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.
No comments:
Post a Comment