Nuclear Man (Superman IV: The Quest for Peace)



Nuclear Man is the main villain from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Why He Sucks

 * 1) The character is poorly written and not even based on the comics
 * 2) His weakness itself is very pathetic and contradicts itself. As while he is weak while isolated from the Sun, there are several scenes where he is indoors without the sunlight.
 * 3) Awful dialogue, such as "I am the father now!" and "If you will not tell, I will hurt people" A lot of his dialogue ties into the deleted scenes involving a failed prototype of Nuclear Man, making his dialogue in the end product just weird and nonsensical.
 * 4) His costume looks laughable and too "comic booky".
 * 5) Barely has any goal, besides attacking Superman and trying to kidnap Lacy Warfield, the latter of which he apparently does just because he sees her on the cover of a magazine and finds her attractive (this again made more sense with the deleted scenes including proto-Nuclear Man, albeit not a whole lot more).
 * 6) His defeat is laughably bad, with Superman dropping him into the cooling tower of a nuclear plant, and this somehow destroying him.
 * 7) Even more laughable is how originally defeated Superman. He scratched Superman's neck with his giant, golden fingernails. No, really.
 * 8) Nuclear Man is uninteresting in the movie, as he feels like a generic plot device who doesn't do much more than just act as a glorified henchman for Lex Luthor.
 * 9) His death was laughably bad, just a generic "falling down to death" cliche.
 * 10) In the comic adaptation, he transforms himself into a giant, and a nuclear missile.