What Real Steel does right in the realm of blockbuster filmmaking...

Real Steel is not a great movie.  It's barely a good one, and as I've joke elsewhere, it's basically so shamelessly recycled from other movies that it qualifies as environmentally-friendly.  But it does do one thing quite right, one thing that makes it stand out and serves as a token reminder when it comes to making these big-budget genre pictures.  There has been much debate about the film's budget.  Rival executives claim it cost $140 million, while director Shawn Levy claims it cost just over $80 million.  Now that I've seen the film, I can confirm that I am more likely to believe Levy himself.  I don't mean that as an insult, quite the contrary.  Despite the fact that it takes place in the world of robot-boxing, it is a (relatively effective) human drama first and a robot-smashing spectacle second.  If the film did end up costing $140 million, than something went horribly wrong during production.  I say that because the movie feels and looks cheap, and I mean that in a good way.