By Katherine Massopust —

Real Steel was based on a the short story “Steel” by Richard Matheson in 1956. The short story was made into a Twilight Zone in the fifth season in 1963 called “Steel” staring Lee Marvin as a washed up boxer, Steel Kelly. Steel Kelly is now managing a washed up robot boxer “Battling Maxo” a B2 model in a era of B9’s. When Battling Maxo fails, Steel Kelly goes inside the robot in the fight and fighting another robot. Although he loses the fight he earned enough money to fix Battling Maxo in this man vs. machine “futuristic” John Henry story.

The 2010 film, Real Steel stars Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton, a washed up boxer who has been replaced by fighting robots in a world where robot boxing is king. Charlie spends his life managing robots at local circuits such as the state fairs and local underground robot boxing rings. When his last robot gets destroyed by a bull at the state fair, Charlie owes his creditors $20,000. Charlie is then thrown a curve when he is given custody of his 11 year old son, Max (Dakota Goyo) after Max’s mother had recently died.

Charlie agrees to give up custody of Max to his wealthy Aunt Debra (Hope Davis) and her older husband Marvin (James Rebhorn). But Charlie is given custody of Max for the summer while they go to Europe for three months on the condition Charlie gets $100,000.

Charlie takes the money and buys a old WRB (World Robot Boxing League) robot Noisy Boy. Unfamiliar with the controls Charlie takes Noisy Boy to an underground boxing match and loses, Noisy Boy smashed to smithereens.

Frustrated they go to the junkyard and Max finds an old robot which he takes with him.

They stay at Charlie’s girlfriend’s (Bailey Tallet played by Evangeline Lilly) gym. Max discovers that the robot he found is named Atom and is an old 2014 generation 2 sparing bot, built to take punishment but not dish it out. They ad parts to the robot and Max bonds with it, learning that Atom secretly has sentience of his own.

The three go down south and get Atom fights. Charlie teaches the robot, Atom how to fight.

Can Atom go all the way to the championship against the mighty Zeus of whom no robot has lasted even two rounds with?

Set in 2020 Real Steel is set in the not so distant future. The sets are not futuristic and are probably more realistic of what 2020 would look like. Some of the technology shown is a 3D GPS System and Holographic built in car cell phone. Other than the boxing robots, the film stays pretty much in a “today” world.

The special effects are outstanding showing the different types of boxing robots. The fights are fun to watch with elements of “Rocky” and “Raging Bull” in the script.

Directed by Shawn Levy, Real Steel is about the human element still needed behind machines. It was both exciting and enjoyable to watch. Levy recently announced he’ll direct Real Steel 2 but he’ll wait for Hugh Jackman to be available for filming. I’m sure it will be worth seeing.