‘The Movie’s A Mess’: Jon Cryer Explains Why Superman IV Turned Out So Poorly, And That Included Throwing Shade At His Own Performance
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While opinion is ultimately subjective, when it comes to the ranking of the Superman movies, it’s generally agreed that 1987’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is the worst of the bunch. The final movie to star Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel was critically panned by professional reviewers and audiences alike, and it only ended up making a little over $30 million worldwide. Following his breakout performance as Duckie the prior year in Pretty in Pink, Jon Cryer starred in The Quest for Peace as Lenny Luthor, and the actor threw some shade at his own performance as Lex Luthor’s nephew while he was going over why this Superman movie turned out
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace came up when Cryer appeared on the podcast Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch, as he’d played Dr. Cyril Taft, a surgeon who befriended Mark Harmon’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs, in three episodes of the long-running CBS series. During his conversation with hosts Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo, talked about it’s fun to “find somebody who loves that piece of art that you thought was the the most embarrassing thing you ever did,” and The Quest for Peace definitely qualifies. First he said:
I did a movie called Superman IV, which was the last of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and it ran out of money halfway through, so the movie's a mess. If you watch the movie, they never finished the special effects, so they had to cut huge chunks out of the movie and it doesn't make rational sense anymore. And I'm sad about it because I loved the [original] Superman movie. I was 14 when Superman came out and I was the demo of that movie.
In 1985, Ilya Salkind, who produced the first three Christopher Reeve Superman movies with his father Alexander, sold the character’s film rights to The Cannon Group, Inc. for $5 million, and the company had considered making Superman V while Superman IV was being put together. However, as Jon Cryer stated, the drying up of funds for the latter movie resulted in the story about Superman clashing with Lex Luthor and Nuclear Man becoming incoherent. As a result, the Superman film series went on hiatus until the release of 2006’s Superman Returns, which served as a spiritual sequel to the first two Christopher Reeve-led movies (and also failed to get a sequel).
Jon Cryer also took some time to highlight his own role in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace being a disappointment, as he’s not a fan of how his performance as Lenny Luthor turned out. In his words:
I'm not good in it, by the way. That was another thing that I'm kind of embarrassed about was that I made a very strong character choice that in retrospect did not work.
Fortunately for the actor, he was able to redeem his standing in the Superman community when he was cast as Lex Luthor on Supergirl. Starting in Season 4, his Luthor became a recurring adversary for Melissa Benoist’s Kara Zor-El in the Arrowverse’s Earth-38, which later merged with Earth-1 and Black Lightning’s Earth to become Earth-Prime at the end of the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. Alas, Cryer was not brought back to play Luthor for Superman & Lois, which takes place on a separate Earth, but he did praise Michael Cudlitz when The Walking Dead alum was cast as the bald-headed baddie.
If you’ve never seen Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and would like to have context for what Jon Cryer was talking about, it can be streamed with a Max subscription. Otherwise, just keep checking back with us for updates on James Gunn’s Superman movie, which will take place in the DC Universe shared continuity and come out on July 11, 2025.
