The history of sports movies in Hollywood is something of a mixed bag but two films from 2011 managed to sit near the top of that genre. Sports films typically fall into two categories: goofy fun or Oscar bait. Beloved flicks like The Mighty Ducks and Major League are the former, while Rocky and The Blind Side are the latter.
Still, even with certain sports movies seemingly being designed to be critical darlings, only a handful have found themselves nominated for Academy Awards. Fewer than 20 have been up for Best Picture, while a few others have landed nods in other categories. In 2011, two totally different sports films, Moneyball and Warrior, pulled off the feat.
Moneyball Is A Unique Baseball Movie
Baseball films that receive widespread acclaim are nothing new in Hollywood. Bull Durham is one of the best movies of the ’80s, 42 is a fantastic Jackie Robinson biopic, and even 2024’s little-known Eephus sits at an impressive 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
However, Moneyball is one of the most unique experiences you’ll find in any baseball movie. Rather than showcase a bunch of the action on the field, the focus is shifted to the front office and the people making the decisions about who is on the team and what their roles should be.
Moneyball centers on Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s. Using help from a new hire, Peter Brand (Paul DePodesta in real life), they use a sophisticated sabermetrics approach to evaluate players, finding inexpensive hidden gems that other teams overlooked.
The film is based on the novel Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, which already make the movie’s success a shock. The novel is difficult to adapt because it spends so much time on statistical analysis and the less glamorous side of sports. It’s the kind of thing you’d more likely find in a documentary than a drama.
Warrior Is A Gritty MMA Drama About Family
The other sports movie to make a splash with critics in 2011 was Warrior. We’ve seen so many films over the years centered on combat sports, with the most prominent and successful being boxing. Movies like Rocky and Million Dollar Baby hit big when it came to Academy Awards season.
However, Warrior focused on mixed martial arts, which was just starting its rise in popularity around the world. That made the film something of an outlier, yet its success was because it went beyond what happened when two people started fighting in the cage. It focused on family.
Warrior tells the story of two estranged brothers who enter an MMA tournament. One is a family man and a physics teacher, while the other is a melancholic marine who is a loner. They are reunited through the tournament and get some heavy emotional scenes with their alcoholic father, which is where the drama comes into play.
Unlike Moneyball, Warrior made sure to show us a lot of the action as the fight scenes are well done and it’s clear that MMA experts were on hand to make sure those went off well. However, the emphasis on what happens out of the ring allows Warrior to stand out.
The Oscars Moneyball & Warrior Were Nominated For
Ultimately, Warrior was only nominated for one Academy Award. The film saw Nick Nolte receive a nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his emotional turn as Paddy Conlon, the father of the two main characters. While it was the film’s only Oscar nod, Warrior was also up for three Satellite Awards, a SAG Award, and a Critics’ Choice Award.
Moneyball was the bigger name on Oscar night, where it received six nominations. That was tied for the most by any film besides Hugo (11) and The Artist (10). Among those nominations were technical categories like Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing.
It was also up for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), and Best Actor (Brad Pitt), as well as the biggest award of the night, Best Picture. Alas, like Warrior, Moneyball came up empty on the big night and didn’t pick up any victories. Still, it was an impressive showing by two sports movies in one year.
Other Academy Award Nominated Sports Films
As noted, several sports films have found themselves nominated for Oscars. For starters, boxing movies Million Dollar Baby and Rocky both managed to win Best Picture, as did Chariots of Fire, a film about Olympic runners.
Ford v Ferrari, King Richard, The Fighter, Jerry Maguire, Field of Dreams, and Raging Bull are just some of the other sports films to earn a Best Picture nomination. Meanwhile, movies like Foxcatcher, Ali, The Wrestler, Hoosiers, Bull Durham, and The Longest Yard were nominated for awards outside of Best Picture.
Regardless of which films won at the Oscars and which movies didn’t, both Moneyball and Warrior sit comfortably among the best releases ever in their genre. What they pulled off in 2011 is difficult to replicate and help cement that year as one of the greatest for sports movies.
