Real Steel Review

A film about robots fighting each other that’s both vaguely tolerable and not in 3D? Not on your nelly! At least that’s what I would have said, posed with that question prior to seeingReal Steel. I am pleased to report that director Shawn Levy’s latest effort is a surprisingly decent little film that may well go some way in setting right the bad name CGI-robot-battle-fests have been given recently.

Set in a near future world where regular puny human boxing has been superseded by exciting, no-holds-barred robot rumbles, former pugilist Hugh Jackman tests his mettle – or ‘metal’, if you will – fighting (via remote control) in the non-league robot boxing circuit. After a few mishaps, a lot of lost cash and whole pile of broken robot parts, Jackman is reunited with his estranged son Max and together they battle a rusty old training bot, Atom, on the circuit. Will the no-hope underdog stand a chance in the fierce world of robot-boxing? What do you think?

It may sound a bit daft and the underdog sports movie is hardly the genre in which you might expect to find startling originality, but Real Steel is definitely one of the more enjoyable family-friendly films of this year. Jackman is outstanding and – despite his reputation as one of the most likable men in Hollywood – plays something of total git in this film (he quite literally plans to sell his own son), which is very amusing and enjoyable. Dakota Goyo, the kid, is far less annoying than you’d have any reason to anticipate. Evangeline Lilly plays the token love interest and even if she veers wildly from being quite good to quite bad in the acting stakes, she’s always rather charming. Her fellow Lost alumni (and Jackman’s former X-Person colleague) Kevin Durand plays a rival to Jackman and is terrific, doing that superficially-pleasant-but-oh-my-goodness-he’s-a-total-psycho thing he does so very well. Unfortunately, he doesn’t get nearly enough screen time; there really should be a campaign to get Durand into more films, because he’s clearly brilliant.

Also exciting were the robot designs which throw up some genuinely interesting-to-look-at machines, rather than blurry masses of cogs, guns and windscreens, like some other big-screen bots I could mention. There’s a minor plot-point in which we’re perhaps led to believe that there’s more to Atom than being simply a machine, but this is left thankfully ambiguous – we get no more than a brief, silent scene in which the robot looks at his own reflection and into his baleful blue LED eyes, which is a really effective and well-executed collaboration between design and direction. Also pleasing was the fact that in many scenes, animatronic robots are clearly used – no matter how good CGI gets, it’s always better when you know there’s something really there in the scene (which, incidentally, is one of the many reasons old Star Wars is better than new Star Wars).

Yes, the film maybe somewhat clichéd, hackneyed and overlong. Yes, there’s a hell of a lot of product placement (though the Xbox 720 advert was a nice touch). Yes, the final battle is staggeringly shameless in its manipulation of your emotions, but if you fail to be uplifted by it, there’s probably something deeply wrong with you that you should talk to your close friends and family about. But in spite of all that, Real Steel boasts heart, charm and characters you give a rat’s ass about, something sorely missing in many blockbusters. It may not be the most well-oiled machine you’ll ever see, but it is certainly punching above its weight.

Shawn Levy Interview

Shawn Levy may not be the biggest name in directing yet – titles under his belt include Cheaper by the Dozen, Date Night and the Night at the Museum franchise – but that could all be about to change with the release of Real Steel this autumn. An underdog sports movie (is there any other kind?) with its focus on a father-son relationship, not to mention some good old fashioned robot-on-robot fighting action, Real Steel is set to entertain the bejesus out of you. Levy was in old London town recently performing promotional duties at Empire’s Big Screen event. Being the very special internet website that we are, Blogomatic3000 was one of the lucky few granted a one-on-one interview with Levy. Here we discuss Spielberg, robots and punching bulls.

So tell us where the concept for Real Steel came from. It’s based on a Richard Matheson short story is it not?

It was a Matheson story that became a Twilight Zone episode that Matheson wrote himself. Spielberg and Dreamworks had been developing a movie version for like, seven years and they never quite cracked it and brought it to life. But they sent it to me and I felt like I had a take on how to make it and things moved very quickly from that point.

You’ve got Hugh Jackman playing a real bastard in your film. How did you get that performance out of one of the nicest men in Hollywood?

I really, really pushed him to play that asshole! I told him what I believe which is that he has such audience goodwill as an actor – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love the guy. He gives off such inherent likability that I felt strongly that he could play it as a hard-edged bastard and not risk alienating the audience. I think that it certainly works and it’s why the third act where his character really has a catharsis works to the extent that it does, because he’s earned, he’s spent so much of his life and so much of the movie playing hard and remote and angry so when we see the softening of that, it’s very satisfying.

In the film you create the robots using not only CGI, but animatronics which was fantastic to see – how was it working with that on set?

It was really interesting, I mean really almost with incident. I have to tell you, the first time I saw Atom, the first time Dakota saw Atom, it’s like you kind of fall in love with this thing because on the one hand he’s this hulking machine but there’s a simplicity and an innocence to his design. Those inscrutable LEDs for eyes behind the mesh of his face – he was really evocative and expressive. I felt that bringing those practical machines into the movie added a lot.

Speaking of Dakota, he plays a precocious young man in the film – is he as precocious and as much of a livewire in real life?

He’s definitely not at all lippy. In the movie he is a smartass, a punk kid with a lot of attitude. In real life he is a well-raised, super polite little Canadian boy. I fear that the fame that this movie will bring to him will forever corrupt him, but I certainly hope not!

Early on in the film, one of the robots fights a bull. Now obviously it’s not real, but the fight is very visceral – I was wondering if you anticipate upsetting anyone over animal cruelty?

I can tell you that we did not have robot punch a bull in the face!

I was hoping not!

We did have a real bull for a lot of the charging shots, we had animal treatment people on set, so the bulls were treated very very kindly and any violence for fun’s sake was absolutely only done to digital creations. So far we’ve had no one offended by the bull sequence.

Obviously the scene is there to demonstrate the brutality of robot boxing and I think the scene works in that way.

That’s right. I’m sure there’ll be some backlash somewhere!

Tell us about the design of the robots. Atom has a lot of charm, but the other robots are a lot more elaborate.

We spent about four months just designing the robots and we did eighteen, nineteen of them. And the mains ones, Ambush, Atom, Zeus, Metro, Midas and Noisy Boy, we wanted each to have distinct designs and colours and personalities. And Tom Meyer, the designer, oversaw different design teams of men and women working on one robot from one another so that the whole visual approach to them would feel individuated.

I really liked Noisy Boy, I was sorry to see him get merked so early on!

I know, Noisy Boy with his shogun helmet and his striated torso – it’s a great looking bot. Little known trivia fact – the LEDs on his fists say things in Japanese like ‘pain’, ‘oblivion’, ‘the end’ ‘doom’!

One film series I’m sure Real Steel will be compared to is the Transformers franchise. Personally, I don’t like them and one of the criticisms they get is that they’re just about a load of robots hitting each other. Now your film has a load of robots hitting each other, but I really liked it! It had charm and character… Did you have Transformers in your mind when making the film?

If you live in… the world, you’re aware of Transformers! Look, I would be grateful to have fifty per cent of the success that Michael Bay’s had with his franchise so I say this with respect to that, but our movie is really, thirty per cent robot action, the rest is a straightforward father-son sports drama, so I think the balance is very different. The other thing is that you only care about the outcome of the robot fights in Real Steel because you care about the people in the corners and that’s something that’s quite different I think from the Transformers movies.

There’s the Steven Spielberg connection there as well, how was working with him?

It was a dream mentorship. The truth is, when you’re super successful, you can be selflessly generous in your advice and support. I think when you’re in the earlier years of your career and you’re scraping it trying to make it, you’re running your own race in your head and you’re worried about getting where you want to get. Steven has gotten to where no one has ever gotten and I found him to be an incredibly available, forthcoming mentor.

The film is not going to be in 3D – was this a creative decision from day one?

Yes. I knew that Transformers was going to be in 3D and we wanted to distinguish. I think that choosing to do the movie in 2D sends a message, and this was important to Steven and I, that this was a father-son action-drama, not a robot fighting movie. It certainly has qualities of robot action, but we wanted the focus to be on the people.

Finally, what’s next on your plate?

Well I’m producing a movie right now called Neighbourhood Watch with Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, so that’s got me quite busy. I’ve also been working for about six months on a movie called Fantastic Voyage with James Cameron which I’m going to produce and direct and Jim will be producing that’s going to be this crazy, immersive sci-fi action movie. As such, it’s really complex and really pricey but we’ll make that if and when we get the right star.

Empire Big Screen: Disney Showcase and Muppets Interview

Disney’s showcase at the Big Screen event/festival/shindig boasted an interesting selection of clips and footage from some interesting looking films. Shawn Levy was first to show up with some fun footage from the robot-boxing movie Real Steel (which I did get to see in order to prepare for the upcoming interview I did with Shawn Levy, but I’m embargoed from reviewing until October 7th). The clips we saw included one boxing match and a scene in which star Hugh Jackman and on-screen son Dakota Goyo discover an old robot quite by accident in a scrap yard. Levy was keen to stress the film’s focus on the father-son relationship and its classic underdog sports story rather than the robotic brutality. Real Steel looks like a lot of fun, but who knows how good it will be? WHO KNOWS?

We also got to see quite a bit of footage from John Carter (formerly of Mars), Disney’s new space-fantasy tour-de-force (or Avatar cash in, if we’re being cynical. Which we’re not!). The footage was introduced by Pixar big kahuna Andrew Stanton, who has played some sort of role (often writing and/or directing and/or producing) on pretty much every film the studio has churned out. John Carter is his first live action flick and is something of a labour of love, given that Stanton has wanted to bring the story to the screen since his childhood. We saw a burly-looking Taylor Kitsch as the titular John meeting some green aliens and doing a lot of jumping around, followed by what looked an awful lot like the coliseum scene in Star Wars Episode II. The CGI didn’t look quite finished, but given that Pixar have been doing photo-realistic visuals for some time now, I’m certain the finished article will look fine. Overall though, John Carter looks good fun. The trailer was improved no end by the classy inclusion of Peter Gabriel’s ‘My Body is a Cage’ as background music.

The last major bit of the showcase was Spielberg’s War Horse, which was introduced by star Jeremy Irvine. Irvine had been playing a small chorus part in a stage production during his audition before getting the part; the jump up to the big league proving as surprising to the actor as anyone else. The footage we saw seemed as stirring and care-laden as anything else Spielberg has done and should do justice to the well-loved book by Michael Morpurgo and the stage play.

They also showed the teaser at the end of Captain America for The Avengers, which is basically a lot of fast cuts between people talking in a grey steel room.

Disney’s showcase was followed by a live satellite link up with Kermit the Frog (Kermit the goddamn Frog!) and director James Bobin (Flight of the Conchords) in which they chatted about the new Muppets film, The Muppets. The interview was a lot of fun and was many people’s highlight of the weekend. The new film seems very much in the vein of classic Muppet’s comedy and we were treated to a sizable chunk which saw Jason Segel, Amy Adams (both perfectly suited to The Muppets) and their Muppet friend Walter tracking down Kermit in order to convince him to get the old gang back together in order to save the Muppet Theatre. The clip included a very sweet song by Kermit and boasted a handful of big laughs, even in its brief duration, which bodes exceedingly well for the film’s release. Kermit’s chat – in which he took several questions from the ecstatic audience – was interrupted by Fozzie Bear and, of course, Miss Piggy who threatened to spill the backstage beans on Jason Segel before the clip cut off. February cannot come soon enough.