Ben Affleck’s Air is the next great American sports movie

Ben Affleck’s Air is the next great American sports movie.

One of the more classic American sensibilities is our persistent stubbornness to give up on something when we believe in it.

You can track it all the way back to the Revolutionary War to find a bunch of scrappy, powdered-wig wearing forefathers who were so against paying those ridiculous taxes on their goods that they’d go to battle for freedom.

For all of the flaws that engulf the idea of “American exceptionalism,” we are an exceptionally headstrong people when we want something.

Ben Affleck’s Air walks the fine line in extolling these virtues. On one hand, there is a direct thrill in watching Affleck’s dramatization of how once-underdog shoe company Nike usurped the basketball competition giants of Adidas and Converse to land Michael Jordan’s sponsorship.

Affleck’s as gifted behind the camera as he is in front of it, and he knows how to ring from history a snappy, monologue-filled headrush of racing against the clock and defying the odds on the sheer power of belief and savvy corporate maneuvering.

You get all the archetypes of the underdog story: the guy we root for who powers himself on good-faith tenets (Matt Damon’s Sonny Vaccaro), the benevolent authority figure who pushes our protagonist when necessary (Affleck’s Phil Knight), the supporting players who fuel our protagonist’s efforts (Jason Bateman’s Rob Strasser, Chris Tucker’s Howard White, Matthew Maher’s Peter Moore) and the moral center who makes everything happen (Viola Davis’ Deloris Jordan).

Ben Affleck as Phil Knight in Air Photo: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC

The villain is more of an obelisk, a system that seeks to use sponsorship to build up product rather than the other way around. Vaccaro’s genius in seeing Michael Jordan’s potential was understanding that he was the marquee event, not the sneaker he was sporting. As a couple of our main players note throughout the film, it’s not about the shoe as much as the person who was wearing it.

As your sneaker closet may spoil for you, Nike succeeded in courting Jordan against the firm pushes of Adidas and Converse. The Air Jordan absolutely changed the basketball shoe world. The deal revolutionized the way we market products around athletes and forever altered the means of compensation on sponsorship deals to build up the individual as much as the company. In a little boardroom in Oregon, sports shifted for good.

Affleck’s film successfully rallies around the underdog narrative with the same gleeful disruption of sports movies like Jerry Maguire and Moneyball. Those pillars of sporting films – the former fictional, the latter inspired by real life – dealt directly with merry marauders who pushed against the old guard of athletics and found a new way forward.

Air is an outstanding example of how to execute that story with enough gravitas to get you cheering in your seat when a billion-dollar company is able to schedule a meeting with an NBA player for a marketing pitch.

It’s a hair-raising, chest-pumping sprint to the finish, built on inspirational platitudes and fiercely written exchanges about ideals. Alex Convery’s script would make Aaron Sorkin proud, and its entertainingly clinical dismantling of power structures would have Steven Soderbergh foaming at the mouth.

Matthew Maher as Peter Moore, Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro and Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser in AIR Photo: ANA CARBALLOSA © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC

Damon is the perfect fixture point, with he and Affleck’s scenes together channeling that uncanny chemistry that they’ll always have. They’re the closest thing we have to a Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau partnership. Tucker, Bateman and Maher, all tremendous, further humanize Vaccaro’s quest, and Davis turns in one of her better performances as the Jordan family’s steely, empathetic matriarch who is hellbent on making sure her son’s generational potential is realized on the most just path.

Throw in Affleck’s quirky take on Knight and Chris Messina’s smarmy, full-throated imagining of sports superagent David Falk, and you’ve got one of the finest ensembles we’ve had in ages. This film can’t work without its cast.

Affleck’s direction is as precise and energetic as it was with Argo, another story about determined Americans racing against the clock to defy the odds. However, his film isn’t shallow enough to not address the Nike-wearing elephant in the room.

Indeed, while there is clear inspiration to the Jordan/Nike story, there is also the finicky trouble with hyping up a billion-dollar corporation’s quest to make a crap ton of more money. The means of production so often leaves behind the worker who makes it possible, and Air savvily takes the Air Jordan deal and adds vital context in the third act about the thankless system that largely governs our economic groundswells.

Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro and Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan in AIR Photo: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC

The film shows that Deloris Jordan wanted her son to get a cut of the Air Jordan shoe sales because she knew Michael was going to be a megastar, and she didn’t want him to get lost in the tidal wave of unpredictable American commerce. Jordan is one of the richest athletes to ever play because of the terms of the Nike shoe deal, and many athletes have benefitted from that over time.

Affleck’s film tries to show the importance of what the Air Jordan deal gave athletes all while making the quest to secure that sponsorship as exciting as overtime in a Game 7 of an NBA Finals. The film is too smart to ignore the corporate greed and risky optimism that can fuel our biggest corporate achievements, but it’s also nuanced enough to celebrate the marriage of good-faith economics and pure belief.

The Air Jordan deal left plenty of winners, and it’s easy to root for the victory. You have to remember that this is a story told through Hollywood’s purview, one that can’t fully unpack the complexities of Nike and its business dealings. However, Air can unpack the brazen foundation that builds all of our competitive successes, and Affleck’s film does so masterfully. It’s a film that inspires you to fly all while reminding you what it takes to have wings.

AIR: See the cast of Ben Affleck’s new Nike movie compared to real-life counterparts

Ben Affleck nails it as Nike founder Phil Knight.

We’re getting closer to the release date for the upcoming sports movie AIR.

The early reactions are overwhelmingly positive and the Nike biographical sports drama currently has a 100 percent approval rating on the film review website Rotten Tomatoes.

The movie tells the story of Knight and the partnership between Michael Jordan and Nike’s basketball division, which eventually led to the creation of the Air Jordan brand.

RELATED: Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Nike film AIR debuts with a perfect 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes

Ben Affleck, who directs the film, stars as Nike co-founder and former chairman Phil Knight.

Affleck stars alongside Matt Damon (as Sonny Vaccaro), Viola Davis (as Deloris Jordan), Julius Tennon (as James Jordan), Chris Tucker (as Howard White), Jason Bateman (as Rob Strasser), Matthew Maher (as Peter Moore), Chris Messina (as David Falk), and Marlon Wayans (as George Raveling).

Michael Jordan, a character who appears more as a mythic figure than as an actual presence on the screen, specifically required Affleck to cast Davis to portray his mother.

This movie will have its theatrical release in the United States on April 5. Until then, you can watch the trailer to get excited and build anticipation for AIR.

You can also check out our side-by-side comparisons of the actors and all of their real-life counterparts:

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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Nike film AIR debuts with a perfect 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes

This movie sounds amazing.

The upcoming sports movie AIR recently had its premiere at South By South West and the early reactions are overwhelmingly positive.

In fact, the Nike biographical sports drama currently has a 100 percent approval rating on the film review website Rotten Tomatoes. That specifically means that all seventeen reviewers thus far have rated this movie favorably.

As also noted by For The Win’s Cory Woodroof, Variety‘s Peter Debruge called the movie “this generation’s Jerry Maguire in his review.

AIR will have its theatrical release in the United States on April 5. But until then, you can watch the trailer to get excited and build anticipation for this movie.

Ben Affleck, who directs the film, also stars as Nike co-founder and former chairman Phil Knight.

The movie tells the story of Knight and the partnership between Michael Jordan and Nike’s basketball division, which eventually led to the creation of the Air Jordan brand.

Affleck stars alongside Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker and Viola Davis. Michael Jordan, a character who does not actually appear in the film, specifically required Affleck to cast Davis to portray his mother.

Could this movie possibly be a contender for another Oscars win for Affleck, who took home the award for Best Picture for Argo in 2013?

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Michael Jordan required Ben Affleck to cast this Oscar winner to play his mom in Air

Michael Jordan wanted this Oscar winner to play his mom in the upcoming sports drama Air.

While meeting with NBA legend Michael Jordan ahead of making the upcoming sports drama Air, actor and filmmaker Ben Affleck got a few requests from the basketball legend.

As he premiered the film at South by Southwest this weekend, Affleck talked about what Jordan had hoped to see in the dramatized telling of the Nike shoe deal that changed his and the company’s lives forever.

Via Variety, Affleck shared that Jordan wanted to see Howard White in the film, who is the vice president of sports marketing for the Jordan Brand. Affleck said the casting opportunity gave him a chance to work with actor Chris Tucker, who appears as White in Air.

Jordan also had a specific casting request for who would portray his mother, Deloris Jordan. The Chicago Bulls great told Affleck he wanted Oscar winner Viola Davis to play the part.

“I got the script and then had the chance again to talk to Michael. Michael Jordan, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the most intimidating, impressive men you’ll ever see in your life,” Affleck said (via Variety). “He told me about is father. And then he talked about his mother. It was the first time I saw this look cross his face. It was a look of reverence, of awe, of love, and gratitude, and innocence. He said, ‘None of this would have ever happened without my mother.’ I said, ‘Who would you like to play your mom?’ He said, ‘Well, it has to be Viola Davis.”

Jordan got his wish, as Davis indeed appears in the film as his mother. Affleck had a very apt comparison as to what it meant to cast Davis in the project.

“That’s like saying, ‘Can I play basketball on your court?’ ‘Yeah, if you get Michael Jordan.’ “Viola Davis is the best actor I’ve ever seen,” Affleck continued. “This is a hard business. It’s hard to know if you’re successful. It’s hard to know if you’ve accomplished something. But honest to God, I always felt that if i was a director one day, and I had Viola Davis in a movie, that would really be something. That would mean the world to me. And it does.”

Affleck co-stars in Air as Nike co-founder Phil Knight, while his longtime collaborator and friend Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, who spearheaded the effort at Nike to bring Jordan aboard for a shoe line.

The film opens on April 5 nationwide.

WATCH: First official trailer drops for ‘AIR,’ a movie about Phil Knight and Michael Jordan

The first trailer for ‘AIR,’ a movie about Phil Knight and Nike’s pursuit of Michael Jordan has officially dropped.

You can feel the buzz starting to grow where moviegoers and sports lovers overlap. When you take a subject that contains arguably the greatest basketball player to ever live — Michael Jordan — and the most famous sports apparel brand in the history of the world — Nike — you’ve got sports fans excited. Then you put actors like Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, and Viola Davis on the big screen to depict that subject matter?

Now you’ve got a movie.

The first official trailer for “AIR” came out on Thursday morning. It is a movie directed by Ben Affleck, depicting the journey that Nike co-founder and Oregon Ducks legend Phil Knight — played by Affleck — went through back in the 1980s when trying to get his company off the ground by creating a shoe-line around Michael Jordan.

The creation of the Air Jordan came about with the help of Sonny Vaccaro, who is played by Matt Damon.

For Oregon fans and sneakerheads who have read the book Shoe Dog, written by Knight, they know this story well. But soon a much larger group of people will be familiar with the improbable events that took place, creating the brand that is Nike, and helping build the legend that is Michael Jordan.

The movie is set to release on April 5, 2023.

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