were walking out, my father said, “That movie wasn't very good.” Now, anyone that knows me knows that my father and I don't get along, but this one moment I actually agreed with him. Superman IV sucks completely.
After the poor box office response to Part III, the Salkinds let the rights to the franchise go to the Cannon Films studio. In return, the Cannon Films studio cut the production cost from 40 to 17 million. With Reeve on board as writer and actor, the movie was ready to go. When the movie was finished, it was cut together and ran 134 minutes. The movie was then test screened, and it received poor test scores. Cannon Films got worried and quickly trimmed the movie down to a slim 90 minutes. And, it was this short cut that hurt the film the most. The movie makes no sense without any subplots.
Because of the huge amount of cuts to the film, the entire story feels disjointed and lost. Story points are set up and never paid off. FX work is so cheap that you can see the wire work when Superman is flying around the moon. The writing is so bad and preachy that it's laughable. Characters from the first three movies are now shadows of themselves in this one. No one stands out. The music was done by Alexander Courage (Star Trek), and he simply reused the main themes that John Williams used ten years ago. There's nothing wrong with that, but here the music sounds like it was preformed by a 20 piece high school band. There's no life to music, it's just a poorly done rehash. You can say the same thing about the entire movie. It feels like they wanted to bring the magic back from the first movie, but on a cheaper level. Sadly, none of it works. People have to care about the work they're doing and not going through the motions like this movie.
Margot Kidder, in the ten years with the franchise, looks like she's aged 20 years. I'm not making this up. She looked down right sexy in I and II, but here she looks like an old woman. She's lost a lot of weight in this film.
This is probably the worst Superhero movie of all time, even beating out Batman and Robin. B&R at least had a plot you could follow, Superman IV has nothing of the sort.
Grade F-
Even though Gene Hackman refused to return to do re-shoots for Lester's version of Superman II, Cannon Films somehow got him to reprise his role as Lex Luthor in IV. Lex is the central villain, but gets completely cut from the last 30 minutes. (his entire subplot about his Nuclear Man not listening to him is cut from the film)
Nuclear Man Mark I: You see with the movie getting cut down to 90 minutes, an entire key plot point got completely cut from the film. There were actually two Nuclear Men. Lex created this one, whom couldn't fly and wasn't very smart, in a lab. Superman easily defeats him and NM mark 1 turns to goo. They collect the goo and create the improved Nuclear Man Mark 2, which we see in the movie. They should have kept this in the film, because it explains a lot of unanswered things in the plot.
Mark 1 had an attraction to Lacy Warfield, and his DNA was carried over to Mark 2, who also has an attraction to Lacy.
Nuclear Man played poorly by Mark Pillow.
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