As a sports fan (I couldn’t decide whether to prefix that with ‘unashamed’ or ‘ashamed’…. let’s just move on) I often find myself having to defend my love and fascination of grown men chasing balls around against friends who can’t even begin to fathom any enjoyment you can take from it. From serious points involving extortionate wages and xenophobia, to the triviality of me referring to teams I support as ‘we’ instead of ‘they’, my general defence for these accusations is always the same. Much like a great movie will take you on journey of ups & downs, emotional attachments, goodies & baddies, so will a great sporting event. This obviously works both ways. Do I want watch a 0-0 draw between Stoke City & Wolves? No. Do I want to watch a rom-com starring Jessica Simpson & Paul Walker? No. Do I want to watch game 6 of the NBA Finals with Dallas leading the series 3-2? Hell Yeah. Do I want to watch Mesrine: Part 2 straight after Part 1 has finished? Who wouldn’t?!
For me, the coming together of two great things will often result in more greatness. Bank holidays and cider. Steven Spielberg and dinosaurs. And providing it doesn’t spend too much time with Kanye West, Beyonce and Jay Z’s upcoming baby. So why do two of greatest things out there, movies and sports, seem so intent on not mixing? As immiscible as oil and water, the litany of crap sports movies has taken the genre to little more than a parody of itself.
I’m fairly confident in identifying the basic problem is the inherent predictability of their outcomes: Rule #1 – The star player/team MUST WIN.
There are some notable variations on this theme but even in the movies in which they lose, there is not enough polish on earth to clean the trophies they would gain from their moral victories… if they were actually given out. In this way, all sports movies are a lie. So what’s the solution? Would I really want to see a movie in which the lead character loses to a better, more successful team? Did they learn any lessons along the way? No. What? They didn’t come to understand that all victory in the world meant nothing compared to the love of their family? No? They just lost fair and square and there was nothing left to do apart from try a bit harder next season? Damn. Not sure if I would watch that either.
In the modern sports arena, where it has been undoubtedly proven that money WILL buy you success, it will also make you a baddie. In a culture in which many attribute their own personal success to how much money they’ve got in the bank, it seems bizarre that the animosity towards newly-rich Manchester City means they may as well rename their team Montgomery Burns F.C. The plucky underdog is always the goodie in the sports genre, but in reality, David wouldn’t beat Goliath, like Iraq wouldn’t beat Canada at Ice Hockey.
So why are we always served up ‘against all odds’, overcoming adversity and last minute miracles as if they are a staple of sports? In doing this, it takes the rarity of unpredictability and makes it the norm. Thus taking the entertainment of twists and surprises and reducing them to mile markers on the dullest piece of motorway you could ever think of driving down. Perhaps this is why the few examples of excellence within the genre are based on true stories that we believe because we know they’re true, not a fairytale of truth. Knowing the outcome of the sporting events in these movies leaves the intrigue, drama and suspense down to the characters. Exploring the psyche of human being is much more cinematically interesting than exploring the frailties of the defensive positioning that allowed Pele to score an overhead kick despite having broken ribs. That’s exactly what makes RAGING BULL, THE FIGHTER, THE DAMNED UNITED (and hopefully) the forthcoming MONEYBALL so much more compelling. You can’t compete with the real drama we’ve already seen on sports stations across the world, so show us what’s happening behind closed doors. Leave the drama on the pitch to the player- and the drama off of it to the director.
