Movies News Talk
Many of the films, especially those directed by Michael Bay, stressed the robots instead of the humans as the core of the tale as the Transformers series progressed. Movies like Revenge of the Fallen and Age of Extinction eschewed characterization in favor of spectacle, even though the most critically successful entries—like Bumblebee and the original Transformers—made a point of creating relevant and sympathetic human characters before unleashing robot carnage. Real Steel stresses the advantages of a distinct strategy even though it had hardly the degree of financial success.
Title: Release Year: Budget: Box Office; Rotten Tomatoes Score: Title
■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ --------- | ---------
Real Steel 2011 | $110 million | $299 million | 60%
primary Steel's primary strength is its human beings, even if the exciting idea of battling robots lends it own amazing action scenes. Combining the contemporary tales of an everyman made obsolete by the march of technology with a parent attempting to live up to his own definition of manhood, Hugh Jackman's Charlie is maybe more relatable than anyone in the Transformers series. Real Steel offers a captivating and nuanced picture that makes the action even more significant than the way comparable characters in the Transformers series—like Mark Whalberg's Cade Yeager—are portrayed.
Hugh Jackman's Real Steel clearly shows where the far more successful Transformers series has gone wrong, even if it has a limited influence on release. It is also clearly better than many gave it credit for. Real Steel has found an international audience on Netflix, proving to be the eighth-most popular movie worldwide between June 3 and June 9, 2024, even though it is not yet available on the US version of the site. 13 years on from its debut, this performance is both somewhat unexpected and a timely reminder of the movie's strengths.
Superfically, the Transformers films and Real Steel have a lot in common. Most clearly, both center on enormous robots engaged in combat. Though the metallic heroes seem to be somewhat similar, there is probably more that separates than unites them. Whereas Real Steel's bots are human-made fighters, produced only for entertainment, Transformers' robots are anthropomorphic aliens. Although this would imply that Transformers is a more relevant series, the reality is far more complicated and reveals Real Steel's relative achievements in the process.
The way the Transformers' robots are portrayed has been one of the main complaints directed at their films. The robots were used more and more as comic relief—sometimes rather controversially—with too little to bind them to the audience as the show progressed. Regarding Optimus Prime, his contribution was sometimes limited to narrating the tale to viewers rather than honing his character via real development and interpersonal adjustments.
By contrast, Real Steel realized that robot characters don't have to explain themselves for an audience to relate to them. While Pixar's Wall-e steered clear of dialogue, Real Steel's robots are far more subdued. Atom may be sentient, for example, but his silence only becomes more potent as he traverses the challenges of war; it is only by subtle gestures and covert acknowledgements that it is realized that Atom may be sentient. Although the dialogue of Transformers for all of its characters was often dubious, Real Steel makes it abundantly obvious that robots don't have to talk to inspire emotion.
Real Steel deliberately makes sure their storylines are emotionally relevant in addition to creating engaging human characters for viewers to connect to. For example, the heart of the story is Charlie's complex connection with his kid; the robots enhance rather than replace this plot. Though the last battle between Atom and Zeus takes front stage in the movie's ending, the scenario is far more poignant because of well-established interactions among all the major characters; the confrontation helps Atom to have a glorious catharsis even as he loses.
This is not at all like the strategy used in the lesser Transformers films. Particularly entries like Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon have minimal emotional impact since the human characters are just too thinly drawn to feel fully-rounded and developed. Similarly, the Transformers themselves are sometimes reduced to comic relief as their violent confrontations demand little audience emotional commitment.
Although from an emotional standpoint Transformers and Real Steel differ greatly, the Hugh Jackman sci-fi offers the most important lesson: spectacle means nothing unless the story is interesting. Real Steel breaks out the action in sections that give character development first priority rather than rushing between robot battles. The story is really rather slow compared to Transformers, with hardly the same degree of globe-trotting, sophisticated MacGuffins, or world-ending stakes. And yet, Real Steel's action is really lot more relatable even if the narrative seems lesser.
Real Steel is not a perfect film, by much. Many critics have pointed out that the movie too closely resembles underdog sports movies to be seen as a particularly original addition to the genre. Real Steel, on the other hand, offers Transformers some lessons as a model for creating a movie about battling robots that is both interesting and exciting.