STEEL (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

Though I hadn't seen STEEL since the nineties, and barely remembered it, I wanted to like it. I mean, I was fairly sure that it was at best mediocre. But I didn't get the sense that it was mediocre because it was slammed together by a bunch of Hollywood hacks coasting on a superhero project, like the Schumacher BATMANs, the second nineties TURTLES movie, and almost every MCU movie after AVENGERS ENDGAME.

Like most of the viewing public, I had no burning need to see an adaptation of DC's STEEL comics franchise. The character, introduced during the "Death of Superman" sequence, was good-hearted super-scientist John Henry Irons. Seeing a need for a new superhero in Metropolis, he formulated a suit of armor, a weaponized super-hammer, and a persona loosely based on the "John Henry" folklore character, calling himself "Steel." I never followed the DC title, and it was never overly popular, so that for the most part Steel's history is comprised of guest-star spots in other heroes' titles.

Yet I must admit that STEEL is at least true to its source material, and its opening signals the sort of flatly virtuous liberalism I've come to expect from the TV-work of writer-director Kenneth Johnson. I still esteem Johnson for the hours of enjoyment I derived from his FUGITIVE-themed reworking of THE INCREDIBLE HULK (even though said program was NOT true to its source). But with STEEL, I felt Johnson straining to find some way to make this minor superhero more significant than he was then, or could ever be.

Since STEEL the film has nothing to do with the Superman mythos, Johnson built up a minor motif from the comics-hero's origin. In the comic Irons faked his death to keep a weapon he engineered out of the wrong hands. In the movie script, Irons (Shaquille O'Neal) is an officer in the U.S. forces, seeking to perfect an energy weapon that will incapacitate victims without killing them. He works with a fellow engineer, Susan Sparks (Annabelle GIsh), and the two are prepared to demonstrate their device for the high command. But scheming officer Burke (Judd Nelson) alters the weapon's setting in some weird delusion that his alteration will reflect well on him. Instead the weapon blows up and puts Sparks in a wheelchair. Burke is discharged from the army but simply turns his talent for destruction to the private sector.

For some reason Irons also leaves the army, but his past follows him, as robbers use variations on his invention to pull holdups. Of course Burke is responsible, empowering minor thugs as an audition of his wares for dictators and terrorists. Irons decides to fight back as Steel, and he enlists both the wheelchair-bound Sparks and civilian scientist Uncle Joe (Richard Roundtree) to work as his backup. After Steel has various engagements with various thugs, he also falls afoul of the cops and other contrivances by Burke.

Surprisingly, even though O'Neal is clearly out of his depth in the acting department, he's not the movie's biggest shortcoming. Arguably, Judd Nelson, a proven actor, makes a lousy villain-role even worse with his mugging. The biggest problem, though, is the lack of decent FX. Even in the late nineties, the budget of $17 million was not enough to mount the sort of eye-popping visuals audiences had come to expect since the 1989 BATMAN. I speculate that Johnson, having honed his craft on TV budgets, had the notion that he could just skate his way into the big time on a wing and a prayer. (To be fair, he had directed the second SHORT CIRCUIT theatrical film on a budget similar to that of STEEL.) All of the action scenes look incredibly clunky, and the dialogue is not much better. Once in a while, a scene almost comes alive, as when Irons invades the space of a self-pitying Sparks and more or less forces her to join his merry band, which is of course exactly what she really needs. But there are no surprises in the pedestrian script, which seems to be begging audiences, "Love Me," rather than doing anything to earn that love. 

Could another writer have done something better with the Steel character by building on the folklore of John Henry, "the steel-drivin' man," rather than focusing on dull crap about weapons-brokers? Hard to say. Yet because there's something of a dopey good-heartedness about STEEL, it still wouldn't make my list of even the 100 worst superhero movies. (Worst five hundred-- yeah, probably.)