Real Steel (2011)
Directed by Shawn Levy
Charlie Kenton is a washed-up fighter who retired from the ring when robots took over the sport. After his robot is trashed, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son to rebuild and train an unlikely contender.
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35 films that influenced Real Steel
What critics say influenced Real Steel
As it turns out, Real Steel, directed by Night at the Museum’s Shawn Levy, borrows so much from other films that it might better be titled Reel Steal: not only from The Champ, but from Rocky, the Transformers movies and even some Star Wars.
The story -- which draws inspiration from "Rocky," "Over the Top," "Pokémon" and Fred Savage's "The Wizard" -- is set about 15 years from now.
The match between the two machines, billed as the biggest thing in boxing since the Rumble in the Jungle, is the climax of Real Steel, a futuristic Rocky set in the world of robot wrestling.
The filmmakers owe a lot to the "Rocky" movies - the big final fight borrows strategy liberally from Balboa/Lang II - but at least they steal from the good ones.
There's really no excuse for Real Steel, a Frankenstein contraption made up of spare parts from middle-American fairytales like Field of Dreams and underdog sports intrigues starting with Rocky , I guess, and building all the way through to junk like The Rookie and any number of films just like it that appear with what seems like annual reliability.
Long time comedy director Shawn Levy (“Date Night,” “Big Fat Liar,” “Night(s) at the Museum”) takes on sci-fi and boxing with his robotic homage to “Rocky.”
The story -- which draws inspiration from "Rocky," "Over the Top," "Pokémon" and Fred Savage's "The Wizard" -- is set about 15 years from now.
If you’ve seen Over the Top, then you know the petulant son and reluctant dad are bound to bond over the sport of choice, and nothing in the screenplay – credited to three writers and loosely inspired by a Richard Matheson short story – deviates from the underdog blueprint in the least.
He certainly should, and by the boatload, given the way in which Shawn Levy’s sci-fi robot-boxing film apes not only Rocky’s underdog-makes-good trajectory and in-ring finale, but also Over the Top ’s dynamic of a father making amends with the son he abandoned by beating the athletic odds while driving across expansive, picturesque country in a big rig.
Since Jackman's character drives a big truck and is trying to get acquainted with his son, I was reminded of the father-son-bonding/arm-wrestling movie Over the Top.
So Real Steel falls somewhere near the intersection of elation and shame, essentially reworking the Sylvester Stallone arm-wrestling non-classic Over The Top for the equally ridiculous sport of android fisticuffs, and mostly getting away with it.
For better or worse, the trailers set up the film as a shot-for-shot remake of Sylvester Stallone's "Over the Top," except with fighting robots instead of arm wrestling.
As it turns out, Real Steel, directed by Night at the Museum’s Shawn Levy, borrows so much from other films that it might better be titled Reel Steal: not only from The Champ, but from Rocky, the Transformers movies and even some Star Wars.
Now, you can make a pop lunacy Happy Meal psychedelic mind destructor like the "Transformers," but that's only if you're Michael Bay, and if you're Michael Bay, you're too busy buttoning and unbuttoning your shirt in front of a mirror right now to read this.
This is basically a more restrained version of the robot fights in the Transformers films, which, while they’re done better here than in those films, still doesn’t make for a compelling concept.
Yes, it's intrinsically all quite goofy (imagine trying to watch this with a straight face before the success of the "Transformers" flicks), and Levy near completely botches the big final match between Atom (and, essentially, Jackman's character who's controlling him in "mirror mode" thus necessitating Jackman to pretty much fight the bout) and the resident, high tech and undefeated champion named - what else -- Zeus (I guess all of the Decepticon names were already taken).
There's that "Transformers" inspiration, of course, with a heavy dose of Rock'em Sock'em Robots thrown in.
Based "in part," according to the opening credits, on the 1956 short story "Steel" by the great Richard Matheson (the story previously inspired a 1963 episode of "The Twilight Zone"), "Real Steel" represents a canny welding of the state-of-the-art effects and boy-and-his-robot relationship of the "Transformers" films with the hoary sentiment of the tough guy-reformed-by-cute kid stories that have been a staple of motion pictures since the silent era.
On the other side of standard montages, a nonsensical culture-clash conflict between an African-American wheeler-dealer (Anthony Mackie) and a thuggish cowboy (Kevin Durand), and imagery borrowed from Terminator 2 (Max and Atom mimicking each other’s movements in the rural outdoors) and Robocop (Atom examining himself in a mirror), a showdown lurks with Zeus, a killer titan run by a cartoonish Brigitte Nielsen wannabe (Olga Fonda) and a Japanese technician (Karl Yune).
Dakota Goyo's performance as Charlie's stubborn offspring reminded me of Edward Furlong in Terminator 2 - a little bratty but not precious or cute.
Blessedly, it forgets that it's taken pains to suggest this, thus sparing us the unpleasant, Terminator 2 voiceover that Atom is a father who wouldn't run away, wouldn't sleep, and wouldn't ever hurt him.
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But in my defense, that is only because I very early on got attached to thinking of it as a stupider version of the already stupid Robot Jox , on account of the earlier film having a similar premise (in the future, the most popular sport is matches between battlebots...) with an even higher concept behind it (...that are fighting World War III by proxy!).
In a tale predicated on the surpassing of man by machine, Real Steel doesn?t engage in the same?it?s what a publicist might describe as an ?effects movie with heart.? Robot Jox jokes aside, gladiatorial animatronics are of secondary concern here.
There have, of course, been exceptions to the rule in films like Raging Bull and Cinderella Man, but for films like this to succeed, they need to be about more than boxing and have fleshed-out characters that the audience can come to care about through good writing and development.
Concentrate on those scenes, try to ignore the schmaltz in between, and the whole experience isn’t really any worse than, say, “Rocky IV.” (Compared to any “Transformers” picture, it’s practically “Raging Bull.”)
As boxing movies go, Real Steel is almost like Raging Bull.
Shawn Levy, who directed such lucrative disasters as the Steve Martin remakes of The Pink Panther and Cheaper by the Dozen , has been brought in by Steven Spielberg to make this conflation of The Champ (the 1931 tearjerker about a drunken boxer redeemed by his long-estranged son, Jackie Cooper) and Rollerball , the futuristic action flick built around a violent popular sport.
The writing on the wall already suggests that this experience will bring father and son closer together, though Levy and screenwriter John Gatins approach it as if they mixed up Charlie Chaplin's The Kid with The Champ as easily as they did Jackie Coogan with Jackie Cooper.
What happens next owes more than a little to both Frankenstein , as the man-made creatures take on lives of their own, and the Wallace Beery-Jackie Cooper classic The Champ , as father and son learn to bond, the kid becomes a partner and a helpmate, his dad grows up, and everyone turns into a better person.
In "The Champ" (1931), Wallace Beery -- who won a Best Actor Oscar for the film -- is a washed-up boxer and compulsive gambler who determines to pull himself together for the sake of his young son (Jackie Cooper).
And while it was a little exciting to see the Delorean from Back to the Future again, this particular subplot eventually leads into a Pee-Wee's Big Adventure ripoff - as the two characters are chased throughout the studio.
What if instead you were pitched to see a high-tech “Rocky” starring Hugh Jackman (Wolverine in the “X-Men” movies) from executive producer Steven Spielberg and producer Robert Zemeckis (the “Back to the Future” movies) with original music by Danny Elfman?
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The story -- which draws inspiration from "Rocky," "Over the Top," "Pokémon" and Fred Savage's "The Wizard" -- is set about 15 years from now.
That’s all harmless enough, but the film mines some arguably xenophobic Tea Party territory with its portrayal of villainy: a black mechanical warrior named Zeus, the tool of gross ethnic stereotypes Farra Lemkova (Olga Fonda, exuding the chilliest Eastern European visage since Dolph Lundgren’s 'Drago’ in Rocky IV) and the inscrutable Asian, Tak Mashido (a cartoonishly-vile Karl Yune).
In a way, the movie is like Rocky IV minus the Cold War but with the addition of robots.
At first the final fight with Atom looks to be Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed I, but then it’s almost exactly Rocky IV and suddenly, out of nowhere, we find out robots can get tired.
The film’s final fight transports boxing lovers specifically to “Rocky IV” where a street-smart, smaller and scrapier Rocky Balboa wages war against the seemingly unbeatable Russian powerhouse Ivan Drago.
Concentrate on those scenes, try to ignore the schmaltz in between, and the whole experience isn’t really any worse than, say, “Rocky IV.” (Compared to any “Transformers” picture, it’s practically “Raging Bull.”)