Real Steel finally comes out this weekend. Even today, I feel tremors from the rush of zeal as the trailer bludgeoned me and I thought "this is a thing that actually exists." This will very quietly be my favorite movie of the summer not named Drive. The trailer promises not only some sort of high stakes robot fighting league, but both pieces of dialogue "You got nothin' left," and "You're a bad bet," delivered with the hyper sincerity that makes my crap sensor tingle. And Hugh Jackman is gonna make good with some kid? Forget about it.
So sure...I work a little material now and again, and I delivered the above diatribe to a film loving friend the other day. He leaned back for a moment, cocked his eyebrows and asked, "Are you being ironic?" Yeah, a little, but sometimes I like a movie that knows it's just a movie. Maybe it's low brow, and my ticket stub goes toward the ever reverberating pablum machine that makes Hollywood great, but...I love crap. I watch a Statham film with the reverence one invokes when they visit the Hagia Sophia. I would trade in a hectare of moody indie dramas for one more installment of Final Destination.
You can't make a B-movie on purpose. A B-movie has nothing to do with budget or cast or genre, it has something more to do with ingenuity, irrational confidence, pervasive good-badness, and a lack of execution. There are still bad movies--tons of em--and great films, but B-movies fill some slight space in between. Sometimes it's a great idea brought to life with meat hands. Sometimes it's one masterful sequence or unforgettable visual effect. In this case, it's the "He was in what...and it was about what?" moment forty years removed from an actors relevance. These movies serve as a quiet bedrock of modern cinema's identity. B-movies are the corpses harvested to make great films. Ask Quentin Tarantino and the mountain of money stuffed in old VHS cassette covers he sleeps on every night. I bet it's with chicks, too...hot ones. At least hot-ish.
Old B-movies enjoy the benefit of nostalgia's allure. The throw back poster art and over the top story lines excuse the shoddy craftsmanship and clumsy narratives. Badness becomes the new measuring stick of quality. The film becomes its flaws. Take the 1968 Otto Preminger crapsterpiece Skidoo. Skidoo is...oh man...it is not good, but Jackie Gleason--yes, that Jackie Gleason--takes LSD. Harry Nilsson does the soundtrack. Mobsters and Hippies intermingle. There's a rape joke. Oh, and the movie also happens to be Groucho Marx's last film...let that wash over you. She's a deuce all the way around, but aren't you curious? Aren't you glad Skidoo exists?
In the moment, in 1968, the movie is despicable. A tragic, unfunny film with a bunch of washed up Hollywood memories trying to pose as a hip counter culture drug romp. This is a year that boasts films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Rosemary's Baby. India was in a cinematic golden age, and Europe and Japan were rippin' shit on the reg. In the winter of '68, I believe I would have deplored this movie. On principle. I can't prove it, but my gut--and my need to make my pointless argument--say otherwise.
40 years later, the first time I saw the film, things were different. As I said to my self, "Jackie Gleason was in what...and it's about what?" the film earned its pass. Skidoo was charming and some far away emblem of another era's misguided notions. Shades of Hollywood long gone in a film so absurd it takes on an endearing, almost naive, quality. What was once born from a bloated Studio flop, came out on the other side of nostalgia as must-see-movie-nerd-cool. Time's elixir can transform even the steamiest turd into campy, kitschy fun, but what of that freshly laid dook?
Well, this is my hope for Real Steel. I want to witness the pre-camp/future-camp flash point. The film could be just good enough to be forgettable. It could be just bad enough to be terrible (I'm looking crazy hard at you ROTPOTA...like I wanna punch you in your face). But, if the feel good hokum is strung taught, the cliches visible from the first five minutes, and the visual effects set to be the blue screen and stop motion laughable to a future era, it could be just bad enough to be great. A relic for tomorrow's cinefiles to gleefully accept for what it is, crap. It remains to be seen if this picture has stuff enough to rise into the cannon of B-movies, but I'll lay a ticket stub on that chance.
So what was the verdict?
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