Which brings us to the final chapter in the story, 1987's "Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace". By this time, the series was pretty much limping along waiting to be put out of its misery. Canon Films had picked up the series from the Salkinds following "Supergirl" and persuaded Warners to let them make another film with Sidney Furie directing. Warners agreed but the budget was brutally slashed as they rightly surmised that the series was past its peak by this point - whereas Superman 3 was given a budget of just under $40 million, Superman 4 was allocated less than half of that. Christopher Reeve (who also co-wrote the film), Margot Kidder and Marc McClure returned as Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen respectively while Gene Hackman was persuaded to return as Lex Luthor after sitting out Superman 3 following his fallout with Richard Lester.
The film starts with Superman saving a group of cosmonauts orbiting the earth in a space station after they're hit by some space debris. Meanwhile, back on earth, Clark Kent is back in Smallville dealing with the sale of his parents' farm following his mum's death (referenced in Superman 3). The estate agent recommends he sell the farm to a property developer but Clark wants to hand it on to someone who wants to keep it as a farm. Similar to the cosmonauts, this storyline isn't referenced again for the rest of the film so you have to kind of wonder exactly what the point of including it was. Before he leaves to return to Metropolis, Clark recovers an energy pod from the old space capsule he keeps in the shed (which we originally saw in Superman I) and hears the voice of his mother Lara (Susannah York who we also haven't seen since the first film - clearly Marlon Brando was way beyond this film's miniscule budget as evidenced by the fact that this scene was apparently shot in Baldock just near where I live in Bishops Stortford!) telling him he can use it once but after that it really will be the final time she's able to help him.
Returning to Metropolis, Clark finds that the Daily Planet is under new ownership by media tycoon David Warfield and his daughter Lacey who want to turn it into a sensationalist tabloid style paper. Editor Perry White is promptly fired and replaced by Lacey who it turns out has a crush on Clark. Actually, while we're here, what happened to Lana Lang in this film? At the end of Superman 3, she'd just started working at the Daily Planet as Perry's receptionist and presumably dating Clark but here she's just gone, completely written out of the film. I'm guessing "victim of budget cuts" again...
Meanwhile, Lex Luthor is in prison breaking rocks in a quarry when he's busted out by his nephew Lenny who distracts the two guards with his new hot rod and offers them a ride in it only to program it to drive them straight into the quarry pit! I'm not sure which is worse, the fact that the guards got tricked by someone as clearly stupid as Lenny or the fact that the prison saw it fit to put both of these imbeciles in to guard a bunch of dangerous prisoners...
Back at the Daily Planet, Clark and Lois receive a letter from a schoolkid addressed to Superman who's worried about the arms race after seeing a newsflash on TV explaining that a peace conference between the USA and USSR has broken down. Warfield quickly grabs the kid in to make him a minor celebrity while Clark agonises over what to do. Initially he flies off to the Palace of Soltitude (I was about comment that this was destroyed at the end of Superman 2 but then remembered Superman had done his "turn back time" trick to reverse the procedure) where the spirits of the Krypton elders advise him not to intervene. However, that evening Clark speaks with Lois and reveals that he's Superman before asking for her advice. She advises him to intervene before he kisses her to wipe her memory (a la the cinematic version of Superman 2). You have to feel sorry for Lois who's generally made to look like the world's biggest dummy ever (with the possible exception of Lenny Luthor) in the script for this film, it really feels like whoever wrote the script didn't pay any attention to her character in the first two films at all.
Superman meets up with the kid in New York (well, Milton Keynes actually - seriously, that's where this bit was filmed! Budget cuts again...) and attends a UN Security Council meeting where he explains that he's offering his services to dispose of all the world's nuclear weapons to the agreement of all those present. He does this by getting everybody to fire their nuclear weapons out into space where he grabs them in a huge net (!) before throwing them into the sun! I'm not sure who was in charge of the scientific portion of this film but I'm suspecting it may have been done in the Old Dog & Duck after ten pints on a Friday night...
Hearing of Superman's plan, Lex and Lenny sense an opportunity to finish off their nemesis once and for all and rope in a trio of unscruplous arms dealers to help them. They sneak into Metropolis Museum and steal a strand of Superman's hair that's part of an exhibit there before attaching it to a rocket which they fire into space. Superman, of course, intercepts it and diverts it into the sun where the hair evolves into Luthor's new supervillain Nuclear Man who returns to earth to get instructions from his dad.
Actually, I need to point something out here - who on earth thought that Nuclear Man's costume was a good idea? He's wearing a Superman style suit but it's flesh-coloured so when you see him flying from a certain angle it looks as if he's wearing nothing but a thong! I mean c'mon, someone must have surely seen that at some point and thought "Hang on a sec..." Anyway, Nuclear Man is basically an evil version of Superman but as he draws his power from the sun he instantly goes into shutdown mode when it goes dark. Hmmm, giving a pretty major weakness away straight away, that'll help build this guy up as a suitably menacing villain...
Meanwhile, Lois has somehow ended up organising a double date between her and Superman and Lacey and Clark. This results in a ha-ha-larious sequence where Superman/Clark is perpetually running between rooms to persuade the ladies that there's two of him there. Remember the restaurant scene in "Mrs Doubtfire"? It's basically the same as that except not as funny.
Thankfully, this is mercifully interrupted by Lex calling out Superman to meet his new creation and the two of them engage in a lengthy and not exactly great fight. We get one sequence where the pair of them are fighting on the Great Wall of China and Nuclear Man's heat rays knock a section of the wall down only for Superman to do the same and build it back up. Remember those old bat and ball games like "Arkanoid" or "Alleyway" where sometimes you'd see the wall quickly building up at the start of a level for you to knock down? If so, this may give you flashback sequences...
The pair's fight then spills over to New Yor...sorry, Metropolis, where Nuclear Man picks up the Statue of Liberty and throws it at the city! Superman swoops in to catch it but Nuclear Man ambushes him on Staten Island and swipes his neck with his radioactive claws. Infected with radiation poisoning, Superman is easy prey for Nuclear Man who kicks him off into the sunset so hard that his cape falls off!
The cape is retrieved and returned to the Daily Planet where Warfield publishes a story claiming Superman is dead much to Lois and Lacey's disgust with the former storming out of the paper. She returns the cape to Clark who's at home suffering with "bad flu". He eventually uses the power cell from the start of the film to heal himself (and cure his sudden dose of alopecia into the bargain!) before flying off for Round 2 with Nuclear Man who's gone off to kidnap Lacey for reasons best known unto himself.
Superman intercepts him and traps him in a lift which he then drops on the dark side of the moon, cutting Nuclear Man off from the sunlight. However, as soon as the moon spins round, Nuclear Man breaks free and hammers Superman into the moon's surface! Flying back to earth, he kidnaps Lacey and flies up into space with her. Surprisingly, this doesn't kill her!
Superman manages to break free and drags the moon out of its orbit, causing a solar eclipse. Starved of power, Nuclear Man starts to fall back towards Earth, dragging Lacey (who's still alive somehow) with him but Superman intercepts them, returning Lacey back to her office and dropping Nuclear Man into the nearest power plant where he ends up lighting up the grid!
Returning to Earth, we find that Perry White has put a consortium together to buy the Daily Planet back from Warfield who's out on his ear. We never find out what happened to Lacey - gotta love the continuity in this film eh? Lex and Lenny are apprehended by Superman who returns the former to prison and puts the latter in a boys' correction school. Finally, the film ends with Superman giving another speech in Metropolis/Milton Keynes about how humanity will achieve peace when it's ready to quest for it. Or something. Anyway, that's the end of the film.
Superman 4 is the sound of a once-mighty franchise limping to a close and really is awful. Reeve, Kidder and Hackman do their best but the script is dire, the film appears to have been cut down brutally meaning there are plot holes the size of planets throughout (apparently, close to an hour of footage was cut after test screenings leaving a feature just 80 minutes long) and the lack of budget regarding the special effects is painfully obvious and, combined with the very '80s "nuclear weapons are bad!" moralising leaves this actually looking like the most dated of all four of the Superman films despite being the last one to be released.
Superman 4 did at least make a profit but it still took about a third of what Superman 3 did at the box office meaning this is really more down to how cheaply it was made than how popular it was. Unsurprisingly, the series was quietly wound down after this and we wouldn't see a new Superman film until 2006 (although a couple of TV series' in the form of "The New Adventures Of Lois and Clark" in the '90s and "Smallville" in the '00s kept the name alive). Unfortunately both Christopher Reeve and, very recently, Margot Kidder are no longer with us and it's a real shame the series had to bow out on a low like this. Remember them for the first two Superman films rather than this low-budget klutzfest.
FINAL RATING: 🚀🚀 (2/10)
CURRENT DC FILM TABLE
1. Superman (1978) (8/10)
2. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
3. Batman (1966) (8/10)
4. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
5. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
6. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
7. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
8. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
9. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
10. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: A second Swamp Thing film. I dunno who asked for that but it definitely wasn't me...
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