Have you ever put together a jigsaw puzzle and noticed a couple of pieces missing? That’s always a problem. Now imagine your jigsaw puzzle missing a third of the pieces. Now that’s a significant problem. And yet that’s what happened with the theatrical release of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace in July 1987. Like many fans, I was determined to find out what happened and why major parts of the film were cut out at the last minute.

Part of the answer came in April 1990, when an extended version of the film premiered on TV. Unlike the Salkind international versions of the first three films, which had aired on ABC and numerous foreign markets during the 1980s, this new extended version of Superman IV ran in syndication on the local Fox station, WDBD Channel 40 in Jackson, Mississippi, and on nationally known stations such as WGN in Chicago and Superstation TBS in Atlanta. Like its theatrical counterpart, the film ran in a two-hour time slot, with a TV Net trailer prepared. Lo and behold, there was footage of Clark and Lacy kissing in the back seat of a car! Where did that scene come from? And there were two new scenes as well, one of Superman saving a little girl (his daughter Alexandra) and her family from a tornado, and one of Superman preventing a nuclear missile going off in the heart of Red Square in Russia. And there were scores of photographs in the film’s novelization, poster magazine, and print interviews. But it didn’t lead me to any answers.

With the explosion of the Internet in the 1990’s, people could now publicly share information with one another on any possible topic. One of the first searches I did was for any information about the Superman film series. This led me to a Geocities web page managed by Gregory Oshel about the films. It was here that I first learned about a version of Superman IV that ran 134 minutes in length. According to Oshel, the running time was based on a statement made by Harrison Ellenshaw based on a sneak preview of the film shown in Orange County, California, in the latter half of June 1987, approximately one month before the film’s release. Apparently something had happened.

This eventually led me to the Superman Cinema website and message board, hosted by Dharmesh Chauhan, and it was here that more information was shared. Reportedly, people who attended the sneak preview were less than impressed with the film, with some people leaving during the screening, which led to executives from Warner Bros. demanding that the film be edited to meet its release date. As a rest, the release date was pushed back a week from its original release date of July 17, 1987, to July 24, 1987, to allow for the editing, the assembly of the remaining footage, and its final distribution. The final film would run 89 minutes in the United States, while it would run 92 minutes in all of Cannon’s overseas markets. According to one report, Harrison Ellenshaw had requested that the tornado and Russia scenes be reinstated to the international release, and a final film continuity report confirmed a 92-minute running time for the film overseas. But the whereabouts of that footage remained unknown at that time.

Around then a number of reports also surfaced on the message boards. Reportedly, a number of people had posted that they recalled seeing the 134-minute version of Superman IV on the SFM Holiday Network, which was defunct by that time. Numerous versions of the same statement popped up on occasion: either the poster or a friend or family member had recorded the film during its lone broadcast, but something happened to the tape – it got recorded over, it got misplaced, they couldn’t find it – and they couldn’t supply the proof. The stories kept leading nowhere, and the SFM rumor was ultimately debunked as false. Serious Superman fans began pursuing every possible lead, and I myself debunked a few leads, including one that supposedly led me to a video store in the Netherlands that claimed to have a 120-minute version of the film. It turned out to be 88 minutes in length. By the early 2000’s, I tracked another lead to a seller on eBay who reportedly had a copy of this 134-minute print on tape. All he had to show for it in his posting were two photos both in poor shape. I was hesitant about chasing this lead down the rabbit hole. Good thing I didn’t – or I would have lost my money in the process.

But not only did Dharmesh Chauhan post photos of some of these lost scenes from the missing footage, so did Jim Bowers on his then-newly launched website CapedWonder.com. From here other websites, including Steve Younis’ Superman Homepage, the unofficial Christopher Reeve page, and numerous others began to share more information on these missing scenes and the film’s production.

With the advent of the DVD format in 1997, it was only a matter of time before the Superman films appeared on the new format. Previously, the only versions of the film on home video were the original full screen version on VHS and laserdisc, and an interesting widescreen version of the film on a Japanese laserdisc from Tohokushinsha Video and King Video. This version ran 93 minutes long and contained the additional footage that was shown in the 1990 syndicated broadcasts. It’s here that we learned that this was in fact the Cannon Films international version of the film. To this date it remains the only source of the longest known cut of the film. I remember finding it on eBay when I lived in Mississippi, but when I moved to Alabama in 2005, the laserdisc did not survive the move. It had broken in half.

Things began to heat up in November 2006 when Warner Home Video released a massive 14-disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition DVD set of all of the Superman films (including both cuts of Superman: The Movie, two versions of Superman II, and the theatrical releases of Superman III, Superman IV, and Superman Returns), complete with audio commentaries, deleted scenes, and documentaries. Included in the release were 30 minutes of deleted scenes from Superman IV and an audio commentary by Mark Rosenthal, who confirmed that the original version of the film was indeed 134 minutes long. Granted, the deleted scenes were taken from a workprint version of the film, but much of what was lost was now available for everyone to view and consider. The original heart of the film, of Superman’s hope for the world as seen through the eyes of a child, is clearly present in the film’s original and more optimistic ending. The majority of the film’s lost subplot involving Lex Luthor’s creation of a flawed prototype Nuclear Man (played by Clive Mantle) is present. Portions of a seriocomic fight between Superman and the prototype Nuclear Man, which was budgeted at approximately $6 million (a good third of the film’s overall budget), are present. Much of Luthor’s motivation towards manipulating the sales of nuclear arms to the U.S. and Soviet military forces is present. An exciting confrontation between Superman and the second Nuclear Man, which nearly brings the U.S. and Soviet forces to their knees, was included. And we have more footage of Christopher Reeve in action as Superman, which is always a pleasure.

In 2007 I took it upon myself to assemble a reconstruction of all of the footage from Superman IV, using the U.S. theatrical release, a copy of the Cannon international version, and the deleted scenes from the DVD, for the project. It wasn’t the best, I admit, but it was all that I had to work with, which sufficed. Once I was finished, I began to see the original intentions that Sidney Furie and Christopher Reeve had in mind. My reconstruction of the film, with all the footage in place, ran 116 minutes in length. That meant that some 18 minutes of footage remained unreleased. The film still had a cheap quality to it in places, and the visual effects still did not hold up to par with the previous films, but there was something there now. The film began to make sense. It remains one of the few bright spots of my life from that otherwise painful and difficult year.

In February 2008 we were treated to another major find, with the release of “Superman: The Music – 1978-1988”, a generous eight-disc CD box set containing the complete soundtracks to all four theatrical films and the Ruby-Spears animated series. For the first time we had the complete score to Superman IV as conducted by Alexander Courage in May and early June 1987 in Germany and England, respectively, and we further saw into the original intentions of the film. While the reduced budget affected the scoring process, the final score reveals an even larger canvas and emotional excitement than was seen and heard in the final film. I remember attending an online chat session on Talk City around 1999 or 2000 with Alexander Courage, Dennis McCarthy, and Don Davis, and questions about the score to Superman IV were posed to Courage. At that time, he stated that he did not see the need for a soundtrack release to the film, feeling that the music sounded repetitive. While the score does at times hit the same beats, it has a freshness that sounds less like the original John Williams compositions and yet more of how he would have further expanded the musical canvas with the new themes and action music. To this day it remains a highlight of the box set. The score would later be re-released in a separate CD set by LaLaLand Records in 2018 to mark the 80th anniversary of the launch of the Superman character.

With all of this information in mind, I reached the conclusion that, after scoring ended on the film, the complete 134-minute version of Superman IV was shown in its finished form to the sneak preview audience in California in the latter half of June 1987, with all of the footage, music, and visual effects completed and in place. I must stress the word all here. One only needs to hear the music in two key deleted scenes and consider the finished quality of many of the visual effects in the workprint footage. And we must also consider the theatrical trailers and TV spots for the film, which contained even more finished footage from the film. All of these pieces are crucial to understanding the overall picture. It is still baffling that a major studio would order severe cuts to a film, resulting in a loss of 42-45 minutes of footage only a month before its release. Perhaps their fears about the poor quality of the film were on the money more than they realized. I remember reading one interview with Menahem Golan in which he believed that editing the film down to 89-92 minutes would guarantee more showings at the box office and more money in return. Not necessarily so.

Thirty-five years have passed, and we still do not know all of the answers to all of our questions related to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Jackie Cooper, Sam Wanamaker, Menahem Golan, and Alexander Courage are long since gone. All we have left are their thoughts on the film to consider. In recent years, however, Sidney J. Furie has opened up a bit more about the film. In the 2015 book Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films, biographer Daniel Kremer has given us the first complete biography of Furie, which includes his thoughts on Superman IV. A 2017 interview with Paul Rowlands for the website Money Into Light sheds further insight about Furie and the film:

“Sidney doesn’t like to talk about the film. He gave me an early warning when we started the book. We discussed each of his films in chronological order. We would get to a particular film and then he would then go off on free association. But when we got to Superman IV, he said, ‘OK, you got 5 minutes. Go.’ He has never actually seen the final cut that wound up releasing, and has no interest in doing so. When I told him about the mountain of criticisms regarding the special effects, he had no idea because he had left once Cannon cut the film down. At that point, the effects were unfinished. In fact, by the look of things, they were permanently left unfinished. Sidney shares the least blame on that production, but people like to pile the blame on him.

“There really was an attempt to harken back to the original Donner film. There are very well meaning aspects to that film that are quite endearing, and there are a number of scenes that are affecting in some ways. Unfortunately, in the final edit, of which he had no part of, the movie doesn’t really coalesce and falls apart, and the special effects do deserve the ignominious reputation they have gotten over the years. People ask why Furie even agreed to make the film, but Richard Lester made Superman III (1983), and that didn’t hurt his status as an auteur, which doesn’t seem fair. Why does Lester get a pass and Furie get the shaft? Both have made masterpieces and both have made flops, and both have recognisable styles.”

Most importantly, the master footage from that lone sneak preview remains unseen, including some 18 minutes that, with the exception of still photographs, the various drafts of the shooting script production logs, and studio memos, we know very little about. It’s a jigsaw puzzle with quite a number of pieces gone. And yet a small niche of fans remains hopeful that Warner Home Video will one day release the complete, original version of the film on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive in the same way that the extended TV cut of Superman: The Movie and the international version of Supergirl were released. In recent years Warner Bros. has stated that the complete 134-minute print of the film exists in their vaults. In what condition, however, nobody knows. And with the forthcoming 4K releases of the Superman films in 2023, perhaps with enough effort, we may finally have the answers we are looking for.

But beyond that, it still has a heart and an intention to it that Christopher Reeve and the cast and crew attempted to recapture. It’s a guilty pleasure, I must admit, one that takes me back to the days when I was on the cusp of adulthood, yet still with the heart and wonder of a child. I still dream to this day, as I am well in the second half of my life now, though my innocence and home, like Clark Kent faces in the film, are now forever gone. But it’s all part of a bigger adventure, one that, like Superman, we all face.

(Some screenshots and photographs in this blog are used courtesy of CapedWonder.com.)