Real Steel

I pretty much enjoyed Real Steel when I watched it on Wednesday night with my friends during a night's out.

It didn't have suspense. It didn't have the WOW factor. It wasn't like Transformers. It didn't have much of a realistic setting. What Real Steel did, though, was paint a father-son bonding so beautifully, in a world where fathers have become passive, withdrawn, and allow the family take care of itself.

Like 11-year-old Max played by Dakota Goyo, every son would want their father to fight for them, to be that role model in their lives who could say, "Yes, son, you have want it takes. You've got it."

Following an almost predictable story line that hardly surprised me (the usual sour-relationship-turned-awesome story), Real Steel shined only because of the wonderful chemistry between Goyo and Hugh Jackman (uh, the Wolverine). The other parts of the movie didn't make up for the so-called futuristic setting where humans enjoying robot boxing, with hardly anything exciting to add to the 2020-era, except for lots of wind turbines across vast fields and huge stadiums that catered to the masses' appetite for robot boxing like some sort of concert.

(On a side note, I thought the consoles used to control the robots were neat.)

Goyo and Jackman rub off each other very well, bringing out the emotions of both father and son as they journeyed together to fight their way up to the robot league with their sparring bot called Atom. For humble fathers who are willing to apologise to their kids for what they'd done, just like Jackman, kudos. Our society seems to be lacking outstanding fathers who can do what they need to do: be looked up to by their kids.

Besides the clear message of father-son bonding, I found the other message equally fascinating. Atom resembled a bot that somewhat had a mind on its own, but worked best at shadowing the movements of others. The underlying idea is that no matter how good robots become, they can never replace the authenticity and flexibility of humans. What makes us different is truly our ability to feel and to love. Atom stood out, simply because he could shadow Jackman, making it the most versatile bot out there. (Credit must also be given to the materials used to make it and the programming that wired him together.)

In our pursuit of technology and convenience, could we possibly one day trade that 'human touch' for robots that could work efficiently and effectively for us?