Released: July 1987

Director: Sidney J. Furie

Rated PG

Run Time: 90 Minutes

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Genre: Action/Adventure

Cast:
Christopher Reeve: Clark Kent/Superman
Gene Hackman: Lex Luther
Jackie Cooper: Perry White
Margot Kidder: Lois Lane
Mark McClure: Jimmy Olsen
Mark Pillow: Nuclear Man
Sam Wanamaker: David Warfield
Mariel Hemingway: Lacy Warfield

We come to it at last:  The great failure of our time.  Superman III, for all its faults, was still a relatively entertaining film.  It had some pretty strong performances and some pretty good visual effects.  Superman has been a symbol for truth and justice for decades.  He’s the big blue boy scout.  Over the years, the character has been adapted from comics into graphic novels, novels, video games and ultimately, movies.  In fact, the movie started the whole comic book film craze was Superman: The Movie.  That was a movie that surprised everybody and convinced the world that a man could fly.  Superman II gave the Man of Steel three super-villains to contend with and was epic and spectacular.  Superman IV could have been something truly special, but the moment the Salkinds left the franchise to the Cannon Film Group, everything went to Hell.

The story, which was co-written by Christopher Reeve himself, involves Superman responding to a child’s desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons.  During all this, Lex Luthor breaks out of prison with the help of his nephew, Jon Cryer, I mean, Lenny.  He devises a plan to destroy Superman using a strand of his hair in a museum.  He creates a new super-villain powered by the sun, Nuclear Man.  Where, oh where do I begin with this?  The concept is interesting, considering that the movie takes place and was made during the Cold War.  Christopher Reeve’s desire to address the issue of nuclear weapons is a noble and admirable goal.  Unfortunately, he was sabotaged by Golan and Globus’ incompetence and complete lack of understanding of the character.  The Cannon Film Group was having some very severe financial issues, which forced them to make drastic cuts to Superman IV.  Oh, yeah, and there’s this bullshit subplot involving the hostile takeover of The Daily Planet.  You can tell right from the get-go that there are some serious problems with the movie.  The story is just the tip of the bullshit iceberg.

From what I understand, and according to Mark Rosenthal on the commentary on the DVD, the initial cut of the film was supposed to be 134 minutes.  There’s clearly a lot of stuff that was cut out.  There’s a lot of story elements which don’t fit together and are suspiciously absent.  As a result, the editing is fucked all to hell.  Because of budgetary cuts, the special effects team for the film was pretty much annihilated leaving us with repeated visual effects shots like this:

I kid you not, this flying sequence was repeated twice in one scene at the beginning of the movie when Superman was saving the Russians.  You see this over and over again throughout the entire film, with only the background changing.  You can see the wires that are supporting the actors and the matte effects are absolutely atrocious.  You can see that in the screenshot above.  Not all of the visual effects are awful.  There’s a sequence involving a volcano that was pretty cool, but overall the visual effects of the film are disastrous.  That’s not the only thing that went wrong here.  The audio is all sorts of screwy.  The guy who plays Nuclear Man, Mark Pillow, had his voice dubbed over by Gene Hackman.  There is an absolutely gobsmackingly awful amount of bad dubbing throughout the entire film.  The kid that wanted Superman to rid the world of nukes, is poorly dubbed, as was the teacher.

Even for a superhero movie, there needs to be a basic understanding of physics and Superman IV shows absolutely NO willingness to abide by ANY laws of physics.  I get it, Superman flies, but most people don’t.  The complete disregard for physics in this movie, makes for an extremely laughable experience.  The most egregious offenses happen towards the end of the film.  One, when Nuclear Man kidnaps Lacy and flies her into space, she’s clearly breathing, even though there is no air in space, and she’s not freezing to death.  Also when the lava flows down the streets and you have people standing on the sidewalk, they should have been incinerated by standing so close to the lava without protection.  Going to back to space, if Superman actually moved the moon, there would be massive environmental catastrophes happening around the world.

The acting is terrible all around.  Christoper Reeve, bless his soul, gave it his all, but it simply wasn’t enough.  Everybody involved with the production of Superman IV, including the Man of Steel himself, came out against the picture.  The absolute disrespect for Superman is apparent in nearly every frame of the film.  There is a scene in which the Great Wall of China is blown up by Nuclear Man, but Superman puts it back using his Super Vision.  Last time I checked, Superman did not have that ability.  The entire film is a fucking train-wreck.  I’m sorry, there really is nothing that’s redeemable about this film.  Mark Pillow’s film career began and ended with Superman IV.  This was, sadly, the final time that Christopher Reeve would wear the red cape.  The character would be revisited in film form until 2013 when Zack Snyder directed Man of Steel.  People often refer to Batman and Robin as the worst comic book movie ever.  Well….I hate to disagree with that, but Superman IV is an absolute abomination.  I can enjoy watching it, because I can point and laugh at the awfulness that’s before my eyes.  If you were to step up to me and say that Superman IV was a good movie, I literally would slap you in the face.

My Final Recommendation: Fuck this movie.  Fuck this movie.  Fuck this movie. 1/10

Released: June 1983

Director: Richard Lester

Run Time: 125 Minutes

Rated PG

Distributor: Warner Bros.

Genre: Action/Comedy

Cast:
Christopher Reeve: Clark Kent/Superman
Richard Pryor: Gus Gorman
Jackie Cooper: Perry White
Annette O’Toole: Lana Lang
Mark McClure: Jimmy Olsen
Robert Vaughan: Ross Webster
Annie Ross: Vera
Pamela Stephenson: Lorelei
Margot Kidder: Lois Lane
Gavan O’Herlihy: Brad

I’ve a question for all of you:  Do you remember seeing a movie when you were younger that you remember not liking at all and you refuse to see it again for 10,15, maybe 20 years?  There have been a number of films like that for me.  One of those movies is Superman III.  Before I get into my review for the movie, let first state for the record how much of a fan that I am of Superman.  Not just movies, but the comics and animated shows as well.  The original Superman film with Christopher Reeve is highly regarded as one of the best, if not THE best, superhero movies of all time.  It’s absolutely one of my absolute favorites, and I don’t get tired of watching it.  The second film was almost as good.  It was 3 and 4 that I had some serious issues with.  Oh, I’ll be getting to Superman IV, make no mistake about it, but I want to revisit Superman III first.  Having seen the film for the first time in over 20 years, I have to admit that I really enjoyed it.  It was not a terrible movie.  Was it as good as the first two?  No.  The bar was set way too high.  But Superman III has charms of its own.

The film opens with Gus Gorman in an unemployment line trying to get his unemployment after several disastrous attempts at keeping jobs.  Being denied, he finds a job dealing with computers at a large company run by a billionaire named Ross Webster.  After discovering that he’s not getting all the money that he thinks he deserves(not too far from the truth for many of us), he decides to hack into the network and change some things around so he can make himself richer.  This gets the attention of Mr. Webster who decides to employ Gus to hack into a weather satellite to attack a country in South America.  Superman eventually intervenes, so Webster commissions Gus to create a supercomputer to destroy Superman.  The story does get silly from time to time, but it also allows for some rather strong character development for characters like Superman, Lana and Gus.  It’s really interesting to see certain here.  Seeing Superman being affected by synthetic Kryptonite, has a really interesting affect on Superman.  He goes from being forgetful to flat out mean, and it’s really cool to see Superman’s dark side take center stage, because we all know he has one.  That’s probably the most memorable aspect of the film.

The acting in Superman III is rather strong, considering the goofy tone of the film.  Most people seem to have a problem with Richard Pryor in the film.  To be honest, I thought he did a great job with what he was given.  His character wasn’t evil.  Misguided, maybe but not evil.  Annette O’Toole plays Lana Lang, Clark’s potential love interest in the film and she’s really something else.  Robert Vaughan is clearly having the time of his life playing a villain.  Unlike Lex Luthor, Vaughan’s Webster doesn’t surround himself with total nincompoops….well, just one anyway.  He’s a fun one to watch.  Jackie Cooper is reliable as always as Perry White.  However, the show, like the last two, belongs to Christopher Reeve.  The man has definitely refined his performance as the Man of Steel after two movies.  I really like the fact that his portrayal of Clark Kent, this time around, takes the klutz part of the character out of the equation.  Kent is a lot more confident this time around.  But as Superman, Christopher Reeve has no rival.  He’s just as amazing as Superman as he was in the original film.  But the character does take a much darker turn in this one due to exposure to synthetic Kryponite, giving him a Jekyll and Hyde style of personality.  It actually works.  Margot Kidder’s Lois Lane only appears in the film for a few minutes as nothing more than a cameo.  You know what?  That’s actually a good thing.

The action in the film is pretty much what you would expect from a Superman film of this era.  A lot of the effects have been done practically, as CGI was literally in its infancy in 1983, so they kinda didn’t use that.  The used a lot of miniatures and large sets, which lends more credibility to the goings-on.  The whole scene in the junkyard was extraordinary with Clark Kent taking on the dark version of Superman.  It was an emotionally charged fight, I thought and it was engaging.  The final confrontation with the giant supercomputer at the end of the film is something to behold.  While Webster and company have been doing their best to destroy Superman, the machine itself literally comes to life and tries to kill them all.  It also features one of the scenes that kind of disturbed me as a kid.  The part where the machine turns Vera into a cyborg was genuinely freaky.  The final result?  Not so much, but the actual transformation still sends chills down my spine.  Like the previous films, Superman III is a lot of fun.

Where the film does falter is in its tone.  There are a lot of moments where the film feels too much like a slapstick comedy.  Don’t get wrong, Richard Pryor did what he could with what he had, but it’s a character that really shouldn’t have been there in the first place.  Yeah, Superman II did get campy at time, at least the theatrical release, but Superman III takes camp to a whole different level, and it didn’t always work.  In fact, it got in the way of the film more than once.  They could have also cut out Lois Lane entirely, and the film would’ve been the same.  Jackie Cooper isn’t given nearly as much to work with and is also sidelined.  Jimmy Olsen makes some pretty stupid moves that gets him nearly killed at one point.

Is Superman III as bad as everyone says it is?  Not remotely.  After seeing the film for the first time in 20 years, I was surprised at how much I liked it.  There’s a lot of interesting ideas and what they did with giving Superman a dark side was executed quite well.  While certain parts of the film didn’t quite work, the rest of it fell pretty much in line with the first two, in my opinion.

My Final Recommendation:  Don’t give somebody a synthetic form of Kryptonite.  They may become a jerk in the process…..if they weren’t already.  8/10.

Published: 2014

Author: David J. Moore

Publisher: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.

I’ve been doing this blogging thing for nearly 8 years now.  I first started out on BlogSpot.com, but then a couple of years ago I got this new website to launch my new blog.  I have to say:  It’s been pretty gratifying that I get to talk about movies quite a bit.  Obviously, I’m not the only one out there that does this, and I’m not even the biggest name.  In fact, I’m small potatoes compared to some of the bigger bloggers out there.  Even so, I consider it a privilege to be able to do this.  Over the past couple of months, I’ve gotten some pretty big opportunities to expand on what I’ve been doing here.  I’ve gotten interviews and screened independent films that haven’t been released to the public yet.  It’s been humbling and a very eye-opening experience.  While I don’t see a whole lot of replies to my posts, I know they are being read, so to everyone that’s been reading my stuff, I am truly grateful to you.  I’m also grateful to folks like David J. Moore for giving me opportunities to expand beyond just doing reviews.  Thank you, everyone.  With that said, I’ve never really reviewed books before.  This site is about movies, so reviewing books seemed a little strange.  Then again, I’ve done reviews for some video games, so….I don’t really have an excuse.  It’s a new and exciting challenge that I look forward to doing in the future at some point.  It gives me great pleasure to present to you my review for David J. Moore’s World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide to Post-Apocalyptic Movies.

The first thing you will notice when you pick this thing up is its size.  It’s a hardcover and it weighs a good 2-3 pounds.  It’s also 432 pages which includes the forward as well as the acknowledgements and interviews index.  So….what’s this book about?  It’s a guide to movies set in a post-apocalyptic world.  The post-apocalyptic film is one of the most popular genres of film and novels and generally involves people trying to survive in a world that’s gone to hell.  One of the things that Mr. Moore has mentioned in the book is the various types of apocalypses that would render the planet nearly uninhabitable.  Everybody knows about the zombie apocalypse, which has been done to death.  As has the nuclear apocalypse.  There are obvious exceptions with movies set during or after those particular incidents.  However, there are a great many more kinds of end-of-the world scenarios that you may not have heard of.  I certainly didn’t until I read this book.  For example, there’s the whole Rapture apocalypse in which Jesus is supposed to return and lift his followers to Heaven.  Movies like Left Behind and This Is The End are just two examples.  You’ve also got your Alien Invasion sub-genre with movies like Independence Day and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  David has actually compiled a list of each sub-genre within the post-apocalyptic arena and the movies for each sub-genre.  You will periodically see the same movie in a different sub-genre.  Why?  Because a lot of these movies don’t necessarily fit into just one particular category.  The list that Mr. Moore has compiled is extraordinarily impressive.  I was fairly familiar with the post-apocalyptic film, but not to this degree.  I really had no idea how extensive the genre was.  It’s incredibly massive.

Mr. Moore spent 8 years and thousands of dollars tracking down and reviewing over 800 movies for this guide.  Based on that alone, I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of post-apocalyptic movies.  There’s a lot of information in here.  His reviews are listed in alphabetical order and he has a unique score that he gives each movie.  Instead of your typical 1-10, or 1-5, he has symbols.  The first is the nuclear sign which indicates that you should avoid the movie like the plague.  There’s a gas mask which indicates a movie of questionable quality, but has some redeeming value.  A gas can says that the movie isn’t for everyone, but some people will like it.  The Safe Zone is a good bet that most people will enjoy the movie.  The nuclear explosion is a film that comes highly recommended.  As you would imagine, when dealing with the post-apocalyptic genre, you’re going to have a lot of movies that just flat out suck.  There are going to be reviews in this guide that not everybody is going to agree with.  There’s quite a few that I don’t.  For example, there’s a movie called Kampfensage or The Challenge, which is a post-apocalyptic martial arts film.  He give it the nuclear symbol.  Personally, I would have given it a gas can.  It’s not going to be for everyone, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.  On the flip-side, there are a number of reviews that I do agree with, like Cyborg with Jean-Claude Van Damme.  Excellent film.  It’s a perfect example of the genre and is one of my favorite movies.  So, yeah, not everybody’s going to see eye-to-eye on things, but I think this world would be quite boring if we all agreed with each other on everything.

But wait, there’s more!  In addition to all the reviews that Mr. Moore has done, he’s also managed to get interviews with a large number of directors, actors and other filmmakers.  For example, he’s gotten multiple interviews with Albert Pyun, which really gives you an insight into how his experience with the Hollywood machine has been.  You get a lot of nifty little details and anecdotes.  He’s also interviewed actors like Richard Norton, Michael Pare, and Fred Williamson.  Some of these interviews last two pages or more.  The level of detail in this book is extraordinary.  Believe it or not, there’s still more.  In addition to the interviews and the reviews, there’s a lot of photographs and artwork for certain movies that a scattered throughout the book.  Some of them are in foreign languages and some in English.  It’s really interesting to see some of the marketing campaigns that foreign markets employ.

In addition to being very informative, World Gone Wild is also entertaining at the same time.  For example, Mr. Moore has also taken looks at some of the more……adult-oriented films.  These are not the films you want your kids to watch until you’ve had The Talk.  I just think it’s really hilarious that the post-apocalyptic genre would also include movies from the adult film industry.  I may have to search these out….for research purposes only, of course.  Unfortunately, the ugly reality of the post-apocalyptic film genre is that a lot of these movies that are mentioned in the book, are either out-of-print or very hard to find.  Companies like Shout! Factory have been doing a pretty decent job of finding some of these movies and giving them a proper DVD/Blu-Ray release.  Now, Mr. Moore has probably missed a few movies here and there, but in a project of this scale, it was going to happen.  Regardless, World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Movies is the most extensive look at the genre that I have ever seen.

The amount of detail that Mr. Moore goes into describing each kind of apocalypse as well as the extensive interviews that he’s conducted are nothing short of amazing.  If you are a big fan of post-apocalyptic movies, I urge you to seek this out.  It is currently available for 34.99 or your regional equivalent.  If you live in the states and are an Amazon Prime member, you can get the book for 26.63USD.  Regardless, this book comes highly recommended.  Check it out.

Released: August 2017

Directors: Shinji Aramaki, Masaru Matsumoto

Rated R

Run Time: 87 Minutes

Distributor: Sony Pictures

Genre: Action/Science Fiction/Animation

Cast:
Casper Van Dien: Colonel Johnny Rico
Dina Meyer: Dizzy Flores
DeRay Davis: One-Oh-One
Luci Christian: Carmen Ibanez
Justin Doran: Carl Jenkins

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating:  Am I missing something?  Is there some reason why 2017 is the year of the number 5?  Since the year began, we’ve seen franchises reach their fifth entry or higher.  Underworld, Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Alien Covenant(Prometheus doesn’t count as an Alien movie), and now, Starship Troopers.  I understand Transformers and Pirates.  Those franchises are extremely popular and make a lot of money.  Underworld surprised me, because the 4th movie didn’t make a whole lot of money.  It wasn’t a complete flop, but it did not impress.  Prometheus did well enough to re-ignite interest in the Alien franchise, so that one I can also understand.  But, how in the hell did we get a FIFTH Starship Troopers movie?  Last time I checked, nobody asked for it, and yet here we are.  So….how is it?

3 years after the events of Invasion, Johnny Rico finds himself demoted and assigned to a boring outpost on a Mars colony.  Why?  Apparently he allowed a Bug Queen to get to Earth before destroying her.  As a result, he was punished.  Finding himself training new Martian recruits, the space station that they are on comes under attack from Bug plasma that’s coming from Mars.  Apparently, nobody knew about the sneak attack the bugs made on Mars, except for a small number of people that include the newest and youngest Sky Marshall.  Forced to abandon the space station, Rico and his recruits find themselves stranded on the surface of Mars.  It’s not the worst setup in a science fiction film.  In fact, I found it pretty interesting.  However, the film falls back on tired and boring cliches that really feel out of place in a Starship Troopers movie.  It’s not the first film that deals with a government conspiracy to annihilate a colony that’s being insubordinate.  When you discover the reason why something like this is happening, it really takes the edge off, because it’s so damned stupid.  It’s a semi-decent premise that’s botched by some really awful writing.

As I said, the writing in the film is god-awful.  Most of the characters are so annoying that you can’t wait to see them die.  The only two characters that you really give a damn about are Johnny Rico and Dizzy Flores.  There is a surprising amount of character development there.  On the flip-side, when you realize how and why Dizzy shows up, you’re left wondering what the point was in addition to being creeped out.  So, that basically leaves Johnny as the only character that you can get behind.  Overall, the acting is generally atrocious with some extremely over-the-top acting.  Casper Van Dien returns to voice Johnny Rico.  This is the third time he’s played the character, and you know what?  He’s still got it.  Dina Meyer also returns to voice Dizzy.  She’s also quite good, despite being in the film for only a few minutes.  Everybody else is a complete and utter waste.  It certainly doesn’t help that the dialogue is cheesier than the original film, and the original movie was pretty cheesy at times, but in a good way.  Here, they’re just referencing and repeating one-liners from the original movie, and as such, don’t have the meaning they used to.

This is the second Starship Troopers film to be animated, and honestly, it’s not shabby.  The ship and creature designs are absolutely phenomenal.  In fact, the entire look of the film is really good.  The action sequences are surprisingly intense and well-crafted.  You’ve got big explosions, tons of bugs and some pretty epic space sequences.  That being said, the human character models are awful, with some really terribly lip-synching.  When Dizzy kisses Johnny, it looks like two plastic dolls going at it.  It’s pretty creepy, actually.

Sadly, Traitor of Mars, like all the other sequels, doesn’t get why the original film was so damned good.  The original film, while on the surface, may not have been a terrific movie, it’s when you peel back the layers that you get something extraordinary.  The original Starship Troopers was a satire, going after fascism and the ways we consume media.  The film was a lot smarter than most people give it credit for.  Was it ever going to be as good as the book?  Not a chance.  Honestly, considering how the first film ended, a sequel was not entirely out of the question.  It could have been done very well, if Paul Verhoeven had returned to direct.  Instead, Starship Troopers 2 and 3 got saddled with extremely low budgets which, in addition to a terrible script and horrible visuals, got torn to shred by the audience.  Not even Van Dien’s return as Rico in the third movie could’ve saved it.  Invasion was actually a pretty decent flick.  While some of the animation was a bit….off, it had some pretty spectacular battles, and plenty of the red stuff to go around.  Traitor of Mars could’ve been the sequel to turn things around for the franchise.  Instead, it only hammers home why the sequels sucked.  Honestly, not even the presence of Casper Van Dien and Dina Meyer can save this train-wreck of a film.  Visually, it’s very interesting, but there’s no substance beneath it, and the characters are mostly irritating.  I can’t recommend this one to…well….anyone.  Good visuals and decent action are not enough to raise this film from the depths of mediocrity.

My Final Recommendation: When it comes to the Starship Troopers sequels, Sony should’ve gotten in there and killed ’em all.  4/10.