10 Actors Who Hate ONE Movie In Their Franchise

While the general consensus is that both the third and fourth of Christoper Reeve's Superman movies weren't all that great, it's Superman IV: The Quest For Peace that has been a true punching bag for fans and critics ever since release.

Despite Reeve having a fair amount of creative sway on the sequel, the film's budget was slashed during production to a pitiable $17 million - just a fraction of the original's $55 million - and poor test screenings resulted in almost 45 minutes of material being cut.

In Reeve's 1999 autobiography Still Me, he wrote of his distaste for the sequel:

"The less said about Superman IV, the better... We were also hampered by budget constraints and cutbacks in all departments. Cannon Films had nearly thirty projects in the works at the time, and Superman IV received no special consideration. For example, [writers] Konner and Rosenthal wrote a scene in which Superman lands on 42nd Street and walks down the double yellow lines to the United Nations, where he gives a speech. If that had been a scene in Superman I, we would actually have shot it on 42nd Street.

Richard Donner would have choreographed hundreds of pedestrians and vehicles and cut to people gawking out of office windows at the sight of Superman walking down the street like the Pied Piper. Instead, we had to shoot at an industrial park in England in the rain with about a hundred extras, not a car in sight, and a dozen pigeons thrown in for atmosphere. Even if the story had been brilliant, I don't think that we could ever have lived up to the audience's expectations with this approach."

While Reeve has made it clear in interviews that he only has much fondness for his first two Superman films, the fourth's troubled, low-budget production seemed to well and truly break his spirit.