Whether it’s for moral support or inspiration to try our best, we love stories that cheer on an underdog who finds themselves up against the odds.
Those in competitive fields like sports, the arts and business can especially relate to the underdog – someone held back by their circumstances and, in many cases, themselves. There are many films featuring underdogs from all walks of life – we’ve got two great examples below, one for athletes and one for businesspeople.
Rocky, 1976
This classic needs no introduction – it’s the story of amateur boxer Rocky Balboa, who gets a shot at the heavyweight champ Apollo Creed, and only hopes to go the distance with him, knowing that winning isn’t an option. Along the way, he faces ridicule and is constantly reminded that the odds aren’t on his side.
It becomes clear very quickly that he’s an underdog, which makes The Italian Stallion more likeable as a result. Today, we’re still enamoured by stories of luck and odds, like when someone unlikely wins a lottery or a game show prize. This film pre-dates the internet, which brought entire industries like iGaming that are built on these lucky stories of people beating the odds. Now we have services like the live casino at Paddy Power and similar websites, all hosting games in real-time using tech that we didn’t have in the ‘70s. They may not carry the same drama of a boxing match but the principle is the same – it’s luck that Rocky was chosen to be the underdog. In sport, it’s rare and often against regulations for a professional athlete to challenge an amateur, but Rocky takes chance-based storytelling to make it happen. Now he must work to not let himself and others down.
It’s the film that put Sylvester Stallone on the map as a writer and later one of film’s most iconic action heroes. Much like ‘First Blood’ in the ‘Rambo’ series, the first ‘Rocky’ movie is different from the ones that came after it. It’s more of a character piece instead of a bombastic, gratuitous affair. That’s why we spend so much time with Rocky in quiet moments of self-doubt or navigating his shy relationship with Adrian. Throw in that Stallone loosely based the story off a real event – Chuck Wepner’s stand against Muhammad Ali – and you have a perfect and true-to-life underdog story.
The Big Short, 2015
Since most underdog stories focus on sport, it’s easy to forget that there’s a very competitive world of big finance out there, where being an underdog with less money or resources can lead to much derision. That’s where we find ‘The Big Short’, a 2015 comedy and drama set during the 2008 financial crash, based on Michael Lewis’ book on the events. It isn’t just star-studded, featuring Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt together, it’s full of cameos from many celebrities who help explain some finance concepts in an accessible way. It’s also remarkably accurate to the book ‘Information is Beautiful’.
To summarise, it’s the story of Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager whose eccentric mannerisms are portrayed well by Bale. He sees the coming crisis and, powerless to stop it, elects to take out a short position. This would make him and his clientele money if the market were to go down. Months pass as Burry holds his position, against the will of his managers and his own clients, but time proves him right, as his fund makes $2.5 billion (£2 billion), saving his investors and the fund as a whole. It’s just one of three intersecting stories about how underdogs in the financial world were right when all the other analysts were wrong, and in the end, they get duly rewarded for it.
