Is "Real Steel" Like "Over the Top"?

When I was going through my weekly movie binge a couple weeks ago, I stumbled upon two movies that I had never seen before that tackled a very similar story.  It was an odd thing to have happen because I didn’t know of any similarities between the two movies.  The first was Real Steel, a movie about a man who participates in robot boxing while bonding with the son that he had left years before.  The second was Over the Top, a movie about a man who participates in arm wrestling while bonding with the son that he had left years before.  Similar?  I think so.

Let’s begin with Real Steel.  I watched this one because, why the hell not?  I quite enjoyed the movie and by the end I was rooting for Hugh Jackman’s character to help his robot, Atom, to a victory.  The thing to point out about Real Steel is how good the visual effects were.  I wasn’t expecting too much going in, but I thought they masterfully crafted each robot in a way that it entirely fit its surroundings and didn’t look like a jumbled up pile of random crap.  Each robot had its own distinct look.  It was quite a great piece of work to look at.

Over the Top was a movie that I didn’t go into with high expectations.  I’m not usually a fan of Sylvester Stallone and it was a movie based around the sport of arm wrestling.  Only it wasn’t really.  The major drawback of Over the Top was that there wasn’t enough arm wrestling for a movie where the climax hinged on the sport.  The movie was much more about the father son troubles than the arm wrestling, so much that there is barely any actual arm wrestling until the climax which was a tournament.  There sure were a lot of montages though.

As I stated previously, the plots of the two movies are quite similar.  In both movies, the father is paired up with his son after a long separation.  This could be a common theme in many films as the drama that comes from a child of ten or twelve meeting their father for the first time could be almost endlessly milked.  It’s a great well for a writer.  It features the strains of the relationship between father and son as they slowly but surely grow closer.  Each movie hinges on this relationship.  There is a slight difference in the relationship between the two films however.  In Over the Top, the father wanted the child while someone else was trying to take the child away.  The child did not like the father but began to love him over the course of the movie.  In Real Steel the father didn’t want the child, the child didn’t want the father but they began to bond.  There is also a similarity in how they bond.

Each of the two movies also had a large influence by sports.  How do the fathers and sons bond?  They go on a road trip that involves sports.  In Over the Top, the father is an arm wrestler who will soon be competing for a truck in an arm wrestling tournament.  In Real Steel, the father controls robots in robot boxing fights and must go on a road trip to the different venues.  The fathers bond with their sons over the competitive nature of the sports.  In one, a father teaches his son how to win an arm wrestling match when you are in an unfair pairing.  In the other, a son teaches his father how to box for the game and not for the money.

To cap off each film in the way that most sports films would end, both Over the Top and Real Steel feature intense final matches where the son is cheering on his father while the crowd goes wild.  This is the moment where the father’s love and son’s love come full circle, along with both of their loves of the game.  Everyone is happy.  It wraps the movie up with a nice little emotional bow and sends you on your way.

As you can see from my description, both movies have very similar plots and themes.  I thought I’d take the time to write it all down and share with anybody who cares.  Real Steel just so happens to be the twenty years later equivalent of Over the Top.  I did not know that going into either of the movies and was surprised when I experienced it through two slightly different views over the course of one weekend.  Was it worth it?  Perhaps.  I did enjoy watching both of them.  And I hope you enjoyed my writing about it because people liking it would really boost my self esteem.