2011 was
a year which featured a couple of movies that showed off large
over-compensating robots beating the living hell out of one another. One
was the boring conclusion to the Transformers trilogy: Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon and the other was Real Steel.
Real Steel stars
Hugh Jackman as a down-and-out former boxer who now pits his fighting
robots against other mechanical wizzbots. Think of it as Wolverine but with giant robots… that aren’t Sentinals.
The
movie got a bit of stick when it came out in cinemas and to be honest I
thought it was all a bit unfair. I mean, what did you really expect
when you went in to see a movie about Hugh Jackman and his fighting
mechanoids? It’s not exactly Shakespeare now is it? But still people
these days demand a lot from smashy smashy robot movies and I suppose
this movie just wasn’t ‘deep’ enough for them.
My thoughts? Well I actually enjoyed watching it, and considering it was about a month after seeing Transformers 3 it might as well have been Shakespeare.
I just went in and watched the most obvious popcorn movie of the year. It’s similar to Cowboys and Aliens in that it doesn’t take itself too seriously and it shouldn’t therefore be looked upon as if it does.
Okay,
Hugh Jackman is hardly at his best here, but he’s charismatic enough to
keep the movie ticking over even if he does play an arrogant idiot for
the majority of the movie. He leaves his kid out in the rain in the
middle of a muddy scrapyard for crying out loud, making him haul a robot
to the truck on his own…
The
story centres around Jackman and his son, who he hasn’t seen in years.
His son’s mother passes away and in order for the Aunt to get custody
Jackman essentially sells him to her via her ridiculously rich husband:
the tyre expert from My Cousin Vinny.
My Cousin Vinny, now there is a film!
Anyway,
cue the obvious Jackman has to hang out with the boy and they become
inevitably close resulting in him learning a lesson and promising to be a
better father, yada-yada-yada.
They
become close when his son finds an old sparring robot in the scrapyard,
which yes his son has to dig out and carry on his own! The director
really slaps on the heartlessness on Jackson’s character in some places!
Anyway, the pair train up the robot to fight and lo-and behold it
actually starts winning fights and subsequently money.
Now,
here’s the most annoying part of this entire movie. The robot’s name is
ATOM. That’s not so bad I hear you say, and you’re right, nothing wrong
with the name. The only problem is Americans (and naturally Australians
playing Americans) cannot pronounce their Ts properly and so the robot’s
name becomes ADAM.
If you
don’t see the logo on the robot’s chest when it’s shown for a split
second then you will go throughout the whole movie thinking the robot’s
name is Adam. Only towards the end does the ring announcer spell out his
name A-T-O-M!
Overall
what can you say about it? Some robots smash each other up for funs,
that’s about it. Considering the only real downside for me was the
mispronunciation of the word ‘atom’ I think that goes down as a fairly
decent effort of a movie.
Don’t expect anything too spectacular if you decide to watch Real Steel, but you really could do far, far worse. Yes I’m looking at you Optimus Prime.
Final Verdict: 3 Stars. Decent fun with smashy smashy robots.
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