Real Steel Real Steel is an American
science fiction drama film of 2011. The plot of the film follows former boxer, Charlie Kenton
who used to be a successful fighter but lost his chance to win a title when robots took
over the boxing ring. He makes a living for himself by piecing together scrap metal into
low-end fighters and betting on fights. Things take an interesting turn for Charlie when he
teams up with his estranged son, Max to build and train a championship robot.
The film starts with Charlie Kenton driving to a carnival in his truck. The scene transitions to
the next morning when Charlie receives a call from Bill whom Charlie owes some money. Since Charlie
is all broke, he tries to dodge Bill’s call and hangs up. Just then, a small girl approaches him
and asks him to show her the Ambush. Ambush is Charlie’s robot that he uses in the robot fights.
The 2020 San Leandro County Fair starts where Charlie’s bot,
Ambush is supposed to fight an 800-pound steer belonging to promoter and carnival owner Ricky
for three grand. However, Charlie is worried as the bull is not 800 pounds but 2000 pounds.
So, he makes a deal with Ricky that whoever wins will get twenty grand. Ricky agrees and warns
Charlie that if he loses, he will have to pay each and every cent or else he will be taken down.
Finally, the showdown starts between Charlie’s bot Ambush and Ricky’s bull Black Thunder.
Charlie controls Ambush and takes down the bull very smoothly. However, during the fight,
Charlie gets distracted by the crowd and his bot ends up getting torn away by the
bull. Charlie keeps asking Ricky to stop the fight but Ricky does not pay any heed
to it until Ambush is completely destroyed to pieces. After the fight, Charlie quickly
recollects the parts of his robot and loads them on the truck, attempting to get away. However,
just before he is about to abscond, he learns that his ex-girlfriend, Caroline died and he
must now attend a hearing to decide the future of their eleven-year-old son, Max Kenton. Later,
Ricky is angry to see that Charlie has already fled away without paying him the bet money.
The scene cuts to the custody hearing in a courtroom where Max’s maternal aunt,
Debra Fallon Barnes appeals to the judge that she and her wealthy husband, Marvin can take care of
Max. However, the judge states the laws which require a written will for a person to take full
custody of a child by his/her parents. Charlie who was supposed to show up at the hearing fails
to appear at the court. So, Debra protests that as Charlie has already waived his rights to custody
since Max’s birth, she and her husband should be given custody. But just then, Charlie storms into
the courtroom and sees the rich Marvin. While Debra goes to check in on Max,
Charlie decides to bargain a deal with Marvin and asks him to pay $75000
for the custody. When Marvin hesitates, Charlie increases the stakes and demands $100,000,
warning him to sign up Max to the state’s custody if Marvin does not accept the deal.
Marvin agrees and negotiates that Charlie retains Max for two months while Marvin and Debra go on
vacation. He promises to give half of the money in advance and strictly asks Charlie to keep the
details of their dealing a secret from Debra. After signing off Max to Debra and Marvin,
Charlie makes a phone call to buy the once-famous Noisy Boy robot and asks for it to be delivered to
his friend’s gym. He then goes to the gym which is owned by Bailey Tallet, the daughter of Charlie's
former boxing coach. Bailey berates Charlie for buying a $45,000 robot and not paying her the six
grand that he owes her for the rent. Just then, Marvin arrives to make the first half payment.
He and Charlie had worked it out to tell Debra that Charlie really wants to spend
some father-son bonding time with Max and will be dropping him back to New York in two months.
After Debra and Marvin leave, Max is pissed at Charlie for selling him for 50 grand
and demands he gives him half the money, making Charlie realize that Max is one stubborn kid.
Charlie shuts Max off and walks inside the gym to see his newly bought robot. Max follows and
is enthralled to see Noisy Boy as Max himself is a robot boxing fan. When Charlie checks the robot,
he is bummed to find out that it does not have a voice recognition feature. However, the genius
Max knows that Noisy Boy understands Japanese and starts controlling it by speaking Japanese,
leaving Charlie and Bailey in shock. Bailey resets the command matrix to English and after Charlie is
able to run his commands, he quickly loads it on his truck to get to an underground match.
However, before he is about to leave, Max intervenes and convinces Charlie to take him
along. Upon reaching the fight club, Charlie insists on taking the main event fight with
another robot boxer, Midas, betting it for 50 grand. Although Max suggests taking an
undercard fight, Charlie feels overconfident and disproves all of Max’s suggestions.
Finally, the fight begins and Noisy Boy initially takes down Midas with full swing.
But soon enough Charlie loses control over Noisy Boy and it is completely destroyed by
Midas. Max slates Charlie for not listening to his instincts and losing the robot.
After losing Noisy Boy, Charlie wants to build a new robot from scratch so he takes Max to a metal
valley junkyard to scavenge robot parts. While scavenging, Charlie tells Max how the era of
human boxing faded into robot boxing as people wanted to see more shows and more violence.
All of a sudden, Max falls down a cliff and is saved by a robot’s arm buried in the junk.
Petrified, Charlie runs to save his son and pulls him up. Max suggests getting the robot that saved
his life but Charlie does not pay any heed to it. So, Max takes it upon himself to dig the robot and
spends the entire night bringing it to Charlie. The following morning, Bailey is mad at Charlie
for accumulating junk in her father’s gym. She berates Charlie for destroying his career and
gives him a last chance to redeem himself. Charlie asks her to look into the robot that Max brought
and see if that powers up. After the robot powers up, Bailey realizes that it has the rare “shadow
function” which means it can mirror opponents and handle movements and store them in its memory.
Max is elated to see the robot function. Later, he washes up the junk on it and discovers that it is
Generation 2 “Atom,” a sparring and intact robot designed to withstand severe damage.
After washing up Atom, Max insists on Charlie getting a fight for Atom. At night, he secretly
takes Atom for a walk and the two grow close to each other. The next day, Max talks to Bailey
about Charlie and she shows him how successful his father was back in the day. Charlie intervenes as
he does not like to talk much about his career. He tells Bailey that he is going to a fight at night
and will be looking for a partner to move in with, leaving Bailey sad. At night, the father-son duo
reaches Atlanta and Max is flabbergasted to see Zeus, the greatest robot boxer of all time there.
Zeus has an adaptive recognition system that helps in recognizing patterns and makes it capable to
rewrite fight codes instantaneously. Meanwhile, Charlie is busy requesting his friend, Finn,
to give him a fight so he can make some money but Finn refuses. While Max is amazed to see
Zeus’s fight, Charlie returns back dejected. The next day, Charlie takes Max to the Zoo,
which is a low-profile robot-boxing ring where Max pits Atom against Metro for a thousand dollars.
Following Charlie’s guide, Max controls Atom and wins the first round. After getting one thousand
dollars, Max places a bet again for round two despite Charlie’s reluctance. As the second
round starts, Atom overcomes Metro with a lethal move that Max taught him before. Charlie and Max
are over the moon due to their win. They spend the night at a motel where Charlie calls Bailey
and proudly tells her about their win. Meanwhile, Max programs Noisy Boy's vocal-response controls
in Atom and then spends time teaching Max moves. Later, he informs Charlie that he used the spin
frame from Ambush and the circuitry sleeve from Noisy Boy to make Atom even better.
Charlie is pretty impressed by Max and asks him to dance the way he was dancing a moment ago in
front of the boxing crowd. At first, Max refuses but agrees to the dance in exchange for Charlie
helping him with Atom's fighting-move memory. Charlie fulfills his promise and teaches Atom
the boxing moves, making him an expert. Meanwhile, Max opens the boxing fights
with impressive dances. The team effort of Max and Charlie results in a series of victories and
Charlie earning a lot of money. He even returns the money he owed to Bailey with interest.
Soon, everyone starts talking about Atom after which Charlie is offered a league fight in World
Robot Boxing. At the WRB, Farra Lemkova, the lady who owns Zeus invites Charlie to her suite and
offers to buy Atom for $200,000. Charlie agrees in a split second but Max straightaway refuses
and tells Farra that Atom is not for sale. Charlie tries to convince Max that Atom will be destroyed
after he fights Twin Cities, a vicious league bot. So it’s better to sell him now and get some money.
But Max makes him realize that Atom is different than other bots and is worth something more.
Finally, the fight between the national champion Twin Cities and the first-time professional Atom
starts with Atom on the attack. Max starts panicking and asks Charlie to figure out the
opponent’s weakness. Charlie notices that Twin Cities got a hitch in its shoulder every time it
throws the right punch. Using this information, Charlie controls Atom to win by knockout after
getting the Twin Cities system crashed. The crowd goes crazy for Atom after which Max and Charlie
are swollen by the happiness of their victory. In his excitement, Max makes a ballsy move and
challenges the undefeated global champion, Zeus, for a fight. The crowd starts chanting Atom,
making Farra even more furious. After getting paid, as Charlie and Max are
leaving, they are attacked by Ricky and his men for bailing earlier and not paying him the money.
Although Charlie tries to make amends, Ricky and his men beat him to a pulp and rob him and Max of
their winnings. The next day, Charlie takes Max to Debra after realizing that Max is better off
without him. Max protests and tells Charlie that they were happy together and doing just fine.
However, seeing Charlie’s disregard, Max gets upset and leaves. Debra follows him and Charlie
rejects the other half payment from Marvin. While Max packs his stuff, Charlie tries to
convince him that he deserves better than this. Max responds by saying that he always wanted
Charlie to fight for him. Having no other choice, Max is taken by Debra and Marvin,
leaving Charlie dejected. The next morning, Bailey makes him realize that Max looks up to
him as a father and that he should not let go of the chance of being the best father he could be.
The two of them kiss revealing their attraction to each other after which Charlie leaves.
He goes to see Max and apologizes to him for abandoning him. Debra and Max are moved by
Charlie’s apology. Charlie then tells Max that he has got the Zeus fight that Max wanted and
convinces Debra to allow Max to witness the fight. The news about Atom and Zeus’s fight
spreads like wildfire and the crowd desperately wait for the biggest showdown. Tak Mashido,
the designer of Zeus refers only to this fight as an insult to his creation and is determined that
Zeus will overcome Atom in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, as Max and Charlie make their way into the arena,
the crowd surges with excitement. On the other hand, Ricky confidently
makes a $100,000 bet with Finn that Atom would not last the first round. The never beaten and
the never threatened, king of robot boxing, Zeus finally enters the ring. Farra can’t stop smirking
as the crowd goes crazy at the mighty Zeus’s entry. The starting bell goes off and the bots
emerge from their corners with Zeus dominating early and decking Atom with its first punch.
One blistering attack after another by Zeus knocks Atom down but he continues to get back up.
Finally, Atom takes the lead and following Charlie’s commands survives the first round.
Ricky on the other hand tries to run away from the arena but is cornered by Finn and his men.
Meanwhile, Farra is worried that Zeus won’t make it but Tak Mashido assures
her that Zeus is prepared for all possible contingencies which means that he will be fine.
Finally, the second round kicks off and Zeus keeps tossing Atom across the ring. However, Atom
manages to stand toe-to-toe, trading deafening blows. The crowd goes nuts as they watch two
machines driven to kill each other. Finally, the fourth round starts, and midway through it, Atom's
vocal-response controls are damaged leading him to stumble around the ring disoriented and dazed.
Max convinces Charlie to show Atom his boxing skills so Atom can mimic them using his shadow
function. The fifth and last round commences and Charlie shadow boxes outside the ring, giving Zeus
a tough time. Zeus compensates and beats Atom like crazy until Zeus’s power is completely
depleted. Taking the opportunity, Charlie commands Atom to fiercely bust against Zeus.
Zeus’s controllers are unable to retaliate so Tak Mashido takes control as Zeus hammers down.
Charlie is relentless, landing blow after blow on Zeus. Bailey and Max are in tears to see Charlie
putting in so much effort in taking Zeus down. The time runs out and the crowd can’t stop
enchanting Atom. However, according to the judges’ scorecards, Zeus wins the match by the number
of hits. Farra tries to flaunt her win as Zeus remains undefeated but feels humiliated by the
near-loss. On the other hand, Atom is titled “the people’s champion.” The film ends with
Charlie and Max celebrating regardless of the match result and the crowd cheering for them.
This movie has a rating of 7.0 on IMDb. The budget of this movie was around $110 million and at the
box office, it earned $299.3 million. I hope you all liked this video. If yes, then make sure to
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