Films like showing the future a lot. It makes sense. You get to have cool special effects, you can muck around with things that couldn't be done in a contemporary film, and you're not locked down by current day settings or events. In a way you have a near infinite supply of options ahead of you.
So it's curious then that for all the myriad of options the future presents, how narrow our cinematic vision of the future can be. And not really just the cinema, but books, games, comics, paintings and particularly elaborate graffiti all restrict their futuristic depictments to (mostly) just two trains of thought.
Allow me to elaborate.
Your first vision of the future is the shiny one. The future is good, for the most part. This is your Star Wars prequels (I know, that's actually set a long time ago, but sod it, it's futurustic tech, your argument is invalid), your I, Robot and Bicentennial Man, your Spider-Man 2099s, your Speed-Racers. The future is bright and sleek, very neony. Your coffee machine has artificial intelligence, your flying car flys itself, and your mobile phone is a swiss army knife of technology. There are problems to be sure (it wouldn't be interesting story if there weren't problems) but the world itself is complete and, depending on your point of view, flawless.
Then there's your dystopia. The future sucks. Poverty and homlessness reigns supreme, and while there's flying cars and neon, it hasn't really done a lot of good. This is your Blade Runner and your Firefly, your 1984 and your Deus Ex. Quite often dystopias include elements of shiny world, but generally only to highlight the rich vs poor dynamic that most of these stories rest upon.
Most futuristic films jump into one of these two extremes, with not much of the middle ground.
And then there is Real Steel, a futuristic movie which manages to sidestep this dynamic altogether.
Real Steel is a father son movie. And you have seen it hundreds of times before. Lets run through a quick checklist.
It features a washed out former boxer who has fallen from his prime and now has hit rock bottom, with debtors after him. In the opening moments he even sinks as low as to fight bulls in a rodeo in an attempt to make a quick buck, but his arrogance and mouth stand in his way, as they have for years.
Check.
Without warning he is forced to babysit his estanged son for the summer after his ex-girlfriend dies and - other than the money he coerces out of the boys foster father -wants nothing to do with him.
Check.
The boy it turns out is just as stubborn as he is, and absolutely insists on coming with his dad on his latest venture.
Check.
Together they have many wild adventures, the kid helps the dad rejuvinete his boxing career, and they start to gradually grow closer.
Check.
But moments before the boxing match that could change everything, and just when you think they're going to form a genuine connection, the dad dumps the kid with his foster parents and gives up on the match.
Check.
The dad has a change of heart and races accross america to reunite with the kid and they go into the final match together, and while they don't win, they learn that the most important thing, is your family.
Check.
All pretty straightforward so far. And while it did manage to hold my attention through to the end, on a purely narrative level I can't say anything other than it's fairly rudimentary but in some ways pleasingly simple story. It is refreshingly to the point. We KNOW the dad is going to come back to the kid, so it's nice it only takes about three minutes for him to do so rather than having to wait for bloody half an hour before he finally does what we all knew he was going to do. Still, storywise it doesn't really add anything new.
So how is this a futuristic film, you ask? Oh, sorry, did I forget to mention the giant robots?
Yes, Real Steel isn't about your boring old mano a mano two gloves two fists boxing. This is about ROBOT boxing. Steel, bolts, metal, voice and motion control, no holds barred decapitation and plenty of leaking robot fluids.
This is where Real Steel starts to get a little interesting. Despite being set in the future, it is actually rather grounded and realistic in it's portrayal of days yet to be. There are giant robots and some flashy phone tech, to be sure, but in most other respects the people of the future kind of just got on with things. We see rodeos, alleyways, old buildings, skating rinks and many a country roadside. And they're all pretty much the type of things you'd see today, just with the occasional giant robot, but even they are restricted entirely to the boxing matches. People still wash their own clothes and do their own work. This is a society of humans, not futuristic beings.
And even the robots are pleasantly real, with a subtle and restrained design. Heck, most of them ARE real. In an excellent piece of advice from Steven Speilberg (executive producing for the umpteenth time this year), with the exception of the boxing matches themselves, all of the robots are real, built things, which lends an authenticty to the acting you don't often see these days as the actors get to interact with things that are actually there.
The boxing matches are pure special effects of course, but are motion captured, meaning actual boxers went out and did that. I presume they didn't decapitate each other, but you never know.
Real Steel definately succeeds in it's decidely different representation of the future and it's real effects, but I can't recommend it on story grounds, and as a narrative nut, that's a bit of a deal breaker. But if you're at the cinema and trying to decide on what to see, it is worth your consideration.
3 out of 6.
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