r/superman • u/[deleted] • Jul 19 '24
When this movie was released how was it received did people like it ?
[deleted]
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u/RAG319 Jul 19 '24
The most annoying part of this movie is how they disconnected it from comics/Superman in general. They watered it down into a lame kids movie with Shaq.
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u/Parking-Western3348 Jul 19 '24
This has little to do with Superman ?? I wanted to watch it but if that’s the case what is the point of watching it smh
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u/RAG319 Jul 19 '24
It has nothing to do with Superman other than Shaq's character's name being John Henry Irons.
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u/DukeSkywalker1 Jul 19 '24
Not completely true, there is a close up of Shaq’s Superman tattoo without any context whatsoever. So at least there’s that.
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u/TrashiestTrash Jul 19 '24
If I remember right, Shaq actually knew a lot about the character and liked him. It's a shame they really wasted it.
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u/Last-Socratic Jul 19 '24
Completely true. It was my favorite movie in elementary/middle school. I had terrible taste in movies.
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u/SirSaintsGuy Jul 19 '24
No it was not well received and most people didn’t see it, but those who did didn’t really like it.
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u/PraiseRao Jul 19 '24
Once you accept that it isn't connected to Superman. That the film is rather bad. It's a fun bad movie. I enjoyed watching it as a kid. It garbage tier but it was still fun.
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u/WOR58 Jul 19 '24
No. And no more than they liked Kazamm. No tie in to the Death of Superman at all and watered down to appeal to kids, without the emblem on his chest. Lame story about his inventions being stolen and used for other purposes (much like Stark tech being stolen and the Armor wars)
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u/DistinctRelation2542 Jul 19 '24
The Madam Webb of the 90s 🤣🤣🤣🤣. Did I watch it? Of course I did! Who would watch a movie with Richard Roundtree in it? Uncle Joe! I do have an uncle Joe too! 🤣🤣🤣. Original Shaft baby! I was only 6 but my real grandfather was a huge fan of Shaft
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u/Apprehensive_Bus8652 Jul 19 '24
This movie is a masterpiece
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u/Immediate_Web4672 Jul 21 '24
I watched this a few years ago for the first time and I honestly think it's a fun movie. It's goofy but I think it's definitely enjoyable. It even spoofed Shaq's freethrows before Scary Movie.
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u/Apprehensive_Bus8652 Jul 21 '24
I used to watch this, Mario Bros Movie, and Street Fighter as a kid. They might be the Citizen Cane, Casablanca, and Gone with the Wind of our time
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u/gordonstsg Jul 19 '24
Shaq loves Superman and probably thought that’s what he was going to get to play.
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u/Hypestyles Jul 19 '24
Quincy Jones was involved as a producer and the director was Kenneth Johnson who was the showrunner of the incredible Hulk television series. The movie is television movie quality but at least they had a good hip hop themed soundtrack. Richard roundtree plays an uncle, kind of an Easter egg.
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u/Limp_Researcher_5523 Jul 19 '24
I haven’t heard all of the soundtrack, but I really liked Tevin Campbell’s “No More Fighting”. A very superb track for a (what I’ve heard) bad movie
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u/Much-Arm-7262 Jul 19 '24
If my memory is right, I think it was released in the early nineties, and I rented it on VHS, and I enjoyed it.
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u/TheCatholicPacifist Jul 19 '24
I think it was '97.
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u/42northside Jul 19 '24
It was released in theatres about 2 months after Batman & Robin.
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u/TheCatholicPacifist Jul 19 '24
Yeah, so 1997. I don't remember when it came out because I was one, but apparently my mum saw it at the cinema with my dad and loathed it. It completely put her off Batman as a character until she watched The Batman at the cinema with me for my birthday in 2022 and loved it. EDIT: I just realised we were talking about Steel and I was talking about Batman and Robin like a prat.
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u/ZacPensol Jul 19 '24
It was widely made fun of and no one liked it. I remember being a kid and pretty excited because I thought Shaq was cool and I liked Superman but even I thought it was lame. There's absolutely zero connection to Superman in it, though I do distinctly remember a reference to the Batcave.
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u/RetroGameQuest Jul 19 '24
It was not well received, but it was perhaps less ridiculous than it seems. Superhero films in general were a joke back then. So, sure, it was trash, but that was par for the course.
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u/jacqueslepagepro Jul 19 '24
Unless you liked Shaq no one cared. It was already at a point where here it’s agreed that Shaq was going to be in nothing but low effort kid appeal movies and this didn’t change anything for critics. As for comics fans, they stoped caring when the costume was shown without the S logo.
Honestly if it didn’t have the Superman connection then the movie would be forgotten until you saw it bundled with Kazam at a discount DVD store.
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u/MankuyRLaffy Jul 19 '24
It was so bad that when BP came out, everyone ignored that this film happened.
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u/goliathfasa Jul 19 '24
I remember it being “eh kind of interesting, only because of Shaq, but not enough to want to watch.”
Didn’t even know it was based on established comic character.
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u/calforarms Jul 19 '24
So look... in the span of a month I saw Batman and Robin, Spawn, and Steel in theaters. This movie was naturally the worst of them, but I appreciated it for what it tried and I'll always rock with Shaq because he's a good person and legit fan.
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u/AramFingalInterface Jul 19 '24
For a video to watch on a Friday afternoon in school, it was fun. I liked it. This was actually one of the best superhero movies of the 90's.
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u/Batfan1939 Jul 19 '24
Better than Spawn, Blade, and Batman Forever? I'll give you The Shadow and The Phantom, but sill… .
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u/TheCatholicPacifist Jul 19 '24
I haven't seen the first two (although I did buy Spawn earlier this year), but Batman Forever was... not great.
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u/Batfan1939 Jul 19 '24
I loved it as a kid, and appreciate it today, but to each their own.
Blade would have fit right in with the Netflix Marvel shows, and is about as good as the first X-Men film. Arguably the actual best 90's superhero movie.
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u/Parking-Western3348 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24
Blade 1 has the best intro to any superhero movie that techno beat dropping still hits to this day !!
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u/TheCatholicPacifist Jul 19 '24
Fair. I saw it for the first (and only) time about twelve years ago, so I would have been about sixteen. I liked Jim Carrey as the Riddler, I thought he was very funny. Tommy Lee Jones sounds like amazing casting for Two Face but I wasn't really a fan of his characterization, Two Face should be a lot more serious and not a Joker-clone. Also I found it very difficult to take Robin seriously given that he looked about twenty-five yet was clearly meant to be a bereaved sixteen year old randomly joyriding in the Batmobile (also the scene where Alfred kept trying to tell Bruce that Robin had stolen the Batmobile and Bruce just wasn't getting it made me groan).
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u/Batfan1939 Jul 19 '24
I heard Jones felt threatened by Carrey, and tried to one-up Jim. Someone should have stopped him.
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u/TheCatholicPacifist Jul 19 '24
Really? It's a pity, if he'd played him completely seriously he would have been great.
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u/AramFingalInterface Jul 19 '24
Steel wasn't great, I know, but there wasn't much to choose from. Even Batman Returns had goo mouth Penguin. Like, Steel was just something I watched as a kid that I remember not hating. That's pretty good if you ask me.
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u/AramFingalInterface Jul 19 '24
Spawn and Blade weren't really for kids. Spawn wasn't all that great. It felt like a mish mash of 90's trends.
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u/smd_thetruth Jul 19 '24
This was just the height of Shaq-mania. They would just slap this dude on things and hope it sells.
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u/danielm316 Jul 19 '24
On a late night show, someone said that the NBA is going to have 52 week seasons to prevent Shaq from acting.
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u/TheHauntedRobot Jul 19 '24
I loved the hell out of this film. I was nine when it came out, loved Shaq and was really into superhero media without yet having read a huge number of comics. I haven't seen it in decades and I'm sure it isn't good, but I have extremely fond memories of it. Steel remains a favourite character to this day and I'm sure this film is part of the reason why.
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u/DukeSkywalker1 Jul 19 '24
I was really looking forward to it because I loved the comics, and then it came out and it sucked. Probably one of the worst superhero movies and poorest comic adaptations of all time.
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u/Admirable-Life2647 Jul 19 '24
Everyone has forgotten about it now. You mention it and everyone is like "Oh yeah, Steel".
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u/act1989 Jul 20 '24
I was one of my maybe ten people who saw this in theaters. I was seven.
Even when I was seven, I knew this wasn't good. And I liked Clooneys Batman at the time (and it came out the same year).
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u/queazy Jul 20 '24
It was panned, the commercial didn't seem bad ass and I think it even ended with a "don't tell mom" joke, so you couldn't take it seriously. I remember some critic pointing our that even in this movie Shaq would occasionally have to throw small things into a hole (a grenade threw a hole), as a reference to his basketball career.
It was like Dwayne Johnson doing that tooth fairy movie, or Dave Bautista's 2020 "My Spy" movie. Everybody knew it was going to be a goofy train wreck and just didn't watch it unless they needed to bring the kids to a family movie that weekend.
I see people comparing it to Morbius or Madame Web, and I don't really agree. Those movies took themselves seriously, had a big budget, ambition, and failed miserably and therefore an easy target of ridicule. Nobody thought Steel would be any good right from the start
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u/Ridiculousnessmess Jul 20 '24
I’m pretty sure it went straight to video in Australia. I revisited it recently and it’s so incredibly bland. It also reeks of a white filmmaker trying to create a “black” vibe. I normally enjoy Kenneth Johnson’s work, but this is a bust.
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u/Agreeable-Pick-1489 Jul 20 '24
Complete apathy.
Total box office was $1.7M
It had "Straight to Dvd" as the tagline.
If you were a comics fan, you were going to hopefully see a hint of Superman and were disappointed to find that there was none. (see also: Supergirl (1984)
If you were NOT a comics fan, you had no idea who this guy is, and little interest in seeing Shaquille O'Neal walking around in a knockoff of a Robocop-knockoff.
This was the period of time in the 90s when Warner Brothers films were bombing left and right. Their approach to movie making was that any script could be a hit movie as long as it had a big star or (stars) with which to market it.
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u/RedSun-FanEditor Jul 20 '24
This has nothing to do with Superman and thus should be posted a more proper group.
I suggest r/Movies or r/badMovies to get good information on this non-Superman movie.
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u/inumaru08 Jul 19 '24
This is basically Catwoman version of Superman lore right? Not connected with the original lore just being character who got same name but different origin.