wrOver the more than 80 years of his history, less than a dozen actors have played Superman in live-action films. Yet, Christopher Reeve's take on Superman remains the gold standard, even today, even with great actors like Henry Cavill and Tyler Hoechlin in the role. However, the worst of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies is, ironically, the one that meant the most to the late actor. He wanted to use the power of Superman to make a statement about nuclear proliferation.

Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is an outlier compared to the previous films, if only because the rights to make Kal-El movies went to Cannon Films. This company was responsible for a number of violent action movies, including sequels to Death Wish, a film by another production company. The film was a mess of low-budget problems and callous disregard from Cannon producers. Yet, what brought franchise star Reeve back to Kal-El (beyond the $6 million payday) was that he wanted to use his Superman film to address the real threat of nuclear proliferation and annihilation. The resulting film was profitable for Cannon but disappointed critics and longtime Superman fans.

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The Nuclear Plot of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace Was Christopher Reeve's Idea

Superman and Nuclear Man fighting on the Moon in Superman IV

The Cold War describes the period of conflict between World War II and 1990 between the United States and the then-Soviet Union. From proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam to close calls like the Missile Crisis in Cuba, by the mid-1980s, the threat of nuclear annihilation seemed very real, and it influenced movies. From films like Red Dawn and WarGames to Terminator, nuclear war was the looming threat filmmakers wanted audiences to worry about. Reeve knew the power Superman had in the culture, and nuclear proliferation was a problem Kal-El could solve.

"I'm personally fairly left," Reeve told The Los Angeles Times in 1987. He added, "I believe a nuclear arms treaty is possible. … When Cannon approached me about playing Superman again, I thought it would be a good idea to get the character involved in trying to solve real problems." Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane, also told the newspaper that she took less money than she deserved because the movie was "a vision of the world through a child's eyes, and it's a vision that makes more sense" than the one offered by the leaders of the day. Unfortunately, the convoluted "Nuclear Man" plot, visual effects done on the cheap and carelessness with the laws of physics broke immersion for a lot of fans.

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Superman Forcibly Denuclearized the World

Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent dancing with Mariel Hemingway in Superman IV

Today, an all-too-often refrain from some segments of fandom is that genre stories today are "too political." Yet, the supposedly apolitical films of their youth were just as "woke," but the messages went over kids' heads. The Quest for Peace was Superman at his most political, even though Superman III is fairly anti-capitalist. In the first act, Superman goes to the United Nations and declares he's going to destroy all nuclear weapons. The subtext of this scene, despite the UN's rapturous applause, was that the world governments couldn't stop Superman if they wanted to. Of course, the rest of the film and the beating it took from critics and fans buried the political message. For example, the UN scene falls flat because Cannon wouldn't even allow the director to film at the actual UN headquarters, a globally famous building.

The harshest critics likely say that Reeve's flight in the red-and-blue tights should've ended with Superman II. Yet, The Quest for Peace was a movie whose heart was in the right place. In a situation evocative of the modern Writers Guild of America strike, the storytellers wanted to do something worthwhile. The studio, on the other hand, only cared about pinching pennies and turning a profit, no matter what harm the film did to the franchise or the movie's message. Still, with his last flight as Superman, Christopher Reeve wanted to use the character to save the world in a very real way.