Real Steel *spoilers*

[CaptainChewbacca]

Saw this movie today. If I had to summarize it, I'd call it 'Every boxing movie you've ever seen, but with robots'. Its by no means a GREAT movie, but its fun and entertaining.

The Plot: Hugh Jackman plays a former boxer in the year 2023 (yep, only 12 years). According to forced exposition, people wanted more violence in fighting, but humans were too weak so robots started fighting and the money followed them. Jackman's character is a tough, brash robot operator, reduced to having his robot fight bulls at county faires. His robot is trashed in a fight, and he's out of luck.

Enter his son, who he never knew about. Jackman has custody, but the boy has a rich aunt who wants to take him in. He cuts a deal with the uncle, that he'll take the kid for 2 months while they're on vacation in Italy, at which point he'll turn the kid over, for $100k. The son Max dislikes his estranged father, but is a fan of robot fighting. Jackman uses $50k to buy an aged champion robot, who he takes to an underground fight and wrecks due to poor control. That night they break into a junkyard where the kid finds an old 'sparring bot'.

Atom, the robot, is Rocky. Basically. He's small and quick, and designed to take a lot of abuse, and he has a rare 'shadow function' which allows him to track and learn opponents' moves. Max takes Atom to a brutal underground fight where he goes against what amounts to a tractor with sledgehammer arms. Atom takes an incredible amount of punishment, and not only survives but wins, netting $2k. Jackman and son take Atom on the road, winning lots of fights and making a name. Along the way the two bond, with Jackman teaching his son about fighting personas and 'flair'. To make Atom better, Jackman 'teaches' him how to box, showing him all his boxing moves.

Predictably, Atom gets a 'league fight' where he uses speed and agility to defeat a well-known robot. Before the match, the owners of the world champion 'Zeus' offer to buy Atom for $200k, but the kid turns it down. After he wins his match, Max (only 11) challenges Zeus to a fight 'anywhere, anytime' in an Ali-esque bit of trash talk.

There's some emotional drama, character growth, and then the final fight. Zeus has never had an opponent survive to the second round, but Atom goes the distance. He gets knocked down twice in the first ten seconds, but he uses quickness and durability to weather the onslaught and get a lot of hits in. At the end of the fourth round, Atom's controller is broken, so he can't hear commands. Instead, Jackman must use the shadow function and shadowbox Zeus, so in effect (a point which is hammered several times) he, a well-known but fallen boxer, is himself fighting Zeus. And just like a real Rocky fight, Zeus punches himself out on Atom, depletes his power core at the end, and the fight comes down to a split decision which Atom narrowly wins.

The crowd cheers, they chant his name, and they call him the 'People's Champion'. Dwayne Johnson would be pissed.

Like I said, its a fun, predictable, and thoroughly entertaining movie. The secondary characters are all well done, and there's a lot of funny moments. I expect this movie to be a classic and stick around for a long time.

[neoolong]

The sequel, The Rock challenges the upstart that dare take his title as the People's Champion.

That said, it's pretty dumb, but works its moments well. And man, does Jackman skirt the line between intolerable and likeable in this. The robot boxing scenes are pretty great, IMAX was worth it. Boxing aside, it's also more similar in plot to the old Stallone movie OVER THE TOP.

Makes me wonder what the next step in this world is. There's some hints that Atom may be more self-aware than the other robots. And the fight at the end makes me wonder if that's what comes next to robot boxing. Hiring back old boxers and putting all the robots into shadow mode.

It opened with $8.6M on Friday, with a projected $25M for the weekend. Word has it that the film cost $110M, so it should do alright. Talk of a sequel had been around for a while.

[Ahriman238]

Wasn't this a short story/Outer Limits episode?

[neoolong]

Yes. Richard Matheson, the writer of the story/episode, gets a credit in the movie.

[CaptainChewbacca]

One cliche I'm glad they avoided; When the cowboy showed up and bet $100k on Atom to lose, I was worried he was going to try and make Jackman take a dive. Glad it didn't happen.

Edit: Yeah, the last bit of the opening credits says 'Based on the Story 'Steel'.

[Xess]

I saw it yesterday and I thought it was well done. It is a cliched boxing movie but it is excellently put together and very entertaining. My favourite fight was probably Atom vs Twin Cities, that was really fun to watch.