Real Steel

Real Steel
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Shawn Levy
Screenplay by	John Gatins
Story by	Dan Gilroy Jeremy Leven
Produced by	Shawn Levy Susan Montford Don Murphy
Starring	Hugh Jackman Dakota Goyo Evangeline Lilly Anthony Mackie Kevin Durand
Cinematography	Mauro Fiore
Edited by	Dean Zimmerman
Music by	Danny Elfman
Production companies	DreamWorks Pictures Reliance Entertainment 21 Laps Entertainment
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date	October 7, 2011 (2011-10-07)
Running time	127 minutes
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English
Budget	$110 million
Box office	$295,120,796

Real Steel is a 2011 American science fiction action film starring Hugh Jackman and co-produced and directed by Shawn Levy. The film is based in part on the 1956 short story "Steel" by Richard Matheson, though screenwriter John Gatins placed the film in U.S. state fairs and other "old-fashioned" Americana settings. Real Steel was in development for several years before production began on June 11, 2010. Filming took place primarily in the U.S. state of Michigan. Animatronic robots were built for the film, and motion capture technology was used to depict the brawling of computer-generated robots and animatronics. Real Steel was publicly released in Australia on October 6, 2011, and in the United States and Canada on October 7, 2011, to mixed reviews. It was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 84th Academy Awards.

Plot

In 2020, human boxers have been replaced by robot boxers. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a former boxer who owns such a robot, Ambush, competing in unsanctioned matches and in exhibitions with it. At a rural fair, Ambush is destroyed by Black Thunder, a bull belonging to promoter Ricky (Kevin Durand). Having made a bet that Ambush would win, Charlie now owes Ricky $20,000, which he doesn't pay before leaving.

Charlie is informed his ex-girlfriend has died, and that he must attend a hearing to decide the fate of his preteen son Max (Dakota Goyo). Max's wealthy aunt Debra (Hope Davis) and uncle Marvin (James Rebhorn) want full custody, which Charlie gives them in exchange for $100,000, half in advance, on the condition that Charlie take care of Max for three months while the couple are away on a second anniversary.

Charlie and Max meet with Charlie's childhood friend Bailey Tallet (Evangeline Lilly), who runs the boxing gym of her deceased father, Charlie's old coach. There, Charlie buys a secondhand World Robot Boxing league (WRB) robot, the once-famous Noisy Boy, and arranges for it to fight the illegal circuit's champion, Midas, at a venue belonging to his friend Finn. Partly due to both his inexperience with Noisy Boy's combinations and his own overconfidence, Charlie ends up losing control of Noisy Boy and Midas destroys it.

Charlie breaks into a junkyard with Max to steal scraps that he can use to put a new robot together. There, Max falls over a ledge, where he is saved from doom by getting snagged on the arm of a buried robot. After Charlie pulls Max back up, Max digs out the entire robot, called Atom. On Max's insistence, Charlie takes it back to Bailey's gym, where they discover Atom is an obsolete Generation-2 sparring bot built in 2014. Atom has been designed to sustain massive damage, but is unable to deal much damage itself. Atom also has a "shadow function" for following human movement. Partly due to both Max's insistence and Charlie needing money, the duo has Atom fight an unsanctioned outdoor match against a robot called Metro. Atom wins, earning back some of Charlie's money.

Max later upgrades Atom to take vocal commands and to have harder-hitting fistcuffs, using parts from Charlie's demolished robots, and convinces Charlie to train Atom. Atom's string of subsequent wins attracts the attention of a promoter from the WRB, who offers Atom a professional fight against the robot Twin Cities. Charlie accepts, and Atom wins again, thanks to Charlie's boxing experience allowing him to locate and take advantage of a small tell in Twin Cities' punch. Reveling in their subsequent novelty attention, Max challenges WRB champion Zeus, designed by genius Tak Mashido (Karl Yune) and sponsored by wealthy Farra Lemcova (Olga Fonda), who before the match tries to buy the upstart Atom.

As Max and Charlie leave after the Twin Cities fight, Ricky and his men attack them, and steal their winnings. Feeling guilty, Charlie returns Max to his aunt and uncle, feeling Max will be safer with them and refusing the second half of the money he was promised. Bailey convinces him that he can be a better father. Debra allows Charlie to take Max out for one last night, to the Zeus-Atom match. Zeus severely damages Atom while also getting injured for the first time. Ricky, who had bet Finn $100,000 that Atom would not last the first round, tries to slip away, but is cornered by Finn and his colleagues. In the fourth round of the five-round match, Atom's vocal receptors are damaged, and Atom must fight the last round in shadow-boxing mode, copying Charlie's moves from the aisle. Zeus, now controlled manually by a furious Mashido, expends energy on trashing the defensive Atom, running low on power and turning sluggish as a result. The fight swings in Atom's favor as he overwhelms the weakened Zeus, even knocking the seemingly invincible champion down once, but Atom is unable to win before the round ends. The judges declare Zeus the winner on points, but the near-defeat leaves the Zeus team humiliated. Atom is labeled the "People's Champion" as Charlie and Max celebrate their success.

Cast

• Hugh Jackman as Charlie Kenton
• Dakota Goyo as Max Kenton
• Evangeline Lilly as Bailey Tallet
• Kevin Durand as Ricky
• Hope Davis as Debra
• James Rebhorn as Marvin
• Anthony Mackie as Finn
• Olga Fonda as Farra Lemkova
• Karl Yune as Tak Mashido

Production

Director Levy on set with Jackman in July 2010

Real Steel is directed by Shawn Levy and is based on Richard Matheson's 1956 short story "Steel". The film was produced by DreamWorks Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, 21 Laps, and Montford/Murphy Productions. The original screenplay was written by Dan Gilroy and was purchased by DreamWorks in 2005 for $850,000, or in 2003 (sources differ). The project was one of 17 that DreamWorks took from Paramount Pictures when they split in 2008. Director Peter Berg expressed interest in the project in mid-2009; but went no further. Levy was attached to the project in September 2009, and Jackman was cast in the starring role in November for a $9 million fee. In the same month, Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider at DreamWorks greenlit the project. Les Bohem and Jeremy Leven had worked on Gilroy's screenplay, but in 2009, John Gatins was working on a new draft. When Levy joined the project, he worked with Gatins to revise the screenplay. Levy said he was invited by Spielberg and Snider while finishing Date Night, and while the director initially considered Real Steel to have "a crazy premise", he accepted after reading the script and feeling it could be "a really humanistic sports drama".

With Real Steel having a production budget of $110 million, Levy chose to set the film in state fairs and other "old-fashioned" Americana settings that would exude nostalgia and create a warm tone for the film's father-son story. Filming began in June 2010, and ended by October 15, 2010. Locations include areas around Detroit, Michigan, and across the state, including at the Renaissance Center, the Cobo Arena, the Detroit Fire Department headquarters, the Ingham County Courthouse, the former Belle Isle Zoo, and the Highland Park Ford Plant.

Jason Matthews of Legacy Effects, successor to Stan Winston Studios, was hired to turn production designer Tom Meyer's robot designs into practical animatronic props. He said, "We have 26-and-a-half total live-action robots that were made for this film. They all have hydraulic neck controls. Atom has RC [radio-controlled] hands as well". According to Jackman, executive producer Spielberg "actually said to Shawn, 'You should really have real elements where you can.' ... Basically if they're not walking or fighting, that's a real robot". Levy added that Spielberg gave the example of Jurassic Park, where Winston's animatronic dinosaurs "got a better performance from the actors, as they were seeing something real, and gave the visual effects team an idea of what it would look like". As Real Steel was not based on a toy and a toy, Meyer said that "there was no guideline" for the robots, and each was designed from scratch, with an attempt to put "different personality and aesthetics", according to Levy. In Atom's case, it tried to have a more humanizing design to be an "everyman" who could attract the audience's sympathy and serve as a proxy to the viewer, with a fencing mask that Meyer explained served to show "his identity was a bit hidden, so you have to work harder to get to see him."

For scenes when computer-generated robots brawl, "simulcam" motion capture technology, developed for the film Avatar, was used. As Levy described the process, "[Y]ou're not only capturing the fighting of live human fighters, but you're able to take that and see it converted to [CGI] robots on a screen instantaneously. Simulcam puts the robots in the ring in real time, so you are operating your shots to the fight, whereas even three, four years ago, you used to operate to empty frames, just guessing at what stuff was going to look like". Boxing hall-of-famer Sugar Ray Leonard was an adviser for these scenes, and also gave Jackman boxing lessons so his moves would be more natural.

Crew

• Shawn Levy – director, producer
• Susan Montford – producer
• Don Murphy – producer
• John Gatins – screenplay
• Sheldon Turner – screenplay
• Dan Gilroy – story
• Jeremy Leven – story
• Danny Elfman – composer

• Mauro Fiore – cinematographer
• Dean Zimmerman – editor
• Tom Meyer – production designer
• John Rosengrant – animatronic robots
• Erik Nash – visual effects supervisor
• Marlene Stewart – costume designer
• Ann Lee Masterson – makeup department head
• David Rubin, Richard Hicks — casting

Marketing

DreamWorks released the first trailer for Real Steel in December 2010. In May 2011, the studio released a second trailer. While the film features boxing robots, Levy said he wanted to show in the trailer "the father-son drama, the emotion Americana of it". He said, "We are very much the robo-boxing movie, but that's one piece of a broader spectrum." In addition to marketing trailers and posters, DreamWorks enlisted the British advertising company Five33 to build large physical displays representing the film as it had done for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. The studio also collaborated with Virgin America to name one of their Airbus A320s after the film, and one of the film's robots is pictured on its fuselage. On September 19, Jackman appeared on the weekly sports entertainment program WWE Raw to promote the film. In addition to Jackman making an appearance on the show, WWE named Crystal Method's "Make Some Noise" from the film's soundtrack as the official theme song for their returning PPV, Vengeance.

Jakks Pacific released a toy line with action figures based on Atom, Zeus, Noisy Boy, Midas and Twin Cities. The company has also released a one-on-one, playset fighting game with robots in a ring.

Jump Games released a fighting videogame based on the film for Android and iOS devices, and Yuke's has made a game for home consoles.

Release

Jackman at the Sydney premiere in September 2011

Real Steel had its world premiere on September 6, 2011 in Paris at the Le Grand Rex. The film had its United States premiere on October 2, 2011 in Los Angeles at the Gibson Amphitheatre. It was commercially released in Australia on October 6, 2011, followed by the United States and Canada on October 7, 2011. For the U.S. release, it was originally scheduled for release on November 18, 2011, but it was moved earlier to avoid competition with the first part of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. The film was released in 3,440 theaters in the United States and Canada, including 270 IMAX screenings. There will also be over 100 IMAX screenings in territories outside the United States and Canada, with 62 screening on October 7.

Home media

The film was released on DVD, Blu-ray, and both high-definition and standard-definition digital download on January 24, 2012 from Touchstone Home Entertainment. Additional material variously includes Disney Second Screen; deleted and extended scenes with introductions by director Levy; and a profile of film consultant Sugar Ray Leonard.

Reception

Critical response

Real Steel gained mixed to positive reviews from critics, with the aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes listing 59% of 192 critics giving a positive review, with a rating average of 5.8 out of 10. The website's consensus is, "Silly premise notwithstanding, this is a well-made Hollywood movie: Thrilling and exciting action with just enough characterization." Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a rating score of 56, based on 34 reviews. CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade moviegoers gave the film was an A on an A plus to F scale. The Rehash Critics gave this film a 1.75 out of 5.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film three out of four stars, saying, "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. Sometimes you go into a movie with low expectations and are pleasantly surprised." Conversely, Claudia Puig of USA Today said that, "Though the premise of fighting robots does seem a plausible and intriguing extension of the contemporary WWE world, Real Steel is hampered by leaden, clichéd moments in which a stubborn boy teaches his childish father a valuable lesson." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an A-, saying director Levy "makes good use of his specialized skill in blending people and computer-made imaginary things into one lively, emotionally satisfying story". James White of the UK magazine Empire gave the film 3 of 5 stars, saying, "Rocky with robots? It's not quite in Balboa's weight class, but Real Steel at least has some heft. There's barely a story beat among the beat-downs that you won't expect, and sometimes the saccharine gets in the way of the spectacle, but on the whole this is enjoyable family entertainment."

Box office

Real Steel has earned $85,120,796 in North America, and $210,000,000 in other territories as of January 21, 2012, for a worldwide total of $295,120,796. It had a worldwide opening of $49.4 million. In North America, it topped the box office with $8.5 million on its opening day and $27.3 million in total on its opening weekend, claiming the number one spot, ahead of the other new nationwide release (The Ides of March) and all holdovers. It managed first-place debuts in 11 countries including Hugh Jackman's native Australia ($4.2 million).

Soundtrack

Real Steel soundtrack consists of 13 tracks featuring artists including Eminem, Royce da 5'9" (Bad Meets Evil), Yelawolf, 50 Cent and Foo Fighters.

1. "Fast Lane" by Bad Meets Evil
2. "Here’s a Little Something for Ya" by Beastie Boys
3. "Miss the Misery" by Foo Fighters
4. "The Enforcer" by 50 Cent
5. "Nine Thou" by Styles of Beyond
6. "Make Some Noise" by The Crystal Method featuring Yelawolf
7. "'Till I Collapse" by Eminem featuring Nate Dogg
8. "One Man Army" by The Prodigy & Tom Morello
9. "Give It a Go" by Timbaland featuring Veronica
10. "The Midas Touch" by Tom Morello
11. "Why Try" by Limp Bizkit
12. "Torture" by Rival Sons
13. "All My Days" by Alexi Murdoch
14. "Kenton" by Danny Elfman

The score album of "Real Steel: Original Motion Picture Score" consists of 19 tracks composed by Danny Elfman; released November 1, 2011, in the US.

1. "Charlie Trains Atom" (1:59)
2. "On the Move" (2:39)
3. "Into the Zoo" (1:02)
4. "Why We're Here" (1:55)
5. "Meet Atom" (3:16)
6. "It's Your Choice" (1:28)
7. "Safe with Me" (2:58)
8. "Atom Versus Twin Cities" (3:12)
9. "For a Kiss" (0:56)
10. "Get in the Truck" (1:13)
11. "Bonding" (2:02)
12. "Twin Cities' Intro" (1:20)
13. "Parkway Motel"" (1:48)
14. "This Is a Brawl" (1:49)
15. "You Deserve Better" (4:03)
16. "Into the Ring" (1:12)
17. "Taking a Beating" (1:34)
18. "Final Round" (6:54)
19. "People's Champion" (2:06)

Sequel

In April 2011, DreamWorks announced it was developing a sequel, and that John Gatins, who wrote the screenplay for the first film, was hired to script the second. Touchstone Pictures, which distributed the first, will co-produce and co-finance, with DreamWorks, and distribute the film. Director Shawn Levy said in September 2011 a sequel depended on the success of the first film and that he would also direct it. The key actors—Jackman, Lilly, and Goyo—would reprise their roles if the studio proceeded with a sequel, though the production schedule would need to match Jackman's crowded schedule.

See also

• "Steel" (The Twilight Zone), a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone also based on Richard Matheson's short story
• List of sports films – Boxing

External links

• Official website
• Real Steel at IMDb
• Real Steel at AllMovie
• Real Steel at Box Office Mojo
• Real Steel at Rotten Tomatoes
• Real Steel at Metacritic
• Official Real Steel game
• Real Steel soundtrack at Movie Soundtracks