Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is generally seen as the nadir of Superman movies, but video editor Aaron Price sees potential in the movie for it to be realized as it was intended. The Quest for Peace was the fourth Superman movie for Christopher Reeve, and was meant to show the Man of Steel tackling the Cold War and the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, The Quest for Peace encounter major production problems, with its distributor Canon Film Group drastically cutting its budget.
In addition, some 45 minutes of footage was removed from The Quest for Peace, and all of the movie's problems led to its downfall and the end of the Christopher Reeve Superman series. However, Aaron Price believes there's potential to re-edit The Quest for Peace and polish up its visual effects to a higher standard, which he's in the process of doing with his fan edit of the film, which can be seen on Price's YouTube channel. Additionally, Price has petitioned Warner Bros. to release the 45 minutes of deleted footage of The Quest for Peace to him, in order to be refurbished and re-integrated back into the movie.
Screen Rant spoke to Aaron Price on his fan edit of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, how it came about, and why he feels the much maligned movie has the potential for a second chance.
Screen Rant - You're clearly a big Superman fan. How did you first come to be enamored with the character of Superman?
Aaron Price: I first got into Superman as a character when I was about 5 years old. My earliest memory is probably Superman IV that I remember watching at the time when I was 5 years old, and that was my first experience with Christopher Reeve in the role. I read the comic books as a kid growing up; he's always the top dog and Chris was always great in the role.
I loved all the Superman films. Superman II was my favorite as a kid, and as I got older, Superman: The Movie has taken that place. Whereas with Superman IV, I see it as a film that's got a lot of potential.
And moving off that, when did you decide that what you're currently doing with Superman IV is something you wanted to take on with your fan restoration?
Aaron Price: It started a couple of years ago. I've got some very good friends here in the U.K., and one has done a lot on Superman IV with regards to information on the extended cut of the film. I started off by just doing a color correction of all the flying shots of Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder, and somebody had talked about the underground sequence and how anyone from the U.K. could see that it was the London Underground and not New York.
It started off as a color correction, and then I decided there was a potential here to see if I could do something with the footage and make it look more like New York rather than London. So, I started off looking for stock footage, but it was too expensive, so then I went the route of 3D, and I actually built a subway in 3D.
I got quite a way into it, because I thought 'Well, if you're doing it in 3D, I could move the camera exactly where I want it in the scenes to match the actual footage.' But as I started rendering it out, I realized it looked a bit too clean, too digitalized, and I thought 'Well, I need to go back to using stock footage', and I found a website where you pay a subscription for a month and you can use as many clips as you want. I found some subway sequence footage and I didn't know at the time that the subway I used was Christopher Street Station, which was a bit weird.
I made it a rotoscoped sequence and tried to make it very similar to how it was originally in the script, with Superman dodging trains and flying through the tunnels, and I had a great response to it. When I finished it, I had this bug to start doing other scenes, and I thought, 'Maybe I can fix this, maybe I can make this a little better, and try to improve the film's visual finesse or make it a little more presentable.' I think the potential to maybe see this get an extended edition with these effects improved would be immensely great for the film, because obviously, it suffered terribly in the budget.
Superman IV was a big victim of circumstance and budget cuts. You've really done an impressive job with clips you've released on your YouTube channel, such as Superman repairing the Great Wall of China and the defeat of Nuclear Man. How much later in life did you read about what happened to the film and how did that play into your decision to try to finish what was started?
Aaron Price: Good question, I think it started about when they released the Christopher Reeve Superman films on DVD and they released all of the deleted footage. Up to that point, we thought all that footage no longer existed. A lot of people didn't even know this different version of the film existed, that there was a Nuclear Man 1.
Certain scenes in Superman IV, like when Nuclear Man says 'Where is the woman?', and Superman says 'Give it up, you'll never find her!' And it's like, 'He shouldn't know who Nuclear Man's talking about!', because there was this deleted footage where the first Nuclear Man meets Lacy in the Metro Club sequence, and later on when he's upgraded to the second Nuclear Man, he remembers her and takes from from the Daily Planet and there's this fight between Superman and Nuclear Man. It kind of goes into that scene where he asks where the woman is, and it all makes sense. There's a lot of loop holes and a lot of stories lost in the cut version.
Then, a few years ago, I just sort of said, 'There's this potential here'. I remember somebody told me something like 'I wouldn't even bother, because it's a bad movie.' My father used to work in the film industry, and even he said it was a terrible film visually. Story-wise, it had a great story, but obviously it suffered on the visual effects. So, I started doing color correction and rotoscoping of the subway sequence and the Great Wall of China, and it was actually a Hot Toys Superman figure I used for that! I got my friend Martin to photograph his Hot Toys Superman figure on a piece of paper flat out, and I cut it out and basically animated it. It was a bit of a motion blur, which they probably would have done it similarly had they had a bit more of a budget to do it in '87.
But yeah, that's pretty much how it started, and it's just taken off from there.
What's been the biggest challenge for you as far as the technical aspects of your fan edit of Superman IV?
Aaron Price: Probably the rotoscoping, because obviously, not having access to the original elements, any time you want to do any sort of color correction on things like flying stuff, you have to rotoscope, which is basically tracing around the elements and the actors, and you have to create a rotoscope basically frame-by-frame and isolate it from the backgrounds, and that's when you can basically do the color correction and make the background look better.
The rotoscoping is definitely the biggest challenge, because it's so time-consuming. You think about it's 24 frames per second that you're working on, so you have to make sure that rotoscope is clear frame by frame so it doesn't look too jaggy or messy throughout the scene. I use a tool called Rotobrush, which will basically calculate the color on the edges and all of that, and it does take some of the pain out of modernized rotoscoping, where in the old days, you would have to do a number of points around the object and then move each point frame-by-frame, and it would take forever! So, it does improve it and make it a lot easier.
You also mentioned in one video that YouTuber Oliver Harper has also contributed in some ways to your fan edit of Superman IV. Could you explain what his role has been?
Aaron Price: Well, I'm friends with Oliver on Facebook, and I actually used a couple of edit shots from his trailer for my little montage. Basically, I didn't used his clips, but I used the edits that were very similar. And in return, he used my Superman IV animation logo, which was a re-creation of the original trailer. He used that in the upgraded version of the U.K. trailer for Superman IV at the time, which you can see on his YouTube channel.
He's a great guy, Oliver, and he does some fantastic retro documentaries, and he's very, very professional, he's a great guy.
You mentioned Superman IV having a lot of potential with the footage that's survived. As far as the version that's been released, what stood out that made you realize it was really truncated and could be restored to what it was intended to be?
Aaron Price: I think it was that Superman IV is like a painted canvas that's had a few coats of paint, but it hasn't been finished off, and that's the way I see Superman IV. Fans lobbied for the Richard Donner Cut of Superman II, which when you look back now, is sort of a bit rough in ways and it probably could do with an upgrade as well. But with Superman IV, you've got a film that no one's ever seen outside of the screener. It's never been seen in the full, uncut version.
Thankfully, we live in a day and age now where new cuts are becoming more popular with fans. You've got the Snyder Cut of Justice League and then a few years ago, the Warner Archive had brought out the three-hour cut of Superman: The Movie, which had done very well when it was released on Blu-ray. I think with Superman IV - the same thing with Superman II and Superman III - having extended cuts of these films would be absolutely brilliant for the fans, and I think it would be a massive money-maker for Warner Bros and the Warner Archives and HBO Max to actually bring these out in their full, uncut versions of the films.
The examples you cite there of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut and Zack Snyder's Justice League are kind of the go-to examples. As far as what you've done so far with Superman IV, you mention in one your videos that you received some response from Christopher Reeve's family. Could you share the story behind that?
Aaron Price: Yes, Matt Reeve, he sent me a personal response on Twitter to one of my videos that he loved what I was doing. He said it was super-impressive work, pun intended, and he asked what software I use and if there was really a version of the film that's salvageable, and it's sort of a taboo topic in their household.
It was actually a bit emotional actually when I got that response, because for me, obviously Chris is no longer around, and I would love for Christopher Reeve to have seen the work I was doing. Chris had always said, 'The less said about Superman IV, the better,' at the time, and I think it would've been nice for him to have been able to see fans out there still loving these films. And there is that nostalgic part of Superman IV, as well.
Obviously, it's bad, but it has its good points. Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder - you have all the original cast, but the flying effects were the biggest letdown, because it was the only Superman film that didn't use front projection. It relied too heavily on blue screen, which sadly from a visual effects point of view, was only really used for shots where you fly towards the camera or backing away. It was never designed to be used for long shots where you have the actors up in the air, and the color correction was never done, which made it even worse, I felt, as well.
And 45 minutes of footage removed, which is just so hard to fathom.
Aaron Price: Yeah, it's madness to think that so much footage was taken out. There's certain sequences of the deleted footage that do make you cringe a little bit, you've got the first Nuclear Man, he's got that metal dish over his private area and he goes 'Da-da!', but at the same time, it makes sense because he's supposed to be like a child. I think some of the reason they cut a lot of that footage out was some of the visual effects were not completed.
And the deleted very final end shot with Superman and Jeremy in space where he flies him over the Earth and says 'Tell me what you see Jeremy', but he's not wearing a space suit. It's a crazy scene, but if Warner Bros. were to give me that footage, what I would do is I would rent a space suit, use either a kid or myself, put me on a green screen, film me doing the same motions, and overlay that over Jeremy, and make it look like he's actually in a space suit, as it was done in the comic book version of it.
You did something similar to that with Lacy when Nuclear Man takes her; you changed that to where they're still on Earth when Superman moves the moon and Nuclear Man falls into the ocean. With your big goal being for Warner Bros. to allow you to polish up and reintegrate the 45 minutes of deleted footage, there been any response from them at all?
Aaron Price: Nothing! [laughs] I've had a couple of copyright strikes, but no actual removal of my videos. I think it's just the algorithms of YouTube, but it hasn't actually stopped any of my videos being shown.
In terms of Warner Bros, n. But I have spoken to someone who apparently has shown my work to somebody who works in Warner Archive and liked what they've seen, but it's all a question of money. Are they willing to spend the money to restore it? If they put the whole film on a hard drive, I could do it all from home.
With the reputation of Superman IV being so negative, what would say to those who might be of the sentiment that it's not a salvageable movie or something that's worth going after?
Aaron Price: That's a good question. I probably would say, 'Because the film can be improved'. It's never going to be on the same level as the first two films, you're always going to have that Canon budget style of films still there. But I see the potential of putting this film on the same level as Superman III in terms of visually. If the film could be improved a few levels up on the visual standpoint, the film would look a lot better, it would be a better presentation. You could watch the film without it feeling like a Canon film, like, 'This isn't a film that was done with a $17 million budget, this look like a film that was done more with $25 million or maybe $30 million'.
One of the things I don't want to do is a modern restoration, like a Star Wars type of restoration with modern CGI over the old footage. I want the new effects to blend in with the time period of the era of the film, and that is very important in terms of you could sit down and watch the film and think 'That works, that fits with the film, it doesn't stand out. It blends in with the time period of '87.'
I would say I see the potential that this could be made into a better film. I've had a lot of feedback and comments of people saying 'Oh, this looks a lot better than the original scene!', and the fans have really kept me going for this, because the feedback I've had has been incredible. People have said 'You've fixed this scene!' I don't truly believe you can 'fix' Superman IV, you can't 'fix' what's been filmed, but you can improve what has been filmed to make it look a lot better with its presentation, improve the films visual finesse.
Also, I wanted to do a quick shout-out to my friend Jim Bowers of CapedWonder.com, who is doing a Christopher Reeve legacy event at Motor Con in Detroit from May 13 - 15th. There's going to be quite a number of guests from the Superman films, such as Sarah Douglas who played Ursa, Jack O'Halloran who played Non, Marc McClure who played Jimmy Olsen, the baby Clark Kent Aaron Smolinski, Mark Pillow who played Nuclear Man, Mariel Hemingway who played Lacy Warfield, and the writer and penciler of the recent Superman '78 comic books Robert Venditti and Wilfredo Torres. If you're near Motor Con, it's worth going to and supporting, and it will also be helping the Christopher and Dana Reeve foundation, as well.