Ben Affleck's Air ties a bow on how Nike cashed in on Michael Jordan
Eli Glasner | CBC News | Posted: April 5, 2023 8:00 AM | Last Updated: April 6, 2023
Matt and Ben are back on screen in film about how shoe company changed the game
What is Air?
Moneyball, but instead of about baseball, make it about Nike.
The latest from director Ben Affleck is many things: An on-screen reunion of the Good Will Hunting duo. A celebration of the greatness that is Michael Jordan. But more than anything, Air is about a man with a vision.
Not Michael Jordan. Not Phil Knight, the CEO played by Ben Affleck, with curly hair and running tights. It's Sonny Vaccaro. Matt Damon plays the basketball scout who works at Nike, except you won't find him in the office much. He's at the high school. He's at the basketball tournaments — sitting in the bleachers, glad-handing the parents and handing out shoes.
The year was 1984, and in the basketball world, Nike was a distant third place. Converse led the pack with 56 per cent of the market share, followed by Adidas. Thanks to Run-D.M.C., everyone wanted the runners with the three stripes.
In the mid-1980s, Nike was an incredibly successful company — for its running shoes. With basketball exploding in popularity, hoops guru Sonny was hired for his insights. The right kind of endorsement could make critical inroads for customers who saw Nike only as a company for rich white joggers.
But Sonny doesn't fit that well in the office environment. He can barely contain his impatience as his colleagues debate how to share Nike's $250,000 basketball budget. An unrepentant gambler, he wants to bet big on an 18-year-old phenom from North Carolina.
But there are obstacles. Jason Bateman plays Rob Strasser, Nike's shaggy-haired marketing man who wants to play it safe. Even the big boss, Phil Knight, isn't sure about Sonny. Then there's the question of even if Phil gets the green light, how do you sign Jordan?
Enter Howard White as one of the few critical Black employees at Nike. As the field rep, White connected the company to the players and their families.
Fans of Chris Tucker might be surprised to see the fast-talking comedian in his first film role in seven years. For the role, Tucker says he reached out to White, a friend he knows from his charity work, and rewrote the parts of the screenplay involving White. The result is something different from Tucker — a slower gear from his Rush Hour persona, but certainly a smooth-talking operator, all too aware of his place in the corporate food chain.
When Sonny sets his sights on Jordan, Howard gives him the game plan. In Black families, he says, "Always go through the mother." Soon Sonny finds himself driving down the interstate to sit down at a picnic table across from Deloris Jordan, someone less than enthused to be sweet-talked by some third-rate shoe company.
As Mrs. Jordan, Viola Davis speaks softly but precisely. Her words have weight. Part of it is just the screen presence of the EGOT winner. But it's also the character. Deloris knows her son's worth. The challenge is so do we. In some of Air's rare unconventional moments, Affleck uses a montage to hint at the future highs and lows of Jordan's career to come.
The superstar at the heart of Air isn't the rarely seen Michael Jordan (who Affleck keeps carefully obscured) but rather Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro. He's a TV dinners and beer kind of guy. He's the guy who wears loafers to work at a running shoe company.
At a time of CEOs with purple Porsches and basketball players worth millions, Sonny is a corporate cog. This is a man with no swag. But his sense of surety is seductive. He's confident the world will eventually see what he sees.
While it's fine watching Sonny try to finesse Deloris, it's when Sonny and Phil go head-to-head that Air really flies. As the Buddhist CEO who likes to quote his own corporate koans, Affleck makes a great foil to the basketball scout who wants to bet the house.
The dialogue snaps back and forth with such ease, I assumed the two co-wrote the script. (They didn't. It was Alex Convery.) With the two real-life friends on screen, there's a sense of trust that allows Damon and Affleck to go further, capturing the push and pull as Sonny tries to convince the corporate titan to trust his gut.
As director, Affleck spares no expense putting us in the era. Like a heavy-handed version of Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights, he hammers the opening of the scenes with quick-cut collages to set the mood. If the film had a genre, it would be dadcore. Just about every scene starts with a song, and Air opens over a montage of '80s ephemera set to the tune of Dire Straits' Money for Nothing.
When Sonny arrives in North Carolina to meet the Jordans, the soundtrack blares In a Big Country. Music aficionados might wonder what a Scottish rock band is doing in a celebration of American can-do capitalism. But Affleck's style is more about maximum impact — what to see and feel as the camera crane soars over the corporate headquarters.
We root for Sonny because he sees the spark in Jordan we know will make him a once-in-a-generation kind of player. But cheering for a company feels different. As the end credits state, Jordan's contract with Nike changed player endorsements forever. Even until this day, Jordan makes $400 million a year in passive income from Air Jordans. In 2022 alone, Nike earned $5.1 billion.
But there's an interesting grace note during a late-night brainstorming session with Sonny and Rob Strasser, the marketing executive played by Jason Bateman. Strasser talks about rocking out in his car to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. — until one moment he stopped and read the lyrics, realizing the song is about a disillusioned Vietnam vet struggling to put his life back together.
I'm ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go
Born in the U.S.A.
I was Born in the U.S.A.
The contemplation ends and Rob shrugs. Good song, though.
It's a moment that speaks to the complexity of the American dream, where millions struggle and only a few can dream of the kind of success Phil Knight and Michael Jordan achieved. Air is a story of how a shoe company commodified a player's greatness.
The real story of how the deal was done is far from settled. But too much of that would kill the feel-good vibes Affleck is aiming for. It's a slam dunk as long as you ignore the subtext.