Line #10 Headscratchers/RealSteel


1	* Although the Shadow Mode jog where Atom bangs into stuff is funny, one has to wonder why the robot doesn't have some sort of proximity sensors built into its body to prevent this, seeing as we already have a similar things in some cars even now.
2	** He's not meant to go jogging down the street, he's meant purely to spar in a fighting area where few, if any, obstacles would be present. He's also merely Generation-2, may not have incorporated such things yet.
3	** Better question; why take the robot jogging? I get that he's training him with the mimic mode, but the point of jogging is to improve endurance as a work out, something the robot can't benefit from.
4	*** He's not. He's just running around for the hell of it, not giving him a thoroughly-thought-out workout.
5	*** Having ''Charlie himself'' be in good shape gives Atom a better chance of winning, as Charlie needs the endurance to direct Atom with his own movements for the duration of a prolonged bout. As for bringing Atom along for his jogs, ''every'' bit of practice operating Atom's mimic mode that Charlie can squeeze into a day, the better.
6	* Why does Ricky have goons when there are freaking fighting robots? Maybe they cost a bit, but still, it would probably be cheaper in the long run. My best explanation is that he's sadistic.
7	** Or it's most likely ''very'' illegal to sic robots on a human. "Assault with a Robot" may carry a life in prison term.
8	*** Plus that would probably kill Charlie and murder might be a step too far even for Ricky.
9	** Also using robots as goons would be ''very'' obvious, and expensive as well. Plus, you'd need somebody nearby to be actively controlling the robot as well. It's just more practical to have a human goon than a robot one.
10	** It'd probably fall under "assault with a deadly weapon", which is ''much'' worse than just "assault"
11	* The fact that people seem to think voice controls are better than anything else, or at least more advanced than the Shadow Mode, is patently ridiculous. Think about how long it takes you to say something vs. doing it. Of course the robot also needs to process the words, and even if it's a super-fast process that's still vital milliseconds and processing power that could be put to better use. If the movie portrayed how long interpreting a verbal command actually took, it would resemble a TurnBasedCombat system more than a super-fast action sequence. So basically, if we take the explanation for robot fighting's popularity (harder hits, to the "death", etc.) at face value, and that somehow this phased real boxing out [[note]]which is just completely ignoring that people like watching other real people, with emotions, and seeing struggle in their expressions etc. not to mention that there would likely be a bunch of boxing "purists"[[/note]] the most likely scenarios in real life would be 1) previous "live" boxers would still box, but using a robot to mimic their actions so that they don't get hurt, 2) things work almost exactly like a video game, with a bunch of dedicated nerds programming and upgrading their robots that they then control using some sort of game controller, keyboard or similar combination[[note]]I'd imagine they'd be elevated over the ring a little because really, the places where they were standing in the movie were shit, it'd be so hard to get a good view of anything. Also, imagine unleashing a combo with a robot IRL, how cool would that be.[[/note]], 3) robots are programmed so sophisticatedly (and we see hints of this when Atom sits up on his own, and saves Max) that no or very little human input is needed. This is actually the only scenario I think that could make robot fighting overtake real fights, because if it were done correctly they could act and respond much faster than a human boxer. Kind of Matrix uber-Neo level fast. Ignoring that metal is notoriously unwieldy.
12	** About the "voice more efficient than shadow mode" thing, I think it has to do with laziness. You're not gonna learn the actual moves and show effort when you can just tell the robot what to do. That's how it is NOW. The less YOU have to do, the more advanced it is.
13	** This bugged me too until I realized that while we don't see much enough to confirm this, the bots must have some pre-programed fighting moves. I think this is a little like Pokemon. Sure things work better when you actively participate but the bot can fight just fine on it's own. I don't think you could have old boxers still fighting with this set up since clearly the robots aren't limited to human biology. We don't (or if we do I missed it) know the rules clearly, having a hammer arm is apparently legal enough that nobody calls the maker on it. Two heads? That's cool too. Are you limited to two arms? Two legs? All sorts of stuff a real human could never mimic.
14	** You have have hit upon the very point of Atom's success with this Headscratcher. One of the primary reasons Atom is successful is because he has actual training. All the rest are, literally, UnskilledButStrong - fighters controlled by non-fighters. It may very well have been that shadowboxing robots were a 'thing' but over time as it became easier to create such robots, there became less of an emphasis on skill versus gimmick and pure power (which is not unusual - many a game has succumbed to the metagame of damage above all else) because more un-trained fighters were fighting. And without that training, they're not going to want to have complicated controls.
15	** Point of fact here: Charlie's robots are in fact the ''only'' ones we see that use the voice recognition. Look at Twin Cities and Zeus--the two biggest-name bots they face in the whole movie, the most "advanced" ones, aren't run by voice commands, they're run by a team using controllers and joysticks. Heck, Charlie says Noisy-Boy has voice recognition by saying the Brazilians are "crazy about that crap," so he's not exactly so enamored with it himself. So, the OP's initial premise that people think voice recognition is the best is wrong.
16	** There is actually logic here. While shadowboxxing is clearly superior, it also means you need someone to actually learn boxing and do it for the robot to learn. That costs money. So, it's cheaper to have pre-programmed moves in and compensate finesses with strength. You can see that robots get smashed due to power of the blows. Atom is build as a sparring robot, so its designed to take punches. However, why not use voice control? Well, we actually see several reasons in the movie. When Atom goes town, Max and Charlie can't do anything else than just shout "GET UP!". Not very good. They also lack any sort of feedback on what is going with Atom. Contrast with Twin Cities or any other bot, their users have the interface and can keep track of their robots and if robots goes down, we see them doing something. Most likely rerouting or stuff like that, to get their robot up. So, it comes down to practicality.
17	* Same troper as above, while I suppose it falls under AcceptableBreaksFromReality, the fact that these robots seemingly made of solid metal are so agile kind of annoyed me. (Yes, I know it's the same as all GiantMecha series, probably far less egregious than the skyscraper-tall bots dancing around and ignoring the SquareCubeLaw completely, but somehow the premise seemed like it should have had more plausibility.) Couldn't they have all been made of a super-hard, super-lightweight plastic or futuristic material, or at least been handwaved as "they're made of carbon fibre"? Their heaviness also makes me wonder what the hell has so much power that it can move all their numerous parts at a speed equal to that of a human's, and why Zeus (who being a modern robot, should logically have a more efficient/advanced energy system) ran out of it faster than Atom. Maybe I'm overthinking it, or maybe they just thought ViewersAreMorons and didn't bother.
18	** Atom is designed to get beaten up, so he's tough and has a long battery. Zeus is designed to knock enemies out near-instantly, so power efficiency is the one thing the designers never had to care about.
19	** Power generation doesn't really advance all that much. After all, we've been using the same basic internal combustion engine and steam turbine technology for quite some time now. More over, it's probably less about power generation (might as well stick an RTG in the thing) and more about power expenditure, capacity, and efficiency. You can have a really efficient system but it's not always going to have the great capacity and vice versa. And there are certainly machines and devices that can move very quickly; the challenge is less speed and more control and precision and making sure it doesn't rip itself apart.
20	* Not a very important thing, but how strong did Tak have to be to smash that screen with a punch, and why didn't he get glass in his hand?
21	** As mentioned on the Fridge page, the nature of that screen means it's probably designed like safety glass, to break in a relatively non-dangerous way. As for strength, it wasn't that thick.
22	*** Also, he was kinda pissed, so that probably had something to do with it.
23	* There should be a trope called "The Future Has Transparent Technology" because it was EVERYWHERE in this film. I really don't see the great advantage of this, other than maybe looking cool. If you think scratches on screens are bad now, imagine if there are two sides of a screen where they could be. Not to mention, presumably everyone can see what you're doing even if they're standing where the "back" of a computer or device is facing.
24	** Ah, but it also means you can see the ring through your screen, so you can watch the fight and the controls. That doesn't explain Charlie's phone though. Maybe it's just "kewl looking" for marketing purposes.
25	** [[HilariousInHindsight There indeed is such a trope now]], alviet under the name TransparentTech.
26	* The shadow function of Atom seems to go from mimicry to mirroring and back without any command. For example, when Atom is fighting in shadow mode, he seems to mimic Charlie, but when they're between rounds and Atom is getting a pep talk, it's mirroring him (as evidenced when Max interrupts an they both look at him.)
27	** There may be a simple explanation for this. If Atom is facing whatever he mimics then he would act like a mirror to their movements. Charlie raises left arm = Atom raises right arm. However if he is behind whatever he's mimicking he acts like that things "shadow." Charlie raises left arm = Atom raises left arm.
28	** It might be a mild case of internal state recognition (Am I fighting or not) which ties into his old role as a sparring robot. In one form of shadow, he has to learn what an opponent might do (mirror). In another, he has to DO what someone might do (mimic). Plus ties into the MaybeMagicMaybeMundane aspect of whether Atom's intelligent or not.
29	* If old sparring robots are built so tough that the most powerful robot in boxing history can't break one, then they would be prohibited from League fights in the interest of fairness. Any experienced 'bot driver or mechanic would know about their reputation, and would cry "foul" at the idea of taking on a fighter who literally COULDN'T be beaten. But everybody in the film, even the master robot designer, seems utterly convinced that Atom is held together with chewing gum and bent paperclips... even after he's spent weeks absorbing abuse from allegedly superior bots.
30	** It's not that he's old, it's that he's a sparring bot. Atom's designed to take a lot of damage, but has very little offensive power. I don't think there's limitations on durability, as Zeus seemed to be equally tough (but with a shorter battery life).
31	** Exactly. Atom as tough but it took replacing parts of him to make him a fighter. Note that some of the parts that weren't his originals actually do get damaged much sooner than he actually does. As for why no one did that any more, you can actually see a lot of this in modern gaming/other niches - people tend to go for damage over survivability (shock and awe) under the idea that if you beat the other guy quickly enough, this mitigates how much damage you would actually take (eg if he goes down in one punch, that's 'the same' as having infinite armor). This also plays into the fact that most of the robots are being 'trained' and controlled by non-fighters. Atom takes a more realistic approach - finding a balance between offense and defense because Charlie knows that you can't one-shot everything and that you have to be able to take some punishment because you will get hit - note he's also an actual fighter so he knows how these things work.
32	** What do you mean "couldn't be beaten"? Atom ''can'' be beaten, as evidenced by his first fight where he nearly gets beaten by a robot that was apparently knocked together out of mostly scrap metal by some backwoods redneck. Atom is simply more durable than the average robot. If it's legal for Zeus to have pistons for arms I don't see how it would be illegal for Atom to be a little tougher than most bots.
33	* I'm a little confused with the IronicEcho of the film with Max telling Charlie "Your secret's safe with me." I dunno if it's obvious enough what they're talking about, but for some reason, it just went over my head.
34	** I'm assuming that Charlie was going to say something like "I'm proud of you" or "I love you". Being a big macho man, he has trouble spitting such things out, so Max saves him from embarrassment.
35	* I mean, clearly it worked, but why was shadowboxing portrayed as the only thing they could've done to continue fighting with Atom - why was not simply using the manual controls brought up as an alternative? For that matter, why didn't Charlie immediately switch to the manual controls as soon as Atom's voice recognition was bust during the match, rather than wait for the next round (when they set it to shadow)?
36	** They might not have even had the manual controls, and it might've taken too long to get them set back up after not using them for so long.
37	** When Max installs the voice recognition, he says he scrapped the old controller. They don't ''have'' it any more. That's why they didn't switch.
38	*** And even if they still have the controller, it's more than likely sitting outside in the truck, and they are in a brief rest period between rounds. Charlie nor Max can physically run all the way outside and back in time to get the controller if it's in the truck anyway. It was either the Shadow Mode or completely forfeit, and Max didn't want to give up. And Charlie didn't want to let his son down again, so Shadow Mode was used.
39	* Why is it that in the extra material its said that weapons (i.e Metros' hammer hand) are illegal to use in league matches, but the top bot has PISTONS for arms? I realize its probably because its owners own the league but still, bit obviously cheating, that and Zeus "winning" on points, probably the only way to beat zeus is an K.O, zeus always wins on points because its owners own the league basically.
40	** Because the pistons aren't weapons, they're a mechanism in the arms. The rest of it is...not a question, just an accusation of cheating and inaccurate -- Zeus doesn't "always win on points," and its owners do not own the league. Zeus has, until the movie, always won via knock out in the first round.
41	** I agree with OP on this, almost all of the bots we see are vaguely human in form and function, basically fighting with what a human has (barring the above mentioned illegal metro) but zeus has pistons in his arms not as a functional help, they clearly push out, giving him more reach and power, my best comparison is he is like a boxer on steroids with metal plates sown in the gloves, its a clearly unfair advantage compared to almost all the other bots basically having a mostly human limit on options, the pistons are clearly weapons.
42	** The fact is that Zeus clearly has weapons, and while this is the first time it has been forced to win on points, Zeus' owners clearly also own the WRB, note the womans complete lack of shock at winning on points, she has CorruptCorporateExecutive written all over her, the pistons are clearly weaponary, they don't "help" the robot very much except to artifically increase reach and power (as anyone who has every watched a piston at work on youtube would know) we don't really know much about the rules, so maybe pistons are allowed we dont know.
43	* All companies that are seen in the movie have their current 2011 logos, despite the movie being set in the year 2020.
44	** In a similar vein, no new music seems to have come out between now and then; people are still listening to current Eminem songs. That would be like a movie set in the present where everyone listened to the Backstreet Boys.
45	*** That's like saying no one would listen to music from the 90s today...or perhaps they don't, hence why Max's gimmick goes over so well. Imagine a boxer performing Music/FrankSinatra before a fight in the real world, for example.
46	*** Just look at the music being produced today in the actual 2020s. It's not that new music isn't being produced during this time, it's just that the new music produced sucks, and so people are having to listen to the music they grow up with and enjoyed instead.
47	*** I think we have to give the movie a healthy about of slack regarding the company logos. The movie was released in 2011. Of course it was going to get things wrong. As for the music? None of the songs that they used actually date the movie.
48	*** Of course, it is now actually 2020 and not only have most of the companies featured not changed their logos in the intervening years, but people are indeed [[AccidentallyCorrectWriting still listening to Eminem's earlier releases.]]
49	** The former may be justified in that branding is rather important to companies, and consistency is important for a brand, so there's a pretty good reason for the logos to be the same.
50	*** Especially as the time between release and taking place is just nine years -- companies certainly do change their logos at times, but nine years is short enough that it entirely possible (maybe not all that likely, but entirely possible) that none of the companies whose logos were shown in enough detail did that between 2011 and 2020.
51	** The robots aren't repairable? You sink fifty grand into a robot, it loses one fight, and you write it off for scrap?
52	*** Well -- considering how complex the inner-workings of a humanoid bipedal boxing robot have to be, in addition to the fact that each individual robot appears to be completely unique in just about every aspect, meaning that it's probably not easy to find replacements for any specific part that gets damaged or destroyed in a fight -- it wouldn't surprise me if repairing a massively damaged robot would cost as much or even ''more'' than it did to originally purchase it, at which point it would simply be more cost-effective and less time-consuming for a boxer with no corporate backing like Charlie to declare it a total loss and invest in a brand-new one.
53	*** In other words, it's probably similar to totaling a car. At a certain point it becomes more feasible to simply replace a bot than repair it.
54	** Where's the ownership regulation on the robots? Imagine criminal gangs or terrorists getting hold of these things. The early film is clearly black market trading and underground fights, but Max and Charlie later turn up to league matches with a stolen robot.
55	*** The robot was buried in a hill behind a junkyard. Salvage rights do exist, and obviously nobody missed it where it was. It might not even have qualified as being in the junkyard where it was at all, which means nobody would have had any claim to it.
56	*** Atom itself is mentioned to be a sparring bot specifically. If anything, there might not be the same amount of regulation over practice bots as there are with official robots made specifically for official rings. It would be like having a bicycle vs a motorcycle. Both can do basically the same thing, but only one needs a license to operate publicly.
57	** Why are there no health and safety concerns? Nobody seems even a little worried about getting close to these giant wrecking machines. Or the flamethrowers from Zeus' entrance. During the actual fights, limbs fly off and robots get knocked clean out of the ring.
58	*** Regarding the safety concerns, they at least show that the fight referee wears armor when in the ring.
59	** Some of the logos ''are'' different- specifically, one references an Xbox 720. The robots are repairable- Bailey's job throughout the film is as a WrenchWench- but most of the bouts we see end with the head being destroyed (where most of the important circuitry is), or a critical system overload. Ironically, the underground fight Charlie attends with Noisy Boy seems to have more concern for health and safety than the actual league (given the cage), but the referee in the final fight is clad in heavy protective gear.
60	*** The Xbox 720 logo hardly counts as being different - It's the same as the Xbox 360 logo, but with different numbers. The film's set in 2020, and TechnologyMarchesOn, after all.
61	*** Also, it seems the problem isn't so much the robots ''aren't'' repairable, just that Charlie didn't have the money or resources to repair his. It's hard to get replacement parts to repair a 50,000 dollar robot when you're flat broke.
62	** Robot boxing has become the dominant spectator sport, and armies in general are known to endorse contestants (or robots in this case) to advertise the military, but no military-endorsed robot is in sight. What happened to advertising for recruits?
63	*** The robot fighters already count as testbeds for intelligent weapon control systems. None of them is physically good enough to take on a tank.
64	*** And how many league robots did we actually see? Eight: Zeus, Twin Cities, Atom, Noisy Boy, and the minor, one-shot robots that Zeus pulverized: Danger Zone, Gridlock, Axelrod and Blac Jac.
65	** It's probably something like a car. You run around, put it through it's paces. You get banged up a lot or crash the thing? Better off getting a new one.
66	* Bailey stated that Noisy Boy's voice control had probably been added in Brazil due to viewer demand, meaning that he was originally built for manual control. Wouldn't it have been better to switch him to that instead since Charlie had a bit of success with Ambush?
67	** Charlie was in "Ooh, shiny" mode with the voice command system, and just like anybody enamored with the newest technology, he wanted to use that immediately rather than learning the robot's quirks and functions with his usual, less shiny methods first.
68	* If there are no rules in underground robot fighting, why does nobody kick their opponents while they're down? Probably would have won Noisy Boy's fight with Midas, at least.
69	** The robots don't have as much flexibility as humans in what they can do. They're designed to attack targets that are standing up, not ones that are on the ground; attacking a downed target might not be cost effective for some of them.
70	** Walking and maintaining balance for giant top heavy robots is probably difficult enough without mechanics of kicking. Standing on one leg while swinging the other leg only to come to an abrupt stop when it hits the other robot might be too taxing on the whatever program the robots use to balance themselves. Also, if the robot's foot were to get damaged by kicking the downed opponent might just end up with two robots lying down.
71	** In ''Series/BattleBots'' on TV, it seemed to be considered a dick move to continue trashing a disabled robot. One opponent kept smashing up a disabled robot, then pushed it into one of the arena weapons, and was soundly booed. The underground fights may operate on the same 'honor'. There's no need to destroy someone's expensive robot when it's down... and consider what might happen to ''yours'' next time it goes down.

Context Headscratchers / RealSteel