{"id":1528,"date":"2011-10-07T06:16:28","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T13:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=1528"},"modified":"2011-10-07T06:16:28","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T13:16:28","slug":"real-steel-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=1528","title":{"rendered":"Real Steel Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe Robots-in-the-Ring Actioner “Real Steel” borrows so liberally from plot elements found in Sylvester Stallone\u2019s filmography, the Great Mumbly One should at least be given a “Story By” credit on IMDB. So many elements are pilfered, in fact, that the film could have easily been called \u201cRocky Sock\u2019em Robots\u201d.<\/p>\n

Much like the original \u201cRocky,\u201d this is the story of a scrappy underdog who gets an unexpected shot at the title. In this case the scrappy underdog is a beat up sparring robot named Atom who was found in a junkyard by scrappy underdog, Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) and his scrappy little kid Max (Dakota Goyo). The year is 2020, you see, and the sport of Boxing has been transformed into a match between menacing machines. Charlie is a derelict who used to be a boxer but is now an unneeded relic so he is clinging on to his failed past by putting robots in the ring and watching them get demolished.
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\nMuch like \u201cRocky\u201d: Atom must clash against the reigning champion whose owner is a beautiful Russian woman named Farra Lemcova (Olga Fonda) that is reminiscent of Brigitte Nielsen who played a beautiful Russian woman in \u201cRocky IV\u201d. Here the main opponent is named Zeus (not Apollo) and he is touted with the statement \u201cWhatever Zeus hits, he kills.\u201d Well I\u2019ve also heard it said that \u201cWhatever Drago hits, he destroys\u201d but the Italian Stallion proved that proclamation wrong in front of a screaming crown in Drago\u2019s Mother Russia.<\/p>\n

The most blatant comparison to a Stallone film and \u201cReal Steel\u201d has to do with the relationship between Charlie and his son, Max. Years ago, Charlie had abandoned his son, leaving behind the child and his mother. Now, the mother has died and Charlie is forced to try and reconcile with Max as the two travel across country, taking up robot battle bouts along the way. There is also a rich relative fighting Charlie for custody of the precocious child. This is almost exactly the same outline for Stallone\u2019s finest achievement (sarcasm), \u201cOver the Top\u201d; the film where Sly essentially ripped himself off and remade \u201cRocky\u201d with wrist-wrestling replacing boxing. They should have called that \u201cWrist Rocky\u201d.
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\nThe only reason I harp on the similarities is because what appears to be an Original Hollywood Movie that isn\u2019t a rehash\/remake\/do-over\/reimagining like nearly every other flick of its kind these days turns out to be a warmed over re-serving of the familiar. They can call it \u201cFormula\u201d but its really just lazy regurgitation. Funny enough, \u201cReal Steel\u201d is loosely based on an old \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d but doesn\u2019t bare any resemblance at all to the Lee Marvin episode entitled \u201cSteel\u201d.<\/p>\n

While the film does take place in the near future, it doesn\u2019t look it. The clothes and architecture do not vary at all from the present day to the point that it is easy to forget that we are supposedly in the year 2020. Occasionally there is a highly stylized vehicle seen that hints at \u201cthings to come\u201d but these designs merely standout as misplaced next to pedestrian cars and trucks sharing the scene with them. You get a sense that an effort was made to make these elements subtle since the film takes place so close to our current time but subtleties should be thrown out the window when your story centers on giant boxing robots that are so far removed from our current technological abilities.
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\nThe big, bad robots are the main attraction but they, too, play as old hat. After Michael Bay has assaulted the modern audience with his \u201cTransformers\u201d spectacles, it is hard to get too roused by a couple of machines duking it out. Again, we\u2019ve seen it. If they were going to remake a Stallone movie with robots they should have gone with \u201cDeath Race 2000\u201d cast with \u201cTransformers\u201d. Or an \u201cOscar\u201d remake with \u201cRobocop\u201d. Or \u201cRhinestone\u201d maybe? Or they could leave well enough alone and come up with an original idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Robots-in-the-Ring Actioner “Real Steel” borrows so liberally from plot elements found in Sylvester Stallone\u2019s filmography, the Great Mumbly One should at least be given a “Story By” credit on IMDB. So many elements are pilfered, in fact, that the film could have easily been called \u201cRocky Sock\u2019em Robots\u201d. Much like the original \u201cRocky,\u201d this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5064,9464,15590,16748,17250,19478,23402,24766],"class_list":["post-1528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-dakota-goyo","tag-hugh-jackman","tag-over-the-top","tag-real-steel-movie-review","tag-rocky","tag-sylvester-stallone","tag-twilight-zone","tag-zeus"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}