It's necessary to know the story behind this movie before I go into why it's awful. This film is Christopher Reeve's take on nuclear warheads. He wants 'em gone, so he made this movie very anti-nuke. There isn't a problem with Reeve's stance on nukes, it's a fairly popular opinion to have. But, trust me, there are soooo many more problems with the movie. But, before we make fun it, let's be positive for a moment. Christopher Reeve is still an amazing Superman, even in this movie. If you know me personally, then you'll know that I don't particularly like Superman as a character. That being said, I love Christopher Reeve. The way he portrays Clark Kent and Superman as two different people is so good that it actually makes you believe that the famously bad disguise (just a pair of glasses and nothing else) could really work. There's a reason why he's frequently cited as the best Superman. Gene Hackman is also amazing as Lex Luthor. Yeah, he's clearly phoning it in in this, but he's still still the best part of it. He could talk about clipping his fingernails and I'd still wanna give him an Oscar. The actors, for the most part, do their jobs rather well. Margot Kidder is great as usual, Mariel Hemingway does well with the material she was given.
Firstly, Jon Cryer is easily the worst actor in the film. His voice is so annoying. I don't know what accent he was going for, but I pray he never attempts it again. Mark Pillow, the guy who did the body acting for Nuclear Man, was so bad here. To this day, Superman IV is the only movie he's ever done. He only has three IMDb "actor" credits, two of which are short-lived TV shows. I'm pretty sure Gene Hackman does the voice acting for Nuclear Man, but I could be wrong. If it is, then boy does it suck. It sounds like they took Gene Hackman's voice and tried to artificially make it intimidating, when using his regular voice would have done that perfectly. Oh, and Nuclear Man's costume looks dumb. It's like a reverse He-Man, it's not good. I really hope that whatever Mark got paid was worth it. And, also, roughly 95% of the effects are just the worst. I hope you like seeing Superman awkwardly flying towards the camera, cause you're gonna see it seventeen times. And, you know how Superman fixes that Great Wall of China explosion that I mentioned earlier? He just looks at it and it fixes itself. The way its filmed, it's like the movie rewinds itself. It looks awkward and bad. You can see the wires used to move Superman's cape during a few of the flying scenes, too. Really ruins the illusion for the kids, don't you think?
I don't think the world has enough thread to properly sew up all of this movie's plot holes. For example, it's shown that a single strand of Superman's hair can hold up a thousand pounds of pure steel. The idea of that is pretty cool, and the effect actually looks good. But then Lex Luthor comes along and cuts the hair with common bolt cutters like it's nobody's business. How? I thought it could support a thousand pounds of steel! And, Superman's solution to the nuclear warhead problem? Just put all of them in a net and throw it into the sun. Wouldn't all that nuclear power blow up the sun and incinerate the entire solar system? Yeah, good job, Supes, you killed us all! There's also a scene where Nuclear Man takes Mariel Hemingway up into space without a space suit, and she doesn't die. That's a thing that happened. And then there's a well-put-together scene where John Cryer launches a car with people in it off of a cliff. The car explodes, but everyone in it survives somehow. Superman loses a fight and almost dies at one point, too. How, you may ask? Krytonite, electricity, lack of sunlight? Nah. Nuclear Man just scratches him once, and then he gets sick and ages a lot. It's all very well explained.
Oh, on the topic of Nuclear Man: He was created by mixing a sample of both Lex's and Superman's DNA (can you say "Doomsday"?) and then launching that sample into the sun via a spare nuke that Supes missed. This mixture creates Nuclear Man. Because of that, he has to be exposed to sunlight in order to stay powered up. We get a genuinely cool scene where Lex uses a ring to shine a single beam of light on Nuclear Man's body, which makes him continually gain and lose power for a few minutes. It sounds like just waiting for nighttime would be a good way to defeat him, but how does Superman prefer to do it? He moves the moon out of orbit and blocks out the sun. It works, and then Superman flies him down and drops him into the reactor of a nuclear power plant. Okay, first of all, that wouldn't have killed him. It would've given him more power. Secondly, moving the moon? Wouldn't that have caused major worldly damage? It's funny that this movie is called The Quest for Peace, because Superman spends most of it trying to end the world! Maybe Batman was right to want to kill him.
This is not a good movie whatsoever, but it's hard to hate it. It's cheesy, it's riddled with plot holes and terrible character decisions, and it's all-around just a poorly-put-together movie. But, all things considered, it gave me one of the best laughs I've had in a while. My favorite scene is the part where Lex is launching the missile that ultimately creates Nuclear Man, but he fires it too early and almost nukes himself. This is your legendary criminal mastermind, people. Be afraid. This movie is terrible, but I do recommend it. It's getting a harpoon right between the eyes, without a doubt, but I still think you should watch it if you have access to it. At least once, for a good laugh. Then you can do what all of us did after watching it: Bury it in the backyard and never think about it again.
