The Natural
Sports Management
11/2/11
Movie Analysis

“The Natural” is one of the most inspiring sports movies that I have ever seen. Matter of a fact it is one of the most inspiring movies that I have ever seen altogether. It is about a baseball player named Roy Hobbs, whose main goal in the movie is to become the best baseball player to ever play the game. It starts out with Roy throwing with his dad at their farm when Roy was a young kid. Then it jumps to a scene where it shows Roy’s dad dying of a heart attack under the tree that is in their front yard. Then it has Roy standing in front of his window one night just looking at the tree when a streak of lightening came down and struck the tree splitting it into two pieces. Now Roy took part of the tree and made a bat out of it and called it Wonderboy. Then it jumps to where Roy is at the age of just getting out of high school and it shows him talking to his girlfriend at the time, whose name was Iris. He was telling her that he had talked to a team out of Chicago and that he had a tryout with the team. As the movie goes a long, it shows him getting on a train with his agent, or the guy that found him and got his tryout, but also on the train it has a guy named Whammer on the train that is supposed to be the best baseball player that was ever going to play the game of baseball. So they stop at a carnival to enjoy their time and during this time Roy’s man that found him and another guy that was with the Whammer on the train made a bet with each other. The bet was that Roy could not strike the Whammer out on three straight pitches. Roy of course did though and it led to a woman that was tagging along with Whammer to attract the attention of Roy. This woman named Harriet Bird ends up shooting Roy and almost causing him to lose his career. Then the movie jumps to sixteen years later when it shows Roy coming back to baseball as an old rookie. He does not pitch anymore but he hits now and plays outfield. At first his coach would not let him play but as time went on and Roy kept waiting for his turn, he finally got a chance to play and made the most of it. He turns out to be one of the best ball players that was playing until a woman named Memo got a hold of him and he starting slumping real bad. Then during a game while he was going through his slump his old girlfriend ends up at a game and he sees her and breaks out of his slump. While he is going good again Memo has a party and poisons Roy and he has to go to the hospital where they find the bullet of when he got shot and they tell him that he will have to quit playing because the bullet had been tearing away at his insides of his stomach and if he kept playing then he could die. That’s when the Judge comes and tries to bribe Roy not to play because they knew if Roy played that the team had a better chance of winning the game and they was trying to get the coach, Pop, fired but if they won the pennant then they couldn’t fire him. Roy almost took the bet until Iris comes back and talks to him. Then it shows Roy going to the Judge’s office the day of the game and throwing the money back at him and telling him that he was going to whatever it took to win the game. Then as the game is going Roy is struggling bad and not doing good at all, until Iris gives him a note and in his last at bat of the game Roy ends up hitting a homerun to win the game. It turns out that in the note that Iris told him that her son was also Roy’s son and the end of the movie ends with Roy throwing baseball with his son in his farm just like at the beginning of the movie when Roy was throwing with his dad. This is a great movie of adversity and perseverance but the movie has a lot more meaning than that to it. Over time people have came up with need for heroes in life. Every hero in the stories all start out great and then something bad happens to them and they have to face a series of unfortunate events but every time in the end of the story the hero prevails and comes out on top. In this movie, Roy fills this position. In the beginning of the movie Roy is this great athlete who is going to be the best until he gets shot and disappears. Just like every other great hero though Roy shows back up and starts saving everything. He was saving the team and Pop from losing is job until he runs into some more adversities, which are Memo, the Judge, Gus the gambler, and Max Mercy, but just like any great hero Roy prevails and in the end he comes out on top and wins everything. Another thing that contributes to him being a hero in the movie is his growth as a person. As the movie starts he is just this young man who plays baseball, but as time goes on he turns into a person who everyone looks up to and he does not let them down. For example the bat boy for the team looks up to Roy and Roy takes him under his wing and helps him out. He even helped the kid make a bat just like he did out of the tree for the kid. The bat turned out to be a great bat to as it was the one that Roy used when he the game winning homerun in his last at bat. This story is just like any other hero movie if you take the time and just pay attention to it.
Another hidden message in the movie was the women that were involved in the story. The three women who were, Harriet Bird, Memo and Iris, all stood death, turmoil and an angel. This is very interesting how they stood for these three things but there is hidden evidence in the story that leads to this conclusion. Harriet Bird, who was the women that shot Roy, was a women that in the story would just go from sport to sport and kill the best athlete that played the sport. She had already killed the best football player and golfer. That is why she was with The Whammer because he was suppose to be the best baseball player to play the game until Roy struck him out at the carnival. That is when Roy caught her attention. She invited him up to her and asked him a simple question, “What is your goal in baseball,” and Roy replied to her by saying, “I want to be the best.” As soon as he said that she pulled a gun out and shot him trying to kill him. It later turned out in the movie that she jumped out the window and killed herself. The clue that gave her away about standing for death was the fact that every time you seen her she was wearing black. Every dress she wore was black and every piece of clothing was black, and as you know black is the color of death. That is exactly what she stood for too because everyone that she got close with she always ended up killing them.
Then you had Memo, who stood for the turmoil part. She was the character that was the trickster. She was always tricking Roy into doing things that he should not have been doing.. Her goal in the story was to pick out the best player and make him awful that way Gus could make bets on them. She had already done it to the player that played Roy’s position at the beginning of the movie. She stood for the person who is supposed to be half and half. Half good and half bad, even though she was mostly bad, she had a little good in her. She always led Roy in the wrong direction. Her clothes showed her character just Harriet Bird’s clothes showed hers. Memo was always wearing black and white, never any other color. Black and white represent that she was the character of turmoil because she was torn between good and bad.
That leaves Iris, whose character stood for an angel. She was always the girl that was there for Roy and always saved him in a time of need. Every time Roy needs to be saved and led in the right path, there was Iris. She stood for the angel in the movie because she was always wearing white, which is the color of good, and the color of God. She is the savior in the story and that is why she is always in white because she is representing the good that is in the world. An example of her representing the angel character, is when Roy is in his struggle when he is dating Memo and he cannot hit a lick, and him and his team are playing in Chicago, Iris is at the game and before Roy’s last a bat he is looking around and Iris stands up and he sees her and automatically is able to hit again. What makes this scene significant and that you know she is the angel character is because when she stands up it seems like the sun is just gleaming on her and no one else in the stands. It seems like the sun does not even touch no one else and it also seems like no one else is even in the stands but Iris. That is why Iris is considered the angel character.
This movie is full of secret stories inside of one big one. This is just two examples that prove it. There are many more in the story. That is what makes the movie a great movie, not taking anything away from the main story itself. This is just an all around great movie with a lot of meaning to it. It gives hope to people that no matter what trials or tribulations that you go through, that you never give up and maybe one day if you keep your head on straight that you will be the best there is also at what you do. That is what makes this movie one of the best that I have seen in awhile.