Superman IV
Plot
Superman vows to rid the world of nuclear weapons, but Lex Luthor decides to use the nuclear weapons disposals to create Nuclear Man from DNA from Superman’s hair.
Direction
Starting from the opening credits (which thankfully return to space, but have a new font), this is a slight improvement on #3 – but the action/graphics and whole concept is quite silly. There are frequent sights of strings showing Superman flying, and I counted twelve copied shots of Superman flying towards the camera with terrible graphics.
Cast/Characters
Returning for the first time since Superman 2 is Lex Luthor, and Gene Hackman seems to be having fun playing him again.
Christopher Reeve is still solid as Superman, and if I am being honest this was probably Margot Kidder’s strongest portrayal as Lois.
New additions are Mariel Hemmingway as the potential love interest for Clark/Superman, and Mark Pillow as Nuclear Man. Pillow quit acting all together after this film…
Jon Cryer who was in his ‘Ducky’ fame era plays one of the most annoying characters in all of cinema Lenny Luthor.
Screenplay/Setting/Themes
One strength the film has is the friendship between Lois and Clark – especially during Clark/Superman’s questioning himself about whether to get involved in mankind’s nuclear threat. The Lois/Clark/Superman discovery is used again, and the wiping memory kiss is used again, a little less dramatic this time around considering the whole moment lasts about five minutes.
There was some truly cringe worthy dialogue at times, and I could almost see the pain on the actors faces as they were saying the lines and it even included stolen lines from the first film.
The absolute clusterf**k is when Nuclear Man takes Hemmingway’s character to space following the fight with Superman on the Moon (with black curtain background just to make it feel authentic) and she almost falls off of his arm halfway there.
Where do you fall too in space???
People can’t survive in space! I know this is a movie where a man can fly but SERIOUSLY!!!
Overall
Even with the strengthened friendship between Clark and Lois, the very brief 85m runtime means for a very compact storyline. This is a fail of a final film. As Reeve wrote in his autobiography, “the less said about this film the better”.
1/5