By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Fighting for nuclear disarmament.
Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman) escapes from prison with the help of his nephew Lenny (Jon Cryer). He is then able to create a powerful villain named Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) by stealing a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum and using its code to create a genetic matrix. Nuclear Man has many of the same powers as Superman, but, unbeknownst to Superman, he’s only powerful when he’s in sunlight and without that he becomes weakened. Meanwhile Clark Kent is having battles of his own when the newspaper he’s working for, The Daily Planet, gets taken over by a rich tycoon named David Warfield (Sam Wanamaker) who degrades the paper’s integrity by insisting only stories with a salacious bent get printed. David’s daughter Lacy (Mariel Hemingway) takes a liking to Clark and the two soon become an item.
The fourth installment was the first not to be produced by the Salkinds who decided to give up on the franchise after the box office flop of Supergirl and sold the rights to the Cannon Group who were suffering financial strain, which caused the budget for this one to be cut from $36 million down to $17 million. Many have complained that the result of this compromised the special effects though I didn’t find the drop-off to be quite a bad as I feared. The biggest drawback are the flying scenes where it clearly looks like Superman is matted in front of a greenscreen and isn’t nearly as slick looking as the first two. The opening bit though that takes place on a Russian space station I thought was alright, but I did wonder how Superman was able to know that the cosmonauts were in trouble, as he appears to the rescue out of nowhere, and what would tip him off that they were in danger?
The dumbest addition is the Nuclear Man. In the 45-minute deleted footage there were actually two with the first one being portrayed by Clive Mantle and resembling the comic book villain Bizarro. This one gets defeated by the Man of Steel prompting Lex to create a another one. The second creation is the only one shown in the studio cut version and this one looks like a male model wearing a tacky get-up stolen from Clash of the Titans. He speaks with Lex’s voice and I’m not sure why it was done this way outside of actor Mark Pillow, who plays the second incarnation, not having any acting experience, so they had his lines dubbed by Hackman, but the explanation that he has Luthor’s voice because Luthor made him doesn’t make sense. Why just stop at the voice? If he’s going to replicate his creator then he should have the same eyes, ears, and body as Luthor as well.
I was happy that Margot Kidder gets more screentime as in Part III she was relegated to being not much more than a cameo appearance. However, having her Lois Lane character constantly getting into extreme danger, this time on a subway train where the driver passes out, causing the car she’s riding in to accelerate to dangerous speeds, starts to get a bit overbaked. How many times statistically can one person accidentally walk into a life-threatening situation? Once sure, could happen to anyone, but even just twice would be a stretch. However, this lady inadvertently falls into a scary mess seemingly every other day making her more like a walking-talking bad luck charm that everyone else should stay away from for their own protection.
The scenes that she shares with Superman are stupid as he takes her on a flight with him into the night sky, but this was already done in Part I, so why redo it? Then when they land back at her apartment after revealing to her that Clark is really Superman, he does something that makes her forget that, but why even bother to let her know about his secret identity if he’s just going to make her lose her memory of it right after?
Initially I liked the addition of Hemingway as the new love interest as I thought the bratty persona of her character would lend some spice. Unfortunately, she loses her entitled attitude right away becoming benign and boring like everything else. The scene featuring her getting kidnapped by Nuclear Man, who takes her into space with him, is ridiculous because she’d never be able to survive outside of the earth’s atmosphere as there would be no oxygen, which along with the frozen temperature, would’ve had her dead instantly.
I really liked Hackman recreating his role as Luthor, who adds a much-needed campy charm. Cryer isn’t bad either as his young henchman and he does have the film’s one and only funny line. The story isn’t as political and preachy as I thought it was going to be either, which is good, but everything else falls flat. The initial runtime was supposed to be over 2-hours, but I was thankful it got cut down to a mere 90-minutes and even then, it was a drag to sit though. The franchise came to a merciful end after this, and I feel it was for the best.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: July 24, 1987
Runtime: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
Rated PG
Director: Sidney J. Furie
Studio: The Cannon Group
Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, YouTube
Scopophilia 