Real Steel at Navy Pier IMAX Theatre

Surrogate.

The Navy Pier IMAX boasts the largest screen in Chicago at 60 x 80 ft., but even a screen that size cannot make a film bigger (or better) than it is.  Ultimately, the film is merely a second-rate surrogate for the real steal behind it.    

Based on “Steel,” a 1956 short story by Richard Matheson, Real Steel is the story of a robot boxing trainer/agent/operator named Charlie Kenton (played by Hugh Jackman) who is suddenly forced to deal with his son, Max Kenton (played by Dakota Goyo), following the death of the boy’s mother.  Together, they train a robot how to fight and dance. 

Charlie has a tragic flaw – he is too cocky.  “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before the fall.”  His son’s haughtiness is a magnified version, but so is his business sense.  In the hands of a child, the two are as much a blessing as they are hazards to humility (and, later, humanity).  The more compelling film may be the sequel in which Max Kenton has either gone the way of Clarence Darrow or P.T. Barnum.

The world of Real Steel, about ten years in the future, is one in which people live via surrogate.  Seldom is there a battle, figurative or literal, one fights mano-a-mano (hand-to-hand).  Perhaps this is our fate.  We already live a great deal through surrogates.  Laws are made by a representative government.  Virtual reality in its many forms continues to grow as a popular source of entertainment.  Speaking itself has been replaced by, oddly enough, man-a-mano communication in the form texts and internet messaging.  Man also uses surrogates to regain the self he was given.  Stephen Hawking uses an electronic voice synthesizer to communicate.  Runners with prosthetic legs run marathons.    

But can technological surrogacy be harmful?  The film seems to feel that living through surrogates isn’t such a bad thing.  The robots dish out and take the punches, and the humans hold the controls and cheer.  You can even tell your father you love him, and vise versa, by coming to the theatre and letting the movie do it for you. 

The danger of surrogates lies in that very distance they create between people – the ones that conceive the task and initiate action.  For instance, if you want to call one of your 14-year-old classmates a faggot and tell him to kill himself, you don’t need to be the kind of person who can say it to his face.  You can send him a message online.  Not that I advocate doing that.  I don’t.  If you want to do that, you should go fuck yourself.      

And after you’ve fucked yourself, ask why you are considering a technological surrogate to go further than you yourself are able to go.  Charlie Kenton explains to his son that a transition from human to robot boxers was necessary because boxing fans demanded more and more violence until it was no longer possible for human boxers to satisfy them.  (Feel free to wander down this road, but I must return to the review…)

One compelling issue in the film is the robot’s awareness.  We know the robot “is” Charlie and Max, but is it alive?  We have evidence to believe this, but this reality isn’t given its due.  It’s an aside.  It’s something you can ponder when the film is dragging and does nothing more than confuse people down the path. 

But the film is not without merit.  (It “coulda been a contender…”)  One must recognize the attempt to create a movie about robot boxing with a depth uncharacteristic of the genre.  Had it not structured itself so closely to the 1973 Peter Bogdanovich film Paper Moon, the performance of Dakota Goyo (playing Max Kenton) would not appear flat next to the award-winning performance of then-10-year-old Tatum O’Neal. 

Perhaps the film will prove a beneficial surrogate to boys and their fathers, who, while watching the film together, or apart, will have unspoken moments of understanding neither could communicate at home.  Or it will just be awkward.