Marval Movie

There is a scene in The Dark Knight Returns where Superman tries to take out a nuclear missile, he derails it, making it miss its sasaran but it goes off right next to him. Superman is then left as a skeleton figure that has to gasp for air and sunlight. Why did this image come to mind while I was watching Superman four?

For a movie series that prided itself with its special effects and high quality Superman four is cheap, plain and simply boring. The shining example of its cheapness is that they constantly reuse a piece of footage of Superman  flying into the camera. Either its the same clip or they just re-shot Christopher Reeve flying into the camera a bunch of times because that's all they could be bothered to do. They definitely use it more than ten times. I swear that if you made a drinking game of this, take a shot every-time Superman flys into the camera, you would be drunk off your ass.

But I digress what about the plot, well before we get into that you should note that the plot was developed by Christopher Reeve himself, huh?  Anyway the plot revolves around the ever growing kasus with the nuclear arms and why doesn't Superman do something about it? we've come a long way since the glory days haven't we.

Now I say this, who cares? Or more accurately why do these characters care so much. Why is it when some kid sends Superman a letter about nuclear arms (speaking of which, what kid cares about nuclear arms?) why is it as if he receives news that  someone he knows has a terminal disease. The kasus with bringing politics or real heavy world problems into superhero story's is that if the jagoan solves the kasus then the kasus still exists in the real world, so they need to tackle metaphors or overblown examples of the problems that the people face. Superman and Captain America would win one battle when they were being published in World War II but they didn't win the war, that's how you do it.

We then meet up with Lex Luthor, still in prison, and is then busted out of prison by Lenny (Jon Cryer) who plays Luthor's Nephew, he's annoying as all hell. Gene Hackman is wasted in this movie, this movie will always be that stain on a great actors otherwise great career. His latest mastermind plot involves harnessing the power of the nuclear missiles and creating the anti Superman, created from his DNA and brought to life from the nuclear missiles. This then creates, through what might be the most questionable movie logic ever Nuclear-man, played by Mark Pillow, who you wont recognize because he never starred in anything before this movie and never stared in anything after.

One aspect that has an underlining presence to the movie is that they hint that Lois might remember, or know that Clark is Superman. Does she know deep down? is it a subconscious thing? does she fully know because she was just faking it when Superman tried to erase her mind because he doesn't have that power? I don't know and frankly neither do the writers, or they just plain don't care and neither do I.

The flaw and I mean the real flaw with this movie is that this idea had potential. The idea of Superman fighting another super powered enemy, nuclear powered, the opposite of Superman who gets his power from the sun could have been a great dynamic. But no, the potential is wasted as well as just plain poorly executed to the degree that you cant even believe that they got it this wrong.

There are some basic, logical flaws in this movie (that's being nice). The flaws in the basic logic that this movie has you could park your car in. I don't mean scientific flaws, although it has that in spades as well. The movie has basic forward rational thinking flaws that make it infuriating for anyone with basic intelligence to follow. I wont go over them because the review would be too long if I did, but you could do back-flips easily in the plot holes and gaps in logic that this movie has.

Some people say that Superman three was a failure, well if it was then they wouldn't have made Superman four. Superman three, while it certainly wasn't a critical success, it was definitely a financial success, so they made this movie. But luckily the people had learned their lesson and they stayed clear of Superman four and that was the end. 

Rating: 1 star out of 4