Originally conceived as a support character for Superman, Steel aka John Wesley Irons was arguably a bit of a strange choice to bring to the big screen as he'd only really been a supporting DC character at this point. Even stranger was the decision to cast Shaquille O'Neal (yup, the basketball player) in the title role as he had no acting experience. It's possible that Warners were flush off the success of the Michael Jordan-fronted "Space Jam" film from earlier in the year but...well, let's be honest, that movie wasn't really much good either. "Steel" is another film which regularly crops up when people mention the worst superhero movies ever so let's see whether the foreboding is justified...
The story starts with John Wesley Irons as a weapons tech expert in the US army where he's assisted by his two sidekicks Susan Sparks and Nathaniel Burke (Judd Nelson from "The Breakfast Club", "St Elmo's Fire" etc). The team have just developed an anti-tank missile based on sonic power and are showing a visiting Senator how it works. As it hasn't been tested at high velocity, Irons has insisted to his team to keep the power at medium level but Burke disobeys when he gets the chance to fire it himself, setting it to the highest frequency he can. The resulting sonic boom bounces off the building it's aimed at and crushes the one the team are in, killing the Senator and crushing Sparkes' legs, leaving her confined to a wheelchair.
At the subsequent hearing, Irons testifies against Burke who's discharged, much to his anger. Irons also opts to leave the military himself, scarred by the experience and returns to his old neighbourhood in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to him, Burke is also heading there with the blueprints for the team's weapons with the aim of selling them on the black market. He strikes up a distgribution deal with Big Willie, the owner of a local arcade machine warehouse where, unbeknown to Irons, his younger cousin Martin is working. Burke quickly shows his ruthless streak when one of Willie's associates questions his motives by cutting the lift cables as she's on her way up from the basement sending her plummeting to her death.
Later that evening, Irons is on patrol with Nora, a policewoman ex of his, taking Martin to a youth workshop when they witness a robbery at a local bank with the crims using the same weapons that Irons helped develop in the military. When Nora is shot, Irons takes off after one of the gang who missed the getaway car but after pursuing him across a goods yard in a rather long and tedious sequence, he gets whacked over the head by the gang's leader Slats who'd stopped back to pick his man up. Well that went nowhere fast.
Realising something's up, Irons travels to the Veterans' Hospital in St Louis where Sparks has been moved to due to her dad being dead and her mum being an alcoholic. He busts her out of the place by carrying her wheelchair and takes her back to LA where he's set up shop in a local junkyard with his Uncle Joe who runs it. Their plan is to come up with a new set of weapons to counter the ones the criminals are using by constructing them from recycled parts that have been left for scrap. Although (understandably) initially sceptical, Sparks eventually agrees to join up with the operation.
We see their creation in action as Irons becomes the vigilante Steel, stopping muggers and breaking up gang fights. Okay, let's just take a quick rain check here - is that the ugliest superhero costume you ever saw or what? It basically looks like a poor man's Robocop and makes Steel look more like a bad guy than a hero. Anyway, I digress...
Steel's vigilante antics attract the attention of the local rozzers and he manages to make a getaway on his superbike with Sparks turning all the lights green as he's homeward bound allowing him to give the cops the slip.
After his initial outing as Steel, Irons finds himself playing the waiting game waiting for Burke and Willie's men to strike again but he intercepts them when they target the local federal reserve. However, when he realises the people he's fighting have weapons just as strong as his, Steel is forced to beat a retreat, hooking up with Uncle Joe in their surveillance van.
Burke, however, has recognised his old partner and sent a load of doctored footage to the local authorities which makes it look like it was Steel who committed the bank job. The cops duly turn up at his aunt's place to arrest him but he's busted out by Sparks who uses phone technology to disguise her voice making the prison officers think she's the local DA.
Irons sets off after Burke's gang again but they've also been doing recon into his activities and turn up at the junkyard to abduct Sparks. They've also set up a scheme where they plan to auction off their hi-tech weapons to the highest bidder including a number of terrorist organisations.
Steel turns up at the auction but gets ambushed and captured with Burke using Sparks as a pawn to get him to drop his gun. However, he doesn't count on her having an armoured wheelchair which she uses to scare off the arms dealers. A shootout duly ensues between Steel, Sparks, Joe, Martin and the military (who Joe has tipped off) on the one side and Burke and his associates on the other. Steel eventually comes out on top when he turns Burke's sonic boom gun back against him and causes him to crash into the wreckage of the warehouse as it burns to the ground.
The film ends with the heroes all out for lunch at Aunt Irma's where Sparks reveals she's now built herself a new high-tech wheelchair which allows her to walk again. Everybody celebrates. Fin.
It's taken a while but congratulations, we officially have a new wooden spoon winner for DC Saturdays. It's bad enough that "Steel" is basically an incredibly formulaic and ultra-predictable 12-cert action film by numbers which, regardless of who was in it, would probably send most discerning viewers to sleep at short notice but when you add in to this Shaquille O'Neal, a man of almost supernatural ineptitude when it comes to acting, in the title role, you really have got an almost perfect s**tstorm for a cinematic disaster. There's no nice way of putting it, this film really is the worst thing I've sat through for DC Saturdays over the last five months or so and if you look at some of the competition it's up against for that award, that's certainly no mean feat.
In fact, so bad was this film that we wouldn't be seeing any more cinematic output from DC for half a decade after this (though I've a feeling that "Batman & Robin" which came out a couple of months earlier didn't help matters either). It would take until 2002 for any DC tie-ins to surface on the silver screen and even then, 2002's "Road To Perdition" and 2003's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" were both from DC subsidiaries rather than the main company itself (though that's still enough for me to merit reviewing them in this blog). In fact the next film from the main DC stable would be another legendary turkey in 2004's "Catwoman". Proof that even after a long amount of time to think things over, some people just never learn...
FINAL RATING: 🤖🤖 (2/10)
CURRENT DC FILM TABLE
1. Batman Returns (1992) (9/10)
2. Batman (1989) (8/10)
3. Superman (1978) (8/10)
4. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
5. Batman (1966) (8/10)
6. Batman Forever (1995) (6/10)
7. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
8. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
9. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
10. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
11. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
12. The Flash 3 - Deadly Nightshade (1991) (4/10)
13. Wonder Woman Returns (1977) (4/10)
14. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
15. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
16. Batman & Robin (1997) (2/10)
17. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
18. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
19. Justice League of America (1997) (2/10)
20. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
21. Steel (1997) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: Five years later, DC finally decides to give films another go with Road to Perdition...
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