THE 'SUPERMAN IV' COMIC THAT'S BETTER THAN THE MOVIE

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace seems to have been generally regarded as the worst superhero movie ever, until 1997 when Warner Bros. and DC had a double whammy with Batman & Robin and Steel.  (Though, perhaps those two even lost their positions at the top of the stink pile to 2004’s Catwoman.)

The Quest For Peace certainly merits it’s unwanted membership in this group of movies that DC would rather forget.

It is pretty poor- a hodgepodge of well-meaning but ultimately ill-fitting anti-nuke rhetoric and the worst bits of camp humour from the school of Richard Lester, churned out on a fraction of the budget of any of the previous entries in the series. The movie throws away any semblance of verisimilitude in the Superman mythology and bestows upon the Man of Steel abilities that make the audience laugh and roll their eyes in equal measure.

So, say you’re a Superman completist, annoyed at the missed opportunity represented by Quest For Peace, but still intrigued by exploring this misguided entry in the series a little more.  Well, there’s a comic book I’d recommend.

The official DC adaptation of the movie sees legendary Superman artist Curt Swan illustrate a comic written by Bob Rozakis.  I recommend this comic to any Superman fan in general, though not for the usual reasons. If you’re expecting a post-John Byrne or Grant Morrison style Supes, then I wouldn’t hold my breath as this comic absolutely follows the plot of a bad movie.  However, there’s 2 things it does which make it a lovely little novelty and well worth a look.

Firstly, Swan sticks with his own style of pencilling our old friend in the red cape, ignoring any likenesses of Christopher Reeve, Mariel Hemingway and indeed, eh-hem, Jon Cryer(this differentiates this work from the Denny O’Neil-penned Batman adaptations of the 90s, which featured art that faithfully captured the look of the films, nipples and all).  Only the requisite costume design for Nuclear Man survives from the imagery of the movie and if one were to quickly flick through this comic’s pages, it could easily be mistaken for just another 70s or 80s edition to the Superman comic book canon(or perhaps even earlier, as Swan’s style was already looking slightly dated).
Secondly, as with many novelisations, computer games or comics adapted from a movie script, the original screenplay is tweaked here for the purposes of entering a different medium, meaning Rozakis was able to make a lot more sense of the film’s more ridiculous moments.

It’s a short comic, owing to it's basically existing as a tool to get kids to see the live-action version, and therefore a little more accessible than the movie.  Things that don’t work when enacted with low-budget 80s optical effects or when uttered from the mouths of otherwise respectable actors, tend to work much better here on the brightly-coloured pages of a comic book.

We don’t blink an eyelid at the dumbed-down escape of Lex Luther from a prison quarry here because, well, it feels like an old-school comic from a more innocent time- which is probably why it helps to forget that this comic is from the not-so-innocent 1987.

A Lex Luthor, clearly written for Gene Hackman’s unique take on the character, can be interpreted differently because, we don’t hear Hackman’s raspy comedic delivery and so the voice coming from this man’s mouth could easily be Clancy Brown’s or Kevin Spacey’s.  And as for his appearance, we have a compromise of a Luthor that doesn’t look like Hackman, but also isn’t depicted as totally bald, as he features the red hair that’s occasionally been bestowed to him by artists intermittently through the decades.

Bob Rozakis and Curt Swan sort of put the filmmakers to shame with their comic adaptation for, whilst some of the film’s snappier and even playfully risque dialogue is missing in Rozakis’s version, he does rewrite much of it into a clearer, more logical narrative, which in turn is illustrated by Swan in a manner that leaves few questions asked.

Much of this is aided by the re-incorporation of deleted scenes, whose omission from the film contribute to it’s occasionally confusing plot.  So, amongst other things, we get to see the sort of proto-Bizarro character who was played in the excised footage by Casualty and Game of Thrones actor Clive Mantle.

So many of the movie’s more foolish moments are either improved, explained away or just flat-out removed here to honestly create something that’s much easier to take seriously.

The nonsense of Mariel Hemingway flying through space, without suffocating or having the blood vessels in her lovely face just rupture all over Nuclear Man, is gladly gone.

In fact, when a human does get brought out into space, it’s young Jeremy, the kid whose letter to Superman got the plot rolling and yet, in

the film, falls into a narrative black hole, his character being completely forgotten about.  And yes, in the comic, Jeremy is in a space suit.

Remember one of the film’s most insane moments, when Superman rebuilds the Great Wall of China with…um…well, by looking at it?  Yeah, well here he uses his super speed to rebuild it brick-by-brick.  Far less crazy an idea and it’s in keeping with Supes’ established powers.

And then there’s Nuclear Man’s powers, amongst which is his ability to be born wearing an ultra-80s super suit.  The film briefly touches on a ludicrous explanation for this.  The tiny little container that Lex’s Superman-clone-jelly-shit is kept in for it’s voyage into space apparently has a costume-weaving computer in it.  I must admit that this idea tickles me, but it’s just dumb.

Swan depicts Nuclear Man coming into existence, rather more believably, naked.  After which, he is presented with a costume by Lex Luthor and Lenny.

In this same scene, it’s noted that Nuclear Man knew to come to Lex’s lair due to genetic memory inherited from the Bizarro-like creature that was created earlier, thereby explaining away another plot-hole of the movie, albeit stretching our suspension of disbelief to the limits.

This comic demonstrates how a fresh set of eyes can help improve, if only slightly, a work that has previously lost it’s way.  Examples of similar improvements go back as far as Fantastic Voyage, which had it’s novelisation penned by none other than the great Isaac Asimov.  In hiring a giant of high-end science fiction to write a version of a sci-fi flick that plays pretty fast and loose with the realms of scientific plausibility, they should have expected considerable changes to the story.  Coz they got them.

The Fantastic Voyage novel delves into detail about the possibilites of ‘shrinking’ that had naturally been overlooked by the movie, pain-stakingly examining the reaction of shrunken matter to both light and even the perception of time.  Asimov also completely changed the ending to one he found more plausible.

I wonder what other adaptations are out there.  What other cinematic offerings have gotten re-interpreted in other media with results that shine a light on the failings of the source material?

All this said, I don’t personally believe Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, is utterly devoid of positive factors.  It’s great seeing Hackman back as Lex Luthor, and indeed almost worth the admission price to see his fun, villainous rapport with Reeve one last time.
And, whilst perhaps belonging in another movie, the messages about nuclear warfare and the transformation of noble newspapers into corporate entities certainly have their heart in the right place.

Also, how many other movies show us Superman flying around Milton Keynes?

DC COMICS & THE WORLD OF REBOOTS: Just Make A Better Sequel

These days, it seems Hollywood studios must have a red button in their boardrooms that’s labelled ‘Reboot’.  At the first sign that a movie from a potential or even established franchise performs below the studio’s expectations(which these days means nothing short of opening weekend record breakage on a global scale), then that big old red button gets a corporate fist slammed down on it.  Panic!  Run away!  Re-cast!  Hire David Goyer!  Do something!

            Because, clearly, if a movie isn’t quite what every single human being on the planet wanted, then the only possible way to manage any future property dealing with the same material is to completely scrap it and start all over.  Effectively pissing away all that money you spent on the original in the first place.

This is a relatively recent phenomenon and an unsettling one.  Had this philosophy been in practice when Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released, then we would never have gotten Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, one of the most successful and well-regarded sequels of all time.

ORIGINALS ARE DEAD: Sequels. Remember those?

The Motion Picture was received poorly by critics and even amongst many disappointed fans who had shelved out the cash for their cinema tickets.  However, it made enough money so that the filmmakers could go ahead and make another one.  Taking on board complaints about the previous movie, they went and made it’s follow-up more fitting with what hungry Trekkies had really wanted in those wilderness years between the cancellation of their beloved show and the franchise’s ressurection on the big screen.

Khan’s producers didn’t panic and start all over again, effectively remaking Motion Picture.  They didn’t decide that, because Motion Picture didn’t quite nail it, that it’s very existence would hurt any future Trek outings.  No.  The Wrath of Khan has the Roman numeral II in it’s title, suggesting they weren’t pretending the previous Enterprise adventure had never happened.
They didn’t freak out.  They just learned from mistakes and made the next one better.

Imagine a world where this still happened regularly- a world where Tom Jane got another official shot from Marvel at punishing the shit out of criminal scum and where we didn’t need to see Uncle Ben’s murder occur twice in 10 years, under vaguely different circumstances.

It is warranted occasionally, of course, where the first attempt at bringing material to the screen has failed so obviously that there is clearly nowhere to go with that same continuity.  And if there has been a fairly significant amount of time passed since the last movie, wherein the very movie culture itself has changed enough that the material can stand a new approach filtered through an updated lens.  The movie Dredd fits both of these criteria, being a film that was very justified in it’s completely evident separation from 1995’s Judge Dredd.

DREDD: When reboots are necessary.

But perhaps, where this approach of completely scrapping continuity from a film that slightly underperformed is at it's most misguided is in the DC universe and their treatment of the Green Lantern character.

Their rebooting of Batman from Bale to Batfleck grew from a mix of Bale not wanting to continue in the role and the fact that Nolan’s universe doesn’t quite lend itself to the fantastic, thereby making it’s interaction with a world of flying Kryptonians and cybernetically enhanced high school football players, fairly jarring and unworkable.  All this means that we can understand DC’s recasting of the Dark Knight and indeed have it feel not drastically different from when Kilmer replaced Keaton.

But it’s the apparent dismissal of DC’s 2011 movie, Green Lantern, that is just flat-out foolish.  No matter what one thinks about the only movie outing of the emerald guardian, it is nevertheless a movie that establishes the character, providing a bit of groundwork already done and dusted for a potential Justice League movie.  And yet, it seems as though this movie is not to be included in the new continuity established by Man of Steel.

Good grief, DC.  Why not let Green Lantern be your Star Trek: The Motion Picture?  Learn from it’s mistakes(amongst which, I don’t think anyone would include the casting of Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan), and go make a better follow-up.  Why throw away the work that was put into that movie?  Lose the CGI suit and design him a physical costume maybe, but at least get something from it.

DOES THE JOB: Reynolds as Green Lantern

If indeed, they go to the extreme of not only scrapping Ryan Reynolds as Jordan, but actually scrapping Jordan altogether in favour of another Green Lantern, they’ll have done two things incredibly wrong.

One- they’ll be completely disregarding DC canon by establishing the Justice League without one of it’s true founding members, namely the original silver age Lantern, Hal Jordan.

And Two- they’ll have just wasted an entire movie, it’s multi-million dollar budget and a decent bit of casting.

Don’t be stupid, guys.  Get Mr. Reynolds on the phone.

Otherwise, face the reality of Kevin Feige and Joss Whedon laughing at you chasing your own tails, well into the future.