10 Most Bitterly Disappointing Movie Showdowns

2. Superman vs Nuclear Man (Superman IV: The Quest For Peace)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zVsd5ubpJ4 Superman showdowns are another thing that are tricky to get right, partly because Kal-El is already so frickin' powerful that all conventional villains are immediately ruled out of the equation. The Superman films have thus generally followed one of two routes: either have the villain weaken him with Kryptonite so as to bring him down to their level (which I found slightly underwhelming since you always knew Supes was eventually going to regain the same godlike powers that had already been on display for much of the film), or range him against a similarly super-powered entity, and just hope that your special effects budget is sizeable enough to create a convincing fight. Superman II had managed this pretty successfully in the encounters with General Zod, Ursa, and Non, but the less said about Superman IV's showdown the better. Gene Hackman returned once again as Lex Luthor, one of the few positives of this mostly terrible third sequel, but Superman's principal physical clash is against Nuclear Man, an evil solar-powered clone of himself. His appearance, for starters, is just ridiculous, looking like he'd be far more at home in a Thundercats movie. Credit where it's due, their battle is given plenty of screen-time but it's all largely awful. Superman IV had a production budget of a meagre $17 million (the first film nine years earlier had $55 million) and by god it shows. It joins the fairly small list of official sequels that suffered from both inferior story and special effects to their original predecessors. At one point their battle even takes the pair to the Moon, whereupon Nuclear Man seems to think that driving Superman into the Moon's surface and covering him with a thin layer of space dust will be sufficient to permanently eliminate him. Supes promptly escapes, succeeds in nullifying his opponent's powers, and disposes of him by dropping him, fittingly, into the core of a nuclear power plant. Nineteen years on Bryan Singer wisely chose to disregard the events of Supermans III and IV in the backstory to his Superman Returns, though that film's showdown too left many feeling distinctly unimpressed. Signs so far look promising though that this year's reboot, Man of Steel, will be delivering in spades on the action front.