I had heard of the awful aspects of Superman IV in vague generalizations before, but man – oh man – it was far worse than I expected. While real life events in Caitlinland have left me unable to review many movies lately, I kept putting this one off… and I wasn’t disappointed by what I got, in a sense.
The basic plot is that it’s Supes versus a character named Nuclear Man, who is created in the most obscene, ridiculous way humanly possible. Nuclear Man wears a lot of spandex and has pretty, fake nails and seems to be very intense all the time. There’s a Dynasty joke in there somewhere that I just can’t find.
More than anything, the movie looks kind of slapdash – like someone cared enough to make this one but not make it well. Christopher Reeve looks like he constantly wants to slink out of frame with embarrassment at every opportunity and really, you can’t blame him. Cheesy, stilted dialogue and hopeless, awful sets probably don’t engender much faith in an actor, especially when there’s an epic moon battle between the nuclear lord of synthetic clothing and The Great American Hero that looks like it belongs in a cheap, made for TV film.
It’s a depressing end to Reeve’s run in the franchise; it’s even sadder based on the fact that the movie is so boring you have to resist the urge to pass out from sheer inanity all the way through. It’s disappointing. Superman – both the movie and the comic book – is really something a lot of people take very seriously and while Superman is not “serious business” to some extent, it’s very disheartening to watch it casually turned into a big joke.
Thank god I’m not a huge fan of Superman…because then, I might cry.
awful sets probably don’t engender much faith in an actor, especially when there’s an epic moon battle between the nuclear lord of synthetic clothing and The Great American Hero that looks like it belongs in a cheap, made for TV film.
HA! Reminds me of Jay-as-Bluntman looking around at the movie set in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, “Wow. This must have set ‘em back a couple hundred bucks.”
Nice review. I’ve never seen it, but it sounds terrible. In fact I haven’t even seen any of them since I was probably 8 years old. I don’t know that they’re worth seeking out now.
I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen the first two films – the third and fourth don’t sound familiar at all (thank goodness? ^_^).
This movie has to go down in history as one of the
worst ever…trust me folks when I say it has to be up
there in the top ten of the most diabolical films ever created
The effects, at best, look as though they
have been drummed up at a kindergarten
and I would say that no serious screen writer
was commissioned to devise a credible storyline
Superman 4 should actually be used as a serious teaching
aid in both film and FX colleges to demonstrate to the students how not to make a decent action/fantasy film.
I would ask anyone to watch this film in order to appreciate
how bad it actually is
This is THE worst film ever created. Going away. Nevermind the nature of the villain; let’s let that be the given: i.e., OK it exists, fine. What happens next?
In this film, Superman basically decides to act on the request of a grade school child who wishes that nuclear weapons did not exist, and proceeds to, supposedly, REMOVE EVERY NUCLEAR WEAPON FROM THE ENTIRE PLANET. Nevermind that this leads to the creation of his alter-ego/black-nails nemesis. The fact that he just WALKS IN, and TAKES ALL THE NUKES EVERYWHERE has to be THE impossible bridge between late 1960s utopian liberalism, and the Nietzchean dream of The Ubermensch (you know, one of those Triumph of the Will ideas that led to NAZISM). If even remotely taken seriously, he just made himself the enemy of every single nuclear-equipped nation on Earth…including the United States, incidentally. Not only that, but now the most prominent reason for obsessively keeping a relative physical peace throughout the Cold War years is gone. World War III may now begin in earnest.
How on Earth can you top this for strategic blunders on the part of super-aliens? Easy! You MOVE THE MOON OUT OF ALIGNMENT! Reason?? To cut off the energy of your solar-powered evil enemy!!…wait, what?? Yes, you heard it heard right: Superman permanently unhinges (if this were real) the very delicate GLOBAL oceanic tidal balance created by the moon…by PUSHING Earth’s natural satellite, incidentally…in order to stop his enemy! His enemy, who dragged an attractive woman he knows from the Daily Planet into DEEP SPACE with him, without any suit of any kind, in order to mate with her! WHAT?!? Yes, you can not only BREATHE, but talk…and SCREAM!…in the hard vacuum of outer space! If you couldn’t, then Superman wouldn’t be able to wish Soviet cosmonauts well while wearing no spacesuit…while saving them from catastrophe…while in high Earth orbit…at the beginning of the movie! Makes one wonder why they even had the Soviets wearing spacesuits at all, if the woman later on didn’t need anything to survive but a vivaciously ’80s blouse and business skirt? Oh well, live and…FRAK UP, actually.
I could go on, about the weird, canon-defying green crystal thing. I won’t, however. It’s just too painful.
A truly terrible film but some sport to be had in analysing the scenes for clearly british sets/locations. My favourites would have to be the london underground doubling as metro city and milton keynes as UN building. I could forgive this due to the lack of budget, but no-one can justify how mariel hemingway’s character manages to both breathe and then fall in a vacuum and zero gravity. Almost as bad as ‘the whole nine yards’.