Real Steel

If there's one thing I strive to avoid in my life, it's cynicism. I don't always win, but I do my best. That's probably why about 95% of the reviews I write are positive. I tend to look for the good qualities in things, and it's generally pretty easy for me to overlook the bad.

When the first trailers came out for Shawn Levy's Real Steel, I thought it looked ridiculous. I never really stopped thinking that, but reviews started coming in that were saying it's better than it should be. And since I have a hard time saying no to robots, I decided to go check it out and hope for a fun movie.

Real Steel is in the near future where Robot Boxing is the sport of kings. Seriously, the near future. Like 8 years from now, human boxing is gone and Robot Boxing has taken over. Hugh Jackman is Charlie, a former boxer, now down-on-his- luck robot boxer, who, after an old flame dies, is saddled with her son. They find a robot in a junk yard and fix him up and take him to fights. The robot, Atom, rises through the ranks and eventually faces the world champion, who is, of course controlled by a couple of rich, corporate people who have lost touch with the more personal, home grown side of Robot Boxing(?). Do they win? Does it matter, as long as they all learn?

I didn't expect the story to be original, and I don't mind a formulaic story if it's well told. Real Steel takes a few elements from Rocky, a few from Over the Top. The antagonistic dynamic between Jackman and the kid is surely lifted from Paper Moon. Whatever, I didn't mind. What I did mind, however, was the fact that I did not like either of the lead characters one bit.

Jackman lost me in the first scene and never won me back. When we meet him, he's taking his old robot to a state fair or possibly a rodeo or something in Texas, where he's being paid to fight a bull. He's told it's an 800-pounder, but he's disappointed to find a much larger one in its place. So he fights the bull anyway. First it charges the robot and the robot flips it over. It gets back up and the robot socks the bull in the face. I don't care that the bull won the fight. When you introduce your hero by having him perform acts of animal cruelty with a 1000lb hunk of remote controlled steel, you lose me. I'm not a vegetarian or anything, but come on.

As the story progresses, he ditches out on the guys he owes money to, and goes to court to sign the son he wants nothing to do with over to his dead mom's sister. When the aunt's husband comes to him and asks him to keep the kid for the summer, he agrees to do it for $100,000 dollars. He sold the kid to these people. He's a horrible guy. Of course he comes to love the kid by the end, and he learns all sorts of wonderful lessons, but in my eye, too little, way too late.

As for the kid, he's a cocky little shit. I just don't like cocky kids. I have nothing against the actor, who did fine, but I really hated the character. My wife says it's just me, maybe it is. There's this scene where he grabs a microphone at a match and starts trash-talking and stuff. And the way he and Jackman argue and fight through the first half of the movie is just awful. I don't mind a tough kid character, but this didn't work at all.

Another problem I had with him is he's too smart for a kid. He knows everything about Robot Boxing before we meet him. Admittedly, if Robot Boxing existed, I might have at 11 too. Additionally, he speaks Japanese (from playing bootleg video games???) and is also apparently a genius robot programmer.

I know it's a kids movie. I'm trying to turn off the cynicism. But remember all those great Spielberg movies about ordinary kids put into extraordinary situations? Hey, remember Super 8 like 4 months ago? Why couldn't this kid be more like that? Hell, Spielberg executive produced this movie!

Another thing that bugged me is the complete lack of safety procedures these robot boxing leagues seem to have. I mean, the underground fight clubs are one thing, but even the professional ones have wide open rings with just chains around them, and the audience and fighters standing right next to it. These are half ton monsters built to destroy each other! You're going to let a KID near them? There are scenes where these robots limbs and heads go flying into the audience.

Now let's take a second to do some calculating here: According to the movie these robots weigh 1,000 pounds. So that's proportionately about, say, 6 times the weight of a human. And if the kid in Jerry Maguire taught me anything it's that the human head weighs 8 pounds. That means these robots have heads that weigh 48 pounds. And they fly into the audience, presumably crushing all who stand in their way! People must die at these matches every day!

So I guess that about sums it up. I really hoped Real Steel would win me over. Instead it lost me in the first scene and never won me back. Just give me someone to latch onto other than these jerks. I'd overlook all the logic problems and cliches if only I liked the characters.