I Forgot How Bad Those Final 2 Christopher Reeve Superman Films Are

After watching and rewatching James Gunn’s Superman trailer in recent weeks, I was on a Superman high. To keep it going, I decided that while building a Lego over Christmas break, I was going to rewatch all of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. Movies I’d seen before—I’m even old enough to have seen IV in theaters—but hadn’t rewatched in order in decades. What I found was one of the most quickly declining franchises I can think of, though I believe history has two of the films reversed.

Everyone would agree that Richard Donner’s 1978 film Superman is a classic. It’s so epic and filled with memorable scenes that it still stands as one of the great superhero films of all time. Clearly, it’s the best of the bunch. Superman II is a step down for certain but it nicely completes the story of that movie, giving us a full circle with the Clark Kent and Lois Lane characters and wrapping up the whole General Zod thing.

Then I popped on Superman III and immediately I knew it was a bad decision. It starts with Richard Pryor’s character in an unemployment office. He then, magically, becomes the world’s greatest computer hacker. Clark Kent goes back to Smallville and gets oddly close with an old classmate. Pryor and his evil boss make fake kryptonite that’s basically a cigarette and it inexplicably turns Superman into an asshole. Then we have to watch him be an asshole for way too long. Finally, Superman fights himself, becomes normal again, and fights the computer hackers while also inexplicably forgiving Pryor’s character. It’s, to put it bluntly, a huge piece of shit.

Superman III actually made me angry. If I wanted to watch a Richard Pryor movie, I would have done that. This was clearly just Richard Pryor starring in a Superman movie, not the other way around. It misunderstands the characters, never develops a dramatic plot, is filled with all sorts of out-of-place gags, and works better as an anti-smoking ad than anything else. This worried me greatly because while I’d seen Superman and Superman II a few times in recent years, I didn’t remember III or IV as well. All I did remember was, I thought, IV was the worst of the bunch. So when I started it, I was more than a little hesitant.

Going in with those low expectations, I actually found Superman IV: The Quest For Peace to be vastly superior to Superman III. It’s still terrible—let’s not forget that—but at least it’s attempting to be a Superman movie. He’s back in love with Lois Lane, with Margot Kidder back for the whole film. Lex Luthor has a new scheme and Gene Hackman is back for the whole film. Superman has to fight an otherworldly supervillain in Nuclear Man. And the character is working towards the betterment of the entire world. These are all things that feel crucial, in one way or another, to the DNA of a Superman movie.

Of course, all of this happens way too easily, and none of the actors—with the exception of the always exceptional Reeve—care one iota about what they’re doing. Superman IV forgets events of other movies, looks bad, feels somehow too small for the franchise, and the action set pieces are dreadful. It’s a bad, bad movie. But it’s a step up from the abomination of the previous one.

As the film ended (Superman IV is also about 45 minutes shorter than the previous three, mercifully, though there are many reasons for that), I felt pretty confident in my rankings. One is one, two is two, four is three, and three is four. It honestly felt like an almost infallible list. So, when I looked over at Wikipedia and Rotten Tomatoes to see that Superman III is better regarded— though not by much—than IV, I was a little surprised. Clearly that’s the narrative I had in my head going in but watching the two bad movies back to back, after the great first and good second ones, I felt like history was wrong. Superman III is awful in every sense of the word while The Quest For Peace is awful, while at least trying to be a Superman movie. And that put it over the top.

Thankfully, Warner Bros. does have the perfect palate cleanser for these two atrocities. No, not the unofficial sequel Superman Returns from 2006. We mean Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, a fantastic documentary about the man and the character. That might actually be the best Superman movie out there.

All of these movies are currently streaming on Max.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.