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Real Steel
In the 2020s, boxing between human fighters has been replaced with robots. In Texas, former boxer Charlie Kenton owns the robot Ambush until it is destroyed in a fight against a bull belonging to promoter and carnival owner Ricky. Having bet money he did not have with Ricky that Ambush would win, Charlie absconds before Ricky can collect.
After the fight, Charlie learns his ex-girlfriend died, and he must attend a hearing about their 11-year-old son Max, whom he hasn't seen since birth. Max's maternal aunt Debra and her husband Marvin seek full custody. Charlie agrees to give up custody of Max for money, while Marvin negotiates that Charlie keeps custody for three months during their vacation.
Settling into a gym owned by Bailey Tallet, the daughter of Charlie's former boxing coach, Charlie uses half the money to acquire the once-famous World Robot Boxing (WRB) robot Noisy Boy. He and Max take Noisy Boy to Crash Palace, an underworld boxing arena run by his friend Finn, where Noisy Boy is destroyed against robot boxer Midas.
While searching for replacements in a junkyard and then sliding down a cliff, Max discovers Atom, an obsolete, dilapidated, but mostly intact sparring robot that breaks Max's fall and saves his life. Atom is designed to endure damage with a rare "shadow function" program, which mirrors and memorizes the handler's or opponent's movements.
Charlie pits Atom against the robot Metro at Max's request, and the junkyard bot surprisingly comes out on top. Max integrates Noisy Boy's voice command hardware with Atom and convinces Charlie to optimize Atom's movements. Altogether, Charlie's boxing experience and Atom's shadow function build a winning streak that leads to Charlie being offered a WRB fight between Atom and the national champion, Twin Cities.
The fight starts with Atom on the attack, but Twin Cities quickly takes the offensive. Charlie notices a hitch (a brief delay) whenever Twin Cities throws a right punch, and he exploits this to win by knockout. Elated by their success, Max challenges the undefeated fighting robot and Real Steel Champion of the World, Zeus. After the fight, Ricky and two henchmen attack Charlie for bailing earlier and rob him and Max of their winnings, prompting a defeated and dejected Charlie to return Max to Debra.
When Charlie tries to convince an upset Max that he is better off without him, the boy reveals that all he ever wanted was for him to fight for him and be there as a father. After Max leaves, Charlie returns to Tallet's Gym and talks with Bailey. She persuades him to reconcile with Max, and Charlie convinces Debra to allow Max to come to the fight he set up with Zeus.
As the fight begins, Zeus dominates the first round, but Atom manages to survive, stunning the audience. Ricky, who bet with Finn on Atom losing within the first round, tries to leave but is cornered by Finn and his bookmakers.
As the fight continues, Atom lands multiple punches and withstands further attacks but makes no definitive progress. Late in the fourth round, Atom's voice-response controls are damaged, forcing Charlie to fight Zeus with Atom's shadow function for the fifth and final round, in which Charlie wards off Zeus with a rope-a-dope tactic long enough to deplete its power core, allowing Atom to begin a counterattack against an exhausted Zeus. With Zeus' programmers unable to compensate, the designer, Tak Mashido, intervenes and controls Zeus manually.
Zeus is soundly beaten but narrowly avoids losing by knockout and wins by a judge's decision. Despite the match result and remaining undefeated, Zeus is left critically damaged, and Mashido's group is humiliated by the near-loss. The cheering crowd triumphantly labels Atom the "People's Champion," and Max and Charlie celebrate.