MAINPAGE

Warner wanted a new film before his 50th anniversary in 1988,Christopher Reeve returned after being granted script approval and a much higher salary. The main cast members also returned: Margot Kidder, Gene Hackman, Jackie Cooper, and Marc McClure. Things began to look brighter. Reeve worked with Larry Konner and Mark Rosenthal on a script which everyone concerned felt would deal with an important issue not only in the world today, but in Superman's world aswell - nuclear arms. A young school boy poses the question to his hero, "If Superman is so powerful, why doesn't he get rid of the nuclear weapons on earth?" Superman's moral decision tears him apart; he controls the powers of a God, but does that give him the right to use them to control other people's lives?

The story held great promise, and began filming in 1986, due out in 1987 for the preliminary celebrations for Superman's 50th birthday.So what exactly went wrong? The problems started with Cannon Films, a low budget producer who had licensed the rights from the Salkinds.The budget was lowered. Scenes were changed to include more emphasis on Luthor, his two solar - powered super creations, and his plans for world domination after Superman destroys the nuclear arms. The screen writers seemed to lack even a rudimentary knowledge of science for instance at the end nuclear takes Stacy Warfield into space!!
The special effects were horendous, with matte lines evident much of the time, and the wires evident most of the rest of the time. Golan-Globus didn't have access to the flexible front projection system developed by Zoran Perisic for the first three movies.
The movie was SOOooooo cheap. The Metropolis scenes where shot in Milton Keynes in England. The outside of the train station was turned into the Daily Planet, the Argos building was the interior to the Planet newspaper. The problem was that Cannon spent half the half the budget on other films at the time like Masters of universe. The film was released unfinished over 20 minutes of footage from the final cut.

MY REVIEW

I first saw this film on video when it came out on release and I thought It was amazing, I didn't realise how bad the special effects were I just wanted to see Christopher Reeve as Superman again. When I got older I noticed the script didn't go together smoothly. The movie was shot at lenght of 134 minutes but was cut down to 89 by Warner Brothers in the US and Canada and Cannon cut the film to 92 minutes in Europe and Japan. All the footage that was cut explained so much more for example there was two nuclearmen, lacy and Clark go clubbing at the Metro Club. The films seemed a mess in the 89 minute version. The story is all over the place, a classic example of the story not going together is where Nuclearman flies down and see's Superman and says' Where is the woman?', Superman ' give it up you'll never find her!'. How the hell does Superman know what he is talking about. The people to blame is Warner Brothers. Warner hate this film and they would prefere not to be connected to it. People say that the original cut was burnt long ago but I find it hard to believe that Warner would burn the film in getting there own back on Cannon. Warner in the begining gave Cannon a lump of cash to spend on SIV. Everyone in the production thought great but Cannon had other ideas. They split the budget in half and spent the rest funding other films they had in production at the time.

EXTENDED VERSION
LaserDisc
DVD
COLLECTABLES