For those who do not know... here is a little history on the Superman IV production.
The Salkinds after the disastrous Supergirl movie and the not-so-bad Superboy series, sold all their rights to Superman – they could not get another film into production none of the original cast wanted any part of it or the Salkinds. They sold all the film right s to the Golem-Globus group & Cannon films best known in those days for doing the Rambo flicks.
From the get-go there was NO money, they had none of the original cast and were looking to re-cast and start over. Reeve had no interest in returning feeling he would forever be typecast, Golem-Globus were able to lure Reeve back into the cape & tights with a story of his creation, the nuclear arms race. Reeve was instrumental in getting the rest of the original cast to return.
The effects: With an already very tight budget and the producers not being able to use the original Zoptic FX process from the previous three films, Golem-Globus were forced to use low-end blue screen, which caused many problems with the blue super-suit, they also used stock flying footage & flying out-takes from the previous films. Also after production was underway Cannon cut the budget in half thus causing an already tight & troubled production even more damage!
The original Sidney J. Fury cut of the film was 2hours & 14mins… the final release cut had 45mins removed to speed up the film and cut down on the amount of FX shots, resulting in a run time of 1hour 29mins and also creating many many plot holes.
Many of the scenes that were cut explained much of the action and character backgrounds. The whole Nuclear Man #1 sequence was completely removed, a cool knock down drag out fight between Supes & NM1 was lost. The Nuclear Man we see in the film is the second attempt by Luthor to create a threat for Superman.
In the end the film simply suffers from NO money and a studio who did not believe enough in the project to treat it with any respect.
It is not a bad film, it is certainly not a great film. Knowing what was removed, could it have made it a much better film? Possibly. In fact Golem-Globus after SIV was finished they had so much footage left over that they were considering doing a 5th film using all un-used footage… they quickly came to their senses and shelved that idea.
I doubt we will ever get to see the Sidney J. Fury Director’s cut of Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, there doesn’t seem to be any of that footage still around and they never shot enough to fill in the holes they were making during production what with large chunks of the film being cut during filming!
Personally, I would watch Supes IV any day over Superman III.
Check out this cool rare behind-the-scenes feature posted at CapedWonder.com by my pal Jim Bowers with Nuclear Man I vs. Superman.
Note that Reeve is very enthusiastic about Superman IV and is open the the idea of doing more films (if they can come up with a great idea) - it's a long load so be patient it's worth it!
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