Movie Monthly - Real Steel

So far, all the future film’s we’ve discussed have followed along to the idea of a very distant future.  The defining aspect of them has been that society, as we know it, has been completely swept away due to some great calamity and replaced with a wholly new system of government.  This has mainly acted as a way to up-jump the importance of the futuristic cyber sports within the world of the film.  Most sports movies are fine to let the stakes simply BE winning or losing a sporting event but in the realms of sci-fi, especially nerdier sci-fi, it’s weirdly suspected that an audience won’t necessarily engage with a story unless the stakes are Earth shattering.  So, this week we’re changing it up with a film that’s set in a not too distant future approximation of our world where the only real change is that we’ve invented fighting bots to take up the act of boxing and wrestling.  I’m speaking of course of the underappreciated 2011 gem Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman.

 

Based on the story ‘Steel’ by Richard Matheson, which had previously been adapted in a Twilight Zone episode of the same title, Real Steel is, in a lot of ways, a very bog standard boxing movie.  Hugh Jackman plays a washed up former boxer who turned robot boxing coach after we decided to let the emotionless killing machines beat each other to death for out amusement instead of insisting humans do that for us.  However, when an ex-girlfriend of Jackman’s dies suddenly he ends up left with a kid he didn’t know he had.  Jackman wants nothing to do with the kid till he realizes he can extort the boy’s grandparents, who actually do want custody, so he agrees to take him for the summer and a big wad of cash.  However, when the kid turns out to be a robotics fan and discovers an old sparring bot named Atom the two set out down a career of actual stardom. 

Like I said, this is more or less EVERY boxing movie with the newer elements revolving around the way the boxer is the one who bridges the gap between Jackman and his son.  Even then, Atom’s a soulless automaton basically acting as a humanoid embodiment of the platonic form of boxing so the metaphor of the sport bringing Jackman and son together is still decidedly prevalent.  There are also plenty of other boxing tropes and clichés woven into the full text of the film I didn’t even mention, like how Atom is able to win so many rounds because “he may not be pretty but he can take a beating.”  It’s basically the same emphasis on the literal guy from the scrapyard taking down the super polished and indestructible big guys because “the important thing isn’t how hard you can hit but how hard you can get hit and get back up again,” as Rocky might tell us.  What works about the movie and what makes all these tropes and clichés function as more than just an exercise in formula is the robots. 

People rarely talk about this because it goes against the precious idea of forming a wholly new story from totally new materials but the function of transposing the broad beats and story points from genre to genre is extremely useful in creating an interesting, vibrant, and often new story.  It’s the same basic ideology that informed all of Star Wars, in more ways than one.  On the one hand Star Wars began life as a Flash Gordon story that was already heavily borrowing plot elements and characters from westerns like The Searchers and samurai films.  More than that, there’s Star Wars’ connection to the Joseph Campbell theory of the hero’s journey.  Campbell’s theories were all about how humanity shares a basic cycle of cognitive development that is reflected in the base line of many of our greatest myths and stories.  However, that same theory also suggest that the ephemera of a story are secondary to the emotional and psychological impact of the basic narrative.  The whole emphasis of Campbelll’s theory is that it doesn’t matter if one hero’s journey is in a far away sword and sorcery fantasy realm while another’s is set in the Civil War, so long as they follow the same points of emotional arc and development they’ll be equally affecting.

That’s the idea here, taking the solid and well-tested bones of a sports drama and ladling a thick layer of robot and sci-fi ephemera over them.  As a result, pretty much every cliché can actually be pretty well waved off on the basis of “they’re robots, that’s how they’re built.”  Additionally it’s a big help that the robot fights themselves are just spectacular.  The designs of the robots are all crystal clear and incredibly vibrant, with each combatant being immediately identifiable even in the midst of battle.  The actual battles are both incredibly dynamic and fairly unique in the choreography.  Hugh Jackman’s opening battles are a good blend of genuine skill and embarrassing overconfidence while Atom’s matches range from quick scrapping and power moves to a struggle against straight up titans.  The final fight against the mega-bot Zeus is really great, a superb blend of brutal pounding and a fast paced knockout. 

The actors are all in top form as well, with Dakota Goyo really doing great as the son character Max.  In a lesser version of this film he’d be the part that sinks this movie but Dakota manages to skirt the border between likable and realistic in a solid way and his love of the robot fights is pretty infectious once we start seeing them ourselves and realize how awesome they look.  Jackman does a great job as well, flexing his acting muscles as a jerk father at first but managing to come around to a likable guy in a pretty believable fashion.  It also helps that the film’s plot doesn’t feel the need to overinflate the stakes with the villains never pulling any kind of cheating or kidnapping plot when the final fight rolls around.  Even calling the rich robot jockeys “villains” feels pretty disingenuous because they really aren’t bad guys, they’re just rich guys with an expensive robot, they’re only the villains because they’re the champions.  

I’m not going to pretend Real Steel is some triumph of genre cinema because that’s not what Real Steel is.  It’s a fun little genre flick buoyed by some dazzling special effects and just a ton of passion from everyone involved.  As CGI improves and genre cinema continues to dominate the box office and popular culture we’ve actually started getting a lot more of those kind of films, stuff like Rise of the Planet of the Apes or Pacific Rim are cut from a very similar cloth.  Bottom line: fun is fun and this film is an absolute blast, especially if you’re looking for a movie that you can just turn your brain off and watch robots fight without needing the film itself to descend into stupidity and condescension.  They discussed a possible sequel after the first one made a lot of fall cash but one has yet to materialize, here’s hoping we might see one soon. 


if you liked this article please like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter