10 Box Office Hits You Forgot Even Existed

Hugh Jackman and giant fighting robots, what's not love? Quite a lot, actually. While the logline alone evokes thoughts of an intentionally cheesy popcorn movie with the ability to put butts into seats, the end result was about as generic as they come. The Academy Award-nominated Real Steel (yes, really) smacked of missed opportunity, and was consigned to the Hollywood scrapheap in a matter of weeks.

Jackman brings his usual grizzled charisma to the one-note role of 'deadbeat dad bonds with estranged son and betters himself in the process', but there's only so much the Aussie can do with such a flat script. While there are a couple of decent set-pieces, like the rest of director Shawn Levy's cinematic output the whole thing just comes off as a soulless, commercially-engineered piece of hollow 'entertainment'.

Real Steel was nonetheless a decent-sized hit, and was in fact the twentieth highest-grossing movie of 2011 with a respectable box office take of $299.3m. Unfortunately, the studio was hoping for a lot more given the high-concept pitch and presence of a bankable star in the lead role, but the movie itself quickly fizzled out after audiences discovered just how insipid the whole thing was.