10 Worst Super Hero Movies Of All Time
By Nick Tylwalk
5. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Rotten Tomatoes score: 12%
Domestic box office: $15.7 million
Running down this movie makes me feel bad. The late Christopher Reeve was a good guy, by all accounts, and he helped come up with the story for this film. It actually revolved around an interesting premise too, which is what would happen if Superman simply forced his vision of world peace on the people of Earth.
That could have made for a thought-provoking film, but what we got instead was 90 minutes of miserly super hero movie-making the likes of which we hopefully will never see again. The same flight sequence used a bunch of times with poorly inserted backgrounds. A lumbering fight on the moon. Superman walking to the United Nations to give his speech in a New York City that obviously isn’t the real thing. The list goes on and on.
Without much arm-twisting and despite my guilt, I’d have to admit that the story also left much to be desired. The Nuclear Man needed sunlight or he’d simply shut off, so why doesn’t Superman simply imprison him somewhere he won’t get any light? Nope, the Man of Tomorrow pushes the moon out of orbit to create an eclipse instead. Uh, that’s actually pretty cool, but I think it might cause some problems down on Earth.
Yet the saddest part was watching Superman, one of the mightiest super heroes ever and unquestionably the most iconic, defeated by a scratch of radioactive fingernails. If a comic book writer came up with that scene, the outrage would be heard far and wide. Sorry Mr. Reeve, but this movie just flat out stank.
Next: An insipid assassin