It’s a great time for Superman fans, with the Man of Steel soaring into movies, TV, animation and comics. To help us stay on top of it, writer Tim Beedle shares what’s grabbed his attention and why in this monthly Super-Family column.
It’s a little amusing that Superman Day is this week and I’m writing about what many consider one of the worst Superman movies—Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.It wasn’t exactly planned to work out that way. For those just joining us, this year we’ve been devoting Super Here For…, our monthly Superman column, to revisiting the Man of Steel’s prior big screen forays ahead of the release of James Gunn’s Superman on July 11th. We’re going chronologically starting with the first Christopher Reeve movie and April is the fourth month of the year…so, yeah, we’ve arrived at Superman IV.
But you know what? I’m okay with that because I’ve never thought Superman IV is the sort of travesty that some fans make it out to be. In fact, I think if you were to show all four Christopher Reeve movies to someone who has never seen them before and has no knowledge of how each of them are viewed, they’d probably be surprised to learn that The Quest for Peace is held in such disregard.
That’s because, for all its flaws, it’s actually a lot tighter and more focused than the other three films. True, it lacks the heart, spectacle and scope of the first movie, the iconic villains and set pieces of the second and the slapstick humor of the third. It’s also very much a product of its time, from the glittery, sleeveless spandex suit worn by the film’s super-powered baddie to its message of nuclear disarmament. However, in a surprising way, it’s this quality that I think helps it play a lot better today than perhaps it once did. That’s because, unfortunately, much of what we were struggling with in 1987 is strikingly similar to the big challenges we face as a world today.
The particulars may not be exactly the same as what we see in Superman IV, but nuclear weapons are still a global problem—one that has reemerged in new, disturbing ways over the past decade. The notion of just getting rid of them, as Superman tries to do in the film, is still an appealing idea. On a less serious note, fitness and gym culture have only gotten more popular since the late ’80s. The likelihood that Clark Kent would have to navigate his way around a weight room without tipping anyone off to the fact that he possesses super strength is still a pertinent one. And corporate consolidation that prioritizes profit ahead of everything else has never been a bigger flashpoint than it is right now, and it’s a major subplot in The Quest for Peace as we see with the billionaire executive David Warfield’s hostile takeover of the Daily Planet.
When you consider the themes of the film rather than the details of how they’re explored, they’re all still remarkably relevant. But the one aspect of Superman IV that surprised me the most during my recent rewatch was David and daughter Lacy Warfield’s drive to increase the Planet’s circulation by making it more sensational in its reporting. Considering this film came out pre-internet, when even the idea of 24-hour news channels was in its infancy, that seems downright prescient. And it’s a pretty big part of the film!
“Summit Kaput! Is World at Brink?” is the headline that Lacy Warfield suggests in response to the peace summit between the United States and the Soviet Union breaking down. Only, the world really isn’t at the brink, as Clark points out to her. That doesn’t seem to matter much in the eyes of the Warfields, however. Not when, as David asserts, the headline will sell a lot of papers.
And he’s right, it probably will. So will the even less responsible headline—“Is Superman Dead?”—the Warfields want to run when the Man of Steel disappears after his battle with the Nuclear Man. In both cases, it’s not that the headlines are technically wrong. The first one is sensational and the second is misleading (note that it’s not saying that Superman is dead, but asking if he is). Both are alarmist, designed to provoke fear—one of our most powerful and motivating emotional responses.
That’s interesting when you consider it because it’s also fear that motivates Superman to de-nuke the planet. He doesn’t want Earth to destroy itself the same way that Krypton did, and he sees that the people of Earth share that fear. It’s how he knows that his actions will have overwhelming support when he tells the United Nations that he’s going to rid the planet of all nuclear weapons. Making use of people’s rational fears isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s a difference between the way Superman does it and the way the Warfields do. One is trying to ease those fears, the other is stoking them. One is philanthropic, the other is exploitative.
Unfortunately, it feels like we see far too many news organizations acting like the Warfields today—certainly more than we saw in 1987 when Superman IV was released. How many “Is World at Brink?”-type headlines have you seen this year? Heck, this week? Yes, we’re living in particularly fraught times right now, but there’s still a responsible and irresponsible way to report on them. As Clark says to Lacy Warfied early on, “A reporter’s first allegiance has to be to the truth. The people of this city depend on us, and we can’t let them down.”
The good news is that there are a lot of journalists working today who still firmly believe that. Journalism is a calling for so many people and that calling is built on both a desire to seek out the truth and a belief that people are entitled to it. And if you find yourself skeptical about the future of journalism, well…maybe you should watch Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. It actually ends on a pretty optimistic note regarding the future of the Daily Planet. New publisher Lacy Warfield comes to agree with Clark and Lois and rejects her father’s profit-driven philosophy and sensationalistic headlines.
Of course, if she ever backtracks on it, Perry White can always fire her now that he’s become the Planet’s primary shareholder and has wrested control of the paper away from Lacy’s father. A reporter’s allegiance may be to the truth, but everyone still has a boss.
Tim Beedle covers movies, TV and comics for DC.com, writes our monthly Superman column, “Super Here For…”, and is a regular contributor to the Couch Club, our recurring television column. Follow him on Bluesky at @TimBeedle and on Instagram at @notabard.
NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Tim Beedle and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.