People seem to think Hugh Jackman deserves better than a boxing robot movie. But seriously, is his starring in Real Steel any worse than his appearances in Van Helsing, Swordfish or pretty much anything else he’s done since breaking out as Wolverine in the first X-Men movie? Sure, he’s an entertaining Oscar host, and he’s apparently very enjoyable on the stage. But try to name one movie he’s really good in that warrants him roles better than a robot boxer trainer in a silly sci-fi sports flick directed by Shawn Levy. And don’t say The Prestige, because that film wasn’t great for any doing of his.
Interestingly enough, Real Steel, which has a very ’80s-action-film-sounding title, is being produced by Steven Spielberg, who also oversees the Transformers movies. Are robots his new aliens? Okay, I guess Transformers are also aliens, and before that he’d already given us alien/robot crossovers like *batteries not included and (sort of) Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (because so many people think those robots at the end of the film are aliens). But in all likelihood, Real Steel will be released in summer 2011, which has just been announced as when we’ll also be getting Transformers 3.
Although I have no interest in seeing either of these movies, I can’t wait to see which of the dueling Spielberg-produced robot blockbusters wins the season’s box office. Maybe Spielberg can even ready Indiana Jones 5 by then, too, and include robots in it. After the ridiculousness of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I wouldn’t be surprised by such an idea.
Check out what the other film blogs are saying about Jackman signing on to Real Steel after the jump:
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It was shut out of the Oscar race for Best Documentary Feature, but Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, now playing in New York City, could easily inspire a Hollywood film about the life of its heroic subject. And that dramatic version could potentially garner multiple Academy Award nominations. It wouldn’t be the first time a figure documented in a nonfiction film was later portrayed in an Oscar-nominated movie. In fact, one of this year’s Best Picture contenders, Milk, is almost like a remake of the 1984 Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.
Actual dramatic remakes of documentaries include Werner Herzogs’ Rescue Dawn, which revisits the subject of his earlier nonfiction film Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Michael Caton-Jones’ Memphis Belle, which fictionalizes the story of William Wyler’s doc The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, and Martin Bell’s American Heart, which is loosely based on one of the subjects of his Oscar-nominated doc Streetwise. Also, the upcoming HBO dramatic film Grey Gardens was inspired by the Maysles brothers’ doc of the same name, and Hollywood has toyed with or announced remakes of the films The King of Kong, Murderball, Bra Boys and Sherman’s March.
To carry on the tradition, we’ve selected nine nonfiction films in addition to Blessed is the Match that would make great dramatic features.
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