It is sometimes hard to believe "The Natural" only has been with us for 31 years, because it is hard to imagine the sports-movie genre without it — same as it's impossible to imagine gangster flicks before "The Godfather" and westerns absent "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
In so many ways, it is the perfect sports movie. That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be everyone's favorite: "Raging Bull" always gets quite a few nods. And "Slap Shot." Myself, if forced to choose between the New York Knights and the Hickory High Huskies, hard a choice as that is, I'm going with Norman Dale over Roy Hobbs.
That said, without "The Natural," we probably never would have seen "Hoosiers," or so many other sports flicks that have come afterward because it was "The Natural" that introduced us to the power of the larger-than-life sports hero, and allowed us to appreciate happy endings that aren't necessarily corny ones.
For "The Natural" has everything you could want in a sports movie: Roy Hobbs. A soaring, impossible-to-forget soundtrack. Loves lost, gained, lost again, gained again. Our hero in peril. Our hero doing heroic things. Our hero in bigger trouble. And then our hero (spoiler alert!) launching one into the light towers.
It is impossible to not either stand up and cheer or lay back and tear at the end. All these years later. So I asked Barry Levinson, the man who brought "The Natural" to theaters on May 11, 1984, why he believes, all these years later, his movie still resonates.
"It's hard to say, but some tall tales endure," Levinson said. "It falls into that category. Mythological, perhaps. I was in France at the Deauville Film Festival. The French know nothing about baseball, and some audience members came over to me, they said 'it is magical.' Nothing wrong with a good fairy tale."
The core is Roy Hobbs, of course, and much of that is because you believe, from the jump, that Redford himself could have played ball, and played it well. Much as "Pride of the Yankees" tugs at your heart-strings, Gary Cooper would have been the first guy cut on a JV baseball team. Ray Liotta was a convincing wiseguy in "Goodfellas" but was such an awkward lefty that he played Shoeless Joe Jackson right-handed, and hoped nobody noticed.
Redford is Hobbs. You root for him from the moment lightning strikes the tree until the moment he is having that catch at the end with his son.
"The appeal of Roy Hobbs is the story of a gifted man/boy with a God-given talent, his fall from grace and his redemption," Levinson said. "I think people can watch it over and over because it's a terrific journey. The journey doesn't have to always be new, some journeys are fun to relive once again. And baseball and Robert Redford: the very American actor and the very American game. A perfect match."
And let's be honest: The ending seals it. Some movies can get away with the good guy losing at the end: Rocky in the original fight with Apollo. The Cincinnati Kid at the end of his straight-up poker match with Lancey Howard. Roy McAvoy finding the water again and again in "Tin Cup." But that's a rare feat. Another spoiler alert: Bernard Malamud's novel ends much differently than Levinson's film.
"We never could figure out how to use the book's ending," Levinson said. "Imagine that whole build up … then Hobbs strikes out. The game is lost. Hobbs fails. And the newsboy with a cap says, 'Say it ain't so Roy, say it ain't so …' That's a tough ending to pull off."
Thankfully, he didn't try. We got the ball and the light tower, and that haunting theme song, and a slow-motion trot around the basepaths … and also, as a result, we got Jimmy Chitwood making that jumper, and Crash Davis getting the girl, and Mike Eruzione lighting the lamp against the Soviets (OK. That one was easier to pull off since it actually happened. But still.).
We got the perfect sports movie. Thirty-one years young.
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