My Review of "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace"

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is a movie that I wanted to see when I was a kid. I never got to see it up until now. Knowing me back then, I would have ate this movie right up. It's not a great movie but seeing this in hindsight, there were some interesting things they added to this movie. Unfortunately, closer to the end it really all collapses.

The movie starts off in space. Some Russian astronauts are doing work there and when an incident happens we have Superman to the rescue. This means it's back to the old Superman that we know and love. Not that terrible version we saw in the third installment. Everything's kind of reset on earth. Nobody knows who Superman is and it also seems as though everyone's memories of the previous movies are kind of forgotten.

We have a big change up where the Daily Planet has been bought out by a wealthy magnate named David. Lacy, the daughter of David is to take control over the paper. This jeopardizes everyone's job and puts the newspaper into a more tabloid direction to sell more papers. Again looking back this makes total sense because it's happened big time over the past few decades. They knew how sensationalizing the news was big business and how it was dangerous to be doing this to the public.

Lex Luthor is back in this movie. In this one he creates a clone based off Superman's hair. Again, this is something that even the newest Superman movie that came out this year has taken a plot point from. This is ahead of its time yet they did it in such a weird cartoony manner that you can't take it seriously. This will eventually becomes Nuclear man who is the main villain for Superman.

The lead up of this movie is actually quite well done. I thought the first half is really fun. The romantic triangle between Lacy, Lois and Clark is a major lost potential. Lacy loves Clark for being Clark not for being Superman. It's quite an interesting dynamic but there's ultimately no payoff for this sub plot. I also liked the fact that there was a clause where Superman wouldn't interfere with big human affairs. He had to really think about intervening to help world nuclear disarmament. This is still an interesting topic today. It's also another element that is touched upon in this year's Superman movie.

After the half point mark of this movie, this movie just goes super bonkers. They forget about world building, legacy or even common sense. Since when did Superman have the ability to build things with his eyes? It's even unclear as to what Nuclear Man's powers are because he seems to have telekinetic powers as well. It's as if the person writing the last half of the movie didn't know anything about Superman at all and just made stuff up.

To make matters worse they have nonsensical things like people traveling to space without any protection. The movie started out with astronauts in space. Why would they need space suits when later closer to the end of the movie it seems like people can easily survive in space. Things like this really threw me out of the movie. It was utterly ridiculous and not in the good way.

They didn't fix much with the fighting choreography. It is laughably bad. Perhaps this was acceptable back in the 80s but today they look really rough. To add to injury, the special effects look horrifyingly bad. Our standards were so low back in the 80s. Still, I think I would have still liked this when I was kid back then.

Overall, there was some potential with this movie. They showed a lot of interesting ideas that never really come to fruition. I think this movie could have been so much better had there been more thought and dedication to this writing and craftsmanship. I unfortunately have to give this movie a 4.5 out of 10. It's really sad to see but they did it to themselves.