Thanks for mentioning Aaron!! He's been doing such a phenomenal job putting that film together in a cohesive and exciting way, that I hope WBD sees it and brings him onto a restoration/fan cut.
Great video retrospective... When and if you do a Supergirl (1984) review, please remember there are 3 different edits of the film - the (atrociously bad) 105 minute US Theatrical Cut, (the slightly better) 124 minute International Cut and the 138 Director's Cut (which is the best version of the film, considering it fills in all the plot holes made from the other two cuts & have extra nice character moments that are also not present in the other two cuts). And it was Tri-Star pictures that released this movie not Warner Bros (because WB had no faith in the film as a whole). Christopher Reeve was supposed to do a cameo but wisely pulled out at the last minute, instead we got Jimmy Olsen (Mark McClure) popping up to tie the thread to the other Superman movies....There was a lot of potential for Supergirl to be a good spin-off film and took interesting turns using magic, dark magic and sorcery. Argo City had some interesting designs (compared to Krypton). The monster crane scene was very elaborate. Supergirl being sent to the phantom zone was very unique. Keeping Kara as a teen who is coming of age is a novel approach. And the film even has parallels with Star Wars (Luke, Obi-wan & Yoda - Supergirl & Zoltar) and the Wizard Of Oz (Supergirl being like Dorothy & Selena being like the Wicked Witch of the West)...But like with Superman III, the Salkinds somehow managed to bungle it up in the process and the film flopped hard at the box office (still it was more professionally done than Superman IV by Cannon films).
Nuclear Man was scary as hell to me as a kid. Also, the battle round the world music is a good thing about this movie. All the bad guy/fight music in this is good.
This movie still has heart. I feel there is a better movie in here somewhere if the deleted scenes were restored. Christopher Reeve & Gene Hackman still have the chemistry
Superman messing around with other countries’ nuclear arms programmes and the geopolitical ramifications of that could have been a really interesting plot point for this film. But this is a Golan-Globus production, so Superman enforces his no nukes policy on all countries and no one seems to have a problem with that.
Still watching this but your reaction to Superman IV (pre-in depth discussion) is basically how I feel about Superman III. Personally enjoy Superman 4 so I’m looking forward to the rest of this.
I saw all Superman movies at the theatre and I was a cosplay before there were cosplays. Every time a Superman movie trailer would just pop up on tv it looked like shit. And every time, it turned out to be good. However, when I saw the IV one, I remember seeing the "image cracking" as Superman came out of wood phone booth and also, he was actually wearing the raincoat that he usually only carried. And something really was off. Also - there was a very small (from memory) moment where we saw Clark and his hair was off. When I finally saw the movie - I was devastated. I came out of the theatre and it was raining. I thought to myself this is the end. And it was. I thought when the vhs would come out - I might be wrong but, it turned out to be worse. Since... I've seen people every where defend it!!!!! Some weirdos at some point on RUclips - sometime in the last 5 to 8 years (from memory) said it was great and that even if the effects were not perfect - Reeve was finally the father figure - something he could not do in III being younger. We couldn't leave comments but, by this logic - Superman the Movie was Reeve's worst performance as he only became better in the latter movies - BS!!!!! They also said that Superman III has too many plots that lead to nowhere - that was during the viewing of IV - defending by defecating on III. Which - when you look at IV - (without extended sequences) what happens to Lacey? How can Lex cut Superman hair? The same friggin' flying shot used (now I forget) like ten times or so. I'm not even giving this much thought - almost every single sequence in Superman IV is terrible. Even Reeve's physique is terrible - he looks soft, holding his belly in, terrible wigs, worse costume colours, worse performance - worse voice (...now thrrrrreatened (got the Mexican R accent there), the scream when kicked from Liberty Island sound like a little girl. Metropolis fight fx, visible wires all over, lazy writing - vision-wall - geeze-Louise, I can go on all day and night. The Superman II Donner cut is superior to this movie - can you beat this?????
As a Cannon Films nut and a huge fan of the Reeve movies, I can get through this movie fine. But I’m in the huge minority there haha. The day Warner Archive decides to release the long fabled extended cut, I’m there release day.
The Superman and Lois flying scenes were so ridiculous in this one, within an instant they've went from NYC to San Francisco that even though he can do this would have resulted in Lois's eyeballs being ripped out given the speed he'd be going at lol The original get together in the night sky over New York was so much better.
I know the budget was drastically cut but it always blows my mind that the budget for Aliens just a year or so later was only $1.5m more than for this. Shows it would still have been possible to make a good film for that budget at that time and that is what is always used as the easy scapegoat.
The producers of Superman (and Supergirl, of course) really didn't understand the character - though Donner and Puzo certainly put together a great story for the first one. The thing about SUPERMAN IV is that the premise is potentially very good - what if Superman decided to actually try to effect some significant solution to a very important and real problem for humanity - in this case the threat of a world-ending nuclear war. While nuclear war is still in the top 5 universal human threats today, the comparison between then and now would be what if Superman decided to solve climate change. However, the direct drama would not necessarily involve Lex Luthor intruding his comic book scheme into the story, but it would be that the governments - more likely their intelligence agencies - would be dead set against Superman's solution. While it would be unrealistic to expect the members of the UN to just stand up and cheer at the offer, that at least is consistent with the somewhat naive view of politics in the Superman film. Nevertheless, behind the scenes, a cabal of intelligence agents, corporate interests and Machiavellian political appointees would have been like "we need Lex Luthor immediately to put an end to this cockamamie plan of Superman's." After all, what geopolitical stability existed at the time was dependent upon those nuclear weapons. Get rid of them and we'd have regular old conventional wars, civil wars and numerous terror attacks almost immediately. Just look at the Balkans after the USSR collapsed. It would have streamlined the story and given the conclusion and "moral of the story" more dramatic impact. The world doesn't need Superman to achieve world peace, and if the world doesn't want world peace, then a Superman won't be able to give it to us.
"nuclear man" doesn't die - it's much worse than that. Without the power of the sun he becomes inert (as shown, but not explained, earlier in the film). So he's trapped, alone, in the dark, unable to move yet, seemingly, giving off enough radiation to run a power station. There isn't enough information to know his final fate. His radioactive decay might slowly degrade his body or one day someone might open the chamber and unleash him upon the world once more. I am unfortunately compelled to vote for the first.
The part where Superman rescues the little girl from the tornado and the scene in Russia is available in the international cut in its finished form. It's only available in the original Cannon VHS release (mine is from Malaysia but it's also in the German version) The full detail is on the movie censorship website.
Weirdly, I think this movie was outdone by Barbie in one respect: in Barbie In Princess Power, the climax of the film centres around the villain activating a volcano. Instead of Barbie’s character grabbing a nearby mountain and plugging it up (which would make the problem WORSE), her idea is instead to stem the flow of the lava (by knocking the crater in) and then guide it into a nearby lake. She has magic sparkle bombs shot from her hands so she can do this.
The intended for Christopher Reeve Superman Reborn might’ve been tricky to do but had it been made it would’ve ended things on a better note than this movie did which was a victim of a tight budget and an editing room nightmare with 45 minutes were cut out drastically changing things in terms of events play out such as having a Bizarro like guy be the first Nuclear Man before the one we end up with for the movie we got
I have an idea for a 20th century spanning superman trilogy and the 2nd one would be a combo of Red Son for the first half and a better version of this movie for the second half. Essentially the first follows him growing up, being a smaller scale superman and then later hero who gets drafted in ww2 but refuses direct involvement and does propaganda and then the nukes are dropped and he'd disillusioned and hits up the other side of the red curtain and while once again only serving in a peaceful capacity does aid the Soviet union in an local industrial.capacity which scares the hell out of the cold war brained who elect Luthor as a Reagan stand in, nuclear buildup goes buts and ww3 seems like it's coming and it's indirectly due to superman and he gathers all the nukes and throws em into the sun. Both the us and soviets have thought about this and have kryponite shielded launch platforms or whatever and each side thinks they have that sole ace up.their sleeve and launch, superman catches the hot missiles and gets nukes right next to the sun which messed him right up.and sets up a third movie loosely based on all star superman. Vibe wise superman had gotta be basically the Christopher Reeve version, but faced with deeper issues, he's still fundamentally good as hell but doesn't necessarily know how to bring that into action. I've got a decent treatment written up over the years. It should be generally uplifting, optimistic and fun but I think it can be done alongside a fairly serious story that explores how the most good boy ever alien would act throughout the last century and be a pretty meaningful story.
That's entirely fair. I do want to specify that for all my problems with Lenny, Jon Cryer is innocent. He did what he could with the material given to him, like everyone else in this movie
I truly believe you had to be a kid wheb it came out. If you werent vien in like 84- 89 or so and/oe it wasnt rhe first superman movie you ever saw, you wont like it.
Tuned out at 13 seconds. This narrative has got to stop… why is there all this hate? Aside from dated effects and a story not fully fleshed out there’s nothing to tear down here. It’s a fun movie… piss off.
Shame you tuned out because I did explain my personal problems with it, while also paying sympathy to the movie I and Reeve wished it were. Thanks for the engagement though, darling
according ti Wikipedia there are 45 minutes of scenes deleted from the movie after failed audience reaction en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_IV%3A_The_Quest_for_Peace
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
*IMPORTANT:* Aaron Price's channel is linked in the description! Please check out his work on Superman IV, it really is impressive work!
I second that!!
@@flatscan1978 Aaron’s work on Superman 4 is nothing less than tremendous!
Thanks for mentioning Aaron!! He's been doing such a phenomenal job putting that film together in a cohesive and exciting way, that I hope WBD sees it and brings him onto a restoration/fan cut.
The movie was hampered by the cut in budget and poor script. The sad thing is, it was salvageable with a bit more love and care employed.
Great video retrospective...
When and if you do a Supergirl (1984) review, please remember there are 3 different edits of the film - the (atrociously bad) 105 minute US Theatrical Cut, (the slightly better) 124 minute International Cut and the 138 Director's Cut (which is the best version of the film, considering it fills in all the plot holes made from the other two cuts & have extra nice character moments that are also not present in the other two cuts). And it was Tri-Star pictures that released this movie not Warner Bros (because WB had no faith in the film as a whole). Christopher Reeve was supposed to do a cameo but wisely pulled out at the last minute, instead we got Jimmy Olsen (Mark McClure) popping up to tie the thread to the other Superman movies....There was a lot of potential for Supergirl to be a good spin-off film and took interesting turns using magic, dark magic and sorcery. Argo City had some interesting designs (compared to Krypton). The monster crane scene was very elaborate. Supergirl being sent to the phantom zone was very unique. Keeping Kara as a teen who is coming of age is a novel approach. And the film even has parallels with Star Wars (Luke, Obi-wan & Yoda - Supergirl & Zoltar) and the Wizard Of Oz (Supergirl being like Dorothy & Selena being like the Wicked Witch of the West)...But like with Superman III, the Salkinds somehow managed to bungle it up in the process and the film flopped hard at the box office (still it was more professionally done than Superman IV by Cannon films).
After Supergirl, you should do Superman Returns.
Thank you so much for the shoutout! It’s my pleasure to help you leave no sad, unpolished stone in this movie unturned.
Absolutely love these. I am BEGGING for a similar deep dive to Superman Returns after Supergirl.
Nuclear Man was scary as hell to me as a kid. Also, the battle round the world music is a good thing about this movie. All the bad guy/fight music in this is good.
Yay. Milton Keynes.
This movie still has heart. I feel there is a better movie in here somewhere if the deleted scenes were restored. Christopher Reeve & Gene Hackman still have the chemistry
Great video, thank you for this!
Superman messing around with other countries’ nuclear arms programmes and the geopolitical ramifications of that could have been a really interesting plot point for this film. But this is a Golan-Globus production, so Superman enforces his no nukes policy on all countries and no one seems to have a problem with that.
The opening credit scene tells you they had no money. The VFX could be updated in a special edition and maybe save it.
10:59 ah yes the Mr Sulu show!
Still watching this but your reaction to Superman IV (pre-in depth discussion) is basically how I feel about Superman III. Personally enjoy Superman 4 so I’m looking forward to the rest of this.
I saw all Superman movies at the theatre and I was a cosplay before there were cosplays. Every time a Superman movie trailer would just pop up on tv it looked like shit. And every time, it turned out to be good. However, when I saw the IV one, I remember seeing the "image cracking" as Superman came out of wood phone booth and also, he was actually wearing the raincoat that he usually only carried. And something really was off. Also - there was a very small (from memory) moment where we saw Clark and his hair was off. When I finally saw the movie - I was devastated. I came out of the theatre and it was raining. I thought to myself this is the end. And it was. I thought when the vhs would come out - I might be wrong but, it turned out to be worse. Since... I've seen people every where defend it!!!!! Some weirdos at some point on RUclips - sometime in the last 5 to 8 years (from memory) said it was great and that even if the effects were not perfect - Reeve was finally the father figure - something he could not do in III being younger. We couldn't leave comments but, by this logic - Superman the Movie was Reeve's worst performance as he only became better in the latter movies - BS!!!!! They also said that Superman III has too many plots that lead to nowhere - that was during the viewing of IV - defending by defecating on III. Which - when you look at IV - (without extended sequences) what happens to Lacey? How can Lex cut Superman hair? The same friggin' flying shot used (now I forget) like ten times or so. I'm not even giving this much thought - almost every single sequence in Superman IV is terrible. Even Reeve's physique is terrible - he looks soft, holding his belly in, terrible wigs, worse costume colours, worse performance - worse voice (...now thrrrrreatened (got the Mexican R accent there), the scream when kicked from Liberty Island sound like a little girl. Metropolis fight fx, visible wires all over, lazy writing - vision-wall - geeze-Louise, I can go on all day and night. The Superman II Donner cut is superior to this movie - can you beat this?????
As a Cannon Films nut and a huge fan of the Reeve movies, I can get through this movie fine. But I’m in the huge minority there haha. The day Warner Archive decides to release the long fabled extended cut, I’m there release day.
The Superman and Lois flying scenes were so ridiculous in this one, within an instant they've went from NYC to San Francisco that even though he can do this would have resulted in Lois's eyeballs being ripped out given the speed he'd be going at lol The original get together in the night sky over New York was so much better.
I know the budget was drastically cut but it always blows my mind that the budget for Aliens just a year or so later was only $1.5m more than for this. Shows it would still have been possible to make a good film for that budget at that time and that is what is always used as the easy scapegoat.
37:40 Aw no bro not the workprint...
The producers of Superman (and Supergirl, of course) really didn't understand the character - though Donner and Puzo certainly put together a great story for the first one.
The thing about SUPERMAN IV is that the premise is potentially very good - what if Superman decided to actually try to effect some significant solution to a very important and real problem for humanity - in this case the threat of a world-ending nuclear war. While nuclear war is still in the top 5 universal human threats today, the comparison between then and now would be what if Superman decided to solve climate change.
However, the direct drama would not necessarily involve Lex Luthor intruding his comic book scheme into the story, but it would be that the governments - more likely their intelligence agencies - would be dead set against Superman's solution. While it would be unrealistic to expect the members of the UN to just stand up and cheer at the offer, that at least is consistent with the somewhat naive view of politics in the Superman film. Nevertheless, behind the scenes, a cabal of intelligence agents, corporate interests and Machiavellian political appointees would have been like "we need Lex Luthor immediately to put an end to this cockamamie plan of Superman's." After all, what geopolitical stability existed at the time was dependent upon those nuclear weapons. Get rid of them and we'd have regular old conventional wars, civil wars and numerous terror attacks almost immediately. Just look at the Balkans after the USSR collapsed.
It would have streamlined the story and given the conclusion and "moral of the story" more dramatic impact. The world doesn't need Superman to achieve world peace, and if the world doesn't want world peace, then a Superman won't be able to give it to us.
"nuclear man" doesn't die - it's much worse than that. Without the power of the sun he becomes inert (as shown, but not explained, earlier in the film). So he's trapped, alone, in the dark, unable to move yet, seemingly, giving off enough radiation to run a power station.
There isn't enough information to know his final fate. His radioactive decay might slowly degrade his body or one day someone might open the chamber and unleash him upon the world once more.
I am unfortunately compelled to vote for the first.
Oh that's much, much worse
He did all this to make Street Smart, which critics loved but Cannon buried 😕
The part where Superman rescues the little girl from the tornado and the scene in Russia is available in the international cut in its finished form. It's only available in the original Cannon VHS release (mine is from Malaysia but it's also in the German version) The full detail is on the movie censorship website.
Oh, neat! Thanks for that info
3:23 😂😂😂
20:11 😂😂😂
Having a selfish asshole phase seems to be a humanising move.
Reminds me of how sad the Ernest franchise went out 😢
Weirdly, I think this movie was outdone by Barbie in one respect: in Barbie In Princess Power, the climax of the film centres around the villain activating a volcano. Instead of Barbie’s character grabbing a nearby mountain and plugging it up (which would make the problem WORSE), her idea is instead to stem the flow of the lava (by knocking the crater in) and then guide it into a nearby lake. She has magic sparkle bombs shot from her hands so she can do this.
I remember that Wes Craven was considered as a director for Superman IV, but was vetoed by Reeve.
The intended for Christopher Reeve Superman Reborn might’ve been tricky to do but had it been made it would’ve ended things on a better note than this movie did which was a victim of a tight budget and an editing room nightmare with 45 minutes were cut out drastically changing things in terms of events play out such as having a Bizarro like guy be the first Nuclear Man before the one we end up with for the movie we got
Gene Hackman was 56 at this time! But he still had it!
17:55 Son, this is a Canon film. You are lucky if they had a script
Have you seen Jon Cryer's rendition of Lex Luthor on Supergirl (he was definitely making up for playing Lenny way back when)
I haven't but I'm being persuaded to give Supergirl a go so I may
@michaelinlofi funnily enough the finale of the first season he was in (season four) was called Quest For Peace, so a little connection there.
That was interesting. Thanks
Thank you!
I have an idea for a 20th century spanning superman trilogy and the 2nd one would be a combo of Red Son for the first half and a better version of this movie for the second half. Essentially the first follows him growing up, being a smaller scale superman and then later hero who gets drafted in ww2 but refuses direct involvement and does propaganda and then the nukes are dropped and he'd disillusioned and hits up the other side of the red curtain and while once again only serving in a peaceful capacity does aid the Soviet union in an local industrial.capacity which scares the hell out of the cold war brained who elect Luthor as a Reagan stand in, nuclear buildup goes buts and ww3 seems like it's coming and it's indirectly due to superman and he gathers all the nukes and throws em into the sun. Both the us and soviets have thought about this and have kryponite shielded launch platforms or whatever and each side thinks they have that sole ace up.their sleeve and launch, superman catches the hot missiles and gets nukes right next to the sun which messed him right up.and sets up a third movie loosely based on all star superman. Vibe wise superman had gotta be basically the Christopher Reeve version, but faced with deeper issues, he's still fundamentally good as hell but doesn't necessarily know how to bring that into action. I've got a decent treatment written up over the years. It should be generally uplifting, optimistic and fun but I think it can be done alongside a fairly serious story that explores how the most good boy ever alien would act throughout the last century and be a pretty meaningful story.
After a rewatch of all the Reeves movies, I’ll take Superman 4 over 3. It’s a terrible movie but I enjoy it more. It’s a so bad it’s good movie.
Lenny is scrappy doo meets poochy
Of course you hate lenny, it's Jon Cryer
Just as Homer was innocent of Poochies failings, Jon Cryer is not the problem I have with Lenny
I thought Jon Cryer did great as Lenny, and now he is Lex! Yeah, no disrespect, but it wouldn't of been as good if Ned Beatty returned as Otis!
That's entirely fair. I do want to specify that for all my problems with Lenny, Jon Cryer is innocent. He did what he could with the material given to him, like everyone else in this movie
I truly believe you had to be a kid wheb it came out. If you werent vien in like 84- 89 or so and/oe it wasnt rhe first superman movie you ever saw, you wont like it.
Tuned out at 13 seconds. This narrative has got to stop… why is there all this hate? Aside from dated effects and a story not fully fleshed out there’s nothing to tear down here. It’s a fun movie… piss off.
Shame you tuned out because I did explain my personal problems with it, while also paying sympathy to the movie I and Reeve wished it were.
Thanks for the engagement though, darling
@ just need to start stronger
I did debate whether that brusque intro was worth it, in fairness.
And FWIW I have the same feelings for Superman III, a film I love warts and all
according ti Wikipedia there are 45 minutes of scenes deleted from the movie after failed audience reaction en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_IV%3A_The_Quest_for_Peace