people say it was SIII, that helped kill IV but what about the awful SG which had flopped only 3 years before? - it will
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freezedawg98 — 12 years ago(July 15, 2013 10:05 AM)
You're one of the very few that I have seen call Superman III a great movie. But, you can't ignore the fact that the decline in the quality from Superman I and II to Superman III and Supergirl contributed to fall of the franchise. Cannon greatly spurred the decline along though and was the final nail in the coffin of the Reeve films.
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chironade — 12 years ago(August 03, 2013 11:58 PM)
Superman II was already using a couple of plots used in S1. S3 took a whole different aproach, adding more humor and less destruction. That I found to be a pleasent surprise. S3 may not be a continuation of S1 and S2, but most certainly it is a good flic on it's own.
Supergirl hat a lot of plot-holes. I guess it was because the scrpt-writers possibly never have read anything related to Supergirl and Argo-City. The story itself sucked. It feels patched, copied mixed and pasted, not written like a true story by itself.
I dare say Helen Slater safed the movie. I can't think of any actress back then who might have done the same job as she did. And seeing Jimmy Olsen in it was most certainly helping as well.
SGs opponent was kind of artificial, her "maid" reminded me a lot of Otis. Nothing good or new there as well.
Also there was a rumor: While producing the movie, the company was told ab out the upcoming death of Supergirl in the "crisis mini-series". I don't belive DC made a lot of friends with that -
mlaughlin22 — 12 years ago(October 12, 2013 07:03 PM)
Superman 3 was sopposed to have Mxy and Braniac with Supergirl
introduced . Ended up with Richard Pryor and Nightmare Fuel robot lady . Superman 4 Bizzaro , ended up with Nuclear Man . Reeves
wanted S4 to be a peace message movie but that got lost .
The Supergirl movie needed a better Villain maybe Ursa ecaped from the Zone and got her powers back . Faye Dunaway chewed the scenery and ate the whole set . Helen Slater was hot in the movie , second that motion .
Fix the error reports on this site -
wallacesawyer — 12 years ago(February 01, 2014 07:46 PM)
Despite it's entertainment value, SUPERMAN 4 killed SUPERMAN 4. It's cut budget, bad effects, and poor editing sure didn't help its reviews or word of mouth.
SUPERMAN III and SUPERGIRL are both rather entertaining, but are also lacking.
http://www.freewebs.com/demonictoys/ -
michaelward15 — 11 years ago(May 10, 2014 09:28 PM)
I agree that IV killed itself.
I remember being excited about IV because with both Luther and Lois back it seemed like the mistakes of III were being corrected, but the result was much worse than III.
And I think the reviews hurt it. We saw it, in the theater, but by then, I already expected it to be bad based on what I'd heard about it. It still managed to by worse than I expected though. -
Soupful — 9 years ago(August 08, 2016 10:21 AM)
Yes agreed. Though SP 3 & SG declined the quality and drama of the fist two Superman movie's and diminshed box office return's neither were the failure of SUPE IV.
At least they had decent production values, spfx and budget's each of around $35 Mill & $30 Mill respectively. Though WB dropped distribution to Supergirl and instead Tri-Star Picture's bought the rights from them to release as Tri-Star would also do with the Salkind's 1985 "Santa Claus". There after the Salkind's sold their Superman motion picture rights to Cannon though they would go on to produce the 80s Television series of "Superboy".
Though certainly not terriffic film fare they were entertaining and appealing especially to very young children anyway though as OP ses but are lacking.
The Golan/Globus Israeli team/Cannon Film producer's were crook's and borrowed, cheated and even not paid certain artists and crew for work done. Basically they were swindler's and con men whom had passion and love for making movie's but as Independent's were un-suited to make big budget movie's as major studio's do.
They had put both projects of Masters of the Universe & Superman IV into production simultanously at both being tagged at $30 Mill to make each.
Trouble was they were going into some bankruptcy difficulties with their company Cannon at that time and as a result drastically halved the production budgets to both films at around $17 Mill each to save money. So imagine having 2 films budgeted combined at cost of say $60 Mill total but you just cant afford to feasibly do it any longer so doing both films for a combined $34 Mill is more doable than the original $60 Mill and hence what went wrong
Superman IV as reported in a STARLOG which came out in January but cover issue of February 1987 interview with Christopher Reeve had the movie requiring much more time for everything to be completed was intended as a December 1987 release to closer tie-in with Superman's 1988 50TH Anniversary.
However that changed and they pushed to get it out by July 87' and Masters for August 87' to cash-in and dump them in late summer.
Much of work was dumped, cut, dropped, corner's cut to slashed as a result and the final product's as is are the final result. Apparently though Golan & Globus did approach the distributor Warner Bros for additional finance assistance and understand they did actually comply but only just enough to get the film done for release and nothing more. Otherwise is most certain if WB had'nt Superman IV would have been pulled un-plugged and never completed let alone released.
So as you can understand given all these problem's involved Superman IV's dismal woes have no bearing on the previous film's Superman III or Supergirl at all.
Cannon was in over their corrupt little head's when attempting to make big budget studio type movie's.
Nothing is as it seems, nothing is just one thing and nothing is ever just over there; -
Soupful — 11 years ago(May 27, 2014 03:49 AM)
Short ANSWER: NO!
The producers being the Salkind's and Pierre Spengler killed "Superman III" and "Supergirl" all by themselves.
Superman IV was sold by Salkinds father & son Alexander & Ilya and bought by Cannon-Globus cheap action movie producers that went bankrupt and stuffed-up No.4 of which Warner Bros the distributor either did or didnt know but offered no extra financial assistance to salvage and help the production along.
It was budgeted conservatively in 1986 as a 30 million & project and was dimminshed to that of 17 instead.
The results show and were known during filming by both crew and cast, notably Christopher Reeve much to his personal dismay as he did co-writing story-credit and 2nd unit directing.
Superman IV is an excellent case of potential 'what could have been' and never was.
The original Supe I/II/III/Supergirl producer Salkinds did buy back the rights and wrote a early script for Superman V and approached Christopher Reeve as reported in various media publications by 1992.
However by then Christopher Reeve was a most definite "NO-GO". The Superman movie franchise would go into development HELL long after even with at some point actor Nicholas Cage attached until director Bryan Singer got the greenlight for "Superman Returns" in 2005.
Again that wasnt quite right for audiences and was re-worked on until 2013s "Man of Steel".
"Nothing is as it seems, nothing is just one thing and nothing is ever just over there" -
stevenackerman69 — 10 years ago(March 04, 2016 05:11 PM)
No, Supergirl had nothing to do with this film being bad. It was different producers, who worked on a shoestring budget that hurt the film.
The reason the first two were the best was they played the legend of Superman seriously, so the laughs came naturally out of them. Superman 3 went for stupid slapstick and Supergirl was camp. Here, the problem was the budget, which was nothing. -
bozo_500 — 9 years ago(December 07, 2016 12:09 PM)
Reeves cameo in SFG was actually intended as more a supporting role
http://supermania78.com/2016/12/hes-my-cousin/