Alright, I just watched this movie earlier tonight, and I have to say, I loved it. It's one of those super estranged father son/man child bonding movies that always seems to pop up all the time, but with robots. Now, I'm a softie and a sucker for these kinds of movies, and I'm a fan of robots. Is there any surprise that I'd like it so much? Now, I have to apologize, because I'm about to do this movie a horrible disservice. That's right. You guessed it. I'm going to compare it with Dark of the Moon. So from this point on, there's likely to be spoiler for both, so you might want to avoid. Don't ask me now. I don't know, I haven't written it yet.

First time I saw a commercial for this movie, it was already out on DVD. I didn't even know it was in the theaters and thought it was one of those direct to DVD(or blu-ray in this case) movies. Furthermore, it looked like a movie about Rock-em Sock-em Robots. As fun as those are, that didn't make me that interested. My parents bought it, and they shoved it into my room when they were finished. (I'm more than certain it was because of the robots.) Well, it sat on my desk for a few days, and tonight I finally decided to watch it. Especially when I noticed that Hugh Jackman was playing a lead role. Now, X-men 3 may not be quite so spectacular, and Wolverine Origins is one of the worst things I've ever seen on film (sorry ~KnuxfanEO), but Hugh Jackman is one hell of a terribly good actor.

So that REALLY pumps me for this. I mean, what could be better than Hugh Jackman and fighting robots? (Maybe if you throw in Jason Statham you'll get the answer.) Hugh Jackman is pretty much good in any movie he does, even if the movie itself is bad, and I have got to say, this is one of his better performances and I feel it was a much better display of his acting ability than any movie I've seen him in. Generally I'm used to him being the badass that busts down a door, whips out his claws or crossbow (or whatever he had in Van Hellsing) and start kicking ass. (Don't look at me like that. I didn't say ass twice in one sentence. I said ass and badass. Two clearly different words. So there. pbbbbt) Well, there's still some Wolverine in there, and he's actually passed his prime (in a sense.)

You see, in this not so distant future world, boxing has died and been replaced by the rabidly popular ROBOT BOXING! And Charlie (Wolverine's character) is a former boxer who never got to really shine in the spotlight because by the time he was really getting into the sport, it died. (Don't worry, boxing fans. As AWESOME as robot boxing would be, even if it dwarfs the human one, I doubt human boxing will ever die, until we become robots. Then it will die.) So, in order to stay in the game, Charlie has to start boxing with bots. Yeah. It's all down hill from there. He gets in debt. Robots get beat up. He has a kid. Doesn't see him for 10 years. Kid's mom dies. Now he's babysitting him for money that he gets from his rick uncle, and practically loses it. Honestly, unless the kid dies or he gets beat up or something by people he was indebted to, it REALLY can't go down hill from here. (Only one of those happened. Don't worry, the kid only ALMOST died.)

Well, after he screws up in front of the kid (His name is Max. I forget the child's name. Sorry child who plays Max.) They find an old robot at a junk yard. (After the kid almost dies. Don't worry. Charlie gets beat up MUCH later in the movie.)(Wait, how does that condone not worrying?) And then everything really picks up (until Charlie gets beat up.)

Now I'm sure you're wondering, how am I going to compare this with ANYTHING in Dark of the Moon? (Is that some kind of metaphor for crap?) Well, the obvious comparison would be the robots, but aside from both having robots that punch each other and are different and bright colors, what's the real comparison? Well, let's go with the rendering. First, in this movie, they actually built scale robot models for the actors to work with. (Some of them even moved!) Sure, the Transformers movies did that from time to time, but I feel that the rendering was a lot more convincing in Real Steel. Sure, Transformers practically set the standard for Robot Animation that caused other movies to have to live up to it. (And Iron Man too. Let's not forget Tony.) But overall I feel that after the first movie the animation quality has gone down hill and become less convincing. I don't even know how that works, unless the movie either has a cheaper budget, has more robots, or has more robots actually on screen at any given time than the movie before it. (I think THAT was the case.)

Anyway, the rendering just wasn't as good. Say what you will, but by the time it got to Dark of the Moon, the CG had become horribly obvious well too often. In Real Steel, I only remembering it being unconvincing maybe twice. One time for sure. A second time is a maybe. Sure, that can probably be attributed to the fact that a Transformer has thousands of parts (and they boast about this), while a Real Steel robot probably doesn't come close to that number. (Thus making them cheaper to produce.) One thing that's noted about the two is how similar the designs look (I guess I can see that,) but I honestly think that Real Steel comes out visually better. There is still LOTS of eye candy, but it's eye candy is more simplistic and you get to appreciate the forest as a whole instead of seeing nothing but trees. (And Transformers sure do love their 'trees'.) So yeah, visually, the robots in Real Steel offered more.

Action-wise, I feel that Transformers falls short yet again. Now, Michael Bay is a great director (with explosions), and he can do some wonderful things (with explosions), but Transformers just isn't his thing.  First, the movement. It's HIGHLY unnatural. (I think the same is equally true of the humans sometimes...) It seems a lot like claymation from time to time and things get awkward. Not to say it's unnatural all the time, but when those moments happen (Optimus vs Megatron and Starscream in Revenge of the Fallen in particular) it totally detracts from the rest of the movie and just cheapens the experience. Furthermore, in all his movies, Bay likes get extreme close ups. If you've not seen the movies and heard people complaining about how the fights are really just independent groups of metal flailing wildly, that's practically true. (boy it's true.) In fact, sometimes it's given me a headache because I'm trying to figure out one bot from another. (The fact that they're made out of so many pieces never helps. NEVER.) Well, in Real Steel, you never have either problem. The camera takes you in close enough to get the action (without explosions), yet keeps you far enough away that you can tell what's going on. Not to mention that the movement is all motion capture. It provides a very natural experience and never comes out like claymation, and it really pulls you in. (No headaches involved.)

Emotion-wise, everything is just far better in Real Steel. In Transformers, all you got from everybody was sex, smartassedness (PUT THIS IN THE DICTIONARY), more sex, and screaming. Four emotions. (because sex counts twice.) Even when they tried to do something else, it was really a variety of these four. (Maybe I should have counted screaming twice instead.) Sure, Bumblebee was depicted as the emotional center of the movie, but it really wasn't convincing. (Oh, rage/anger/kill them all. Fifth emotion.) Now, it's sad to say that the main bot in Real Steel (Atom), showed far more emotional depth in this movie than any Transformer in any of the 3 movies, and it's a soul-less, mindless machine with absolutely no will of it's own. (That's like being out emoted by a G.I. Joe action figure. Talk about pathetic.) Not only that, but the humans did something I thought was impossible in a movie about fighting robots. They acted human! (Blasphemy? I know, right?!) It had smartassedness, sex, and screaming (and a wee bit of rage), but it also had so much more, and the characters actually seemed to grow. (You, disbelieving me. Get off your ass and re-watch all 3 bayformers. Sam doesn't grow at all. Magicarp has more character growth than he does.)

This movie did so much right, and overall I can't help but feel that this movie reinforces the fact that Michael Bay should never be allowed to direct another movie again. (With robots. Explosions are fine, just no robots.) This movie may be fundamentally different, but it has something Bayformers will never have. Heart. It's not some mindless sex driven war story about alien robots. Sure there's some mindlessness (and some sex driven-ness), but it's used tastefully. (No opening shots with ass. Sorry guys [and lesbobs].) There's emotion, motivation, determination, growing relation, and it all works to suck you in and give you an emotional stake with what's going on in the movie. Sure, Dark of the Moon kinda did that, but hell. Who doesn't get upset when seeing the robot masters enslaving the human race. (We didn't even have to make these. How nice of them to take a step out of having Robot Overlords for us.)

Ignoring the sex and smartassedness, I know the Bayformers movies are movies about war, and humans fight war, but war itself is unrelatable. Have you ever sat down with war and had a chat with it? Have you ever once carried a meaningful conversation with it? Have you ever tried to listen to it and understand it? Chances are if you did, you're probably going deaf from all the gun fire, missiles, rockets, cannons, machine guns, and explosions. War is a big mess of people just maiming each other. It's the people that we have to relate to. The characters have to be relatable. This is where Bayformers fails in general. The robots act more human than the humans do, and even they aren't relatable. Sure, the depiction of how soldiers fight in war may be realistic, but my god, they never turn the soldier off. (I stand corrected. The man who played Lennox was probably the most relatable person in this trilogy, and Epps too. But really that's it.) Wouldn't it be nice if Optimus Prime got a character moment that wasn't just "Kill them all" or ripping out Megatron's spine?

If Michael Bay has turned you off from robot movies, please at least give Real Steel a try. It's not really the same thing, but it's a movie with heart and shows that there's hope out there for future (hopefully rebooted) Transformer movies or robot movies in general. (I for one, would like a non-war robot movie where the robots are sentient and don't want to enslave or kill us all.)

And now with that, bed.