Review of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is a disaster, less than ten years after the wonderful Superman The Movie the series has been downgraded to a cheap Cannon film. Most people know now that Cannon slashed the budget for this film just before it was to be filmed and it is impossible to make a Superman movie on the cheap. These films are very reliant on their special effects, we must believe Superman is flying and using all his various Super powers and this film just didn't have the budget to convince the audience. The same awful effect of a greenish Superman flying towards the screen is used over and over again, every special effect looks cheap and nasty. If thats not bad enough the story is very poor and makes little sense. I felt sorry for the actors and the director as they were on a loser from the start. Christopher Reeve looks like he knows he is making a bad film and gives easily his worst performance as Superman and even more so as Clark Kent, also he must take some of the blame as he came up with the dodgy "rid the world of nuclear missiles story". Funny thing is even though the whole world knows Superman is going to pluck all the missiles out of the air and throw them into the sun they continue to launch them! Why not just say OK fair enough just take them all Superman, oh and by the way what exactly is going to stop the Red Army from marching across Europe now Supes? The UK for instance would have had no Nuclear Detterent??? But I don't really want to get bogged down in the whole Political side of this film, neither did Reeve's either as his story seems just an excuse for Lex Luthor to release the worst villain in any Superhero movie, Nuclear Man, or maybe Mulletman... whatever, he looks more like the lead singer of Whitesnake than a credible villain. Also on the acting side even Gene Hackman who is nearly always fantastic doesn't look in the mood to put the effort in. The less said about Jon Cryer and Marc Pillow the better, they are poor substitutes for Ned Beattie and Terence Stamp from the first two Superman films. What a shame Reeve's Superman ended up like this, best to remember him in the first two movies.