Next week, Missouri Southern students will have four opportunities to catch the movie Real Steel in the Phelps Theatre.

This free movie runs Feb. 6 – Feb. 9. The feature movie showing is sponsored by the Campus Activities Board.

The plot of Real Steel centers around the character of Charlie (played by Australian actor Hugh Jackman), an out of work boxer turned promoter struggling to pay the bills.

Charlie struggles financially in this stylized science fiction adventure flick, because 2,000-pound robots have become the main focus of attention in the formerly human realm of boxing.

But a theme of humans outsourced by machines progresses to a theme of man and machine working alongside each other.

Outside the mechanical action of the boxing ring, a father/son dynamic develops.

The estranged relationship between Charlie and his son Max gets a second chance as Charlie trains their robot for a championship bout.

Phelps Theatre airs Real Steel in the basement of the Billingsly Student Center Monday at 4 p.m., Wednesday at 7 p.m., Thursday at 6 p.m, and in a double feature Tuesday at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Elizabeth Colley, a sophomore elementary education major and CAB secretary, says the show times make the film “available to daytime and nighttime students, and it’s a really cool movie.

“I like boxing and Hugh Jackman, but it’s the ultimate dad-and-son movie,” she said.

Since the dollar movie theater on Seventh Street went out of business a few years ago, CAB Movie Nights are the cheapest (free) movie viewings in Joplin, and CAB expects the turnout for the viewing of Real Steel to be around 100 students.