After watching and rewatchingJames GunnsSupermantrailerin recent weeks, I was on a Superman high.
Movies Id seen beforeIm even old enough to have seenIVin theatersbut hadnt rewatched in order in decades.
Everyone would agree that Richard Donners 1978 filmSupermanis a classic.
A crop of the poster for Superman IV: A Quest for Peace.Image: Warner Bros.
Then I popped onSuperman IIIand immediately I knew it was a bad decision.
It starts with Richard Pryors character in an unemployment office.
He then, magically, becomes the worlds greatest computer hacker.
Clark Kent goes back to Smallville and gets oddly close with an old classmate.
Then we have to watch him be an asshole for way too long.
Its, to put it bluntly, a huge piece of shit.
Superman IIIactually made me angry.
If I wanted to watch a Richard Pryor movie, I would have done that.
This was clearly just Richard Pryor starring in aSupermanmovie, not the other way around.
This worried me greatly because while Id seenSupermanandSuperman IIa few times in recent years, I didnt rememberIIIorIVas well.
All I did remember was, I thought,IVwas the worst of the bunch.
So when I started it, I was more than a little hesitant.
Its still terriblelets not forget thatbut at least its attempting to be aSupermanmovie.
Hes back in love with Lois Lane, with Margot Kidder back for the whole film.
Lex Luthor has a new scheme and Gene Hackman is back for the whole film.
Superman has to fight an otherworldly supervillain in Nuclear Man.
And the character is working towards the betterment of the entire world.
These are all things that feel crucial, in one way or another, to the DNA of aSupermanmovie.
Its a bad, bad movie.
But its a step up from the abomination of the previous one.
One is one, two is two, four is three, and three is four.
It honestly felt like an almost infallible list.
And that put it over the top.
Thankfully, Warner Bros. does have the perfect palate cleanser for these two atrocities.
No, not the unofficial sequelSuperman Returnsfrom 2006.
All of these movies are currently streaming on Max.
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