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Amplifier Home Receivers home receivers.Amplifier Home Receivers home receivers InformationWe have been created with a need for heroes. We yearn for them because we are born with the want and desire to believe in someone, to have faith in someone, to trust in someone, and to look up and strive to be like someone. This "someone" is how Roy Hobbs is portrayed in the movie version of The Natural.Roy in the movie version is utterly heroic. He struggles, after an almost fatal injury in his youth, to try to become the best that the game of baseball has ever seen. He is quietly confident, without an arrogance to him. Iris is his former teenage-love who reappears after Roy makes it into the majors and stands up and inspires him when he is in a slump. Their relationship in the movie appears pure and innocent. Iris reminds Roy of "home" and all that is good and true in his life. Roy also has a relationship with Memo, who is his manager Pop's niece. She is a shady character who basically throws herself at Roy after he notices her beauty and wants to get to know her. Their relationship is dark and more sexual than Roy and Iris' on-screen romance. Roy is respectful to his fans and in return they stand by him faithfully, in good-times and bad. He even goes as far to helping the batboy make a bat resembling Roy's own bat, Wonderboy. Roy views Pop as a father figure. Even after he is poisoned by Memo and blackmailed by Gus and the Judge, Roy decides to play in his last game to win Pop the pennant he had always wanted. By doing this he risks his life because of his stomach illness, he could die at any active moment. When the time comes for his last-at-bat and with the game on the line, Roy crushes the ball over the fence for the win. The movie ends with the hero playing catch with his son, from Iris, in golden cornfields. The Roy Hobbs from the book is a much darker and complex character. Everything Roy does is just to please himself. He is constantly wanting more and more. He wants to be the best ever to play the game, he wants to break every record in baseball, he wants Memo, and he wants more money to play the game he supposedly "loves". He treats the Iris in the book, who is a middle-aged woman who he sleeps with on their first date, more as an object than a person. He wants and obsesses for Memo because of her beauty and just the adventure of getting and conquering her. He takes the money to throw his final game. But when it comes down to it, he decides he really does want to win but fails and strikes out. And to top it all off, he is exposed to the world as being a sell-out. The Natural the book is a melancholy, emotionally realistic story of a man who lost his youth who wonders what could have been if his life had taken a different path or direction. The Natural the movie is a sentimental, uplifting, fantasy story. It is a battle of good and evil. It is the hero defeating the villain. These two stories are almost completely opposite except with the same characters and baseball are involved. It makes a reader/viewer wonder why the movie even has the same name as the book because its lead character has such a different value system. I believe the filmmaker recognized the American people's need for heroes. We do not like seeing people with great talent fail and not fulfill their dreams, which are also our dreams. We do not like seeing evil defeat good. We want to ultimately to succeed and win in the end and we do when our heroes do. Sports are a way for all of us to vicariously accomplish all that we ever have dreamed of doing. |