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.

 

Movie Monthly - Rollerball

Welcome back to Movie Monthly’s celebration of the very thin crossover line between sci-fi and sports this November with a look at all things future, techno, and athletic.  Last  week we looked at Robot Jox, the story of a distant future wherein nations hashed out their disputes through the tried and true method of giant robot fights, this week we’ve got arguably the opposite inverse film with Rollerball, the 1975 dystopian future sports film starring James Caan.  It’s actually kind of amazing how much Rollerball serves as a counter point to Robot Jox; corporations instead of nations, teams instead of individuals, entertainment rather than politics, a well known star with an actual career rather than “that guy from Alien Nation,” a really awful remake in 2002 instead of a reappraisal by nerd culture in recent years, and most key of all: Rollerball was the product of ‘70s pessimistic futurism while Robot Jox was the result of ‘80s blockbuster fun giving way to ‘90s shallowness and polish.