Ben Affleck and why ‘Air’ is closer to ‘Succession’ than to Marvel and its special effects

We begin our review of ‘Air’, the Ben Affleck film by saying that it is a film about Michael Jordan, although Michael Jordan does not appear. We also explain the true story of Jordan’s first contract with Nike that inspired ‘Air’. We have even spoken with Ben Affleck and he has told us in detail how as a child the sports genius marked him by scoring no less than 63 points for his team or how Matt Damon remembers that anecdote that shows the sick competitiveness of Michael Jordan. And if we’ve been able to talk about everything, it’s because ‘Air’ is committed to a true story.

No, true stories are not a novelty or something strange in Hollywood cinema. Biopics based on music stars, in fact, are one of the few that have succeeded in the cinema lately that do not belong to a fantastic franchise. However, he gives us a sample to understand what Ben Affleck is referring to in the video of our interview that you can see above. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck return to their old ways in a real movie bet. That’s right, Affleck has left behind his Batman project to bet, according to what he says, for a real people movie.

Perhaps some think that it is exaggerating but at first it sums up very well the current state of Hollywood. While television is focusing on great characters and stories based on our world such as ‘Succession’ or ‘Ozark’, almost the only thing that the box office responds to adequately is fantastic bets from Marvel, DC or other Disney ips. That is, movies with a lot of CGI set in fantastic worlds created by special effects and based on ips and multimedia franchises.

Affleck says that he believes, or at least hopes, that the public still wants to see on the big screen and not on television, on platforms, stories like ‘Successsion’ or ‘Air’, stories of real people with realistic conflicts, and whose great interest is not a great battle but rather that it is told through the interpretations and the dialogues. Come on, what we acclaim on television with ‘The White Lotus’ or ‘Succession’ but in cinemas plays over and over again. Something that worked for you ten years ago with ‘Argo’. Has cinema been reduced to fantasy and fantastic franchises with a base audience of fan phenomenon? Well, seeing that ‘Super Mario Bros: The Movie’ has raised in its first days ten times more than Ben Affleck, Damon and his ‘Air’, maybe not.

Be that as it may, at Fotogramas we continue to believe that there must be an audience that still goes to theaters to see this type of story. But it is true that now only the so-called “phenomenon” films seem to work, that people go to theaters paying only for films that are part of successful sagas and franchises, and not to see anything new. To discover stories they prefer to wait a few months to see them at home.

Be that as it may, ‘Air’ is already in Spanish theaters waiting to see whether or not Ben Affleck had unfounded hopes for the future of cinema.