SUN VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL 2023 REVIEW! If ever we needed inspiration in our current state of existence, let it be the founding of Nike’s Air Jordan. For a special final-day festival screening, the 2023 Sun Valley Film Festival provided its dedicated patrons a preview of Air with the film’s screenwriter Alex Convery and producer Michael Berman in attendance.
Directed by Ben Affleck, Air is the story behind how Michael Jordan and Nike revolutionized the global shoe market with the Air Jordan brand, which allowed a young, Black gifted athlete the ability to become one of the wealthiest and most successful athletes ever—an absolute gamechanger.
Ben Affleck as Phil Knight in AIR Photo: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS © AMAZON CONTENT SERVICES LLC
“…the story behind how Michael Jordan and Nike revolutionized the global shoe market with the Air Jordan brand…”
From the start, Air provides plenty of nostalgia to create an atmosphere of walking back to the early 1980s with references in every corner of the screen from decor, VHS tapes, and original Nike shoes to everyone’s wardrobe—beige is a big swatch of color—and several montages—remember Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” and those first car phones? There are jokes aplenty (the Just Do It slogan is one of them) and a soundtrack to accompany each turning point of the story, which is also a bit of a dance party and a full spectrum of 1984 music, which keeps on giving with “I Want My MTV” to “Sister Christian” and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” and it doesn’t stop there.
At Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, it is 1984. Nike’s on-the-chopping-block basketball division needed an injection of success. So Nike’s shoe salesman Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) has to produce a winning deal to stay on the playing field with Converse and Adidas. A gambling man literally, Sonny is dedicated to basketball and refuses to give up. Of course, we know the film’s outcome, but how the Air Jordan brand came to be is what Air is all about—the journey, not the sport. And there are the 10 Principles of Nike, originally laid out by its marketing director Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) in 1977. Number nine, “It Won’t Be Pretty and number one, “Our Business is Change,” set a course of understanding which still maintains its hold. On a side note, the timing of Air’s release fits well with this year’s surprising NCAA tournament, especially with a nod to Gonzaga, which is not a vocational school.
