Real Steel 2 Watch

[Thomas Merino]

Ifyou watch TV at all, by now you must have seen at least a few trailers for Real Steel. If you're anything like me, your first thought -- and probably your second thought, too -- was to wonder why they hadn't simply called it "Rock 'Em-Sock 'Em Robots." Having now seen the movie, I can say that, while that would have been a cool title, it really would have been misleading.

Hugh Jackman (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) stars as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter who lost his chance at a title when 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots took over the ring. Now nothing but a small-time promoter, Charlie earns just enough money piecing together low-end bots from scrap metal to get from one underground boxing venue to the next. When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo, Thor) to build and train a championship contender.

"The uncanny thing about Real Steel is just how gripping the fight scenes are; Sugar Ray Leonard served as a consultant to the motion-capture performers responsible for pantomiming the machines' moves."

"An underdog drama with clanging metal-on-metal action, Real Steel feels scientifically programmed to claw at your heart while its battling robots, which have a semblance of human personality, drum up your adrenaline. That said, I'm not sure that the movie itself has more than a semblance of a heart."

"Real Steel is a real movie. It has characters, it matters who they are, it makes sense of its action, it has a compelling plot. This is the sort of movie, I suspect, young viewers went to the "Transformers" movies looking for."

"The robot fight scenes are brutal, the emotions are big and obvious, and yet I liked Real Steel a lot. It's a good natured film, made with some wit and flair. If I were 12 years old again, I'd probably think it just about the best film I'd ever seen."

It's difficult to watch the trailer for Real Steel--the Hugh Jackman movie that dares to ask "what if boxers were robots instead of people"--without thinking of that classic "two great tastes that taste great together" Reese's commercial. In recent years, audiences have flocked to movies about robots and to movies about boxing, and now, someone finally thought to combine the two. Is "robots and boxing" the "peanut butter and chocolate" of the film world? DreamWorks is betting $80 million that the answer is "yes."

With Hollywood churning out films based on games like Battleship and Monopoly, audiences may assume that Real Steel is a big-budget adaptation of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. But to find the actual genesis of Real Steel, you need to turn to another, unlikelier source that Hollywood has routinely mined for ideas: sci-fi writer Richard Matheson.

If Matheson's name doesn't immediately register, his pedigree might. Throughout his career, Matheson has seen his work translated into hits (I Am Legend, which has been remade for film no less than three times in the past 50 years) and misses (the syrupy Robin Williams adaptation of What Dreams May Come). Real Steel is very loosely based on a 1956 story by RichardMatheson called "Steel," a fantasy/science fiction story first published in the cleverly-titled Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. And Real Steel isn't even the first filmed version of Steel: In 1963, Matheson himself adapted the short story into a script for a four-season episode of The Twilight Zone.

"Steel" is not The Twilight Zone's finest hour. "Boxing was legally abolished in 1968," intones host Rod Serling. Fortunately for fight fans, robotics have somehow leapt ahead to the point where humanoid robots can plausibly stand in humans in the ring. Lee Marvin plays "Steel Kelly," a human former boxer who pretends to be a robot after the robo-boxer he manages breaks down ahead of a bout with its robo-opponent. Needless to say, the fight goes poorly for Kelly, and Serling solemnly informs us that his loss is "proof positive that you can't outpunch machinery" (is that really a lesson we needed?).

"Steel" may not hold up particularly well, but the extent of Matheson's contributions to The Twilight Zone is impressive: He wrote 14 scripts during the show's original run, including all-time classic "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," which starred William Shatner at his hammy best. During the 1960s and 1970s, when the science fiction and horror genres were still in their televisioninfancy, Matheson's contributions included episodes of Star Trek, Night Gallery, and the first two televised appearances of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Matheson generated a significant body of work in his six decades as a screenwriter, though many of his original short stories remain frustratingly difficult tofind in print. But in the past five years, Matheson's greatest exposure by far has come has come with a trio of big-budget films: I Am Legend, The Box, and now Real Steel. These films, based on Matheson's original writing, were often adapted by screenwriters who weren't even born when their source material was first published.

Matheson's writing lends itself particularly well to contemporary Hollywood because it's "high concept"--which translates, in screenwriting parlance, to "easy to pitch." At the heart of Matheson's best tales you'll find a simple, compelling question, from I Am Legend ("what if a mass epidemic left a single man alive?") to "Button, Button," the short story that became The Box ("would a needy family sacrifice the life of a complete stranger for a massive financial windfall?"). Hollywood loves these kinds of stories because they're easy to understand and therefore easy to mass-market. At least, that's the idea, though it doesn't always work in practice: Where I Am Legend succeeded (at least financially) in drawing an audience to Matheson's brainchild, The Box was a bizarre, messy, box-office bomb.

So far, Real Steel looks to be taking the I Am Legend road to box office victory. Early buzz and test audience reactions for the filmhave been so positive that DreamWorks greenlit production on a sequel as early as last April. If audiences turn out for robot boxing this weekend, we'll have plenty more robot boxing to look forward to. And we'll have Richard Matheson to thank.

The Real Steel extended version opened up much differently than we expected: smack in the middle of a big fight in the Khakrez District. Ambush comes thundering down the ramp of a Shithook hovering over the rocks in above Darvishan, all painted up in multi-cam, with a couple squads of Rangers hauling ass after and a bunch of RPG- and RPK-toting Taliban trying to fight them off.

Tell you one thing we liked, when it comes to tropes and standard Hollywood fare; the villains did not try to sabotage Atom after their bid to buy him failed. Nice touch. We also liked the hawt Tron-like babes in the ring during the final fight.

The iPad/laptop stuff from the "Second Screen" feature took us a minute or two to figure out (for which our new bacon flavored beer might be to blame) but it was really cool. Basically with this Second Screen thing is a deal where you watch the movie, syncing it with your iPad or whatever, and check out galleries and activities relating to whatever scene the movie is on.

Make no mistake. It would have been a lot better if Noisy Boy was painted up in MARPAT desert digis with NODs on his kabuto, smashing through mud huts on the side of a valley in Pashtunistan, tearing some AQ f&%$tards limb from limb and demolishing technicals. Well, maybe Midas instead...he might be more appropriate wearing the gyrene colors anyway.

When I first heard that director Shawn Levy was making a robot boxing movie, I'll admit to thinking it sounded like a really stupid idea. After all, the guy who made Pink Panther and the Night at the Museum movies taking on robot boxing? Um...no thanks. But after sitting in the editing room the other day with Levy and having him show me (along with a few other reporters) about ten minutes of the movie, consider me ready to enter the ring to fight alongside Hugh Jackman.

While I'll explain what the movie is about and have a lot more details about what I learned after the jump, I want to immediately talk about something that absolutely floored me during the presentation.

Like all of you, when I watch a movie, I can tell when an effect is done by computers and when it's real. Meaning, when it's been done practically. However, for the first time in my life, I saw some footage that made me lose track of what was real and what was created in a computer. I had to pick my jaw off the floor after watching it. And Levy told us it was only 80% completed. Hit the jump for more:

Before going any further, if you're not familiar with Real Steel, the film stars Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Dakota Goyo, Kevin Durand and Anthony Mackie. Here's the official synopsis from DreamWorks:

"A gritty, white-knuckle, action ride set in the near-future where the sport of boxing has gone high-tech, Real Steel stars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter who lost his chance at a title when 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots took over the ring. Now nothing but a small-time promoter, Charlie earns just enough money piecing together low-end bots from scrap metal to get from one underground boxing venue to the next. When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo) to build and train a championship contender. As the stakes in the brutal, no-holds-barred arena are raised, Charlie and Max, against all odds, get one last shot at a comeback."

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