Movie: Air Legends AIR (2023)
Director: Ben Affleck
Screenwriter: Alex Confrey
Starring: Matt Damon / Jason Bateman / Ben Affleck / Chris Messina / Viola Davis / More...
Genre: Drama / Biography / Sports
Country/region of production: United States
Language: English
Release Date: 2023-03-18 (South by Southwest Film Festival) / 2023-04-05 (USA)
Run time: 111 minutes
Also known as: Air Cushion / AIR Jordan
Douban score: 7.5
In the mid-80s, Nike tried a long-term effort to sign rising basketball player Michael Jordan to the third footwear company at the time. Thanks to maverick footwear salesman Sonny, he signed Michael Jordan.
In 1984, the market share of basketball shoes in the United States, the position of Nike's basketball division, and all of Nike's weaknesses compared to competitors Converse and Adidas were clearly sorted out.
At the insistence of Vaccaro, the Nike team sought breakthroughs for Jordan, Jordan's family, Jordan's agent, and turned their weaknesses into strengths one by one. In the process, many historically famous landmark events naturally took place.
For example, during the design of sneakers, Strasser suddenly had a flash and decided to bear the fine during the Jordan game to make a breakthrough in shoe color matching; For example, the name "Air Jordan" has an episode similar to "stealing"; For example, propose and adopt a profit-sharing model to usher in a new era of sports marketing. These stories that shoe fans and shoe fans are familiar with are well dramatized in the film.
Although Jordan is the main factor in the popularity of the AJ brand around the world, in the context of this film, Jordan himself is not the key to the outcome of this business war. In addition, Jordan's image is well known, so it is not appropriate to rush to find someone to play it.
Daben uses a very ingenious trick that not only preserves Jordan's "presence" in the film, but also prevents the "fake Jordan" from causing the audience to appear in the movie.
In this film, it was true that an actor was hired to play Jordan at the time, but by deliberately shooting his back and obscuring the foreground, he avoided the actor's frontal appearance. Jordan is in the same frame as the other actors in the movie, he is always just a silhouette and doesn't even say a line. Later, in the scene where the Nike team meets with the Jordan family, Vaccaro gives a speech that is 2 minutes and 25 seconds long to avoid the embarrassment of poor performance in the presentation video.
This presentation is undoubtedly the highlight of the film, since not only does Mada's performance reach the level of an actor, but it unexpectedly includes many important photos from Jordan's career. This "god-synced" sound and picture quickly reminded the audience of Jordan's legendary life, and they immediately understood why Nike dared to bet all its budget and even the future of the entire basketball department on Jordan.
"Shoes are just shoes. They are meaningless unless someone puts them on. ”。 The rest of us just want the opportunity to be exposed to greatness. We want you to wear these shoes, not to give meaning to your life, but to give meaning to our lives. Everyone at this table will be forgotten when they die, except you. You will be remembered forever because some things are eternal. You are Michael Jordan and your story will inspire us to fly.
Spoilers + brief comment