The boys went to see "Real Steel"

I've always been fascinated by robots and it seems like my son is taking after me. My wife and daughter weren't interested in the least. So, we had a boys day at the movies.

Most of the time, robots are misrepresented in movies and books and are used as artificial (ha ha) villains. They always have to be menacing and they don't follow orders and attack the people or they do follow orders from evil people and hurt the good people (whoever they are). But in the movie Real Steel, although the robots are menacing, they always follow orders if they can. The story is set in a near future when boxing with human participants has been outlawed and boxing matches now consist of two robots bashing each other until time runs out or one is knocked down for a count of 10. The concept is a little like Robot Wars with much more sophisticated robots. The story, though, is more like Rocky.

I liked the movie for a number of reasons. First of all, the robots were terrific. I don't know if real robots could take the punishment these do but it sure looks convincing. Another reason I liked the movie was that in one scene, when a creditor finds the hero and beats him up (with some thugs to help), the fighting robot owned by the hero does not start on its own to defend the hero. That would have been ridiculous (even if it would have been satisfying to see the bad guy get beat up). Another good scene from the movie was when the underdog robot (owned by the hero) is able to stay in the fight with a much more advanced robot because the advanced robot was losing power. Being bigger with more advanced capabilities would use up a robot's stored power more quickly. And, if the robot was as good as the story implies and its previous matches didn't last long, this wouldn't have shown up before. One last thing I really liked about this story was that the hero was an ex-boxer. His son discovers that their robot has a mode where it can match the movements of a human and this allows the robot, with less sophisticated equipment, to beat more advanced opponents being operated by people who weren't boxers themselves. I liked the fact that just knowing how to operate the robots was not enough. It took skill and knowledge to do it right. I find this to be true in real world engineering, too. Just knowing the equations and how something works isn't enough. You have to understand what you're trying to do. You can just plead ignorance and barge ahead with a plan. You've got to know what you're doing and what the customer wants.