Went and saw Real Steel

<Rimshot>

Seriously though, all of the positive things I'm hearing about this movie make me want to see it. However, having a two month old is rather detrimental to me seeing movies these days (movie cost + babysitter costs) :/

Will have to put it in the Netflix queue when I can

Neither set of grandparents live close, and the ones that don't live out-of-state are afraid they're going to cause harm to our child somehow (haven't held a baby since my wife was small). I've got friends that have volunteered, but haven't put them up to their words yet

I liked it... and I hated it. I'm being very nit-picky, but I had a couple of serious problems with it. But it was a FUN movie to watch.

My problems were this: (possible spoilers)





I didn't get a good feel for the robot hero. He wasn't given enough personality. A couple of shots here and there, but mostly, I got that he was a blank slate, and a little writing effort would have helped here.

Another thing was the way the movie ended. (major spoiler)






Seriously, energy management??? It is one of the very first things my Tae Kwon Do teacher taught me many, many years ago: Whoever gets tired first in a fight loses. And Rocky punctuates that point in more than one movie... to the detriment of Rocky's good looks (lol). But seriously, what fighter loses by punching themselves out? And how does a dynamically reactive AI[sic]' fall prey to 3 right hooks in a row????



The movie was "Almost" "Man vs Corporation"... but not quite, not enough about Zeus' managers in the movie, and why would they accept the challenge? Weak justification.

It was "Almost" Man vs. Man, but not enough (Charlie vs. Tak Mashido), or (Max vs. Farra Lemkova) to make it personal. Also, not nearly enough Farra Lemkova in general.

It was "Almost" a movie about replacing a brutal sport with surrogates to save the fighters - except it got a 3 line, 1 scene mention.A lot of lost opportunities due to lazy writing and an emphasis on.... well now that I think about it, nothing in particular.

It was "Almost" a movie about an amazingly tough and cool robot with some personality, but that was glossed over and totally lost in the other muck. What made him so tough? Was he made of Unobtanium? Did he have a soul? Was he a victim of some kind of robot-on-robot viciousness? Because being a 'sparring partner' and being a little faster than the other bots didn't go far enough for me, nor did having a damage-smile-scar (what is that, from the 50's?). They stole from Rocky, but not from Wall-e. Might shoulda watched that one again before writing this one, guys.

Lines like, (and if I'm spoiling any ideas here, you really need to watch more movies...)
"You put the voice recognition from that one in the body of this one? Brilliant!"
and
"This isn't a video game, this is real life!"
[no dude, it's actually a VIDEO GAME. No people will be harmed, you're not actually participating, and there are ACTUAL CONTROLLERS. Do you not understand the words that are coming out of your mouth??!]
are kinda insulting to today's moviegoers.

I predict RSII will be direct-to-video, no big stars, and very bad... but there WILL be one.

Spoilers ahead:





To me it felt like there was more to Atom's story than they put into the movie. Why were Team Zeus unwilling to fight the match? Why did they offer to buy Atom in the first place? There are also a few scenes in the movie that to me suggested Atom was at least a little sentient.

As far as Zeus wearing himself out? It looks like they never bothered to test him past 2 rounds or no other robot went past 2 rounds with him.

Zeus' creator definitely recognized him somehow. I'm gonna go with Zeus prototype.

I had fun, I enjoyed it.

Awesome robots fighting? Liz squees.
Awesome robots with growly noises? Liz squees.
Awesome robots that move in realistic but not a clunky manner? Liz very happy. It looked like either they had people in robo suits or they filmed people in the black suits with ping pong balls against a blank screen method then translated that to a CGI rig. Most importantly, the robots did not look pure CGI.

I do agree, I would have liked to see a little more personal reaction from Atom since it was hinted that he had some kind of reactive personality AI.

Plan to grab it on DVD release. Wouldn't mind seeing it in the theater again.

They had actual animatronics there for parts of the movie. The rest was filmed using the same technique that was done in Avatar, iirc.

Saw this yesterday. Overall I liked it for the robot fights but man was this movie cheesy. It was basically Hugh Jackman's Hancock. Oh, and I felt bad for the kid because Jake Loyd killed the market for kids who look like that.

I will also point out that Muhammed Ali used the 'let them tire themselves out' strategy against other boxers, especially the much bigger George Foreman, hell it's even got its' own wiki article, called The Rope-a-dope.

I somehow envision this as a mash up of the 1990 movie Robot Jox and the 1987 NES video game Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!