I kind of welcome the future of sports if Real Steel manages to become a reality. I mean we had that awesome show on Comedy Central called “Battle Bots” which was just the nerdy mash-up I could get behind. Man, now I really wish they brought that show back cause it was just bad ass. Anyways, I was not the most receptive to Real Steel when it came out, although I did give it an average review score. I mean the movie is no Robot Jox or even Arena, but after additional viewings, it’s a cheesy sports movie that is well shot and has good boxing fights that add to enjoyment of the film. Also there are a lot of unbelievable things that kind of push to the bad, but good territory of movies that I love. Mainly this post is an excuse to watch Battle Bot highlights cause that was the shit. Did you know that Bill Nye lent his scientific expertise as part time commentator to the battles? Fucking awesome.
Real Steel definitely dallies in the realm of sports cheese. I mean it borrows so heavily from other sports movie and their plots that you have seen this sort of movie a dozen times. It isn’t anything new in the way of story telling as Hugh Jackman plays a washed up boxer who is a dick, but gets renewed vigor when he and his estranged son start winning boxing matches with a robot that may or may not be sentient. That last part is a plot point that was dropped because I don’t have a fucking clue. It would have made this movie way better if the robots did have some sort of AI capabilities. No, we get the typical fight for me or your pride or whatever spiel and an ending that is torn straight out of Rocky.
But for all the crap I give this movie, I actually have come to enjoy the movie. The one thing that wins me over is the boxing. Done very well and competently choreographed with actual boxers and then brought to life with the intricate looking robots. Atom, Zeus, Metro and Noizy Boy all have a life of their own with some personality, probably the only personality in the movie. They all have a unique style and look to them, which seems more wrestling like instead of boxing.
Give this a watch if you haven’t seen it before. It’s a decent sports film with a pretty veneer of robots slugging it out in some great boxing sequences. Ignore the human counterparts as much as possible since the robots seemed to be more entertaining than the human actors, but what can you do.
Below is an excerpt from my original review with a link to the review itself.
I haven’t touched on the best part of the movie and that’s the boxing. Real Steel does something that Transformers wishes it could do and that’s choreograph and film coherent action sequences. Instead of quick cuts and shaky cam to hid the faults of poor action sequences, Real Steel frames the movie as an actual boxing match. There are no quick cuts, fast edits or even a lot of shaky cam. The action is beautifully shown in full, open frames and the fights look like they had real boxers standing in for the robots. It was coherent and not jarring in any way, which ends up enhancing the movie overall. The final battle between Atom and Zeus is one of the best action scenes I have seen in a while. The robots go punch for punch and it took a lot of care and planning to set up each swing. Read more here!
