Real Steel is a Terrible Movie

Adam Rosenblum
Zeta Beta Tau

We can’t always expect movies to be good. In fact, with the way recent trends have been set, we more often expect them to go the opposite way. From the heavy-handed Justin Timberlake metaphor about time puns to Mission Impossible 17, we all laugh and roll our eyes at previews and commercials, confident that, as bad as it is, at least Hollywood is trying.

At least, that’s what I thought, until recently. Over Thanksgiving break, I went to see Real Steel with a couple of friends. We weren’t expecting Oscar gold, obviously, but we were content to watch CGI robots punch each other in the face until they bled motor oil or ran out of batteries or whatever it is robots do when they die. With candy we’d smuggled in and overpriced bags of popcorn, we settled in to watch.

About thirty seconds in, I had a slight gnawing sensation at the corner of my brain. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen this movie before. With a flawed, yet redeemable, main character, a precocious kid, and fighting robots, Real Steel is a potpourri of tired movie themes, mixed up in a random new way. Hollywood, it seems, is out of ideas.

It’s not like they’re trying and failing, either. We’ve reached a point at which I’m actually offended by how bad the effort levels of movies have gotten. In Real Steel, characters make Rocky references and share meaningful glances with the camera. At one point, the main robot looks at itself in a mirror, almost as if to ask, “Who am I?” set to haunting music. A scrappy underdog stands up to the robot-boxing champion, driven by a team of people who had lost their way and forgotten the true meaning of robot boxing (?). An accented enemy from the beginning of the movie gets his comeuppance, the redeemable character fails a challenge of character, but pulls it out of the fire in the end to win the admiration of his son and blah blah blah blah blah.

Honestly, if this is the best Hollywood can do, I’m signing off movies. No vague body of people that can make a real life Rockem-Sockem Robots movie without a trace of shame or irony deserves my 10 dollars.

Adam is a senior studying psychology and creative writing. You may contact him at adamrosenblum222@yahoo.com.