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Superman IV: The Quest For Peace
166 Plays3 years ago
Superman IV: The Quest For Peace is considered to be the worst Superman film, but returning guest Liam Carrigan is on a mission to defend it as being not as bad as people remember. And Perry takes him up on that challenge with some interesting results.
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Introduction to Audible and Superhero Audiobooks
00:00:00
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Hey, fellow superhero cenophiles. Did you know that almost 30% of adults say they haven't read a book in the past year? Primary reason why is a lack of time. Well, Audible's here to help with the gift of found time. Thanks to Audible, you can listen to audiobooks like Marvel Comics, The Untold Story, or Slugfest inside the epic 50-year battle between Marvel and DC.
00:00:19
Speaker
Read up on the history of superheroes in comics and movies with Grant Morrison's Supergods. You can also check out Vanguard, my original superhero novel series, or try The Vrilagenda or The Adventures of Fortune McCall, both of which were written by our duly departed host emeritus, Derek Ferguson.
00:00:35
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00:00:59
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All you have to do is go to audibletrial.com slash SuperCinemapod and with your free trial you get one free audiobook and two free Audible Originals. In fact, you get to keep those titles even if you cancel before the trial is over. So what are you waiting for? Head on over to audibletrial.com slash SuperCinemapod and start your free trial today.
Superhero's Mission on Earth
00:01:32
Speaker
Madam Secretary, honorable delegates, ladies and gentlemen, for many years now, I've lived among you as a visitor. I've seen the beauty of your many cultures. I felt great joy in your magnificent accomplishments. I've also seen the folly of your wars. As of today, I'm not a visitor anymore because the Earth is my home too.
00:02:00
Speaker
We can't live in fear, and I can't stand idly by and watch as stumbled into the madness of possible nuclear destruction. And so I've come to a decision. I'm going to do what our governments have been unwilling or unable to do. Effective immediately, I'm going to rid our planet of all nuclear weapons.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:02:37
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, welcoming back another returning guest. And that is Liam Kerrigan. Liam, how are you doing today? Good, thanks. Perry, good to be back. Good to have you back. So before we jump into the movie today, well, first off, congratulations. You just got married. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I got married earlier this week. And yeah.
00:03:05
Speaker
I don't know if she'll be listening in, but hello to my lovely wife, Kyle. She is listening. Well, I'm very happy for you. Welcome to the club, so to speak.
00:03:16
Speaker
Thanks.
Connection Between Superman IV and Power Rangers
00:03:17
Speaker
Anyway, today we're talking about, well, actually I had an interesting kind of a thing. After we decided to record this, I found an interesting little connection between this episode and the last time you were on, we talked about Power Rangers. So today we're talking about, we're going to be talking about Superman for the Quest for Peace.
00:03:39
Speaker
and last time we talked about the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie and I just read an article the other day that it looks like Amy Jo Johnson from who is you know Kimberly and the Power Rangers is going to be directing an episode of the Superman and Lois TV show. Yeah she she announced that on her um on her Facebook the other day um I was reading that and that's uh yeah good for her she's
00:04:04
Speaker
making quite a nice little career for herself as an indie director these days. So that's what's good to see. Yeah, yeah. I think one of her things that she did that I had read about was like a movie about like a former actress who would who had tried like it said it seemed very autobiographical.
00:04:22
Speaker
So it sounded really interesting. But yeah, that that's really cool. And I thought it was the timing was just really interesting because the last time we had John, we talked about that. And then this time we're talking about Superman thing and those two just connecting right at the same time.
Insights on Superman Portrayals
00:04:36
Speaker
Have you seen that show at all, Superman and Lois? You know, I've actually got I've got season one sitting in my on my hard drive ready to watch. And I haven't actually got around to it yet.
00:04:47
Speaker
Definitely, I might actually start it this weekend actually because I've got, I'm not much planned for today after this so I might make a start on it. I've read good and I'm looking forward to it. Definitely, definitely get into that because it is really good. Like I loved Tyler Hoechlin ever since he first appeared on Supergirl and same thing with Elizabeth Tullock but they take it to
00:05:12
Speaker
They take their performances and their relationship to such a new level and it's just the
00:05:19
Speaker
the maturity of this relationship between the two of them, and then you add in the sons too. And I was expecting, because they've got teenage boys that was gonna be very much a lot of the CW type drama that you have, but there's surprisingly little of that, right? And it's very much, the family dynamics are just excellent. It's such a great, refreshing take on Superman, and so nice to see a Superman who's not always hating what he does, like in the movies.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah you know I think and we're going to get into it obviously but that's one of the reasons why even today although I think Henry Cavill does a fine job as Superman I do prefer Christopher Reeve because I just think those movies have a
00:06:07
Speaker
a hopefulness about them that modern superhero cinema often doesn't, you know. Yeah, Henry Cavill was, he was just so robbed of what he could have done because that was the first thing I saw him in was Man of Steel and just like the the dourness of his performance and that, but then I saw him in The Man from Uncle and
00:06:29
Speaker
My God, the man just exudes charm in that movie. And then in the theatrical cut of Justice League, you know, we had little hints of what he could do as Superman in that, right? He's got a little bit, he's a little bit more charming, he's a little bit more laid back. And we just had, and I just thought, I'm like, man, if only we could have gotten a whole movie where we could see this guy really kind of embrace that. Yeah, yeah.
00:06:56
Speaker
I mean the one, the one glimmer of hope I suppose is that, you know, Dwayne The Rock Johnson has said that he wants his black Adam to face off against Henry Cavill Superman at some point.
00:07:09
Speaker
The Rock carries a bit of clout in Hollywood. So if anybody can make it happen, he can. And that would be a movie well worth seeing, I think. Yeah. And also, Cavill had recently done an interview. In fact, you know, Adam Lance Garcia, who has been on the show twice before, he was the one who did this interview with Henry Cavill for for GQ, I think it was. And in it, he was talking about what he wants to do with Superman and how he wanted to explore the whole
00:07:38
Speaker
the whole hopeful aspect of the character and all that. And so it'd be, I really hope that Warner Brothers finally gets their shit together and, you know, lets them do that. I mean, the fact that they've, they've green, apparently green light the, the, the
00:07:57
Speaker
This black Superman they're going to do apparently that is a mini series on HBO Max now. Oh, okay. Hopefully that means that they might still continue with the current iteration of Superman on the big screen, but
00:08:10
Speaker
We're not going to know what happens until after the Flash movie because that's going to reset a lot of stuff apparently.
Superman in Cinema: Past and Future
00:08:16
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's and you know, obviously Superman more than any character in that in that cinematic universe needs some resetting. So so they do like a soft reboot and just kind of like, you know, we start things over with him. I think that'd be that'd be the best thing to do.
00:08:32
Speaker
But anyway, so like we said, we're talking about Superman 4 today. But let's talk a little bit more about what's your history with Superman? Right. Well, Superman was always my favorite hero. It goes right back to actually my earliest memory of watching a movie on TV was Christmas Day, 1987.
00:09:01
Speaker
Sitting down. I was I just turned four years old Sitting down with my dad and my dad was a chef. So often he was working during the Christmas period So getting to spend Christmas day with my dad was quite a rarity actually when I was a kid and we sat down together and watched Superman 2 and I just I fell in love with the whole concept of that, you know this guy that can fly and save people and You know the
00:09:30
Speaker
And if you've seen Superman 2, of course, I mean, that is my personal favorite of the Christopher Reeve movies, just because it's got everything. It's got action, it's got romance, it's got a fantastic payoff at the end. But the infamous diner scene. Anybody who was ever bullied at school was just going to cheer when they
Liam's Journey with Superman
00:09:52
Speaker
see that scene, you know? Yeah. And yeah, after that,
00:10:00
Speaker
It's funny because you know when I was a kid I wanted to be Superman but then as I got older I found I identified Moira Clark Kent and that led me into studying journalism actually. So Superman really did impact my life at quite a fundamental level because I
00:10:19
Speaker
you know, as a kid trying to do the right thing, you think, oh, what would Superman do? And then as a teenager and a young adult, I think, well, you know, I want to be a journalist like Clark Kent did. That's how I can make my impact rather than, you know, saving people from burning buildings or whatever, you know.
00:10:38
Speaker
That's a beautiful story and especially that continued with you into your teenage years because I think most people who come to Superman at a young age, they kind of have a similar journey as I did where when you're a kid, when you're a little kid, you love Superman. But then as you get older and you get into your teen years, you start getting
00:10:57
Speaker
you start going through the edginess and you're like, oh, Superman's lame, he's a boy scout, Batman's cooler and all that. And then as you mature out of that, you're like, actually, no, Superman is kind of cool. The thing with Superman was that there was always just with the timing of it, there always seemed to be some kind of new Superman media to keep me interested. There was the movies and then right after that, we got the Superboy TV series.
00:11:27
Speaker
And then when that finished, it seemed to run straight into Lewis and Clark. Right. And then when that finished, you only had another couple of years and then Smallville started. Yeah. Well, and in between that, too, we had we had the animated stuff, too, with Superman, the animated series and Justice League as well. Yeah, that's right. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't I don't think I don't think we got we got Justice League in Scotland. I don't think we got Superman animated series originally. I have seen it, but OK.
00:11:57
Speaker
since then. I don't think it was originally broadcast at the time in Scotland. Do you have much familiarity with Superman in the comics as well too then? Or is it mostly just from the movies and TV? I got into the comics through the movies. I remember when I was, I think when I was about maybe 12 or something.
00:12:19
Speaker
um i actually got a a present from my dad which was the novelization the uh the death and life of superman which the novelization of the whole death of superman comic book arc but it also incorporates various aspects of superman's history in the comics and it explains like
00:12:40
Speaker
It kind of touches on the concept of the crisis and infinite air. It talks about a little bit of a dark side. It talks a bit about General Zod, Lex Luthor, you know, the sort of minor
00:12:52
Speaker
characters that don't really feature in the Death of Superman story, but are integral to Superman's history in the comics. Yeah, and that was actually written by Roger Stern, who's also, you know, probably most famous for his work on The Avengers, but he also did a pretty long run on the Superman comics in the late 80s and 90s, I believe.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah. And that book was kind of my back door into the comics. After that book, I started reading some of the comics. I got, you know, I had a couple of friends who are more clued up on the comic book side of it and they were like, yeah, you need to read this volume and this story arc and whatever. And I got really into Superman and Batman comics as well, to be fair. I've always felt Superman was the more interesting hero for me, but Batman had the better villains.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. I think I feel a lot of the same way. Yeah, that's always been one of the weaknesses of Superman. I think a lot of the stories, ironically enough, that I think have been my favorite Superman stories have been the ones that don't really involve a lot of his villains. Like if you look at Joe Casey did a really excellent run in the nearly 2000s on Adventures of Superman that
00:14:07
Speaker
barely ever dealt with his villains. It was just all like these kind of like human interest stories type of thing. It was excellent stuff, which I had mentioned this before, but DC, if anyone from your publisher is listening, please collect those stories in a trade paperback already, because I've been dying to read them again, so. Yeah. But anyway, Superman 4 now is the movie we're talking about today.
Evolution of Superman Films
00:14:32
Speaker
And this was,
00:14:36
Speaker
Superman movies had such a weird kind of arc because it had started off so strong and you had this, and you had Richard Donner, when it was his hands, he wanted to make it very grounded, and not grounded in the sense of gritty, but grounded as in you believe this could happen in the real world. And he wanted to make it so that, you know, it wasn't like,
00:15:04
Speaker
It wasn't campy, it wasn't cartoonish. She wanted to treat it with respect and reverence. And you can see that in the first movie.
00:15:12
Speaker
And in his cut of Superman II, you can see it as well. I think in the theatrical cut, Richard Lester kind of, you know, the camp elements came really strong into it. And then- Yeah, yeah. And then, and it's so weird because with the success of what he did with Superman in that first movie, you would think that the Salkins who were the producers and were notoriously cheap and penny pinchers, which was where most of the fights that him and the Donner and the Salkins had were about money.
00:15:44
Speaker
You'd think they would have realized that, okay, well, what the audience responded to most was how seriously Donner had taken this source material, but instead they seemed to think that what worked better for the character was the campy stuff. So I remember watching Superman III, rewatching it a few years ago, and just that opening title sequence in Superman III was just campy as shit. It's like they took all the campiest moments from
00:16:11
Speaker
from Richard Lester's cut of Superman II, jammed them all together and then cranked the volume up to 11. And then that tone extended throughout the whole movie. Yeah, it was, I mean, I like Superman III, but it is a strange movie. It really doesn't, it doesn't even tonally fit with Superman IV either. It's such a departure from the other three movies in the main series.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's where the franchise definitely lost its way. Superman 3 was strange. Yeah. And then Supergirl was just outright weird. That movie just, I mean, they had to rewrite a lot of it at the last minute because Christopher Reeve decided he wasn't going to appear in it. Right, right. Which is funny because Mark McClure, he appeared in it as Jimmy Olsen. And so
00:17:05
Speaker
up until Hugh Jackman, Mark McClure was the only actor to have played the same character in a superhero franchise for five times. And he had set that record at that point. And if Reeve had been in Supergirl, then he would have set that record. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing to think that. Yeah. And it was finally Hugh Jackman who broke the record in the X-Men movies. But yeah, so
00:17:35
Speaker
And the movie, so Superman IV, the Salkins decided to do a fourth movie if Superman III grossed at least 40 million. And even though it was so universally negatively received, it still made twice that, it made 80 million. And Reeve also, like you said, he had bowed out of Supergirl and he was hesitant to come back for Superman IV as well.
00:18:03
Speaker
but they still announced it was going to, and they had to convince Reeve to come back by offering him $6 million and financing for his own movie, his own pet project, Street Smart. And Reeve- By the way, I'd recommend that to anybody.
00:18:24
Speaker
who wants to see Christopher Reeve in a wider range of acting, that's a great movie. Oh, OK. And Reeve, you know, people probably don't realize this in hindsight, but Reeve was very politically active. And in fact, I remember I think it was probably I think it was Alec Baldwin after Reeve's death who had said that, you know, he could have easily run for president or something like that if he had wanted to and won. And he had definitely had the knowledge of it.
00:18:52
Speaker
So Reeve pitched a story for Superman IV and it was in reaction to the breakdown at the Reykjavit summit and Reagan's military buildup and just the nuclear arms race.
00:19:07
Speaker
And he was even considered to direct it. And he had also directed some second unit scenes, but ultimately they thought he was too inexperienced to take on the full job. They tried, Canon Films tried to get Donner to come back actually, but he was involved. And I've seen some things about it saying that that was probably not a real offer because they'd seem to time it just around the time when he was filming Lethal Weapon. So. Yeah, yeah.
00:19:34
Speaker
And I think they probably just asked him to come back as a way to kind of appease Reeve than anything else. And Wes Craven originally, interestingly enough, was hired to direct it at first, but which would have been so interesting to see Wes Craven direct a Superman movie, because he had actually gotten his big film break directing Swamp Thing, DC hero.
00:19:59
Speaker
which we talked about way, way back in one of the early episodes of this show. But apparently him and Reeve didn't get along at all. And so Reeve demanded that a new director comes in and he had recommended Ron Howard actually, although eventually they ended up with Sidney J. Fury. So it's kind of interesting that they thought that Reeve was too inexperienced, but then they asked this other guy who I don't think anybody, I have never heard of him before at all.
00:20:28
Speaker
No, it's sad. I mean, it looks like he does have experience. So I will say that he does have a lot of experience, but still it was, I don't think, judging how this movie turned out, I don't think Reeve would have necessarily done a worse job than Fury did. No, no, I don't think the, I think most of the problems with the movie can be traced to two things, which is poor budget and poor
00:20:55
Speaker
direction stroke editing. So yeah, yeah. So what's your experience with this movie? Because I know you have you had mentioned this before that, I think in our last episode, even on the air, you mentioned that one of the things you you're interested in doing is one of the things you do a lot is you defend this movie. In fact, a little, little side story, I do fan art requests every now and then on Facebook, and
00:21:22
Speaker
The first time I did it, you had given me like a long list of characters. And I'm like, dude, dude, just one, just one. And the one you chose out of this long list of characters was Nuclear Man. I'm like, wait, you don't mean the one from Superman IV, do you? And I'm like, and you said, I figured he's got to mean some other character.
00:21:42
Speaker
But no, you meant the one from Superman. And I was so surprised when I did the drawing and then you had made it your profile picture for like years. Yes, I'm wearing the nuclear man sweater today. Yeah, I'll defend that character to the drill. I was actually lucky enough that
Liam's Dedication to Nuclear Man
00:22:07
Speaker
Mark Pillow, the actor who plays Nuclear Man, he did a podcast a few months ago that I listened to. And through the people who run that podcast, I'm friends on Facebook with the guy that runs this podcast. And I was able to actually get Mark Pillow's autograph. So I have like a personalized signed photo of Nuclear Man. What podcast was that? The Kep Wonder podcast. Okay.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah, they do, their series focuses entirely on the Christopher Reed movies and looking at them kind of from a sort of a historical preservation perspective. And it's really interesting stuff. A lot of the, they go into a lot of the technical details of how the movies were made. And I mean, this whole business with Superman IV, you know, what those who are not necessarily maybe au fait with the movie industry wouldn't realize is that
00:23:05
Speaker
if you watch Masters of the Universe the movie and think wow they spent a lot of money on this movie even though it's not that good yeah that's why Superman 4 looks like it was made in in 10 minutes you know because um basically they were given I think it was they were given approximately 50 million by Warner Brothers and they were told make a He-Man movie and make Superman 4. Now
00:23:33
Speaker
the fine answers believed they're going to spend 25 million on each. They spent, I think something like 8 million on Masters of the Universe and about 12 million on Superman. So, and it shows. Yeah. It shows. I mean, it's just, I can't even imagine thinking that you can, you can make a Superman movie for 12 million. I mean, that's probably like, you know, that's probably the, I don't know how much they're spending on the TV show, but that feels like the budget of like one episode of the TV show.
00:24:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, well, I mean, if you watch it, like I know that even in the mid 90s, like when they were doing Lewis and Clark, I think the budget for the final season of that show was something like about three or 400,000 an episode. Yeah, so I've been looking at the numbers here. The budget is estimated at 17 million. And to let you know, the worldwide gross for this movie,
00:24:34
Speaker
route, it's like 15, like 15.7 million. So they didn't even make back their budget on this. Oh dear, oh dear. Oh, I'm defending this one. Well, you know what, it was surprising. Well, before we get to that, what, talk about your history with this movie and why you defend it.
00:25:00
Speaker
Right, well, as I mentioned earlier, I saw my first encounter with Superman was Superman 2 Christmas Day, 1987, right? A month or two after that, Superman 4 came out on VHS in the UK. We were living in England at the time, so it came out on VHS in the UK. So the first Superman like video cassette that I got was Superman 4. Okay. So
00:25:29
Speaker
Although two was the first movie I saw, four was the one I watched more because that was the date that I had. And then later on, of course, we got three, two and one on VHS as well. But yeah, for about the first sort of maybe six months of my Superman fandom, I was just watching Superman four on repeat, you know.
00:25:48
Speaker
And I really got it. And of course, as a four or five-year-old kid, you don't realize all the flaws in the movie. You're just like, oh, there's this guy that's as powerful as Superman. And oh my god, the fighting's so cool. Yeah. You have no frame of reference for it. So yeah, you have nothing to compare it against. Yeah. Yeah. And my only criticism of the movie, even as a kid, was like, it's a lot shorter than the other one.
00:26:15
Speaker
Because I think it comes in at something like 84 minutes or something. I think it's almost exactly like an hour and a half. Yeah. But the interesting point about that is that the original VHS version that I had is actually longer than the current DVD Blu-ray version. Oh, OK. I don't know why this happened, but the European cut, the original European cut of Superman IV
00:26:44
Speaker
is about five minutes longer than the American Cinematic Cup, which is the one they used for all the Blu-rays and whatever. You notice it most in Superman's first battle with Nuclear Man, in the original version, which I remember watching as a kid, there are two additional scenes. One where Nuclear Man creates a tornado,
00:27:14
Speaker
and then a little girl gets swept into the tornado and Superman flies into the tornado and saves the little girl. And that little girl was actually Christopher Reeve's daughter. The second one, which is good considering the political undertones of the movie, nuclear man flies into Red Square and activates a nuclear missile and basically points at the Politburo. And then Superman flies in and basically saves the entire Russian cabinet.
00:27:44
Speaker
I don't know if they if they thought that that was they didn't like the idea of having such a kind of pro Russia scene in the American version or something but
00:27:55
Speaker
those two scenes were cut and I don't know why because it makes that whole fight sequence flow so much better to have them in there. I think a big part of it is well so there was a lot of deleted footage like 45 minutes of this film has not been seen by the general public apparently and that came after they'd done a screening in Southern California and it failed. In fact
00:28:20
Speaker
There are actually two nuclear men in the original cut. There's like a proto nuclear man who was played by Clive Mantle. And then he gets destroyed by Superman. And that first one is much more inhuman looking and kind of has this vague resemblance to Bizarro. And then that's when he creates the second nuclear, and then Luther creates the second nuclear man. And there's also another scene with Clark visiting the graves of Mon Pa Kent.
00:28:51
Speaker
which would have come before he meets the contractor. There's also another scene with him, with Clark and Lacey Warfield, a little bit more of them dating. All this kind of stuff was just completely cut out of the movie and... Yeah.
00:29:08
Speaker
Sorry, your screen went blank. I thought I lost you for a second there. That's okay. It's all right. But as long as you're still in here, it's audio wise. But yeah, they had cut 45 minutes of this movie and they had actually thought we can use this footage in Superman five was originally the plan. And the reason they cut it down is because they were hoping for like a big budget film release. And back then, if you wanted to,
00:29:35
Speaker
have movies in the U.S. playing in the most theaters possible, like your best chance was to have it like exactly at an hour and a half. So that was apparently the reason why they had cut so much footage away from it. Yeah.
Challenges in Superman IV Production
00:29:50
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense when I think about it, but
00:29:55
Speaker
It's unfortunate because I really think it hurts the movie, having all that stuff cut out. And in fact, it's interesting because this movie has gotten so many fan edits, apparently, that have been released on the web since in the internet age, with people finding this old footage and cutting it in or recutting the movie. And I don't know, have you seen any of the fan edits?
00:30:22
Speaker
Yeah actually just just last night I was having a look through and I saw um there's a guy who I can't remember his name to give him a shout out unfortunately but he's going through the movie and doing re-edits of individual scenes and one that I saw last night that was really interesting he cut together some footage from Superman 3 where
00:30:45
Speaker
bits of Superman IV and his own sort of digital editing to make the subway scene quite close to the start of the movie where Superman stops the runaway subway train, to make it look much more like New York and less like, you know, the London tube, which is where it was actually filmed. You know, it's an interesting
00:31:09
Speaker
edit and it prolongs the scene and it makes it you see it takes a lot more effort for Superman to stop the train. Whereas in the in the actual movie he just kind of holds up his hands and the train stops. It's almost as if he's doing it perfectly which is strange. Yeah there was some really weird budget saving methods like one of the things in the scene when he rebuilds the the wall
00:31:39
Speaker
And it's just, he's like using like magic rebuilding pages to do it. He builds itself, yeah. And even the footage of him, like the footage of him actually doing it, that was actually cut from like footage of him waving at people. And it's so obviously that it's so, it does not fit what is happening in that scene. Yeah. Yeah, it's bizarre, it really is.
00:32:08
Speaker
But you know, I think that, of course, the other big issue is the reused flight shots. You know, they reuse the same shot, the same blue screen shot of Superman and then later Nuclear Man, probably what, a dozen times during the movie? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And apparently,
00:32:32
Speaker
They had, like even the, he had in Reeves autobiography, he had wrote that, he had given an example of when Superman lands on 42nd Street and walks down the double yellow lines of the United Nations to give the speech. He said, if that had been a scene in Superman one, we would actually have shot it on 42nd Street. Richard Donner would have choreographed hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles and cut to people gawking out of office windows at the sight of Superman walking down the street like the Pied Piper.
00:32:59
Speaker
Instead, we had to shoot at an industrial park in England in the rain and with about 100 extras, not a car in sight, and a dozen pigeons thrown in for an atmosphere. Even the story had been brilliant. I don't think we could ever have lived up to the audience's expectations with this approach. Yeah, that scene really, it's a shame because actually I think that his UN speech is one of my favorite moments in the movie.
00:33:25
Speaker
yet, yeah, the build up to it, it's just so obviously that it's Milton Keynes and it's not Metropolis. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it really is a shame. Because even even as a kid, I remember that I remember thinking like,
00:33:41
Speaker
That's not the Daily Planet building. You know, that's this isn't that this isn't metropolis. This is weird. Yeah, I remember watching it last night, I was thinking about that one scene at the end of The Daily Planet when Perry announces that he's bought back the paper and and you see the like the globe setting in the background. I remember I'm like, wasn't that like a much more a much bigger lobby in Superman, the movie? Yeah.
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, just like it just like little things like that. But one of the things that really surprised me when I watched this movie last night because I was what
00:34:19
Speaker
When you told me that you defend Superman IV, the first time you said that to me, I'm just like, really? You defend Superman IV? And I started watching it last night. I put it on HBO Max. I'm like, oh, this is going to suck. I thought the movie was going to just be torturous to watch. But the first hour or so of it, I found
00:34:41
Speaker
This is actually, maybe not hour, maybe like the first 45 minutes, I think it's probably more accurate. But I was watching, I'm like, this is actually not bad. We actually had, it's a pretty, despite the budgetary constraints, right? Which obviously you're gonna have, there's no getting away from it. The film looks like shit. There's just no getting away from that. But I was surprised at how well the story kind of unfolded over like the first,
00:35:10
Speaker
Up until probably we get to Lex Luthor and the Nuclear Man, up until that point, this has actually really done well. There's a lot of stuff that they were doing in this movie that I really liked. I really appreciated the whole idea of
00:35:30
Speaker
looking at, you know, why doesn't Superman address real world problems like nuclear weapons? I thought using the kid to introduce that was kind of stupid because that seems like something that Superman should figure out on his own. And like that whole thing was just kind of ridiculous. But also the whole idea of like the hostile takeover of the Daily Planet, that was, this is, these were serious issues that were confronting, you know, people in the 1980s.
00:36:00
Speaker
And you can see with that, and probably one of the reasons why that, you know, maybe they did end up cutting that scene where he saves the Russian government, like you had mentioned, because it was clear this movie was not pro-rate. And that's the thing, as a non-American watching it,
Superman as a Global Hero
00:36:23
Speaker
even now I think this is the movie that really kind of puts across the idea that Superman belongs to the world. He's not an American hero. He belongs to everybody and you know like I say when he gives that speech at the UN to me that's really beautiful because he's like you know as of today I'm not a visitor anymore because Earth is my home too and I have to
00:36:49
Speaker
I have to protect it, you know. And that to me is just pure Superman. That's Superman is very best. Well, also, I was also really impressed with the scene that opens the film when he rescues the cosmonauts. Because again, that also goes to that same idea, the idea that he's not
00:37:14
Speaker
And I hate it when people do that, because the big misconception that people have about Superman, and these are people who have never read a comic book in their life, probably never watched a Superman movie all the way through, they're just clearly doing it for political opportunism, is that they act like Superman should be pro-Ra-Ra American exceptionalism hero, when that's not who Superman has ever been. I mean, the whole,
00:37:42
Speaker
I mean, when he got rid of the, there are two big instances I remember in my lifetime when they had stopped using, DC had stopped using truth justice in the American way. One was when Superman Returns came out and Perry White says, does he still fight for truth, justice, all that stuff. And Fox News drew a hissy fit about that.
00:38:04
Speaker
And then recently they'd also had it with his son, Jonathan Kent in the comic books. His new motto is now, you know, fights for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow. And again, Fox News threw a hissy fit about that. The thing people don't realize is that originally the motto was, he fights for truth and justice. The American Way thing was only added to the Adventures of Superman TV series because that was the 50s. And it was the big- Yeah, I mean, again, like you say, it speaks to people who,
00:38:34
Speaker
shout now and research later, you know, and that that's the problem if they ever. Mm hmm. Oh, well, I had clarification there. Yeah. Now and research now. But yeah, the that that's the thing I think that the the internationalism of Superman is a big part of the character for me, because we want to take him to his basic roots.
00:38:57
Speaker
The guy's an undocumented immigrant. That's what he is. That is an integral part of his character. And yeah, I think a lot of people, particularly on the political right, tend to disregard that fact because it doesn't flip with the narrative. Superman never was and never will be American. He will always be a global citizen. That's who he is.
00:39:25
Speaker
And an interesting little tip, but actually going back to that scene at the UN, I'm assuming this was a production error, but I'm choosing to interpret it in a positive way. When he walks into the main hall, you see all the delegates, and he says, I don't represent any country, but I'd like to address the delegates. And the general secretary says, well, in that case, you need a sponsor, and every country raises their hands, right?
00:39:51
Speaker
One of the countries in the front row is listed as England, rather than the UK. I like to believe that in Superman's moral, Scotland, and I'm a supporter of Scottish independence, that's my political stance, I like to believe we went independent sometime around about the early 80s when Thatcher came in.
00:40:17
Speaker
That would have been, you would have been much better off if you had my friend.
00:40:25
Speaker
And just a side note, have you ever read the John Constantine Hellblazer comics, particularly the Jamie Delano run? Okay, I had reread some of those recently and it always tickles me when people say that comics are too political nowadays.
Politics in Comics
00:40:40
Speaker
And you go back and you read Jamie Delano's Hellblazer run and it's like every single page you could just interpret as fuck. I mean, another one is V for Vendetta.
00:40:51
Speaker
A lot of people seem to have completely missed the point of that movie. It's a warning against Thatcherism and the likes of Fox News and whatever. It's not endorsing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, more explicitly said as much like he said, you know, that was just like me. He's talked about me from a dead end. He said that that was me when I was young and pissed off about Margaret Thatcher. Just blatantly. That's what it was. It was an anti Thatcher book.
00:41:21
Speaker
But going back to taking it back to Superman IV now, one of the things I also really liked about this is that it shows, I feel like Christopher Reeve had really kind of grown into Clark Kent by this point, because you look back at Superman the movie, I always, as much as I love that movie, there are some things about it that just do not age well, aside from the effects. Like one is,
00:41:49
Speaker
you know, Lex Luthor to a certain extent, like I love Gene Hackman, but like, I like my Luthor a little bit more intimidating and a little bit more menacing and less goofy. I can't imagine like, you know, you can't imagine like, you know, Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor or Clancy Brown or even John Cryer's Lex Luthor putting up with someone like Otis in,
00:42:14
Speaker
And so that's one thing. The other thing that I think is really kind of that doesn't age well is Christopher Reeve's portrayal of Clark Kent. My idea of Clark Kent is that he's the guy you forget is there. He's the guy you never remember. You remember Christopher Reeve's Clark Kent because he's always knocking shit over and he's bubbling all around the place.
00:42:41
Speaker
But Reeve's performance in this, and that's what I loved about Brandon Routh in Superman Returns, is that he's got this very understated performance as Clark Kent, so much so that you always forget he's there. You always forget he's in the room. And I think that's what Clark
Character Developments in Superman IV
00:42:55
Speaker
Kent should be. He's the ultimate wallflower.
00:42:58
Speaker
And I think Christopher Reeve gets a little bit more of that in this movie. His Clark Kent is much more understanding than his previous movies. I mean, I remember like, again, as I was growing up and obviously I knew nothing about the man or his politics at the time, but I always really liked Dean Kane's portrayal of Clark Kent because he seemed more confident and self-assured and a good journalist. And at that point in my life, I was getting interested into journalism and seeing Clark Kent, the journalist, was almost as heroic to me as seeing Superman, the hero, right?
00:43:29
Speaker
But, um, looking back on it, I'm like, yeah, he's, he's too handsome to be clocked in. You know,
00:43:39
Speaker
My whole thing about, like, I like Dean Kane's Clark Kent as well. His Superman was just, you could have replaced a cardboard cutout of Superman in all those scenes. No one would know this is different. But his Clark Kent, yeah, and that was also influenced by John Byrne's reboot in the comics, which, and they had taken that, and John Byrne actually got that idea going back to
00:44:02
Speaker
George Reeves performance because George Reeves in Adventure Superman was a much more confident Clark Kent. I've never been a fan of the the whole man of action confident Clark Kent thing because I think it just like this for the same reason that I'm not a fan of Reeves overly bumbling Clark Kent in Superman the movie and because it puts too much attention on Clark Kent. I always feel like Clark Kent should be the guy
00:44:25
Speaker
who is he never noticed he's there he's he's he's just in the background the whole time and I think that's what makes him a good reporter because he's you could have two people talking about some like you know criminal activity they're doing and they'll never realize that Clark Kent's standing right behind him and I think that and that's that's the kind of Clark Kent I like he's the guy who just
00:44:48
Speaker
you never see because and that's why nobody ever thinks of him as Superman right because nobody pays attention to Clark Kent. I think that's one of the interesting dynamics in this movie as well with bringing in the Lacey Warfield character. She is attracted to the fact that Clark Kent seems so meek and so kind of like you know in the background and she's trying to like get at who the real guy is
00:45:16
Speaker
and throughout the whole movie Clark is kind of struggling to keep her arms length and it's quite it's it's a very different dynamic compared to the you know the first two movies where he was quite clearly into Lois Lane was you know
00:45:34
Speaker
yeah but try at the same time trying to keep his distance whereas like he's now got someone chasing him which is a totally different dynamic and it really kind of again it's something that gets overlooked because the movie itself has a lot of very valid points to criticize but i actually really found that in that relationship dynamic interesting
00:45:58
Speaker
I did as well. It's always interesting when you see some them try and shake up the Lois and Clark dynamic a little bit and it's funny because I don't think the comics had done something similar around this same time. I believe the burn reboot came out just a year before this and
00:46:19
Speaker
And during that time, I've been listening to Digging for Kryptonite, which is another Superman podcast. And episodes I'm listening now, they're talking about the burn reboot, all this stuff leading up to the death of Superman. And one of the things they talk about was how Clark was being pursued by Kat Grant, which we also saw in Lois and Clark, the TV show as well.
00:46:44
Speaker
And it is kind of that kind of dynamic. It's not as like, cause you know, Kat in the TV show was very much just like,
00:46:53
Speaker
I don't know, it was just like, she was like a cat in heat. But in the comic books, it was not that drastic, right? And so I think, and it seems like, I'm not sure, this is like a chicken or egg situation, I'm not sure if this came before that in the comics or if the comics did at first or if it just happened, it was just serendipitous, but whatever it was, it seemed to have a lot of that cat-grat Clark Kent dynamic from the comics.
00:47:20
Speaker
And it was also interesting to have the, because her father in the movie is such the sort of archetypal ruthless Rupert Murdoch type media baron capitalist. Whereas she obviously has a privileged upbringing and it shows, but she's trying to be a nice person and it's really, I actually really feel sorry for that character because she tries so hard to like get with Clark Kent and also to be
00:47:50
Speaker
human despite the fact that her dad is just such a you know an unpleasant person. I was surprised how much depth that character had because in a movie like this because she didn't she had no reason to be as well rounded as she was because when she first appears on screen you think oh you know
00:48:10
Speaker
You've got the stock 80s mogul Superville, and then you've got his spoiled bitch of a daughter. And she really grows a lot in the course of the movie. So yeah, that was kind of interesting. And just like another one of those little surprising things about this movie. Another thing too, and was Gene Hackman as well. He seemed to be taking a bit more of a serious
00:48:37
Speaker
take um Lex Luthor as well he did seem a little bit more ruthless a little less yeah I mean you you go back to the Kevin Spacey comparison with Superman returns you know this Lex Luthor and Superman IV I believe he is the sort of guy that would take a shot of Kryptonite and stab Superman in the back without any hesitation you know that that's the yeah he's got that like you say he's got that ruthless streak particularly if you see the um the scene where um
00:49:05
Speaker
you know, he basically convinces those three arms dealers to bankroll his construction of nuclear man. And then later on, he basically just tells him like, I'm taking control now, goodbye. But he does it in such a ruthless way, you know, and it's
00:49:24
Speaker
Again, it's an 80s thing. It's obviously tie into sort of a Gordon Gekko archetype where he's sitting there with the pile of money, the literal pile of money. He's like, right, I don't need you guys anymore. You're fired. You know, it's really, it's really powerful. Interesting side note, one of those, one of those three arms dealers was actually Bill Hookens, who would appear in Batman a couple of years later.
00:49:54
Speaker
Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's right. I did think that guy looked familiar. Yeah, that's right. Did he play the Ecker? He was also the Porkins in Star Wars New Hope.
00:50:08
Speaker
That's right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought that would, I'm like, the hell, it's so familiar. I didn't put that together. Also interesting is seeing John Cryer in this playing Lenny Luther, Lex's nephew. And it's so funny because watching this movie, you would never think that he would end up being one of the best actors you've ever got. It's a lot of ideas. But again, it shows that he has clearly grown as an actor.
00:50:37
Speaker
Yes, amazing. Even just in the time he's been playing Lex Luthor, right? Because I didn't like him at all the first time I saw him on Supergirl, but as he's played the role more, he's grown into it a lot. Yeah. And I find myself like- My, actually, again, I go back to my favorite Lex Luthor portrayal is actually the one from season one of Lois and Clark. Yeah. I've always liked the kind of the,
00:51:05
Speaker
Again, it's the John Byrne thing. I like the sort of the corrupt billionaire Lex Luthor as opposed to the mad scientist Lex Luthor. And to me, John Shea just captures that perfectly, you know.
00:51:22
Speaker
Yeah, I like John Shea a lot. I think the soap opera aspects of his character are way too played up in that, but he was easily the best thing about that first season, which is why the show really went to shit after he left. But my favorite is probably Michael Rosenbaum, and I think he does a good job of
00:51:45
Speaker
I'm not a fan of one approach or the other. I like when they meld both approaches like the animated series did, when they combined the mad scientist with the corrupt billionaire. And Clancy Brown did that brilliantly in the animated series. And I think Rosenbaum has come the closest to capturing that in life. Yeah, because again, it's proto Lex Luthor because of the set novel, but
00:52:08
Speaker
Yeah, you definitely, you could see this guy growing up to become the president and also to become a mad scientist. You could see him going both those paths quite realistically.
00:52:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And one of the things I did like about the John Shea portrayal is that he did bring that charm to Luther. I think Luther, one of the things I don't like about the burn reboot, and I don't think there's so much bird as well, because Luther had never really had that quality. But I do like the idea of Alex Luther, who is charming, who has this
00:52:44
Speaker
redemptive side to him, whereas he's fucking crazy, but you kind of understand why, right? He's not like the joker. So like, that's what I liked about,
00:52:55
Speaker
Rosenbaum's portrayal is this idea of, like, Lex Luthor as he sees Superman, but he sees, like, I have to destroy Superman because he could be a threat. That's the way I kind of view Lex Luthor. And I think having that redemptive sense. I mean, yes, it's a good thing in the comics where he just repeatedly refers to Superman as the alien. And again, it ties into that. Yeah. Yeah. That sort of right wing Fox News kind of fear of the other, you know.
00:53:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I also, and you know this movie, there's some scenes here that just, it feels like
00:53:35
Speaker
they put these scenes in here and they didn't know why they were doing that. And like the scene in Smallville is great. I love the scene in Smallville where he's talking to the real estate agent and he's saying, and he's telling him like, no, no, I want this to go to a farm. And this whole idea of preserving the Kent's legacy. I really liked that scene. And I really liked how Clark's talking, including that little funny line about how the Cribby is like, well, I asked Jonathan what happened to the crib. And he said, little Clark must've had a bad dream and kicked it.
00:54:08
Speaker
Um, that old, that old sequences is, it's such a great little scene, but it's just, it has no reason to be in this movie whatsoever. No, cause there's no need to reference Smallville at all because it doesn't, it doesn't fit with the rest of the movie. Um, I guess the only justification you can make for it is like, if, now again, this, this isn't a justification because at the time they didn't know this was going to be the last Superman movie, but
00:54:35
Speaker
you know if it's the last one I guess that's a bookend it's a story from the previous three that you want to kind of tie up and him sort of severing his final tie to Smallville says right now he's permanently Metropolis Clark Kent he's not farmed by Clark Kent anymore you know
00:54:55
Speaker
Right. Yeah, yeah. That would have been if they had known about that, but, or if they had had some sort of acknowledgement about that, even in
Critiques of Superman IV's Plot Devices
00:55:02
Speaker
the movie. And maybe they did when he goes to visit the parent's grave in that deleted scene. I'm not sure I've never seen that scene, but, and that might well be a problem too, just stuff being cut out. Another scene that just felt really odd in here is when he reveals his identity to Lois again. And it just, it felt so,
00:55:26
Speaker
So I'm not, one of my biggest criticisms of Superman II, both the Donner Cut and the Lester Cut, is they undo the fact that Lois learns that Clark Kenton is Superman. And I feel that is just a weakness of both those versions. It is such a cop-out, the amnesia-inducing kiss is beyond stupid.
00:55:49
Speaker
And Donner's solution of having him, you know, reverse time again in the Donner cut is also stupid too, because they had the perfect ending in the Donner cut when Superman drops Lois off at old balcony and then flies off and she gives that little speech about how I'll always be here. Like, that's the perfect place to end that movie. You don't need to then undo the knowledge.
00:56:11
Speaker
especially because you know if you then cut to the scene in the diner assuming that the previous thing never happened he's just going in there and basically battered an innocent man exactly that yeah that's another thing too um and yeah that that's that's one of the problems i have with that last scene in the diner cut too um uh but yeah and so but so then bringing it back in here and having
00:56:40
Speaker
having Clark reveal himself to Lois and ask her for advice and counsel and then give her amnesia all over again. It's just like, it feels, it's such a shitty thing to do, right? I mean, you're just, so what? You just restore Lois's memory every time you need to talk to her and erase it again? It's horrible, but it opens up this whole can of worms where like, you know,
00:57:09
Speaker
Could Superman basically seduce any women he wanted to, then just make a forget about it the next month? Yeah. Yeah, because I got the sense watching that scene. I'm like, can he just do this? I got the sense that this is not the first time he's done this. And it's just such a weird sequence, too, because
00:57:34
Speaker
When Lois brings the letter from the kid and she shows it to Clark and she's like, you need to read this, it feels in that moment like she knows he's Superman. So it's just like all the, it's just these weird little things they put in here. And I don't know what they were thinking when they did these. It's like, well, we want to have some acknowledgement. We want Lois and Clark to work together. We want her to know his secret.
00:58:00
Speaker
But at the same time, we don't want her to, I don't know. It's just, it felt like they couldn't, they didn't want to make that. But again, later on in the movie, I think they also kind of acknowledge that. Like the scene where she goes to Clark's apartment because he's not turned up to work. And she's like, I knew it. And then she says, like, if you do see Superman, he might need this. And she hands him the cape. It's like, yeah.
00:58:26
Speaker
That's her saying like, I know what I'm not gonna say, but I know, you know? Yeah. Which also doesn't, and it's just that wide, that whole amnesia thing. If you know what, if I was gonna do this movie, I would say like, okay, if you want to keep the amnesia kiss continuity, then say that it's faded and she does not know.
00:58:48
Speaker
right, or something like that. But yeah, I just, I got so many problems with that amnesia kiss and it's just like, it's just such a creepy idea, just such a cop out and all around. There was something else I was gonna mention too about, oh, for me, the most ridiculous sequence in this movie is the double date. It's like, I can't in any way fathom
00:59:18
Speaker
why Clark would think that's a good idea. I mean, it's, it's not like he's being forced to do it. I mean, it's, it's, he's, he chooses to do this and it's, he's Superman, right? He could just, he can just tell Lois, you know what, you know, it's just what Lacey invites him over and he feels like he has to. It's just Superman can just be like, oh, I'm sorry. I can't do it. Clark could say like, I'm going to be half an hour late and the time he had on, so the mind's conveniently left, you know? Yeah.
00:59:49
Speaker
Yeah. It's just like, it just, it, it felt like a stupid attempt to work in some humor. And it's just, it's just, it's just beyond logic and beyond stupid. I mean, even everything with the nuclear man makes more sense than that. Yeah. And it's such a weird tonal shift to have this kind of slapstick comedy.
01:00:11
Speaker
And then literally five minutes later, you've got Superman getting like, you know, nuclear induced cancer. It's like such a tonal shift as well. Yeah. It felt a lot like Superman 2 in that, like it felt like that was like the producers putting their hands into it, like just like they had done in the past where they'd made it much more slapsticky and goofy when they had no reason.
01:00:39
Speaker
All right, let's talk about the nuclear man. Because one of the weirdest things about this movie and also Superman 3 is how they use concepts and characters from the comic books, but they don't at the same time. So in Superman 3, you had this supercomputer thing, but it's not Brainiac.
01:01:00
Speaker
And in this movie, you have this, you know, this twisted clone of Superman, but it's not Bizarro, it's Nuclear Man. And even with Warfield, right? Because you had a version of that in the comics too with Morgan Edge, but you don't have that here. So I'm not sure why they're just, they take these things and I don't know why they're twisting them into something new instead of just making them- So that's the thing, I never made the Morgan Edge connection to me.
01:01:25
Speaker
Sam Wanamaker's character was just straight up, that's Rupert Murdoch. That's who they're going at, you know? But again, that's maybe a sort of Eurocentric way to look at it, because that was at the time when Murdoch owned most of the British media and was very pro Thatcher and whatever, and pro let's create a scandal to get more headlines, you know?
01:01:52
Speaker
And that to me was, yeah, I was like, yeah, that's obviously a pastiche of Rupert Marduk. That was also taken as well from that specific example where Superman Da Kid dropped dead. That was a specific example actually taken from the American media because in the 80s, I don't know, I think the 70s, New York had gone bankrupt and the
Criticism of Superman IV's Media and Action Depictions
01:02:23
Speaker
They pleaded with the federal government for aid and Gerald Ford, who was the president of the time, refused to give it to him. And so then the headline in this paper was foreign to New York City. Even though he had never said that.
01:02:41
Speaker
But I mean, but it is all just emblematic of, you know, the media becoming more sensationalist and Murdoch played a big part. I mean, again, it's done with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but to the end of the movie where, you know, Warfield is giving his daughter the lecture about, you know, less sensational papers go broke. You know, this is the business of newspapers. And she's like, no, our business is journalism.
01:03:06
Speaker
And if we don't, if we're not careful, we're going to lead everybody into a disaster. It's like, what disaster could we bring about the nuclear man arrives? You know, there's some things in this movie that talking about the nuclear man. And one of the things that I thought was funny is
01:03:28
Speaker
you know, they've got this strand of Superman's hair suspending a thousand pound weight and Lex is able to cut it with both corners. That was just, I'm like, wait a minute, what? And then another thing too is that the fight with nuclear man at the end when he's flying through the daily planet building,
01:03:50
Speaker
It's like such a slow, gradual rise up through each of the floors. I'm like, okay, how long is this? And also, if it has to be in direct sunlight to maintain its powers, how is able to go into those floors without cutting out, you know? Yeah. Well, also what he kidnaps late in the end, and he takes her into outer space.
01:04:12
Speaker
And she has no suit, no breathing apparatus, nothing. She's just out there. And I'm like, wait a minute, it's got to be night, right? But then you see Superman and her flying back. No, no, no, she's out there in the vacuum of space with no protection and she's fine. So I'm like, at that point, I'm wondering, like, Superman, how come you're not asking why the supposedly human woman? Did that not seem to annoy me because it's a scene it would be so easy to fix.
01:04:37
Speaker
just don't have that shot of the earth in the background. And it's, yeah, she's just in the nice sky, you know? Well, also there's also the scene of Superman moving the moon out of Earth's orbits that he can create an eclipse. And I'm just like, I guess they, I guess some of the deleted footage is the tide killing a whole bunch of people after that.
01:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, but again, it's one of those things, you know, switch your brain off and just enjoy it for what it is, which as a, you know, as a five year old, I did many times as an adult, it's not, but I still, I still enjoy it for the, the thing with this movie is at its heart, it's trying really hard to tell a good story. And thanks to the budget and thanks to poor editing, it doesn't succeed. But I appreciate the effort.
01:05:34
Speaker
And I really. Yeah. Yeah, there. There are some really good ideas in that and just like overall the whole, the whole plot of the movie is because Superman movie is obviously a much better film.
01:05:50
Speaker
the whole plot of this movie, like the whole scheme of it, it is so much, even though it's such a smaller movie in those respects, it is such a grander movie in terms of plot because in the first movie you have Lex Luthor trying to sit California because he wants to increase the value of his crappy real estate. It's just a big land scheme. Whereas this, it's about the nuclear arms race and you know,
01:06:19
Speaker
It is such a grander story, but it's just, it's like they should have taken these ideas. That's the thing, again, with the deleted scenes. Now, again, I don't know if you've seen this, but Lex has the throwaway line where he's like, with nuclear man and with you gone, I'm going to make a fortune rearming the world, right?
01:06:40
Speaker
Later on, when he assumes that the man has killed Superman, you actually there were scenes where you saw him meeting with the Russians and meeting with various other world governments, clearly with the intent of supplying them with nuclear weapons. That was obviously all deleted later on, but it really it showed that Luther's scheme was much grander than, than on, you know. Yeah.
01:07:09
Speaker
And I like that, I like a Luther who thinks big. Like that's one of, that is one of my issues with Superman, the movie is the whole, and also Superman Returns is the whole land scheme. Like it's just like, that seems way too petty for Lexington. So I did like that. And that was the thing, it's like, you know, again, because you don't have the context of the extended scenes, whatever, and it's just a few lines of exposition.
Lex Luthor's Character Depth
01:07:35
Speaker
it could come across as just like he's out of his out of prison and the only thing he can think about is I've got to destroy Superman and it's like man that is your that is your one path straight back to prison because you can't do that but you actually realize he's got this bigger plan of cornering the nuclear arms market you know yeah um yeah and also the the the effects really
01:08:04
Speaker
make it like, one of the things about, because Superman too, you know, that fight with the Kryptonians hasn't aged that well either because of the lack of how little they could do with the effects of the time. But they make up for that by making the fight shorter. This fight with Nuclear Man, it's way too long at the end. I feel like you could have cut this in half and use that extra money to make that half a lot more exciting than what we get.
01:08:34
Speaker
especially when they're when they're fighting at the Statue of Liberty I thought it was so funny they're fighting at the base of the statue there and that set is so flimsy you can see the wind blowing like the bricks back and the funny thing is that the um you know talking about that that whole sequence as I said an international cut is actually longer but
01:08:57
Speaker
it makes more sense because it's less about him fighting nuclear man and more about him cleaning up after the mess that nuclear man creates in every country. Which is a much better idea because that's one of the things I liked about Superman Returns the best is that scene when he's
01:09:18
Speaker
He's flying to the island, but then he sees that, you know, the effects of the island are affecting metropolis and he flies back to metropolis to start saving people and contain the damage. That's that's what Superman should be doing like Superman saving people is every every hero has their like the
01:09:34
Speaker
one thing that they focus on the most, right? You know, for Batman, it's the detective angle. For Superman, it's saving people. It's not fighting the bad guy. Fighting the bad guy is secondary, saving people. I remember that, like, when Superman Returns came out, I don't know if you ever played the tie-in video game, but
01:09:56
Speaker
that had a really interesting dynamic where like superman doesn't have an energy bar as in like superman cannot be killed in the game but it's how much destruction is caused in the city and if the city gets too destroyed that's when you get your game over and i thought that was a much take on the superman character in the video game yeah it was a really that was one of those things about the game that i thought was
01:10:23
Speaker
A good idea, but not so well executed because it basically did just become a substitute life bar in that way.
01:10:31
Speaker
Um, and also the whole idea of like him saving people. It was, it was a good idea. It was just poorly execute. Cause you had to like, you had to target the person and you had to, you had to go over, run over, pick them up, carry them over here. And it was like, you, you needed to be able to like a quick time event or something to, to speed it up faster. Um, but I would, and one of another thing, nice idea, bad execution, that, that whole game, I think it was just nice idea. And fortunately that's a recording thing with a lot of games that involve superman. Um,
01:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I got a whole article on what culture I post up about, you know, how you'd make a good Superman game, which, you know, nobody's taken me up on yet. I mean, the Batman Arkham example. Exactly. Yeah.
01:11:20
Speaker
That was the example I used because Batman Arkham and now the Spider-Man PS4 game, they showed that what you need to do is you focus on the character and then you build the game around what works best for that character. And that's what both those games did. And that's why those games are awesome. And that's what they really need to do with the Superman game. But that's another podcast.
01:11:44
Speaker
Anyway, Liam, anything else to add about Superman? I would close up by saying I'm not going to try and pretend this is a perfect movie or even a great movie because it isn't. But I think it's a movie with a lot of heart, a lot of good intention. And unfortunately, you have great individual performances from the actors. Christopher Reeve, he just embodies Superman. And like you said, he grew more into the Clark Kent side of it as well.
01:12:12
Speaker
Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor is always entertaining and this is him at his maniacal best I think because he's more vicious and less goofy as opposed to how he was in the movie. I think the the concept of the nuclear man villain is a great concept
01:12:35
Speaker
And like we were talking about a minute ago with the video game, good idea, not necessarily particularly well executed. And I like the fact that although, you know, the guy never really had a movie career after it, whatever, Mark Pillow, who played Nuclear Man, always speaks fondly of this movie and always seems grateful that he was able to be a part of it.
01:12:58
Speaker
I mean, the guy literally went to the royal premiere dressed up as nuclear man. That's commitment to your role right there. Shaking Princess Diana's hand while you're dressed as a super villain. If you have the chance to look up those photos on the internet, it's hilarious. But yeah, and I would just, I'd love to see, it will never happen, right? It would never happen. I would love to see this movie get what the Snyder cut treatment.
01:13:26
Speaker
because I think if you if you if you redid the effects shots, if you re-edited the some of the scenes, if you brought back the stuff which was cut from the international version for no particularly good reason, I think you have a much better movie and a much better way to round off Christopher Reeve's legacy as Superman. Yeah, I think
01:13:57
Speaker
Well, I'm not gonna say it's a good movie.
Superman IV vs. Superman III: A Comparative Insight
01:13:59
Speaker
I will say this. I think it's better than Superman 3. You know, and there is this idea of diminishing returns with the Superman movies. And so many people say that Superman 4 is the worst one, but I actually think Superman 3 is the worst one, you know, outside of the Superman fights himself scene. But other than that, like this movie, it's got a lot of good ideas, just like you said, terribly executed.
01:14:28
Speaker
we get Christopher Reeve, you know, still doing his thing. I mean, his Superman, I think one of the things I liked about his performance in Superman, the movie is that when he says these things that would seem like, you know, overly sentimental or corny or anything like that, it still comes off as very earnest. That earnestness doesn't seem as strong here.
01:14:54
Speaker
Like it doesn't, I don't believe it as much. It feels more stock here when he says Superman. And that might be the writing more than anything else. But like, but I do like his Clark Kent a lot more here, like we talked about. And it's nice seeing Margot Kidder back in in a larger role than she had in Superman III. It's great to see Gene Hackman back because he had completely set out Superman III because he hated Richard Lester after what happened to Donner.
01:15:20
Speaker
So it's good that, you know, having got a chance to do Luther one last time and that he had made it a more menacing portrayal. Yeah, it's just, some good ideas poorly executed. God, the effects are terrible. God, this movie just looks like shit. It's just, there's no getting around that. Like no fan edit can make up for the fact that this movie just looks like shit.
01:15:47
Speaker
I mean, you need to like have to completely like replace all the backgrounds or something in that. But other than that, it's, yeah, it's a lot better than I thought it would be. Yeah, I remember. That's the message that I hope people take away from listening to us talk about it today. This is a movie that you've probably, you know, if you've seen it when you were a kid, you're maybe scared to go back and watch it again, because you think it's going to be terrible.
01:16:14
Speaker
or if you've never seen it and you're like oh yeah that's the black sheep of the superman franchise it's one of the worst movies ever made whatever no no no right i mean there there are there are movies that have come out this year that i watched the superman 4 in my opinion right um
01:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, in fact, it's funny because they say Superman IV and Batman and Robin are cited as the worst examples of both series. And actually, I would take in both those instances, I think it's the third movie that's the worst. I would take Batman and Robin over Batman forever. And I would take Superman. I disagree on Batman, but that's that's that. But I definitely that's a valid as a valid take.
01:16:59
Speaker
If you go back, you listen to Derek and I covered Batman and Robin. And the way we both looked at it is we looked at it. You can't look at it as a continuation of the burden Batman, but if you look at it as an adaptation of the 66 Batman, it worked surprisingly well. Yeah, I could see that. That would make sense. And that was what stood out to us because Batman forever, I felt that it didn't have an identity.
01:17:27
Speaker
Like it didn't know if it wanted to be more of the Burton stuff or if it wanted to be more of the 60s stuff. And so it's just like that muddledness. Yeah, I was also pissed off that Billy Dee Williams was cut from being Too Faced because I would love to have seen that in live action. That too. Although they're doing, they are doing the Batman 89 comic book now and they're using Billy Dee Williams likeness for Too Faced. So you can check that out.
01:17:57
Speaker
But yeah, but that about does it for this then. Liam, any one of you guys want to follow me on Twitter? I'm at Liam6783. My tweets do get political now and again, I'll let you know. But yeah, I'm always happy to engage with people who want to discuss superhero stuff, whatever. And yeah, it's been a pleasure being here again, Perry. Thanks for having me. And I would hope we can do this again soon.
01:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, same here. Hopefully we'll have more difficulties next time. But it was great having you back again. That does it for this episode of Superhero Cinephiles. Find us on the web, superherosinephiles.com, Twitter and Instagram, SuperCinemapod. And if you like the show, give us a review on Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen, and we'll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening.
01:18:52
Speaker
You have been listening to the Superhero Cinephiles podcast. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at SuperCinemapod. Join our Facebook group by searching for Superhero Cinephiles, where you can interact with us and other superhero fans. If you'd like to support the show, you can become a regular supporter at Patreon or make a one-time donation through PayPal, both of which can be found at our website, SuperheroCinephiles.com.
01:19:14
Speaker
If you buy or rent any movies through the Amazon links at our site, it helps support the show. Please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening. And as always,
01:19:45
Speaker
Good night. Good evening. God bless.