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If you already watched the new movie Air , you might have noticed that although Michael Jordan plays a pivotal role, he is only featured in the film on shots of magazine covers and snippets of archival footage. The Amazon Studios film, currently showing in theaters, follows the story of the NBA global sensantion and its creation of the legendary Air Jordan shoe line.
According to Ben Affleck, the movie director, there is a reason why viewers won’t see Jordan’s face. “How do you tell a story about Michael Jordan and never see him?” he asked during the film’s world premiere at the South by Southwest Film & Television Festival. “When you are that person, when you become so much more than a hero or an athlete or even an icon, you start to become an idea to people.”
“You touch them and just start to represent hope and excellence and greatness. You are one of a kind. And there is no way I was ever going to ask an audience to believe that anybody other than Michael Jordan was Michael Jordan,” he clarified, sharing the reason why no other actor was cast for the role.
“Which was also out of my own naked self-interest, frankly, because I knew it would destroy the movie,” Affleck assured. “You will see him [in archival clips] in the movie, but you will see Michael Jordan as he truly is in his authentic masterful genius, which exists for all of us to see. It was a deliberate choice. I thought he was too majestic to have anyone impersonate him and – as I told him – ‘You’re too old to play the part.‘”
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, who, in addition to direct acts in the film, said Michael Jordan is one-of-a-kind. “Jordan is too big. He exists above and around the story, but if you ever concretize him, if you ever say, ‘Yes, that’s Michael Jordan,’ we know it’s not, really. It’s fake,” he told the publication. “I thought if the audience brought everything they thought and remembered about him and what he meant to them to the movie and projected it onto the movie; it worked better.”
When promoting the movie, Affleck also informed in a separate press statement that “Michael Jordan is so famous that I truly felt if we ever saw an actor playing it would be hard to get the audience to suspend their disbelief, because, in my opinion, there’s no convincing anybody that someone who isn’t Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan.”
“We felt a more interesting way to tell the story would be for him to exist in the ether of the movie. To be talked about by everyone but not seen is somewhat analogous to the experience of celebrities and sports stars in modern life because most people go their whole lives without ever meeting or seeing their favorite sports star or celebrity in person. So we only see Michael in clips and flashes,” the actor said. “We don’t ever fully see him in person because to see him in person would be to put his feet on the ground in a way that the movie doesn’t want to do.”