And I Took That Personally: On Air, Ads, and Airport '98

Ben Affleck's supremely entertaining new film promises to return adult dramas to cinemas, while also potentially ushering in a brave new world of feature-length ads

I read the Guardian’s ‘Top 10 Football Adverts of the 90s’ a few weeks ago with the same intent I imagine most people have when they make the grim decision to click on a listicle: to spend a few pleasant minutes getting mildly irate about my own objectively correct opinion not being adequately represented, before returning to whatever nightmarish thing was currently going on in my actual life. But I quickly felt vindicated – and inevitably a little disappointed – to see that the Guardian’s Sachin Nakrani and I were basically in full agreement on the Number One Football Ad of the 90s: Nike’s legendary TV spot, Airport ‘98. 

If you were assiduously watching TV in 1998 like I was, you will have watched this ad in its various iterations literally hundreds of times. But for any of you who are unfamiliar, the ad features members of the legendary Brazil 98 World Cup squad who, while bored waiting in an airport to depart to the tournament, begin having a kickabout, one that due to their rapidly escalating showboating spills out of the departure lounge, before heading out onto the airport runway, through X-ray scanners, and down baggage carousels. Memorably soundtracked by the Sergio Mendes cover of the bossa nova standard ‘Mas Que Nada’ (the Brazilian roughly translates as ‘No, that’s nothing’, or in a more spiritually accurate interpretation, a sarcastic: ‘Yeah right’), and directed by John Actual Woo, the 90 second ad was and remains a deeply beautiful expression of pure footballing joy. Woo, utilising his established technique of setting up multiple cameras for coverage of the action scenes, encouraged his cast of historic footballing talents to improvise on set, before effectively building the ad in the edit, lending the footage and the completed work an energy and exuberance that was like nothing else we had ever seen before and I still don’t think has been topped to this day. The pitch-perfect editing, the impossibly smooth soundtrack, the remarkable physical skill on display, the well-judged cameo, all followed by a genuinely funny punchline – there are few things that brings a smile to my face quite as quickly as this ad. 

But that’s a problem isn’t it – that it’s an ad? Ads are, by design, inherently devoid of any artistic merit. For all its improvisatory wit and formal joie de vivre, the intent behind the creation of Airport ’98 was nothing more complicated than 1) increasing Nike’s market share, and 2) fucking over Adidas, the actual sponsors of the tournament, with a memorably killer ad that (successfully) took the attention away from them. It’s not a film, it’s a marketing asset, and therefore it would be distasteful to analyse or assess it alongside Woo’s other film work. This was certainly how people felt in the 1990s, where, despite it also being the golden age of big budget, big swing adverts, there was no more heinous accusation than of ‘selling out’ to Gen Xers, and so anyone who did ads generally kept quiet about them. It is after all hard to argue with a straight face that taking money to do an ad instead of making your own projects isn’t dictionary definition of selling out.

And yet…I find this Nike ad more impressive, more meaningful, more important to me than most of John Woo’s filmography, and I say that as someone who considers themselves a legitimately big fan of his. If Chow Yun-Fat were to burst into here now, boot several doves up the arse as he does so, before putting a gun to my head and asking me to name my five favourite John Woo films, I would only be lying to myself if Airport ‘98 wasn’t up there vying for the top spots with Hard Boiled, Bullet in the Head and The Killer. Airport ‘98 to me, it is best football film ever made. This is a film that understands the power of iconography, that respects the physical beauty of the player’s movements, understands the artistry of their improvisation, and represents that all visually in a way no other directors have ever matched. And it manages to do it all in 90 seconds.

So where does all that leave us? Can an ad - gulp - actually be art, after all?  And conversely, does that mean art has the potential to be an ad?

If you’re now at the point where you’re scratching your head and wondering if late-stage capitalism might Not Actually Be All Bad, congratulations: you are now in the perfect headspace to watch Ben Affleck’s Air, the supremely entertaining and oddly disquieting underdog tale of how a million-dollar shoe company became a billion-dollar shoe company, released in cinemas today. 

Set fifteen years before Airport ‘98, Matt Damon in a fat suit (I’m seeing double here! Four Jesse Plemonses!) plays Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike marketing executive who is presented in this film (it has to be said, slightly unconvincingly) as a basketball savant, capable of identifying true historical greatness on the court. With the Nike basketball division lagging behind its competitors Adidas and Converse and under threat of closure, Vaccaro becomes convinced that the only way to save his colleagues is to go all-in on an unprecedented sponsorship deal for an up-and-coming star named Michael Jordan. To do so, he has only a few weeks to win over Head of Marketing Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), Nike CEO and OG disruptor Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), Jordan’s dyspeptic agent David Falk (Chris Messina), and most formidably of all, Jordan’s mother Deloris (Viola Davis). 

The first thing that strikes you about Air is just how comfy the whole enterprise is. It is a big warm movie blanket, and, frankly, a delight from start to finish, with its punchy, funny Sorkin-esque screenplay, a killer’s row of likeable movie stars, a new wave 80s pop soundtrack ripped straight from VH1 Classic, and bunch of grandstanding, fist-pumping, spectacularly corny speeches about Legacy and Greatness. You have to work pretty hard not to be charmed by it, and I had never really had any intention of doing so. 

What’s more, its old-school crowd-pleasing feels doubly effective by how atypical it feels in the context of the modern cinema landscape, one dominated by sequels, franchises, and films that require a whole-ass television syllabus in order to be remotely penetrable. Air, meanwhile, is a talky, mid-budget drama written for adults, the kind of witty and garrulous hang-out movie that surfs along entirely on the charisma of its 24-carat movie stars. It’s the kind of film that spiritually feels like it should begin with  a Touchstone Pictures logo, and indeed there’s something deeply 90s about the whole endeavour (even while the aesthetic and soundtrack is None More 80s); as if Da-ffleck sat attentively through a triple bill of A Few Good Men, Jerry Maguire and – yep – Good Will Hunting, before turning to each other, hi-fiving and deciding that yes, this is cinema. And, in an unlikely twist, distributor Amazon Studios agreed, not only putting Air into cinemas, the first film since 2019 where it saw fit to do so, but also awarding the film the widest theatrical release of any film it has produced to date. This comes just a few days after Apple announced they are investing $1bn into longterm theatrical distribution of their films, leading their slate off with fellow non-superhero dramas Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon. So, whisper it: does the high profile release Air finally signal the end of the Pandemic Streaming era? Is the cultural hegemony of Marvel finally over? Is it time for the full-fledged return to cinemas of Real Movies for Adults?

Well, maybe, and I hope so, but you have to acknowledge a delicious irony in this self-consciously old-fashioned drama apparently signalling a return to the good old days (i.e. 1993) while also effectively being nothing more than a gigantic, big budget ad, one created by the most image conscious people on the planet, no different in its DNA than Airport ’98.

So what are we being sold in Air? Well, firstly and most obviously, there’s Nike, who according to this film invented the entire concept of brand marketing and influencer marketing, and created a historic fairer deal for (predominantly black) athletes while they were doing it, just because they liked Michael Jordan and his mum so much. They did all this while also creating some pretty kick-ass sneakers, by the way. The message is clear – Nike got it, they were simply cooler, smarter, and sexier than everyone else, which is why they ended up running away with the trainer billions.

This film is apparently not officially funded or directly associated with Nike, but the fact remains you could not pay for a better showreel for the company’s greatness, as the film does a pretty incredible job of making everyone other trainer brand look like absolute dogshit by comparison. I’m a little confused as to why Converse and Adidas agreed to have their logos and likenesses included in the film just to be spectacularly dunked on (hey), and to have their executives depicted as starched-collar blowhards and hilariously stereotypical cartoon Germans respectively. 

It's also quite the advertisement for the greatness of Michael Jordan, who apparently gave his blessing but little else to the movie (although Affleck admitted in a recent interview that Jordan’s one request was for Viola Davis to play his mother, which, as Damon noted, is a bit like asking for Michael Jordan to play on your basketball team. It’s an inspired choice, though; while it’s obviously integral to the storyline that her character’s appearance would immediately intimidate the assorted sneaker men into behaving like actual adults, it’s also not a huge leap to suggest that you can feel Davis’s gravity visibly elevating the performances of the other actors. In her scenes I swear you can feel Damon, Affleck, Bateman et all doing the acting equivalent of sucking their stomachs in). That said, I do find it a little hard to believe that this was Jordan’s sole input, given his reputation for maintaining an iron grip over his image and legacy (a reputation that begins with the story told in this film!). In an interesting creative decision, Jordan’s face is never shown, with his character given the George Steinbrenner treatment from Seinfeld. Honestly, this works if it was an artistic choice, in that by refusing to depict a false idol of Jordan I think they only serve to add to the myth of his deification, and to emphasise that the use of his image is not something taken lightly. Equally, they might have just done it because Jordan asked them for too much money. Neither would surprise me, and obviously it still works either way, in a great example of how this film continually has its cake and eats it, spinning every potential avenue for cynicism and criticism into something either irrelevant or a positive.

One of the most endearing aspects of the film is how earnest it is about the concept of true sporting greatness, and it understands – in the same way Airport ‘98 understood – what it is that makes people fall in love with sport. There is a reason why TV ratings and revenues for major sports continue to grow exponentially in the face of the internet, while most other forms of entertainment have stagnated or declined – it remains an area of life that revolves, for the most part, around a genuine meritocracy, which means that stars can come from nowhere overnight, the control that corporations and owners have can only go so far, and unforgettable moments of levity and surprise are all but assured. Which, of course, is why the money keeps pouring in - people will always need their larger than life sporting heroes.

And the argument of the film is that while the athletes are responsible for their own greatness, it’s the packaging of the marketers that makes them immortal. And I have to confess, when I think of Ronaldo, one of my favourite footballers of all time, one of the first images in my head is of him barrelling down towards those posts at the end of Airport 98, the crowd cheering him along. The creation of lasting icons and how they are built and maintained is undeniably important, and marketing for better or worse is a part of that story– it’s just unfortunate the idea of presenting marketing executives as plucky underdog kingmakers is so inherently uncomfortable and lame.  

While we’re on the subject of icons, let’s talk about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the wicked smaht bro-teurs who first won our hearts in Good Will Hunting, reunited at last. It’s surprising to look back and see how few films they have appeared in together since then: other than pratting around in Kevin Smith comedies in glorified cameos, and collaborating on the script for The Last Duel (with Damon starring and Affleck making a cameo), this is pretty much it. And at this point, after two decades of movie stardom, they are completely at ease with not only each other, but their respective onscreen personas – they know their strengths, they know what we expect from them, and they play off these expectations beautifully.

Damon remains totally unique, both one of the most charismatic and least interesting movie stars in history. He’s one of a handful of people capable of carrying a film like The Martian on his back, and yet it’s all but impossible to imagine him having any kind of inner life. There is no sense of complexity or inner darkness informing his performances; he just inhabits these roles, performs them expertly and we follow him unquestionably. We trust him, and a such he’s perfect for playing a down on his luck everyman who has to win over a group of sceptics – if Matt Damon says this guy is good then hell, I believe him!

Ben Affleck, on the other hand, is almost the polar opposite. When you are watching Ben Affleck perform, you are watching a Ben Affleck performance, and – more than likely – thinking about Ben Affleck stuff while you’re watching him. He knows all this, and he’s become a master at working that into his roles (and - yes - now Dunkin Donuts adverts, too).

This acute self-awareness is why his performance as Nick in Gone Girl is one of the best movie star performances of the past twenty years – thinking about ‘Ben Affleck stuff’ during watching that film makes it ten times better. In his performance as Phil Knight, Affleck is playing a character who is smart, but perhaps not as smart as he thinks he is; brilliantly talented, but insecure; goofy, but with a desire to be taken seriously; a spiritual buddhist, with a colossal ego… just Ben Affleck things. It’s why on top of everything else, this movie is as much about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s onscreen legacy as anything else.

For good measure, though, we do get one more advertisement in Air. A key plot point is about the Jordans’ desire for more equity in products trading off Jordan’s name, a participation on the ‘back end’ that had hitherto been withheld from professional athletes. Air, meanwhile, is the first production from Damon and Affleck’s new production company, called, uh, Artists Equity, an organisation founded to push for more equity for artists in the films that trade off their name, and to facilitate those artists being able to participate on the ‘back end’, after the streamers all but took that revenue stream away. Quite the coincidence!

So to recap, not only is Air a celebration of Nike’s market dominance, a glorification of marketing itself, a feature length argument for Michael Jordan as the athletic GOAT, and a big budget comeback party for Damon and Affleck, it’s also, ultimately, one long advert for a fucking production company. You have to admire the Da-ffleck chutzpah, to swim in such cynical, transactional waters and still managing to come up out of it smelling entirely fresh. Is Air well-made, smart, entertaining, well-acted, surprisingly hilarious? Sure. But does that justify it coming into cinemas and spending literally its entire screen time selling you something, everything, anything, all the time, shoes, images, stars, icons, brands, everything bought and paid for, all branded and accounted and synergised and logoed up to fuck? Is everything destined to be an ad now, and forever? Where artists are so desperate for material and for original stories, that you don’t need to pay them to shill your products any more, they’ll do it because it’s ‘right for the story they wanted to tell’, that story of course being the story of your brand, i.e. your brand story. Hell, they might even pay you. 

Does any of this matter in the slightest? Put it this way: I think I still prefer Airport ‘98, an artefact of a time when the ads aspired to be art, and not the other way around. But hey – you cannot deny it is nice to hang out and shoot the shit with your favourite movie stars for two hours again. And if this is the current price of entry, then maybe it is worth it, the lesser of two capitalist evils. Maybe Artist’s Equity only sold out just this once, and now that their fairer, socialist production enterprise is off the ground, we won’t get continue to get ads masquerading as movies. I’m sure this won’t be the start of something. They were probably just testing the waters, a one-off. Mas, que nada!