In addition to being the last of the Christopher Reeve-led Superman films, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is also generally considered the worst. The movie suffers from a poor script, atrocious effects and a ridiculous secondary villain, diminishing the character's film reputation for over a decade. It's hard to say if anyone could have saved the production, but Wes Craven, one of cinema's great horror directors, may have had a chance.
Work on Superman IV began after the Salkind family sold the rights to the character to Cannon Films, a studio infamous for its cheap and tacky approach to filmmaking. Craven, who had directed the original A Nightmare on Elm Street only a few years prior, was brought in to fill the role of director on the latest Superman sequel too. Details on his involvement or contributions remain scant to this day, but he departed the production early on after numerous disagreements with Reeve.
Cannon's decision to hire Craven was undoubtedly motivated by his work on 1982's Swamp Thing, a DC-owned character like the Man of Steel. That film received relatively positive reviews, indicating the cerebral horror legend was capable of transitioning to the more action-oriented superhero genre.
Craven's ability to reinvent genre tropes and shock audiences may have been a breath of fresh air to a series of movies that was already feeling stale after Superman III. The horror genre in general seems to be a natural stepping stone for many directors to superhero films, with the likes of Guillermo Del Toro, Sam Raimi, James Gunn, Tim Burton, Zack Snyder and even Richard Donner, who directed The Omen before helming the first Superman, all making the jump.
At the same time, a better fourth Superman film under Craven's watch was no guarantee. The director always had a very dark and anti-establishment reputation, a potentially poor fit for a movie like Superman IV, which aimed to appeal to children and their families. Craven's best work resulted from a response to trends in the industry -- The Last House on the Left, Nightmare and Scream all challenged conventions, something he probably wasn't at liberty to do in this case given how frequently he clashed with Reeve before filming even began.
Moreover, the actual director, Sidney J. Furie, was himself a well-respected artist who had made movies such as The Entity and The Boys in Company C that impressed and even influenced film legends like Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. Ultimately, the film's biggest obstacle to success was Cannon's determination to cut costs by all means necessary, which would have made the final product look amateurish in the hands of almost any filmmaker.
Whether a Wes Craven-directed Superman IV would have been better than the version that was made is highly questionable and certainly up for debate, but it's interesting to consider what Craven's version of Superman might have looked like. If he had been allowed the kind of creative control and budget necessary, the movie could have truly been unlike anything that came before it.