Star Jon Cryer Is Still “Embarrassed” By ‘Superman IV’: “And I’m Sad About It Because I Loved The [Original] Superman Movie”
The notorious B-movie peddlers at Cannon Films could sometimes make something special and underrated like Lifeforce or ride a trend at the right time like they did with Breakin’. However, as they declined in the late 80s, their eyes got bigger than their stomach, and their wallet.
When Cannon sank like the Titanic, they didn’t go quietly and went down swinging, managing to take a few big IPs with them. Two of the biggest were brought down with the ship in 1987, and one of them was the Man of Steel. We’re not talking any old incarnation either.
Christopher Reeve’s run as Superman ended with a boondoggle of a boogaloo greater than Breakin’ 2 known as The Quest for Peace. The fourth installment in a series that was already noticeably moribund, it was so bad that even the people who made it know it was terrible.
Jon Cryer was a young actor breaking into the big time back then and only had a supporting role as Lex Luthor’s nitwit nephew Lenny. However, the bad reputation of Superman IV has followed him, and maybe haunted him a little too, up to today.
Cryer had a long conversation with NCIS alums Cote de Pablo and Michael Weatherly on their podcast (Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch) where the topic turned to “that piece of art that you thought was the the most embarrassing thing you ever did.”
“I did a movie called Superman IV, which was the last of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and it ran out of money halfway through, so the movie’s a mess. If you watch the movie, they never finished the special effects, so they had to cut huge chunks out of the movie and it doesn’t make rational sense anymore,” the actor began.
The folly and disaster of it were personal for him as a fan of Richard Donner’s 1978 film that made us all believe a man could fly. “And I’m sad about it because I loved the [original] Superman movie. I was 14 when Superman came out and I was the demo of that movie,” Cryer continued (via Cinemablend).
Working with Christopher Reeve and Gene Hackman on what should be a major blockbuster would be a dream come true for any actor, one might think. But while Cryer might have been thrilled about that, he doesn’t believe he brought his A-game.
“I’m not good in it, by the way,” he said. “That was another thing that I’m kind of embarrassed about was that I made a very strong character choice that in retrospect did not work.”
None of Superman IV worked in retrospect, which Cannon found out pretty quickly. They went broke so fast that all their hopes and plans for a Masters of the Universe sequel and a Spider-Man movie were dashed.
Nothing went as planned for the former either as Quest for Peace was trimmed down from a longer runtime that had a subplot with a prototype Nuclear Man. Played by British character actor Clive Mantle, the experiment-gone-wrong that preceded the wavy blonde Mark Pillow was – like Bizarro – dumb and childlike.
The first Nuclear Man’s arc, and his swift defeat, can be seen across deleted scenes available online and as part of home releases.
NEXT: ‘Twisters’ Director Lee Isaac Chung Believes David Corenswet Will Make A Great Superman
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