The 2016 sci-fi movies was directed by Stewart Hendler, and written by Christopher L. Yost. It’s the story of a young teen getting stuck in one of the most generic sci-fi plots of all time.
PLOT:
Spoilers ahead, I guess.
Max McGrath ( Ben Winchell ) is a high school teen living in a small town named ‘Copper Canyon’. His Father died in an unspecified accident when he was very young. At this high school he meets his equally uninteresting love interest, Sofa ( Ana Villafane ). One day, after coming home from school, he finds his Mom ( Maria Bello) dating Dr. Miles ( Andy Garcia, how did they get you in this garbage? ), a colleague of Max’s deceased Father.
One day, Max starts spewing magic blue energy stuff out of his body., driving him to think he’s crazy. Then this weird flying mini-alien-roomba thing shows up and is like “hey I’m a cool alien robot, I need your energy to survive and if you don’t use me you will literally explode”. Steel being it’s name, hence the titel “Max Steel”. Steel then proceeds to constantly be around him at every single second of the movie. He’s annoying, his voice is annoying, and he talks and overexplains everything way too much, leading to the weirdest, cringiest moments in cinematic history. He takes Steel to his school, and he talks in his backpack and everyone thinks he’s just some weird dude talking to himself. Making weird excuses to brush it off.
Literally everything between this is pretty much a blur. Even though I just watched the film a few hours ago, yeah it’s just that forgettable. Eventually Max somehow ends up at a military base or something. A man is being experimented on with the same blue energy source that he has. Also Andy Garcia is back. He betrays them in the most cliche’ style known to man. So he’s the bad guy, and it turns out Max’s Father is an alien, and his Father used to own the very same Steel. Garcia dies. Max ends up with Sofia. Pretty much the end. Also Steel’s Iron Man Tron suit thingy can fly now. Right, at some point he turned into that earlier then this paragraph, minus the flying.
CONCLUSION:
Max Steel felt like a cheap, sci-fi ripoff of Percy Jackson, only so much more worse and generic then any reasonable human would actually expect. The acting was dreadfull, only exception being Andy Garcia who was at least tolerable, though this most likely was the result of both the plot and dialogue, which was unforgiveably weak and the film felt like one of the biggest wastes of time I have ever commited. There is genuinally nothing good to say about this film, other then that it had some decent looking special effects. That’s it. If my review seems a little
‘unpassionate’ that’s because I am. That’s how bad this thing is. I went knowing how bad the reviews were, but still wanted to give it a fair chance. Nope, it actually is as bad as they say. I watched this for free but I still want a refund. I’d give this trash a 1.5/ 10.
-The Screenwriter
PS, happy birthday to Neill Blomkamp