I saw the Bad News Bears in 1976 and watched them lose. Then I saw Rocky a few weeks later and watched him lose.
Underdog stories where your heroes end up losing are so depressing, especially when you're a kid and you're just dying to see the upset fulfilled.
They had to lose to show just how far they almost got. I think the whole movie was great but I wasn't a fan of the ending it was anticlimactic. Hated how he says " shove it up your A."
shareThen I saw Rocky a few weeks later and watched him lose.If it was depressing for ya that Rocky lost, then ya missed the point of the film.
Exactly, Rocky didn't "lose" - he went the distance, just as he promised himself he would.
It's almost too bad Stallone felt the need to spell this point out in "Rocky Balboa," where he actually thanks the champ onscreen for giving him the opportunity
Cause it would have been just another underdog wins in the end type movie. When watching it for the first time you really think the Bears are going to win it only to lose in the end. The Bears for being so bad at the start it was obviously a mortal victory for the Bears.
shareIt is a better story that way, because if they won the match it would had obscured the message of the movie: that, at that point, winning or losing the match no longer mattered, because the Bears had already achieved the victories they truly needed. They had won their self-esteem and their dignity. The rest was just a little league game.
At that point, Buttermaker had learned to care for someone else again. Even the seemingly most pathetic among the kids (Lupus) had a new-found self-respect. He had friends for the first time in his life ("Nobody ever stuck up for me before"). He had been put on the field to play the most important part of the match, because win or lose he was part of the team and was there to play ball, he wasn't just some embarrassment to be hidden in the name of winning ("Listen, Lupus, you didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can"). Because of that, he even had his moment of glory when he caught a homerun ball right about to go over the fence, which for other kid would be a great play, but for him was an incredible moment. The circle was completed at the end of the movie, when Tanner said "Hey Yankees... you can take your apology and your trophy and shove 'em straight up your ass!", and then Lupus added "And another thing, just wait till next year!" and was cheered by his team mates. The Lupus at the start of the movie would never have had the self-confidence to do that.
And in the end, that's the powerful message of the movie. That winning a little-league trophy was never the important thing. Do you think Lupus was the loser in this movie? Coach Turner won the trophy but was the lesser man and lost the respect of his son and wife. Who was actually the winner, then?
Absolutely agree! It was a perfect ending, one that stays with the viewer & actually has something meaningful to say.
shareThey didn't have to win. They weren't expected to finish the season.
I think the quote from Necessary Roughness says it best:
he won because they played.
Things were different back then, and directors loved to toy with audiences back then. Normally the hero wins, but not in the mid-'70s. The Bad News Bears, Rocky, Jaws, King Kong, Carrie... the list of titular heroes who die at the end is a long one.
shareThanks for clarifying this. Jaws was the titular hero but ultimately gets blown up in the end. So it's a tragedy overall.
shareJack Earle Haley gives a great interview on the new blu ray and he talks specifically about what you're whining about. If you think it's depressing, it went over your head.
shareThe main point of the movie is to show how you can win my developing self confidence, self respect, not by winning a trophy.
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