Ranking the 8 Superman movies since Christopher Reeve’s portrayal

Superman and Nuclear Man square-off while an American flag lays crumpled between them. Underneath it, presumably, is the dignity of everyone involved with this film.

8. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace

Picking the worst Superman movie of all-time is shockingly easy if only because Superman IV: The Quest For Peace is not only one of the worst Superman movies, but one of the weakest in the entire history of superhero films, and would stand unchallenged if not for some other righteously awful movies like Catwoman and Batman and Robin. Occasionally, critics or disgruntled fans with a hate-beef for the new DCU will argue that the newer movies are somehow worse than this wretched film. With all due respect, those people are wrong. Rebuild-the-Great-Wall-with-magic-vision-wrong. Giant-press-on-nails-wrong.

This is a bad movie, a step back for the entire genre, that functioned as a ignoble swan song for what had been a strong run for Christopher Reeve as the iconic hero, and still serves today as a cautionary tale about just how much harm can come from the best of intentions, and from allowing a lead actor too much creative authority.

Reeve, at the height of his power–and his ego, if Margot Kidder is to be believed–co-wrote this bloated 80’s era morality tale after growing concerned about the dangers of nuclear war. How he got quite so much putrid juice out of that simplistic squeeze, I’ll never know, but we can be thankful that it was cut from its original run of an unpalatable 134 minutes down to a nausea-inducing 90 minutes.

Nothing works in this film, from the laughably cartoonish Nuclear Man–whose eleven lines of dialogue seem ten too many–to the shoddy special effects, the cheapness of which are even more disappointing considering the technical achievements of the previous movies. This film could easily be renamed Superman IV: A Bridge Too Far. There is a scene where, using re-purposed footage taken from an earlier scene where Superman waves, The Man of Steel rebuilds the Great Wall of China with his eyes because they didn’t have the budget for a speed run. They invented a superpower to cover-up an FX crisis that happened because most of their crew left over a labor dispute.

In the span of four films we went from the iconic tagline, “You’ll believe a man can fly,” to magic repair eyes. That’s almost offensive.

It was time to hang up the cape after Superman III–which had its own myriad of issues (more on that later)–and everyone seemed to realize it. It was a movie that seemingly no one wanted made and no one wanted to be in, but was made for…reasons?

Even Reeve only agreed to do it in exchange for financing for another project, Street Smart, and is on record as saying, “Superman IV was a catastrophe from start to finish. That failure was a huge blow to my career.”

If that isn’t enough for you to put this one at the bottom of the Superman hierarchy, consider this: Superman IV was such a commercial and critical failure that it effectively ended plans to make a Spiderman movie. It was so bad that it not only put Superman on the self for two decades, it iced an absolutely innocent web-slinger in the process.

I don’t care what any of these other movies were guilty of: they didn’t kill Spiderman by virtue of their awfulness.