Hugh Jackman: Real Steel robots were amazing

Hugh Jackman says working with 7ft life-sized robots for Real Steel was an “incredible” experience.

The Australian actor appears in the upcoming action-drama movie that tells the story of fight promoter Charlie Kenton. He works in a boxing world where robots have taken over.

The film features high-octane fight sequences between the machines.

Real life-sized robots were used during filming to make it more realistic for the actors, which Hugh and his young co-star Dakota Goyo greatly appreciated.

“Absolutely [it helped.] They were limited in that they couldn’t walk, but if they were still, they are exactly like you see in the movie. They are incredible. We believed they were real,” he told Cover Media.

“I’m speaking on behalf of Dakota. To him, it was extraordinary. It was exactly like you see in the movie, a dream come true. So it was incredible. Plus, this is the Avatar team we had on our movie, taking it to the next level because as opposed to being in one room with Avatar, green screen rooms – we were in real locations. We knew exactly what was going on, Shawn directed every visual effect.”

Producer Don Murphy wanted to create a sense of realism throughout shooting. He says the actors found it far easier having something tangible in front of them.

“Well I think from the beginning the team wanted to do everything possible to grab the movie’s reality. And so, unlike the Transformers movies where they were all CGI-rendered, Shawn worked with Legacy and we actually built 7ft tall versions of Atom and Noisy Boy and Ambush,” he explained. “Of course they were limited to what they could do but they existed and they were something to actually look at and something for the actors to relate with which was way different to looking up at a peg in the air and going, ‘Look there’s Optimus.’”

Shawn Levy agreed with the notion.

The American director says the real robots added a raw dimension to the film.

“Just to be clear, because there’s some confusion about this – these robots are not animated. These fighters are real fighters, going full on, full contact in a ring, directed by me, with Sugar Ray Leonard there consulting. So the reason that the fights feel like they have weight to it, is that it’s not computer animation, it’s motion captured human fighting performance converting into robot weight, robot mass,” he said.

Real Steel will be released in theatres on October 14.