Hacker Cinema
The Wrestler
2008 · Film · 109 min
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Aging wrestler Randy "The Ram" Robinson is long past his prime but still ready and rarin' to go on the pro-wrestling circuit. After a particularly brutal beating, however, Randy hangs up his tights, pursues a serious relationship with a long-in-the-tooth stripper, and tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter. But he can't resist the lure of the ring and readies himself for a comeback.
1 positive3 neutralfrom 4 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
This scenario was (sort of) depicted in a line of dialogue in the Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler. The main character (a struggling pro wrestler) asks for more work hours at his side job, and his boss jokes “Why, did they raise the price of tights?”
Firstly if you have time, I'd recommend watching Max Landis' Wresting Isn't Wrestling [1]. Warning, its a 30 minutes comedy, but to get his message you really do have to watch it all.
Just as Landis says, most of wrestling sucks. Its poorly choreographed, the storylines can make no sense (why does a communist boar want to fight a football coach?), or straight depressing (people well past their prime, ala Mickey Rourke's character in The Wrestler).
However, there is something magical to having the empathetic bound with an indie wrestler. You know that are doing for the love, because they might be paid $0, even after driving hours to the show. In Mick Foley's books, he talks about how he slept in his car eating a tablespoon of peanut butter to train at a particular school.
In addition, its story driven, much like any soap opera. Characters come and go and some stay and change. These characters arcs are the appeal to audience members, but they take longer levels of commitment to develop. Once they are there, its near impossible to remove the need to keep up with the story, even on a minimal level. I don't watch RAW every Monday, but I still make sure to check /r/SquaredCircle on Reddit for the latest news/videos.
In one podcast, I recall Shawn Michaels (former wrestler, now a born again Christian) talk about how wrestling consumers very, very similar to Christian consumer. In his example, he was promoting a Christian redemption movie (The Resurrection of Gavin Stone) he stared in. It doesn't necessarily have to be the worlds greatest, but they will spend money on it because it explicitly it supporting one of the consumers' major interests.
Plus, who doesn't think some of the moves just LOOK BADASS?!
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYvMOf3hsGA
"So what have they done lately?"
Not even counting foreign films, here are some darn good productions from the past five years:
Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Drive, Warrior, Black Swan, Inception, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Whatever Works, The Limits of Control, The Dark Knight, WALL-E, Gran Torino, The Wrestler, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Ratatouille, The Departed, and The Prestige.
> Well, it didn't work for me.
Me neither, and "The Wrestler" was quite a glaring omission.
I also agree that the "micro-genres" feature is flawed. For example, I searched for "Gwoemul" and none of the micro-genres it returned matched the reason I liked the movie - the deliciously dark humour.
When I searched for Eight Legged Freaks though it returned "terrorize goofy carnage" which is a close enough, if over-simplified, description of Gwoemul.
I suppose it boils down to the audience size as well. More people (on that site) are likely to have seen Eight Legged Freaks because it's older, and because it's Western movie (Gwoemul is Korean).