Shaquille O’Neal is a superhero in many of his fans’ eyes.
His legendary skills on the basketball court and his hunky stature earned him a status that led to several people looking up to him. But what many may not recall is that O’Neal was an actual superhero in the late ’90s. He played the main character in the 97-minute movie “Steel,” where he acted as a scientist who turned into a superhero.
O’Neal reflected on the over two decades’-old flick in an interview with “PopCulture” on Wednesday, Oct. 13. Speaking about his character at the 8:12 mark of the interview, he said, “Well, if you look at the Steel character, it’s me. It’s all me, John Henry Irons is me.” The 49-year-old is referring to his character’s abilities being limited due to the lack of advanced technology back then.
“You know, when we did the movie, I would have liked to have those Iron Man effects, but nah, we did the movie in the early ’90s, and technology wasn’t as it is now, but I would love to be able to do a redo of that.”
“Steel” only earned about $1.7 million and wasn’t very popular among the viewers. But O’Neal expressed that all can change if today’s technology is used.
“Same effects that they use in the movies, that they use now,” O’Neal said. “I think it would be much better appreciated.”
The story of “Steel” begins with him being born as John Henry Irons. Irons was a weapons engineer, but when he saw his weapons being misused by his company, he decided to fake his own death because he thought they would now let him voluntarily leave. He moved to Metropolis, became a construction worker and nearly fell to his death while on the job but was saved by Superman.
When Superman was later killed by Doomsday, Irons used his engineer skills to build a suit that provided powers to those similar to Superman’s — following the death of Superman, who would later return to his superhero role. When Superman was resurrected, Steel stepped down and became superman’s ally.
O’Neal said, “When Superman died, he came back as seven different people. I got John Henry Irons, if you look at all the comics, that was me.”
Would you watch a reboot of “Steel?”
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