I don't really have much of an issue with respect to the "Quest for Peace." I actually liked the premise.
Here's Superman, a guy who can do anything, he's a big fan of the human race, and here we are, perpetually two minutes from global thermonuclear annihiliation.
I mean, what's the point of saving all those people from burning buildings and landslides and bank robbers if its all just going to go poof! Who wouldn't want to try and do something about it?
Hell, there's Superman: Why isn't he ending famine, moving icebergs to the sahara, terraforming mars, helping NASA along, stopping wars. Why isn't he making the world better, rather than just rescuing Jimmy Olsen every time he stumbles down a mine shaft.
That's basically the premise of Superman 4, and you know, I can respect it. I can even respect the overall conceptual narrative. When Superman tries to make real changes in the world, of course there's going to be reaction. Of course there's going to be unforseen consequences. Of course the people he takes power from, politicians and armies, are going to push back. Certainly they're going to look to manufacture an anti-superman defense or their own tame version of Superman. Maybe in the end, Superman has to step back and grow up and realize that he can't save people from themselves, and try and make the world a better place in some other way.
Where I think it really falls apart is that having bravely decided to go out and wrestle with BIG IDEAS, it didn't know what to do with them, or how to follow through. It couldn't marry the grandeur of its concept to human concerns, couldn't work with subtlty or nuance. What kills it, is that it's trying to do way too much, its like sure, if they had twenty or thirty hours and unlimited budget, they could have maybe gotten all they wanted out of it.
But no one has twenty or thirty hours and unlimited budgets. We economize, we make choices, we have to figure out how to make the story work in ninety minutes and a finite budget. Real art, real genius is making things work within the limitations.
And they just couldn't. So what it comes down to is a thousand small bad decisions in the script, the plotline, the acting, the effects, the editing, and something that perhaps, done right could have been incredibly powerful becomes simply..... meh.
I mean, stop for a moment, visualize Superman IV the way Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman would have written it. Imagine that movie instead.
Cool or what?
Oh well. Maybe there's an alt history.
Actually, that's not completely insane. Alan Moore began his work on Marvelman in 1982. Broke through in America with Swamp Thing in 1983. He wrote a classic Superman story in 1985. He started Watchmen in 1986.
Superman IV? 1987.
I could see a hotshot Alan Moore, going from triumph to triumph in the early 80's, being recruited as a boy wonder by a Christopher Reeves looking for a fresh, brilliant 'realistic' new take.