I remember when Superman IV: The Quest For Peace was being made. I was the first person to interview screenwriters Mark Rosenthal and Lawerence Konner, who told me about their excitement over the project, about meeting with Christopher Reeve at (what I believe was) an IMAX theatre where they watched a documentary about Earth, showing the planet from space and triggering the notion that Superman would look at his adopted home as one world with no boundaries, and how he would do anything he had to in order to keep humanity safe.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? It might have been if the production company, Cannon Films, hadn’t slashed the budget in half just before production began (but that’s another story for another time).
Later, I spoke to the film’s director, Sidney Furie, and spent about 90 minutes on the phone with him -- this after having spoken to Richard Donner, who sang Sidney’s praises and expressed his enthusiasm about wanting to see what the director came up with.
For his part, Furie’s imagination was captured by the disarmament theme of the film, particularly the ending in which the Man of Steel realizes the choice is not his to make; that mankind must control its own destiny. But to encourage the global village concept, Superman, in an earlier draft of the screenplay, takes a young boy into orbit so he can tell the world what Earth really looks like.
"You can't tell where one country begins and another ends," reports young Jeremy. "It's just one world."
"And maybe one day everyone will see it," Superman responds.
"I'm proud of that idea," Furie proclaimed to me while Superman IV was in post production. "If that's corny, then to hell with it. That's what I want to be: corny. It's not that it's a message. It's just a good feeling. To me, the thrill of it all is that Superman IV is a family picture. A family can sit there, have a good time and be moved a little bit."
At the same time he also wondered if it would connect with an audience. "Maybe it will be too real for an audience," he conceded. "Maybe they can buy whales having to make a sound to save the 23rd century [as in Star Trek IV] because it's not real, but they can't accept a disarmament theme. I don't know. The only thing that makes it work for me is Superman trying to disarm the world and Lex Luthor trying to sell the other side missiles. Every time you have a 'message' scene, in comes Lex who just beats up on it. It's that quality that keeps it a comedy. Superman IV doesn't get that serious, but it's interesting to see if mixed in with the shredded wheat the audience wants some fresh fruit. If the picture doesn’t work, it's because the audience didn't buy it. But I never felt the theme was a problem.
"Having courage and guts is part of the insanity of this business," Furie pointed out to me as our conversation came to a close. "The truth is that whether your film is about the great mythological character you have to do right by, or it's a little movie that nobody has heard of, you still approach it like it's the most important thing in the world. And failing is still the worst thing in the world. But you fail, you go on, you succeed once in a while and you don't think about it too often. It goes with the territory....We're gunslingers, and you don't win every duel."
Unfortunately the duel with Superman IV was lost, but damn if everyone involved didn’t get me psyched in the months leading up to its release, because THEY were psyched.. at the time.
IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT, WE’LL LOOK AT SYLVESTER STALLONE’S JUDGE DREDD.