Runtime:
90 minutes
Directed by: Sidney J. Furie
Starring:
Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Mariel Hemingway, the
hilariously named Mark Pillow
From:
Unfortunately for this movie, Cannon
Yep, this movie is still quite bad:
As my last review was of a pretty terrible Marvel movie (Blade: Trinity) which I had seen before, why not do one for a pretty terrible DC film? As I've said before, I have no dog in the fight between those two comic book studios turned motion picture-making juggernauts. I've also mentioned how as a kid I saw all the Christopher Reeve Superman films, even this cheap hunk of junk... turns out, I have a lot to say about this legendary misfire.
The chief thing to note is that the effects in this movie look TERRIBLE. I mean, significantly worse than the ones in the first film, from 9 years earlier. Watching it on Blu really exposes their piss-poor quality, and of course there are plenty of effects being used. The Salkinds sold the rights to the movie to Cannon after III disappointed at the box office and Supergirl made most people unhappy; Golan/Globus is neat and all but they were spread way too thin at this point and this only had the fraction of what was needed to make the movie look not atrocious.
Then there's the story... Reeve only returned to the role if he could be involved in writing the script. He came up with something that-to be honest-expresses his anti-nuclear and anti corporate media attitudes. They were even more obvious than Leonard Nimoy's pro-environment message in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, but at least that was a very good and entertaining movie where the message was used to make a real yarn of a tale, while this motion picture is just a mess, with a message that can be questioned by some; I think of a review done long ago by Ken Begg of Jabootu... and that review can still be read today; imagine my shock at discovering last night that Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension is still up. The site is now more than 20 years old, so it was a trip seeing something I looked at in 2002 and 2003 has not vanished into the ether.
Anyhow, Begg is a conservative instead of a liberal or any other political leaning and was really against the message of the film. Google can help you find the article if you want to read his argument for yourself. I won't get into my opinion on such things... I'll just mention that it is naive to presume the entire world will be behind Superman becoming an obvious Christ figure and rid the world of nuclear weapons all because one bad child actor... I mean one boy wrote Supes a letter asking him to do this. Superman struggles with the decision but having him get all political seems like a bad idea. If there could be satire about him trying to also rid the world of other evil things (such as drugs) and failing, that'd be one thing... but the movie is not that.
Also, there's The Daily Planet being taken over by Not Rupert Murdoch and his daughter Lacy (Mariel Hemingway); I'd say what the newspaper turns to is absurd, but after looking at the New York Post and the New York Daily News, perhaps not... then there is Lenny Luthor, Lex's nephew. I think I'd rather go the less agonizing route of attempting to watch an episode of 2 ½ Men rather than see Jon Cryer play the male version of a Valley Girl and wear hideous clothing because Hollywood thought it was “80's punk duds” even though I am pretty sure it wasn't.
Another notorious aspect is that this was originally 134 minutes long and yet 1/3 of it was lopped off after test screenings were a disaster. What ended up being released was only 90 minutes and besides the movie overall being a poorly made pile of crap, it's also incoherent from all the plot threads that are dropped to how things suddenly happen with no logical explanation. Deleted scenes are on the Blu and from watching them, it is obvious the 134 minute version will never see the light of day as the print must have rotted away in a landfill back 30 years ago. I proclaim this as many of the scenes shown are in such rough quality, the effects are unfinished.
I'll say the movie still would have been bad; infamously, the Nuclear Man villain we get here (who is... solar-powered and what an incredible weakness to have, shutting down if there's no sunlight) was actually Nuclear Man II as there was a first one created in a different-but still preposterous-way and apparently was supposed to be like the comic book nemesis Bizarro but I hope the character in the comics wasn't dumber than Lenny, a total low IQ creature... the scenes with him were portrayed as comical so that wouldn't have been enjoyable. Yet between the half hour of deleted scenes on disc and what I've read about the footage that is lost forever, at least the movie would have been more coherent. There's resolution with a few characters and it explained how the first Nuclear Man had the hots for Lacy, which is why II goes after her too... which comes across as inexplicable in the finished product.
Yet the movie would always have such moments as Supes pushing the Moon to cause a solar eclipse (BTW, that would cause more damage than Nuclear Man did in his absurd attacks on random locations around the world) and Mariel Hemingway flying through outer space without immediately dying, making me think that she must be an alien herself. The only reason why this isn't rated even lower is the cast and it being nice but bittersweet seeing some play their famous roles for the last time. It's just a shame that a series which started off so well ended up turning to crap.
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