Regardless of how you feel about 2013’s Superman reboot MAN OF STEEL or last year’s BATMAN V SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE, it’s hard to argue that the worst Superman movie ever released was SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE… and it came out 30 years ago today!
Fresh off a mission to save some cosmonauts, Superman returns to Earth and takes on a mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons. But the biggest nuclear threat he faces has nothing to do with a nation, but with his arch-foe Lex Luthor, who creates the villainous Nuclear Man to take Superman out.
Even the trailer looks terrible…
Christopher Reeves’ fourth turn as the Man of Steel was taken on by Cannon Films, after the father-son production team of Alexander and Ilya Salkand had given up on the franchise. Cannon didn’t exactly go out of its way to breathe new life into the franchise, either, though, as it was working on close to three dozen films at the time, with none having any real favored status.
In addition to Superman film stalwarts Reeve, Margot Kidder (Lois Lane), Gene Hackman (Lex Luthor), Mark McClure (Jimmy Olson) and Jackie Cooper (Perry White), the fourth movie added Jon Cryer as Luthor’s nephew Lenny, Sam Wanamaker as publishing magnate David Warfield and Mariel Hemingway as his daughter Lacy, a love interest for Clark Kent.
Wanamaker and Hemingway’s plot of the film involve the Warfield’s buying The Daily Planet and turning it into a trashy tabloid, but Lacy’s crush of Clark and Perry’s tough challenge of securing a bank loan to fight back against the evils of sensationalism!
According to IMDb, the film cost an estimated $17 million and barely grossed $15.7 million back. The movie looks cheap, it plays cheap and it killed the cinematic franchise for almost two decades, before Bryan Singer’s 2006 SUPERMAN RETURNS.
Sadly, it seems as though no networks are showing Superman IV to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its release. But we do have new episodes of PREACHER on AMC, and a whole lot of nothing else.
Here’s your open thread for Monday. Talk about it all right here.