Awesome Music: Unlike Superman II and Superman III, this has a substantial amount of original music. John Williams didn't score this onenote Can you really imagine Williams doing an entire movie for Cannon? (his longtime friend and regular orchestrator Alexander Courage did), but he did write new themes for Jeremy, Lacy Warfield, and Nuclear Man (and say what you will about the guy, but Nuclear Man does have a pretty kickass leitmotif).
In the climax, Nuclear Man takes Lacy into space. And she doesn't seem to feel the lack of oxygen at any time.
Lex Luthor dancing with a random woman in a Georgian dress. The only way the scene makes sense is if (as Lewis suggested on Movie Nights), Lex had hired a prostitute just to fulfill his extremely specific fetish.
The Comic-Book Adaptation features an apparent deleted scene where Nuclear Man randomly transforms into a missile to chase Superman.
A particularly horrifying example, where Clark goes to a gym with Lacy and pretends to injure his back lifting weights. It's not a direct parallel, but the image of Christopher Reeve holding his spine and wincing in pain is very eerie.
At the end of the film, Lenny gets dropped off at a boy's home, with a priest saying "We take care of boys." Flash forward to the child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, and that delivery becomes really creepy.
The sensationalistic headline of "Superman Says 'Drop Dead' to Kid" was supposed to be a funny Take That! towards tabloids and journalistic ethics. But considering how many critics view Superman as being a fascist in this movie, it certainly brings to mind the Injustice: Gods Among Us version of the character, who didn't just tell a kid to drop dead, but actually killed said kid (even though Billy Batson was as Shazam at the time)
Clark Kent starts his romantic flight with Lois Lane by leaping off a high rise with her, and as he does this Lois assumes he's attempting suicide and she tries to talk him out of it. This scene can come off as a bit disturbing considering Margot Kidder took her own life in 2018.
When Superman first enters the United Nations' assembly, he is greeted with a standing ovation. Afterwards, he asks to speak to the assembly, but the rules say he can't do so without a sponsor. Delegates from every country offer to be Superman's sponsor by immediately raising their hands.
Also, this moment from Lois where she goes to Clark's apartment after his fight against Nuclear Man which made him deathly sick from radiation, and when asked what she would say to Superman if he was dying:
Lois: I'd want to tell him that I'll always cherish the time we spent together, and I never expected anything in return. And no matter how few minutes I saw him for, it always made me happy. And I would tell him that I love him and that I'll always love him. And ... no matter what happens on this world, I know he tried his best to help us.
Superman tells Lex Luthor at the end of the movie, "See you in twenty." The next live-action movie, Superman Returns, came out just one year shy of that length.
Nuclear Man was created from both Superman and Lex's DNA. This also becomes true with Superboy via Retconnote originally he was cloned from the founder of Cadmus Labs, since at that time, it was impossible to clone Superman without creating another Bizarro.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A major complaint about Superman IV is how much it feels like a poor man's remake of the original film.
Nuclear Man's ridiculous, poorly looped-in roaring and snarling during the moon battle. The fight, shot mostly in slow motion for maximum awkwardness, culminates with Nuclear Man bodily lifting up Superman, planting him feet-first into the moon's surface, and then hammering him into the ground like a railroad spike, complete with appropriate sound effects.
Lex Luthor's constant phrasing of "nuclear" as "nucular". A mispronunciation that four Presidents of the United States before and after this filmnote Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and vice president Walter Mondale were chastised for using.
Never Live It Down: Every time someone mentions Superman IV, people only remember two things: the horrible visual effects of the film and the fact that the box office and critical failure buried the franchise in the big screen for nearly two decades.
Lenny Luthor, for being annoying and obnoxious. Somehow Gus Gorman from the previous film seems like a good idea.note Notably, when Jon Cryer was cast as Lex Luthor for the Supergirl TV series, he explicitly mentioned in interviews that he took the role as "an apology" for playing Lenny.
Nuclear Man is also regarded as an absolutely awful character, thanks to his evil press-on nails, cheesy electric powers, and ridiculous weakness.
Sequelitis: The fourth and last film in the original Superman film series, this is the one with the most hard knocks/contempt and the only one to fail at the box office. Minus the outright Box Office Bomb part, history would repeat itself with Batman & Robin falling into this same category almost exactly ten years on.
So Bad, It's Good: Aside from the combination of sincerity and cheese that usually earns a movie the designation, it's quite easy to argue that Superman IV is a better comedy film than Superman III; it has Narm in spades, and Unintentional Humor beats Failed Gags every time. The mere presence of Gene Hackman can make anything a little better, and his Ham and Cheese here, as both clever Lex Luthor and the voice of all-brawn, no-brains Nuclear Man, is quite tasty. Jon Cryer's Totally Radical Lenny Luthor is more bearable than it otherwise would have been with Hackman to play off. And if nothing else, despite how bad the film otherwise is, Reeve still gives it his all, showing why even to this day, when it comes to "Actors who played Superman", people still say "There's Christopher Reeve, and there's everybody else".
Special Effect Failure: A combination of a cut budget, rushed production, and multiple effects teams (including Disney) resulted in this.
A human woman breathing perfectly finein space, as it was originally intended for her to be in the skies above Metropolis.
Superman "rebuilding" the Great Wall of China with his ... vision?
Just about every shot of Superman flying is the exact same shot, set against different backgrounds.
One of the green-screen shots of Superman flying depict him as being way too small compared to the poster in the background (which we just saw him standing next to in the previous (non-green-screened) shot.)
One scene has Nuclear Man breathe his freezing breath to trap Superman in a block of ice. Ignoring the fact there is no water in space and thus no ice can form, this effect is represented by showing Nuclear Man exhaling his Breath Weapon, followed by a shot of empty space with Superman (already encased in ice) suddenly fading into view. What the hell?
The film actually rewinds to simulate Nuclear Man blowing the NYPD cops backwards with his laser vision.
Several moments of Superman and Nuclear Man flying, as well as the scene where Nuclear Man levitates some hapless citizens of Metropolis, clearly have the cables used to hold the actors up be visible.
Nuclear Man flying straight up through several floors of a skyscraper and blowing out the windows doesn't look too shabby... until you notice that the rather buff actor Mark Pillow's stuntman has a clearly visible pot belly.
Most of the nuclear missiles shown onscreen are painfully-obvious props.
Needless to say, the film's visual effects landed the department a well-deserved Razzie nomination that year.
As Nuclear Man flies through various offices at the Daily Planet, freeze-frame shows that it's the same office set rearranged differently
Stock Footage Failure: As Nuclear Man is about to slash Superman, the background shows Superman flying away from New York City, but when we cut to Nuclear Man, the background shows him flying towards NYC.
Nuclear Man is basically a fully villainous and non-comedic version of Bizarro, being an Evil Knockoff who is both a physical match for Superman and is capable of dealing lethal damage to him in a fight. On paper, he was a decent idea for a primary antagonist and really should have turned out a lot better than he did.
Lana Lang does not appear in the film, despite the fact that Superman III ended up with her working on the Daily Planet. It is even more unfortunate considering that Lana and her chemistry with Clark is one of the few praised elements of Superman III, especially since the scenes between Clark and Lacy Warfield come off as a poor attempt at recreating that romance.
Superman vs. A Political Issue of Global Importance? Oh, What Could Have Been...
At the beginning of the movie, Clark is dealing with a real-estate broker who's helping him sell off his parents' farm but Clark rebuffs his wants to build a shopping center over it because he only wants it to be sold to a real farmer. The subplot ends up getting dropped after this, even though it would've complemented the Daily Planet subplot nicely on the whole themes of demanding progress versus respecting tradition.
It's often forgotten that in-between films three and four we had Supergirl (1984) which introduced us to the fact that there is a floating city full of Kryptonians still out there, one of which being Superman's cousin who is on first-name terms with both Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane's sister. There is obvious story potential here but they do not even get a mention anywhere in this film. Justified by said film's ending, wherein Jimmy and Lucy tell Supergirl that they won't speak of her ("never saw her, never heard of her").
Took the Bad Film Seriously: Christopher Reeve had to have known that the Superman film franchise was on its last legs when he signed up (with stipulations) for this film. To note, Reeve would only take the film if several conditions were met, one of them being a strict anti-nuclear weapons message. While other members of the cast understand how bad the script is (Gene Hackman was there for a check and Jon Cryer was camping it up), Reeve gives it his all and delivers the only emotionally honest performance in the film, which is especially evident in the scenes where he prepares to sell the Kent family farm, and the sequence where he delivers a Rousing Speech to the United Nations. It's enough to make the viewer wish that the film wasn't screwed over with Nuclear Man, perhaps the most ridiculous villain ever seen in a comic book film.
(and say what you will about the guy, but Nuclear Man does have a pretty kickass leitmotif).