Cory Johnson
Staff Writer
Hugh Jackman is driving an oversized truck to a carnival. The darkness of his cabin and the anxiety on his face heavily contrast the playful hue of the lights and sounds that encompass his destination.
As his car stops just outside the festive event, its image reflected in the windshield, you can see the juxtaposition of the two worlds.
And then the Robots appear.
Welcome to “Real Steel,” the newest movie by “Night at the Museum” director Shawn Levy, where giant-sized robots aren’t just a reality, but one of the biggest forms of entertainment.
In the near future, 2,000-pound bodies of steel and circuitry have taken the place of humans in the ancient sport of boxing because humans can’t dish out the pain that people want to see.
Now, inside the ring, metal titans go blow for blow, taking out appendages and turning their opponents into scrap metal as their trainers command them from outside the ring.
Jackman plays Charlie Kenton, a robot-fighting good-for-nothing with an illegitimate child and a prideful streak.
His 11-year-old son is Max (Dakota Goyo), who Charlie thinks is 9 years old. Abandoned by his father from birth, he has acquired a love for robot boxing and swearing like a sailor. He is thrust upon Charlie after the child’s mother dies and the aunt and uncle that have custody of him are going to Italy for the summer.
And finally, there are the robots Atom and Zeus. Atom is the Kenton family robot, a second generation sparing robot found on a father-son forage through the scrap yard; Zeus is the World Robot Boxing league Real Steel champion.
Sound simple? That’s because it is.
“Real Steel” is similar to countless other father-child bonding movies, where a mutual love brings the two together and forms a bond that the two have been missing all along.
But the bonding forces in this movie are robots. Robots beating the axel grease out of other robots.
That’s what brings this duo together, and what makes this movie as fun as any movie with robots should be.
Yes, there is a backstory, and yes, it’s cute and heart-warming, but it’s been done before – and much better. What saves this movie from being an average, dull movie is the pure fun that comes from watching a robot decapitate another via double uppercut.
Compared to other dysfunctional family movies, this is low on the totem pole, but compared to robot movies, this is really good. The characters aren’t just plot vehicles without personality but real people. Even the robots, uncanny as they may be, gain personality as they develop fame in the movie.
You begin to feel for these characters, which only makes it more entertaining when their robots get wrecked.
But with all that’s going right for the movie, there are some major flaws that only propel its overused, poorly executed formula.
Useless characters and dead and pointless scenes are some of the things that drive the movie to its minimum run time of two hours and push it to the edge of average.
The movie also has some wonky design choices. The fight scenes are jumbled waves of loud, cringe-inducing metallic noise, and some of the robot design rests heavily in a valley of just human enough to be creepy.
The product placement is so obvious it makes the audience laugh but also want a Dr. Pepper and HP computer.
All in all, “Real Steal” isn’t a bad movie, but it’s no “Field of Dreams” or “Super 8,” as both it and “Real Steel” were produced by Spielberg.
With some bad choices to balance out the epic enjoyment of live action Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, this movie is worth two viewings: one with a group of friends at the theater and a $1 Redbox rental when you have a nostalgia fit in the near future.