When I was 5 years old I played in Little League and a movie came out about Little League called The Bad News Bears. I obviously wanted to see it, but my parents wisely said I could not until I was old enough.
At 46, I suppose I'm old enough, so I just watched it, and I found something particularly interesting. This was close to the same time of Rocky, and it had the same message which is lacking in so many sports movies. The lead team loses, and the point of the movie is that there are more important things than your petty little game.
My favorite part of the movie was the climax where they are losing the game as a direct result of decisions they made which were better for their lives, even if they caused them to lose the game. It is triumphant, because the characters have learned that what's happening here isn't really all that important.
I never had any interest in seeing Rocky 2 for this very reason. As I understand it, Rocky wins in a rematch against his opponent in the first. This takes away the entire point of the first movie. All these films which advertise themselves as "this boxer's one chance" or "this team's one chance to win" are huge turn-offs to me because, I'm sorry, what happens in a game just isn't as important as what happens in their lives.
It's interesting that several films of the '70s seemed to understand that.
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