Real Steel

Real Steel is set in a near future where human boxing has been replaced by fights between large remote-controlled robots. Charlie Kenton, a former boxer who never reached the top, now scrapes by on the unofficial circuit with battered machines and mounting debts. When his ex-partner dies, he is reunited with the son he barely knows, eleven-year-old Max, and the two spend a summer together while Charlie tries to keep competing. After losing yet another robot, they salvage an old, discarded sparring model from a scrapyard and discover it can fight far better than expected, giving them a chance to work their way up through the robot boxing world.

Shawn Levy directed the film, the eighth of the seventeen features he has directed in chronological order, following Date Night and preceding The Internship. John Gatins wrote the screenplay, and Don Murphy, Levy and Susan Montford produced. Hugh Jackman plays Charlie, with Dakota Goyo as Max, Evangeline Lilly as Bailey Tallet, Kevin Durand as Ricky, Anthony Mackie as Finn and Hope Davis as Aunt Debra.

Released in 2011 after a budget of about 110 million dollars, the film went on to take roughly 299 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.1 from around 379,000 votes, and on TMDB it also sits at 7.1, from about 9,500 votes, while the film critics' rating stands at 5.9 from 231 reviews, so audiences have rated it more positively than critics did.