After saving a bunch of cosmonauts in the Russian space station,
Superman goes back to Smallville, where he has placed his old farm up for sale
(I assume his mother is deceased, or else the old lady is in for a big shock).
Heading back to Metropolis, Supes saves Lois’ life once again when she boards a
runaway subway train. Arriving for work at the Daily Planet, Clark Kent is
shocked to discover that it’s been sold to a sleazy tabloid company owned by
David Warfield, who places his darling daughter Lacy (Mariel Hemmingway) in
charge of the day to day operations. If nothing else, Clark’s got job security,
because Lacey has the hots for him.
When peace talks finally fall through between the US and the USSR (this was
filmed before the break up of the Soviet Union), and tensions--along with
production of nukes--increase, a little boy writes a letter to Superman asking
him to get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world. Superman ponders this
for a while, reveals his identity to Lois, then makes her forget everything
again (talk about a real manipulative bastard, eh?), before deciding to do what
little Jeremy asks. And so Supes gets rid of all the nukes on earth (thereby
proclaiming himself Lord and Master of all of us puny humans).
This makes everybody happy, except for the nasty arms dealers, who team up with
Lex Luthor. Luthor has once again escaped jail with the help of his nephew Lenny
(Jon Cryer, before his career was rescued by Two And A Half Men), and he uses a
lock of Superman’s hair to create Nuclear Man, a dude in a really, really silly
costume who has super powers equal to that of Supes. Mayhem ensues, and Superman
saves Lacey, who’s taken by Nuclear Man into the vacuum of outer space and yet
still survives. Maybe she’s got super powers, too--or maybe the filmmakers just
got bored to the point where they didn't care? If so, I certainly know how they feel.
On the commentary track for Superman II: The Donner Cut, Tom Mankiewicz talks
about how Christopher Reeve had come to him, asking if he would work on the
script for The Quest For Peace. Mankiewicz refused, telling Reeve that it was a
bad idea to get Superman involved in real world events, such as the arms race,
and that the character should stick to threats of a more fantastic nature. In
retrospect, Mankiewicz was right; the filmmakers should have avoided tackling
such a weighty issue--but then again, they should have just spared all of us by
not making this film at all.
Lacking the epic scope of the first two Superman
films, The Quest For Peace is just very, very lame, with sophomoric humor and
shoddy special effects that aren't up to par even for a made for TV movie. This
movie is barely an hour and a half in length, and yet I still caught myself
glancing at the time, wondering when it would be over. When Bryan Singer decided
to make Superman Returns, he made the decision to ignore this movie. Having seen
this piece of tripe, I can understand why.
--SF
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