Dreamworks recently released a featurette for their new film Real Steel. In this short video, star Hugh Jackman and Director Shawn Levy explain the background of the robot boxing movement featured in the tale.
Jackman plays the part of a boxer whose career has come to an end due to the rise of robot boxing, which has taken over for the presentation of live athletes and become the most popular sport in the world of 2020. He’s at a low point of his new career as a robot boxer controller, when his estranged son joins him to help build one last robot.
They find an intact robot, Adam, in the junk heaps and fix him up only to find that he doesn’t work the way the other robots in the ring work. Adam has a special operating system which allows him to simply follow the moves of a person, rather than being controlled with buttons and levers on a remote. This allows Jackman’s character to control the robot with his actual boxing expertise, something which didn’t help him when using the remotes of other bots.
Of course, there is a sub-plot with the kid’s mother, played by Evangeline Lily (of Lost fame). As she explains in the featurette, Adam is the element which brings their family back together.
The video also explains some of the tech behind the boxing robots.They are all controlled by motion capture acting which has recorded real boxers in real boxing matches which have been choreographed by Sugar Ray Leonard, one of the most famous professional boxers in the world.
Real Steel comes to theaters October 7, 2011.
