This is the film where the "Superman" franchise really fell off, but it's definitely not without its merits and there's also a lot of small things that could have been changed, added, or subtracted that would have made this movie much better and possibly on par with "Superman II."
The main problem is the script, it definitely could have used a rewrite to focus more on certain aspects of the plot. I honestly don't mind the more comedic and light-hearted tone, that's not terrible to me. It's really the fact that there's an incredibly half-baked romance plot between Superman (Christopher Reeve) and his hometown sweetheart Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole) that doesn't really go anywhere at all and doesn't have anywhere near the chemistry of Reeve and Margot Kidder, who's still in this movie but just barely. There's also the problem of the "evil" Superman personality crisis. It's a similar problem that I have with "Superman II" when he gives up his powers just for a brief moment and then all of the sudden gets them back in that movie; it's an incredibly underutilized plot point that could have gone a lot further.
And then we get to the actual meat and potatoes with the plot of the supervillain here. I'll start off with saying Robert Vaughn is definitely not a good stand-in for Gene Hackman. I find it kind of strange that Hackman returned for the fourth film but not this one. Vaughn lacks all of the charisma and vigor that Hackman had. I actually didn't mind Richard Pryor, to tell you the truth. I thought he was one of the better parts of this movie and definitely added a lot of much needed comedy to a dull performance from Vaughn.
Anyways the plot is that Pryor's character is a lower level computer programmer who's tasked by Vaughn's character with hacking into a weather satellite in order to disrupt the harvest of Colombian coffee beans, thereby raising the price of his own stock via supply and demand. Then doing the same thing with the world's oil supply. Honestly some of the plots in these movies are more similar to something you'd see out of a "Bond" movie, it's a similar criticism I have with the first "Superman" film. I wish they had done something with Bizarro or maybe Brainiac. There's hints of those things with the alter-ego and the super computer at the end.
The movie itself isn't boring, it's entertaining and none of the performances are completely terrible. There's nothing really "so bad it's good" quality either, it's just a very ho-hum movie that's kind of in that murky area between competent and incompetent. I'd honestly say leave it unless you just can't get enough of the Reeve era "Superman."
The main problem is the script, it definitely could have used a rewrite to focus more on certain aspects of the plot. I honestly don't mind the more comedic and light-hearted tone, that's not terrible to me. It's really the fact that there's an incredibly half-baked romance plot between Superman (Christopher Reeve) and his hometown sweetheart Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole) that doesn't really go anywhere at all and doesn't have anywhere near the chemistry of Reeve and Margot Kidder, who's still in this movie but just barely. There's also the problem of the "evil" Superman personality crisis. It's a similar problem that I have with "Superman II" when he gives up his powers just for a brief moment and then all of the sudden gets them back in that movie; it's an incredibly underutilized plot point that could have gone a lot further.
And then we get to the actual meat and potatoes with the plot of the supervillain here. I'll start off with saying Robert Vaughn is definitely not a good stand-in for Gene Hackman. I find it kind of strange that Hackman returned for the fourth film but not this one. Vaughn lacks all of the charisma and vigor that Hackman had. I actually didn't mind Richard Pryor, to tell you the truth. I thought he was one of the better parts of this movie and definitely added a lot of much needed comedy to a dull performance from Vaughn.
Anyways the plot is that Pryor's character is a lower level computer programmer who's tasked by Vaughn's character with hacking into a weather satellite in order to disrupt the harvest of Colombian coffee beans, thereby raising the price of his own stock via supply and demand. Then doing the same thing with the world's oil supply. Honestly some of the plots in these movies are more similar to something you'd see out of a "Bond" movie, it's a similar criticism I have with the first "Superman" film. I wish they had done something with Bizarro or maybe Brainiac. There's hints of those things with the alter-ego and the super computer at the end.
The movie itself isn't boring, it's entertaining and none of the performances are completely terrible. There's nothing really "so bad it's good" quality either, it's just a very ho-hum movie that's kind of in that murky area between competent and incompetent. I'd honestly say leave it unless you just can't get enough of the Reeve era "Superman."