I was wracking my own mental database for a sport that has not had a movie made about it, and I couldn’t really come up with many. Curling, Jai Alai, Murderball, darts, billiards, sumo, luge, and cricket all have movies. I just learned that kabaddi has a movie, and I don’t even know what kabaddi is. Lagaan, a Bollywood cricket movie, was nominated for an Academy Award. The notion of the sporting movie is such a basic one, and the drama felt during sporting events is so pervasive to all cultures, that it crosses into every single sporting event in every single country. I don’t think there’s a skee-ball movie. Someone get on that.
Another interesting facet of sports movies: They tend to have a subtext of gender dynamics. Some films deal with this obviously and directly (as when a girl – a GIRL – plays on a boy’s team like in Little Giants, or perhaps vice versa like in Ladybugs), although most tend to leave it as something implied or simply present. The way males relate to one another changes in a sporting context. There is hatred and camaraderie based on their devotion to the game. A man can prove how honorable he is in a field of competition (see Redbelt). The way women relate to each other in sporting situations is usually seen as a distaff to the way men behave; how “like a man” do the women behave? Are they as aggressive? Female athletes in movies have camaraderie as well, and vicious rivalries of course, but it has less to do with machismo, and more to do with sheer skill. Is “machisma” a word? To articulate myself on this point, I’m just going to ask that you picture the characters from Rocky as women, and note on the juxtaposition. Gender dynamics in movies is too long and sticky a subject to really explore here.
Another element shared by all sport movies is, well, their love of the game. No sports movie ever looks down on the sport depicted therein. While some films deal with corruption or mortification in the sport (Any Given Sunday, Moneyball), there is still a pervading feeling that the game itself is poetic and right. That by playing baseball or football or soccer, you are exercising your most basic right as a human being, and the game itself is an almost spiritual and wholly sentimental path to enlightenment. No matter the game, it is pastoral and nostalgic. Look past the money and the politics, and there is purity. Heck, even Real Steel had themes of the old and scrappy and pure fighting robots overcoming their slick and well-moneyed counterparts.
And that may be the real reason we keep coming back: The purity. Sure the drama is there, and we can take usually take comfort in certain oft-repeated plotlines, character types, and typical victories. But it’s the love of the game that we find infectious. The characters care about something, and it is always good. Someone who loves baseball is a hero, and we can feel like heroes too by watching them.
To close, I’m going to point to what is perhaps the single most imitated sports movie of all time. I refer, of course, to John G. Avildsen’s 1976 boxing classic Rocky. While tales of underdogs eventually rising out of their poverty and self-pity to achieve a grand sporting accomplishment were common before Rocky, it was Rocky that sort of codified it. Sylvester Stallone’s brooding Philly mook who goes from being a friendly shake-down guy to a widely-seen and cheered-for local boxing legend set the template for generations to follow. All the emotional beats, all the sporting details, all of the overcoming-the-odds, all the training montages that have come since Rocky are all hearkening back to Rocky.
If you want to make a sporting movie, familiarize yourself with Rocky. Learn it backwards and forwards. Rocky is to sporting movies as Alien is to sci-fi, and as Emmanuelle is to softcore smut.
Sports movies will continue as long as there are sports and movies. New sports will be invented, and movies will be made about how great they are. Sports movies are about drama and competition, but more than anything, they are about love. And that’s so wonderful.
Homework for the Week:
What’s your favorite sports movie? Why that one in particular? Is it the sport, the character, the competitive aspects, or the camaraderie? How do sporting movie rivals relate as opposed to otherwise emotional rivals? Is there a gender element to sporting movies? Watch Rocky and one other sporting movie that came after it. How is that film like Rocky? How does it differ? Are the differences pronounced?
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
