I pretty much held up Superman 4, Batman and Robin and The Fantastic Four as potentially the worst Superhero movies ever made. Batman and Robin stopped a franchise for a decade and Superman 4 crushed the life out the Man Of Steel for 2 decades.
I figured my list was safe, all of these movies were truly awful, until I saw Steel. Steel made the effects in Daredevil look cutting edge. It made the writing of Batman and Robin flow as if it had been penned by Kipling. It made the pacing of Fantastic Four seem to fly.

♫ “Superman never made any money saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see another man like him”♫
There is a back story to this for anyone who is interested.
One day, Superman died. In the movies, the death of Superman was going to potentially follow Supe 4… however that of course never happened.
In the comics, specifically The Death Of Superman we saw Supe get the living snot kicked out of him by Doomsday and while he was victorious, his injuries were mortal. In the days and weeks that followed, Supe’s friends buried him and we were introduced to other characters who were driven to possibly take his place.
One of these potential new Supermen was a massive, African American, blue collar, metal worker; an average Joe and modern day blacksmith who owed his life to Superman as so many did.
I remember that when I first read the comic, the character of John Henry Irons was the one that intrigued me the most and the one I found myself rooting for.

♫“John Henry he could hammer (Hoo!), he could whistle, he could sing (Hoo!). He went to the mountain early in the mornin'…
Just to hear his hammer ring, Lord, Lord, Just to hear his hammer ring.
Just to hear his hammer ring, Lord, Lord, Just to hear his hammer ring.”♫
The Plot:
John Henry was not named by accident. In history he is a mythical being almost akin to Paul Bunyan (but not quite as big). In the 1840’s, when the railroad was being built across the U.S, John Henry, who was born a sickly small child but grew to be mammoth in size, supported his family by driving his hammer through rock, excavating railroad tunnels.
When the owner decides to mechanize the process, John Henry challenges the Steam Hammer to a one-on-one competition.
He wins, but he dies.
Likewise, John Henry Irons is a massive individual who carries a big stick. In the movie Steel the character is portrayed by Shaquille O’Neal. He has kept his blue collar origins however he has been given a military past. It’s in the military where the story begins.
J.H.I is sort of a weapons guru. His big thing is creating weapons that will subdue with out the necessity of killing. He and his “trusted sidekick and brain behind the brawn” Susan Sparks (Annabeth Gish… the Gish dynasty must just be rolling over in their graves), are demonstrating their latest weapons to some Senator.
Another Lieutenant, Nathaniel Burke (Judd Nelson… no really, he was still getting work in 97), who is more interested in infamy than anything else, jumps into the spotlight and demos one of the weapons at an untested level which results in the Senator’s death and the permanent crippling of Sparks.
Burke’s punishment is dismissal from the army.
Disgusted, John Henry leaves the military with out a second thought and goes home where he lives with his Grandma and his younger brother and has a job at a smelting factory (Iron… not fish).
One day, the weapons he has designed end up being used in a bank robbery. The bank robbers aren’t talking about where they got the weapons and the Military has all theirs accounted for so John Henry does the most logical thing he can think of. He goes to a Veterans Hospital, carries Sparks out (wheelchair and all), sets up a blacksmith’s forge and lab at his Uncle Joe’s (Richard Roundtree) Junk yard, creates an entire metal suit for himself, along with a multi-purpose sledge hammer weapon that shoots bullets, fire, bombs etc and goes out on the streets at night to find out what is happening. Sparks, in the mean time, creates a computer set up in the Junk Cave that allows her to do everything from monitoring Iron’s surroundings to controlling all the stoplights in town to replicating exact voice prints of some of the cities more prominent individuals.
Bet you can’t guess who’s behind the “leaked weapons and bank robberies.” Yup… it’s Burke. That Burke…I knew he was bad news when the senator died.
He’s having video of the robberies leaked to various networks so that his weapons can be seen and sold to the highest bidder over the Internet (that internet… I knew it was bad news when the senator died)
John Henry Irons, Uncle Joe and “Sparky” need to stop him.

♫“I'm just your average ordinary everyday Superhero, trying to save the world, but never really sure.
I'm just your average ordinary everyday Superhero, nothing more than that, that's all I really am.”♫
The Plot Sickens
I’m not quite sure where to start here with the problems. You may have to forgive me if I digress in to point form.
-The creators of this movie decided to eliminate all references to Superman since the final movie had never been made… so you have J.H.I standing alone as a “Man Of Steel”. It sort of makes his choice to become a superhero… well…. Stupid.
-There is such a thing as going too big. Having such a massive person as a superhero may seem like a good idea, but unless you’re the Hulk and you morph back down in to a regular looking guy, your cover really isn’t all that good. The question “Who was that masked seven and a half foot tall black man with an obvious history of metalwork and in-depth advanced weapons knowledge?” is a pretty easy one to answer. On hearing a description of STEEL, John Henry’s grandmother immediately know’s it’s him. On seeing some fuzzy video of STEEL in action Burke sarcastically asks “Gee… I wonder who that can be.” Not a lot of mystery to this one. Makes having an “alter-ego” pretty pointless.
-Another problem with having someone who is seven foot plus play a lead superhero is the fact that the film directors couldn’t find a stunt double for him… so Shaq does all his own stunts… badly. At one point he has shot a zip-line up in the air to get away from the cops (a-la Batman) and he is lifted at a snail’s pace. The prolonged look of surprise on the cop's faces becomes painful and you want to shout out “Shoot him… he’s …very… slowly… getting… away!”
-Certain points in the plot make no sense or get tedious. Burke kills a Senator through incompetence and only gets dismissed from the army? I’d think that the senator’s people would have a bit more pull than that. STEEL runs from the cops more than he chases bad guys. There’s a running joke about Shaq’s inability to make free throws and it is a lynch pin for a later scene when he has to dispose of a grenade. First of all… I HATE athletes who make the transition to film and then have to throw in some joke about their athletic past but I swear that the grenade had about a three minute time delay between the time the pin was pulled and the time they were able to get rid of it. It went on so long I was hoping he and his brother would get blown up. Oh… and don’t get you’re biggest fan, Spike Lee to do a cameo in the movie just to lend you credibility. Try acting instead.
-The film started out with a soundtrack that made me think I was watching a blaxploitation superhero flick and turned in to a made for TV movie cross between The A-Team and The Incredible Hulk. I kept expecting to see Lou Ferigno. This was released in theatres. Now while it only had a budget of 16 mill (I think Shaq was paid by the inch), Napoleon Dynamite, American Graffiti, Swingers and Lock Stock and Two Smokin’ Barrels were all theatrical releases that were made for a million bucks or less and THEY WERE AWESOME. This gets chocked up to the director… a guy named Kenneth Johnson. Up until this point everything he directed was made for TV (including being the writer, producer and director of The Incredible Hulk series) and since this fiasco he has never ventured out of the small box.
- Where the hell did the money go on this?
It wasn’t the forged suit of solid steel that flexed and moved around Shaq’s face and body like the painted rubber that it was. It wasn’t the support cast to prop Shaq up and make him look good, even Richard Roundtree stunk half the time. It wasn’t the writing, since the jokes consisted of basketball and SHAFT references that any infant could have written.
It might have been the explosions in the climactic scene, but if so then they wasted the money since the horrible acting made it all unbelievable.

All in all, I have to rank this up there in the worst 5 movies I’ve ever seen. Damn… I feel all dirty.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12