Superman IV: The Quest For Peace
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Superman IV: The Quest For Peace is a 1987 film, the last of the Superman theatrical movies starring Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel. In this film Superman battled Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) and his creation, a super-powered evil clone of Superman called Nuclear Man.
Unlike the previous three movies, which were produced by the Salkinds, the fourth movie was produced by Golan-Globus' Cannon Films, in association with Warner Bros.
Tagline: Nuclear Power. In the best hands, it is dangerous. In the hands of Lex Luthor, it is pure evil. This is Superman's greatest battle. And it is for all of us.
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Plot
The Daily Planet is the victim of a hostile takeover when it is taken over by David Warfield, a man who owned a number of tabloid newspapers, and who converts the Planet into a loud, exaggerating, trashy tabloid, and puts his daughter Lacy in charge as publisher.
Superman/Clark Kent learns that diplomatic relations between the United States and the Soviet Union are reaching a point where the two powers might resort to force to settle their disputes. Superman soon receives a letter from a child begging him to take care of the threat posed by nuclear missiles. At the Fortress of Solitude, Superman talks to the spirits of the Kryptonian council members. They tell him not to interfere with the humans, and that he should leave Earth - that there are places he could go where war is only a distant memory.
For a time, Superman is torn about what to do. He visits Lois as Clark, and goes for a walk with her on his penthouse garden, and walks right off the building with her, then reveals himself as Superman to her. They circle the world, he says he's come to a decision, then helps Lois forget about the dual identities.
At a meeting of the United Nations, he tells the assembly that he is going to rid the Earth of all nuclear weapons. Over the next several days, Superman takes all the nuclear weapons, and gathers them into a gigantic net in orbit above the planet. When he has almost all the weapons, he closes the net and tosses it into the sun.
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor's nephew Lenny helps break Luthor out of prison. The pair steals a strand of hair that Superman had donated to a museum (holding up a heavy weight). Luthor creates a genetic matrix from the strand of hair, and attaches it to the final American nuclear missile. After the missile is fired off into the air, Superman grabs the missile and throws it into the sun. A few moments after the missile explodes on the sun's surface, a ball of energy is discharged from the sun, which in a few minutes turns into Nuclear Man. Nuclear Man (though powerless if isolated from the sun's rays or suitably bright artificial light) finds his way to "daddy", Luthor.
Superman, meanwhile, finds himself struggling with his dual identities via his dates with Lois (in his Superman persona) and Warfield's daughter Lacy (in his Clark Kent persona). Suddenly, Superman hears a screeching sound coming from Lex Luthor. The Man of Steel is once again lured into Luthor's hideaway, only this time he is introduced to Nuclear Man. A worldwide battle soon follows between Lex's creation and the Man of Steel. Superman is injured by the poisonous hands of Nuclear Man. The Daily Planet, to Lois' disgust, blares the headline about Superman being dead.
Near death at his apartment, Clark is visited by Lois, who has to pick the lock to Clark's apartment because Clark is so sick, he can't get up to open the door. Lois begins to break down in Clark's presence as she praises Superman for all the good that he's done thus far, and tearfully awaits his return to Metropolis. As she leaves, she instructs Clark that if he hears or sees Superman, to give him a package. The package is Superman's cape, which fell off during his scuffle with Nuclear Man. Therein contained is also a crystal - the last remaining crystal from Krypton. This crystal revives Superman and his powers return. He then goes off to face Nuclear Man one last time.
Nuclear Man develops a crush on Lacy Warfield. He goes off to the Daily Planet to find her. Superman cuts him off at the pass and tries to thwart his attempt. Nuclear Man threatens that if Superman does not tell him where Lacy is, he will hurt the surrounding onlookers. Chaos ensues. Nuclear Man begins to wreak havoc in front of the Daily Planet, hurling people to and fro, and throwing vehicles all over the place. Superman agrees to take Nuclear Man to Lacy. In an attempt to disable the villain, Superman lures Nuclear Man into an elevator in the building, traps Nuclear Man in it, and pulls the elevator out of the building and flies to the moon, heaving the elevator onto the ground there. Superman doesn't realize the doors have opened a crack. As the sun rises, and Superman is raising an American flag that had fallen over (the work of Non in Superman II?), Nuclear Man breaks out of his makeshift prison and the two resume battle on the moon's surface. At the end of the battle, Superman is driven into the ground by his nuclear-charged opponent.
Nuclear Man returns to Earth to kidnap Lacy and take her to the moon to join Superman in death, but the powerful Man of Steel manages to escape, and he pushes the moon out of its normal orbital movement to cast Metropolis in a solar eclipse. He then rescues Lacy from the arms of Nuclear Man. Remembering that Nuclear Man gets his power from the sun, Superman decides to disable him permanently by throwing Nuclear Man into the core of a nuclear power plant, the diodes of which go to maximum as Nuclear Man proves extremely fissionable.
Perry White resumes control of the Daily Planet through a loophole in the bylaws that allowed Warfield to seize it: he bought all the outstanding shares and made Warfield a minority shareholder, and Olson heaves, into Warfield's arms, a stack of newspapers with the Daily Planet's normal staid look, a banner headline proclaiming, "We're back!"
Later, in a press conference, Superman declares only partial victory in his peace campaign, but declares "there will be peace when the people of the world want it so badly, their leaders will have no choice but to give it to them."
Shortly after, Lex and Lenny are captured by Superman. Lenny is sent to the Boys Town sanitarium, while Lex returns to prison. Once again, Superman has saved the world.
Score
Main article: Superman music
Critical Response
The movie was not well received by either the general public or movie critics. Some critics considered the film to be one of the worst of its year. The movie suffered from poor sound and visual effects, believed to be caused by Cannon using much of the film's intended budget on their other projects. Most feel that the first movie had superior effects when compared to the fourth film, despite being ten years old at that point.
Of the four Superman films starring Reeve, this one fared the worst at the box office, and the series did not continue after it. Reeve himself admitted that both this and the third installments were very poor and did not live up to the potential that had been established by the first two films, and his 1995 paralysis made the development of any further sequels even less likely. Time Warner let the Superman feature film franchise go undeveloped until the late-1990s when a variety of proposals were considered, including several that would reboot the franchise altogether with substantially different versions of the characters and setting, rather than attempt to follow up on this film. Instead, Superman Returns will - according to director Bryan Singer - be a sequel to the first two films starring Reeve, and completely ignore both Superman III and this film.
In Reeve's autobiography Still Me, he described filming Superman IV as "simply a catastrophe from start to finish." He wrote:
"We were also hampered by budget constraints and cutbacks in all departments. Cannon Films had nearly thirty projects in the works at the time, and Superman IV received no special consideration. For example, Konner and Rosenthal wrote a scene in which Superman lands on 42nd Street and walks down the double yellow lines to the United Nations, where he gives a speech. If that had been a scene in "Superman I", we would actually have shot it on 42nd Street. Dick Donner would have choreographed hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles and cut to people gawking out of office windows at the sight of Superman walking down the street like the Pied Piper. Instead, we had to shoot at an industrial park in England in the rain with about a hundred extras, not a car in sight, and a dozen pigeons thrown in for atmosphere. Even if the story had been brilliant, I don't think that we could ever have lived up to the audience's expectations with this approach."
According to Jon Cryer, who played Lex Luthor's nephew Lenny, Reeve had taken him aside just before the release and told him it was going to be "terrible". Although Cryer enjoyed working with Reeve and his on-screen uncle, Gene Hackman, Cryer claimed that Cannon ran out of money five months ahead of time and ultimately released an unfinished movie.
Trivia
Deleted footage
There are approximately 50 minutes of the film that have not been seen by the public after they were deleted following a failed Southern California test screening. In fact, the Nuclear Man that appears in the film is actually the second Nuclear Man Luthor created. Cut scenes featured the original Nuclear Man engaging Superman in battle outside the Metro Club and being destroyed by the Man of Steel. The first Nuclear Man was somewhat more inhuman-looking than his successor, and resembled vaguely in looks, and significantly in personality, the comic book character Bizarro. Luthor postulates that this Nuclear Man was not strong enough, and hatches the plan to create the second Nuclear Man inside the sun as a result. The comic book adaptation of the film, as well as the novelization, depicts these scenes and several photos of Superman's battle with the first Nuclear Man can be seen online. Three of the "lost" minutes, consisting of two scenes (the "tornado scene", in which Christopher Reeve's daughter Alexandra plays the girl swept away by the tornado; and the "Russia" sequence, in which Superman stops a nuclear missile from being launched) were used in the international release by Cannon Films, and in the U.S. syndicated television version prepared by Viacom. Warner Bros. has confirmed that the lost footage has been found, and some, if not all, of the footage will be included in a "deleted scenes" section of the forthcoming 2006 DVD reissue (which will be part of a 14-disc box set of the Superman films).
Ownership and rights
As a result of prior contracts, different entities own different components of Superman IV. Warner Bros. co-produced the film and handled North American theatrical distribution, while Cannon Films handled distribution outside North America. Due to legal snags, the film was not issued on DVD for many years until WB bought back key rights to the film, thus allowing it to be released on DVD in the U.S. in 2001. The international DVD rights were not settled until 2005 and WB has since released IV outside the U.S. on home video. WB will also handle worldwide distribution of IV when it is reissued in late 2006 as part of a 14-disc Superman movie box set. Meanwhile, CBS Paramount Television (owners of the television rights to Cannon's library) continues to hold TV rights to the film, while all other theatrical and television rights in certain territories, including partial copyright, are owned by MGM/Sony/Comcast (successors-in-interest to Cannon Films).
Special powers
Many die-hard Superman fans have also noted that this film gives the Man of Steel powers he had never before been portrayed with. The classic example is after the Nuclear Man destroys part of the Great Wall of China, Superman restores the wall, not by rebuilding it with his super-strength and super-speed, but by gazing at it, thereby causing the wall to rebuild itself, apparently by use of telekinesis, a power never ascribed to Superman in the comics. A contemporary film critic jokingly referred to this new power as "masonry vision". He uses the same ability during the street battle with Nuclear Man when he lowers several men (who are floating in the air thanks to Nuclear Man) to the ground just by looking at them.
However, others note that General Zod had telekinesis powers in Superman II, levitating a farm boy's father and changing the faces on Mount Rushmore, and since Superman and the Phantom Zone criminals were equal in abilities, telekinesis isn't so far fetched. Zod's telekinesis came out of his index finger though.
Even more bizarre is the fact that both Nuclear Man and Superman seem to have the ability to negate Lacy's need for oxygen and protective gear in the vacuum of space.
Miscellaneous
- As with the previous films in the series, Superman IV was filmed extensively in England, with the new town of Milton Keynes being used (somewhat incongruously) to represent several locations within Metropolis, including the UN building. Shooting also took place in London.
- Christopher Reeve was said to have been unhappy with the set design of Superman IV. In Superman II, a long time was spent creating an exact scale replica of a New York (Metropolis) street for the battle scene, and possibly for the helicopter scene in the first movie. However, in Milton Keynes they used an industrial park with "A few hundred extras and some pigeons thrown in for good measure."
- In this scene in the background can be seen a building with a "Daily Planet" sign, and compare this with Superman and Superman II, where the Daily Planet was a huge building in a suburb, with buildings either side, whereas in this movie there appear to be no buildings on either side.
External links
- Superman Cinema - Superman IV
- Film Sculptor Special Effects Sculptor who worked on the film
- The DVD Journal | Quick Reviews: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace