air movie review metacritic

• Vertical Entertainment

Summary In the near future, breathable air is nonexistent and two engineers (Norman Reedus and Djimon Hounsou) tasked with guarding the last hope for mankind struggle to preserve their own lives while administering to their vital task at hand.

Directed By : Christian Cantamessa

Written By : Christian Cantamessa, Chris Pasetto

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“Air” bristles with the infectious energy of the man at its center: Sonny Vaccaro, who’s hustling to make the deal of a lifetime.

Of course, we know from the start that the former Nike executive succeeded: Michael Jordan became a superstar and arguably the greatest basketball player in the history of the game. And the Air Jordan, the shoe that gives the film its title, became the best-known and most-coveted sneaker of all time.

So how do you tell a story to which we already know the outcome? That’s where the deceptive brilliance of Ben Affleck ’s directing lies. His fifth feature is much in the same vein as the previous movies he’s helmed: “ Gone Baby Gone ,” “ The Town ,” “ Argo ” (which earned him a best-picture Oscar) and “Live By Night.” He makes the kind of solid, mid-budget movies for grown-ups that are far too rare these days. Affleck emphasizes strong writing, veteran performers and venerable behind-the-scenes craftspeople. His choice in cinematographer, longtime Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino collaborator Robert Richardson , is a prime example.

With “Air,” it all comes together in an enormously entertaining package—one that’s old-fashioned but also alive and crowd-pleasing. Working from a sharp and snappy script by Alex Convery , Affleck tells the story of how Nike nabbed Jordan by creating a shoe that wasn’t just for him but of him—the representation of his soon-to-be iconic persona in a form that made us feel as if we, too, could reach such heights. This probably makes “Air” sound like a two-hour sneaker commercial. It is not. If you love movies about process, about people who are good at their jobs, then you’ll find yourself enthralled by the film’s many moments inside offices, conference rooms, and production labs.

The interactions within those mundane spaces make “Air” such a joy, starting with the reteaming of Affleck and Matt Damon . It’s a blast watching these longtime best friends, co-stars, and co-writers playing off each other again, provoking and cajoling, more than a quarter century after “ Good Will Hunting .” Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike recruiting expert who recognized the young North Carolina guard as a once-in-a-generation talent and pursued him relentlessly to keep him from Converse and Adidas cooler brands. Affleck is Nike co-founder and former CEO Phil Knight, an intriguing mix of Zen calm and corporate arrogance. He walks around the office barefoot, yet he drives a Porsche he insists is not purple but rather grape in hue. Vaccaro, as his friend and colleague from the company’s earliest days, is the only one who can speak truth to power, and the affection and friction of that camaraderie shine through.

The year is 1984 (boy, is it ever—more on that in a minute), and Nike’s basketball division is an afterthought within the Oregon-based running shoe company. Nike is also an also-ran among its competitors. Vaccaro, a doughy, middle-aged bulldog in various puddy-colored Members Only jackets (the on-point work of costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones ), knows Jordan can change all that, and most “Air” consists of him convincing everyone around him of that notion. That includes director of marketing Rob Strasser ( Jason Bateman , whose mastery of dry, rat-a-tat banter is the perfect fit for this material); player-turned-executive Howard White (an amusingly fast-talking Chris Tucker ); Jordan’s swaggering agent, David Falk ( Chris Messina , who nearly steals the whole movie with one hilariously profane telephone tirade); and finally, Jordan’s proud and protective mother, Deloris ( Viola Davis , whose arrival provides the film with a new level of weight and wisdom). Character actor Matthew Maher , who always brings an intriguing presence to whatever film he’s in, stands out as Nike’s idiosyncratic shoe design guru, Peter Moore.

“Air” is a timeless underdog story of grit, dreams, and moxie. In that spirit, Vaccaro delivers a killer monologue at a crucial moment in hopes of sealing the deal with Jordan (whom Affleck shrewdly never shows us full-on—he remains an elusive idea, as he should be, but an intoxicating bit of crosscutting reveals the legacy he’ll leave over time). Still, Affleck very much hammers home the fact that we are in the mid-1980s. Sometimes, the evocation of this period comes in subtle and amusing ways, as in a throwaway joke about Kurt Rambis that made me chuckle. (You don’t have to know anything about basketball in general or this era in particular to enjoy the film, but there are many extra pleasures if you do.) More often, though, Affleck aims to create nostalgia with nearly wall-to-wall needle drops and overbearing pop culture references. As if the lengthy opening montage consisting of Cabbage Patch Kids, Hulk Hogan , the “Where’s the Beef?” ad, President Reagan, Princess Diana, and more weren’t enough, he randomly throws in a Rubik’s Cube or a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards as a transitional device. And the soundtrack of ‘80s hits is such a constant it becomes distracting, from the Violent Femmes and Dire Straits to Cyndi Lauper and Chaka Khan to a truly baffling use of Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” as Knight is simply pulling into the Nike parking lot.

Still, this is a minor quibble about a movie that, for the most part, is as smooth and reliable as one of Jordan’s buzzer-beating, fadeaway jumpers.

Now playing on Prime today, May 12th.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Rated R for language throughout.

112 minutes

Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro

Ben Affleck as Phil Knight

Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser

Marlon Wayans as George Raveling

Chris Messina as David Falk

Chris Tucker as Howard White

Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan

Julius Tennon as James Jordan

Damian Young as Michael Jordan

Matthew Maher as Peter Moore

Gustaf Skarsgård as Horst Dassler

Barbara Sukowa as Kathy Dassler

Jay Mohr as John Fisher

• Ben Affleck
• Alex Convery

Cinematographer

• Robert Richardson
• William Goldenberg

Latest blog posts

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan. Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan. Follows the history of sports marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan.

• Ben Affleck
• Alex Convery
• Jason Bateman
• 425 User reviews
• 271 Critic reviews
• 73 Metascore
• 5 wins & 47 nominations

• Sonny Vaccaro

• Rob Strasser

• Phil Knight

• Deloris Jordan

• James Jordan

• Michael Jordan
• (as Damian Young)

• Howard White

• Peter Moore

• Horst Dassler

• Kathe Dassler

• John Fisher

• John O'Neill

• George Raveling

• 7-Eleven Clerk

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Big Cars, Big Dreams With the 'Air' Cast

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Did you know

• Trivia Though Michael Jordan was not directly involved in the film, Ben Affleck consulted him numerous times to get details on how to accurately portray the story. According to Affleck, Jordan's only two requests were that Viola Davis play his mother and that his longtime friend Howard White be included in the film. Affleck always wanted to work with Chris Tucker , so he was cast as White. Tucker was also friends with White, and Affleck gave him a lot of flexibility for his performance.
• Goofs The "Just Do It" slogan didn't come out until 1987. It was created in 1987 by Wieden + Kennedy to accompany Nike's first major television campaign, which included commercials for running, walking, cross-training, basketball and women's fitness.

Sonny Vaccaro : [to Michael Jordan] Forget about the shoes, forget about the money. You're going to make enough money, it's not going to matter. Money can buy you almost anything, it can't buy you immortality. That, you have to earn. I'm going to look you in the eyes and I'm gonna tell you the future. You were cut from your high school basketball team. You willed your way to the NBA. You're gonna win championships. It's an American story, and that's why Americans are gonna love it. People are going to build you up, and God are they going to, because when you're great and new, we love you. Man, we'll build you up into something that doesn't even exist. You're going to change the fucking world. But you know what? Once they've built you as high as they possibly can, they're gonna tear you back down - it's the most predictable pattern. We build you into something that doesn't exist, and that means you have to try to be that thing all day, every day. That's how it works. And we do it again, and again, and again. And I'm going to tell you the truth. You're going to be attacked, betrayed, exposed and humiliated. And you'd survive that. A lot of people can climb that mountain. It's the way down that breaks them, 'cause that's the moment when you are truly alone. And what would you do then? Can you summon the will to fight on, through all the pain, and rise again? Who are you Michael? That will be the defining question of your life. And I think you already know the answer, and that's why we're all here. A shoe is just a shoe until somebody steps into it. Then it has meaning. The rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness. We need you in these shoes not so you have meaning in your life, but so that we have meaning in ours. Everyone at this table will be forgotten as soon as our time here is up - except for you. You're gonna be remembered forever, because some things are eternal. You're Michael Jordan, and your story is gonna make us want to fly.

• Connections Featured in CBS News Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley: Episode #45.26 (2023)
• Soundtracks Money for Nothing Written by Mark Knopfler , Sting (as Gordon Matthew Sumner) Performed by Dire Straits Courtesy of Warner Records By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User reviews 425

• Jun 1, 2023
• How long is Air? Powered by Alexa
• April 5, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Los Angeles, California, USA
• Amazon Studios
• Artists Equity
• Mandalay Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $90,000,000 (estimated)
• $52,460,106
• $14,456,279
• Apr 9, 2023
• $90,060,106

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 51 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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‘air’ review: ben affleck’s ode to michael jordan is affectionate and involving, even when it fails to convince.

The 'Argo' actor/director stars alongside Matt Damon and Viola Davis in this feature about the creation of Nike's Air Jordan shoe.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Ben Affleck ’s Air operates in a respectful and deeply reverential register when it comes to its subject, his family and the sport in which he made his legacy. The film, which premiered at SXSW , chronicles the tense Nike campaign to sign Michael Jordan, then an NBA rookie, to his first sneaker deal in 1984. That contract, closed a year before the first Air Jordans were sold to the public, changed Nike’s reputation and altered the way players negotiated brand deals.

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For most audiences, Air will be worth seeing just for the starry cast — particularly the reunion between Damon and Affleck. Their scenes possess a kinetic and intimate dynamism that the rest of the film approaches but doesn’t always match. The old friends are magnetic as Sonny — who’s in charge of the company’s flailing basketball division — and Phil try to take Nike to the next level. (Before signing Jordan, the shoe company held a meager 17 percent of the market compared to competitors Adidas and Converse.) Their conversations take place in Phil’s appropriately retro office (the production design is by François Audouy) and offer insights into how both executives tried to balance the imagination of Nike’s scrappy roots alongside its corporate ambitions.

Phil and Sonny’s divergent ideologies come to a head when Sonny proposes putting all of the fledgling division’s money on Michael Jordan. The boss disagrees, and he’s not the only skeptic. His colleagues Howard White (Chris Tucker), Rob Strasser ( Jason Bateman ) and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans), one of Jordan’s coaches at the 1984 Olympics, all try to dissuade him. The dynamics within this group of coworkers and friends offer most of the film’s comedic relief while also helping us deepen our understanding of Nike’s philosophy. When they are later joined by Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), Nike’s creative director, the film applies — wonderfully — the poetic reverence usually reserved for portraying the sport in these types of dramas to the process of designing a shoe.

Sonny isn’t one to take no for an answer or ignore his instincts. After a crucial call with Jordan’s agent, David Falk (a hilarious Chris Messina ), Sonny flies from Oregon to North Carolina to court Jordan’s parents. Deloris (Davis) and James (Julius Tennon) turn out to be a tougher crowd than Sonny anticipated. They are immune to his salesman charm and unfazed by his dramatic entrance onto their property. Deloris, especially, demands a quiet respect, which Sonny, in awe, gives her.

And those experiences matter. Sonny and Deloris are bound by a profound and unwavering belief in Jordan, but, as she suggests during one conversation, his strong sense of self is a product of the lessons she has taught him. It’s Deloris’ and her son’s understanding of their worth that leads them to negotiate a contract giving Jordan a percentage of the revenue from Air Jordan sales.

Beneath the sentimentalism of Air are hints of an even more compelling thread: How do you compensate people in a society organized around corporate greed? The film’s third act highlights and circles the notion of equity. Jordan’s contract changed the way players made money from brand deals. A note right before the closing credits informs us that Sonny would play a critical role in taking on the N.C.A.A. and helping college athletes get paid for commercial use of their likeness. All of this feels prescient considering Affleck’s recent venture: Last year, he and Damon started Artists Equity , a production company that operates on a profit-sharing model in hopes of creating better deals for everyone employed to make movies. It makes Air feel like a letter of admiration — to Jordan, his family, the tenacious execs at Nike — and a statement of Affleck’s future intentions.

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‘Air’ Review: Ben Affleck’s Underdog Story Soars Thanks to a Dynamite Cast

SXSW: The true-story film stars Matt Damon and Viola Davis and chronicles Nike’s quest to sign Michael Jordan

A sign of a great historical film is one that makes the audience forget they know how it will end. The ship isn’t going to stay afloat in “Titanic.” Woodward and Bernstein will figure out how to bust open the story of Watergate in “All the President’s Men.” King George will address the nation in “The King’s Speech.” But all those movies leave their viewers enthralled by the stories’ twists and dynamic characters, making the certainty of the outcome secondary to what they’re watching unfold. Director Ben Affleck’s “Air” never quite does that — mostly due to choices in the script and direction — but it controls enough of the audience’s attention and provokes enough wonderment to deliver a solidly entertaining two hours.

In 1984, Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) oversees scouting basketball talent for Nike sponsorship. At the time, the sneaker company was primarily known as shoes for runners with its basketball division dwindling. Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), the VP of marketing, knows how close the entire department is to getting shut down by the company’s CEO, Phil Knight (Affleck). Vaccaro decides that they should bet the future of the basketball program — indeed the entire corporation itself — on one up and coming player who’s about to start his rookie season: Michael Jordan. Vaccaro must convince his bosses to go along with the plan as well as come up with a winning pitch to Michael’s agent (Chris Messina) and, more importantly, to Michael’s mom (Viola Davis).

“Air” soars in large part due to how its impressive ensemble of actors interacts with one another. Frequently hilarious, there’s an especially uproarious scene between Damon and Messina that will stay with audiences long after the credits have rolled. And while most of the cast is devoted to strong banter born on the back of tremendous chemistry, Damon and Davis are the two emotional centers around which the film revolves. Damon’s Vaccaro is the persistent dreamer making a massive bet that should never work and basically succeeds due to his passion and foresight. Davis, meanwhile, is rock solid as the no-nonsense mother of the man that everyone wants a piece of. That’s not to say she’s a dour presence in the movie, but her genuine love for her son comes through via an intuitive wisdom that aids in the protection of her child.

The performances are great across the board with each cast member delivering incredibly memorable turns. Chris Tucker as Howard White (another member of Nike staff) is a welcomed presence whose charm plays beautifully off the drier elements of Damon’s laconic comedy style. Julius Tennon (Davis’ real-life husband) exudes friendly warmth as Michael’s father who is clearly the softer touch of Michael’s parents, but nonetheless has his own reserve of strength and wisdom. Affleck’s mere appearance (very much exactly like his real-world counterpart) is funny, but it’s his alternating Zen approach and goofish ways that make for a terrific part of the larger cast. There isn’t a bad actor in the bunch, and they all find ways to really work as an ensemble without ever overshadowing each other.

Additionally, DP Robert Richardson’s cinematography isn’t flashy or full of lots of movement, instead using simple shot setups with changing focus to relay a lived-in quality for every scene. Much of the film’s color palette is the off-white and brown of a 1980s corporate office, with some minor excursions to greener pastures or more austere companies’ headquarters. This aesthetic by the cinematographer, greatly assisted by production designer François Audouy, buoys that grounded approach. Not only does the dialogue feel real between the characters but the settings all feel like real locations in which these people reside.

There is something intrinsically odd that Michael Jordan doesn’t really have any lines in “Air,” nor is he ever directly shown except out-of-focus or courtesy of stand-in Damian Delano Young. It can’t help but feel like the man at the center of this whole story is less a person deciding on his future and more of a commodity used in contract disputes between various factions. The fact that it’s a Black man absent from most of these scenes with white businessmen is a bit off-putting if one were to think about it long enough. At the SXSW premiere, Affleck said the exclusion of Michael Jordan as a character was because Jordan is such a singular person in history, and one for whom the actor/director has such reverence, that it would be odd to have anyone else step into the role. “Air” is ultimately about business decisions made by those most passionate about the situation, primarily Deloris and Sonny, but Jordan’s exclusion remains an odd choice in Alex Convery’s script and Affleck’s direction.

There are other stylistic choices that don’t work as well within “Air,” distancing itself from the audience. There are far too many needledrops of 1980s pop music that it becomes distracting when each scene has one to three different chart-topping hits just to remind people that it is, in fact, the 1980s. This constant reminder extends beyond the soundtrack and into various pieces of pop culture ephemera: Coleco handheld games, posters for era-relevant athletes and political figures, fashions, cars, and much more that all but scream “hey, remember the ‘80s?!?” This constant underlining of the decade leaks into the script itself with much of the humor being a reference to the fact that certain players never amounted to much in the NBA while others would go on to have illustrious careers on the court and in the booth. This barrage of winking references makes it hard to disappear into a story where the destination is not a foregone conclusion, instead reminding viewers that they know how it all ends.

And yet … “Air” is still an underdog story where the third-place basketball shoe company is competing for the most sought-after athlete in the world despite being outgunned. The charm of Affleck’s movie is that it’s hard not to get swept up in the trials and triumphs that this plucky band of marketing misfits experience on the long road to launching Air Jordans. It’s a testament to the performances and especially the chemistry between cast members that these sequences overcome the winking references and some odd style choices to still deliver engaging moments that viewers can’t help but laugh at and cheer. The tangible strength of Davis also lends a different type of energy to Deloris’ scenes, where it’s no longer the goofballs trying their best but a woman who refuses to let anyone decide the narrative of her son’s life. “Air” manages to bring these different tones together, occasionally even in the same scene, without ever feeling jarring or forced.

Affleck has made a feel-good procedural that hilariously and poignantly follows the story from the inception of Vaccaro’s idea watching game tape through to the product pitch in the boardroom with the future greatest athlete of all time. These types of movies aren’t made as much these days — the kinds of films that forego large effects and flashy performances for grounded characters made real through solid turns by the cast. The banter in Convery’s script is entertaining, but it’s truly the actors under Affleck’s excellent direction that makes “Air” feel like something special. It doesn’t nail every scene or sentiment; but when the film is good (which is often), it’s on fire.

“Air” opens exclusively in theaters on April 5 before later streaming on Prime Video.

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Air Reviews

It does very well on repeat viewing. The acting, writing, and pacing of the story was great.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 31, 2024

This was incredibly entertaining. Between the soundtrack, pacing, performances, and script, this was a damn near perfect film.

This film, directed by Ben Affleck (“Argo”) and writer Alex Convery successfully builds tension in a story where everybody in the audience already knows the outcome. The story also works as 'how to' historical movie about sports endorsement deals.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 11, 2024

An immensely entertaining drama based on true events that changed the game and the business of basketball.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 24, 2023

a powerful and dramatic film that at times feels like it was written for the stage. Air has one of the best screenplays I have seen in a long time and is only lifted further by electric performances by Davis, Damon and co.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 23, 2023

Easily one of the year’s most rewatchable films.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 13, 2023

More often than not, AIR succeeds in its mission of being a crowd-pleaser, with something genuine to say.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Oct 30, 2023

AIR is a POWERFULLY moving story about hoops & dreams. With an ALL-STAR cast and SLAM DUNK script, it is this year’s first Best Picture contender.

Full Review | Sep 20, 2023

Armed with a phenomenal cast, Ben Affleck deftly directs this tale of Nike’s basketball division trying to sign a young Michael Jordan, in what would be a game-changing move for the worlds of sport, shoes and athletic marketing.

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

This isn't a story about MJ's achievements so much as it is a tale of a plucky billion dollar company extending a minuscule percentage of its largesse to the player that would become arguably the greatest of all time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 8, 2023

Air is just a good movie. Affleck’s directorial skills cannot be denied, but the movie likely left a lot on the table.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 7, 2023

The goal of “Air” is to provide audiences an enjoyable two hours watching Damon, Affleck, and co. crack wise on screen while telling a feel-good story. By that metric, “Air” is a slam dunk.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 9, 2023

A film about business negotiations should not be fascinating enough to fill a documentary short but in the case of Air it soars to the top of the best films released so far in 2023.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 9, 2023

In a world full of agents, marketing techniques, reputations, and money to be made, "Air" understands all the many players it took to make Nike an iconic brand associated with sports.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Disguised as an origin story of Nike and Michael Jordan’s partnership, Air is a reintroduction of director Ben Affleck that at its heart is a story about having purpose and believing in yourself.

Affleck Soars back to the director's chair with AIR! A must see inspirational sports drama about the business of the industry that changed forever after the AIR JORDAN deal. A love letter to Jordan but specifically the focus on Jordan’s Mom was GREAT.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

Air isn’t interested in cold hard facts but in how stories like the Air Jordan deal, though grounded in capitalism, can tap into the very soul of a nation. On that point, it hits nothing but net.

Air might play like a by-the-numbers underdog tale, but it has an irresistible feel-good energy led by its cast, all of whom are fine. Like other films, this isn’t really about Basketball and more the business of it,

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 19, 2023

These movies don’t really want to explain that magical transformation as much as participate in the magic themselves.

Full Review | Jun 22, 2023

moves along at a brisk pace and hits the right notes, giving us the sports-marketing movie we never knew we wanted

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 19, 2023

‘Air’ Review: Ben Affleck Turns Nike’s Quest to Sign Michael Jordan Into This Generation’s ‘Jerry Maguire’

Reteaming with longtime friend Matt Damon, Affleck never shows the NBA star's face, focusing instead on how Jordan’s mom (Viola Davis) negotiated his game-changing endorsement deal. 

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Americans spend tens of billions of dollars on basketball sneakers every year. Sure, everybody needs shoes, but it shouldn’t matter if your choice bears the Nike swoosh, Adidas’ three stripes or the Converse star. So why does it? In most cases, consumers aren’t simply buying footwear; they’re investing in the fantasy of walking in someone else’s shoes, be it a sports star or a personal idol, and the promise that switching one’s kicks has a direct impact on your potential for greatness.

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In a sly move, Affleck casts himself as Knight, playing the OG “shoe dog” as a comic figure with an ill-fitting wig and an aloof sense of timing. Most corporate CEOs step on other people’s sentences, butting in before their underlings have finished speaking, but not this guy. He waits a beat before responding, as if his attention might be divided between the conversation at hand and a dozen other thoughts. On the wall of Phil’s office hangs a giant sign listing the 10 rules by which Nike operates. Rule No. 2 reads, “Break the rules.” But in 1984, Nike was a publicly traded company, and boards expect rules to be observed.

Enter Sonny, Nike’s in-house basketball guru, whom “Air” introduces as a betting man: He stops by Vegas after a scouting trip, and loses it all on craps. But it’s more than a hunch that tells him Nike should invest its entire quarter-million-dollar basketball marketing budget on one player, as opposed to spreading it among several lower-ranked draft picks. Never mind that Jordan is an Adidas guy; forget that the German company (at which “Air” takes a few sharp digs) can outspend anything Nike offers.

Jordan’s genius on the court practically goes without saying, and yet screenwriter Alex Convery shrewdly decodes the 21-year-old’s potential, spelled out after Sonny studies tape of Jordan’s first year on the University of North Carolina’s team. This and other key moments play like classic Aaron Sorkin scenes, blending the inside-baseball insights of “Moneyball” with “The Social Network”-style power games. His characters aren’t quite as compelling as Sorkin’s, but they express themselves beautifully. Between nostalgia-baiting ’80s radio hits, they walk and talk strategy (around production designer François Audouy’s great sets) or else cut one another down in private (as old friends Damon and Affleck do at several points).

In the film’s most galvanizing monologue, Sonny finally gives Jordan (whose face appears only in archival footage) and his parents (Davis and Julius Tennon) the pitch. Who knows what Sonny really said in that room, but this speech — intercut with the triumphs and pitfalls of Jordan’s career — summarizes everything Michael Jordan means to us, his fans and the legions of Americans he inspired. To get to this moment, Sonny must first convince Phil to endorse his plan; he has to deal with Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, hilariously hostile); and he has to drive out and face Deloris in person.

Casting Davis was the smartest thing Affleck could have done, as the EGOT winner is to acting what Jordan is to sports: Her strength inspires, and she can move us to tears while making it look easy. We all know what happened with the Air Jordan deal — more than Adidas’ early-’70s Stan Smith alliance, the shoe launched our now-ubiquitous sneaker culture — and yet, Deloris forces Sonny to work for the family’s approval.

Memorable parts by Chris Tucker as Howard White, who traded his basketball uniform for a corporate suit, and Marlon Wayans as 1984 Olympics coach George Raveling notwithstanding, “Air” often seems to be focused on the whitest guys in the room. But Affleck is hardly blind to the racial dynamics underlying the whole saga, revealing how Deloris ensured that corporate America couldn’t exploit her son.

Then as now, Nike’s shoes weren’t necessarily any more stylish or advanced than its competitors’ — although the original Air Jordans are a thing of beauty. The company’s sneakers owed nearly all of their mystique to the athletes who wore them. In 1984, Michael Jordan was still a rookie, destined to become a legend. The novelty of “Air” comes in trying to imagine Nike as the underdog, given what the brand has become, but that’s as fine a place as any for a sports movie to begin.

Reviewed at SXSW (Closing Night), March 18, 2023. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 112 MIN.

• Production: An Amazon Studios release of an Amazon Studios, Skydance Sports presentation of an Artists Equity, Mandalay Pictures production. Producers: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, David Ellison, Jesse Sisgold, Jon Weinbach, Madison Ainley, Jeff Robinov, Peter Guber, Jason Michael Berman. Executive producers: Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Kevin Halloran, Michael Joe, Drew Vinton, John Graham, Peter E. Strauss, Jordan Moldo.
• Crew: Director: Ben Affleck. Screenplay: Alex Convery. Camera: Robert Richardson. Editor: William Goldenberg. Music supervisor: Andrea von Foerster.
• With: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina, Marlon Wayans, Viola Davis, Matthew Maher, Julius Tennon.

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“Air,” Reviewed: It’s Fun to Spend Time with These People, but We Don’t Know Much About Them

By Richard Brody

“Air” is a meaningful movie but an unsatisfying one. It’s a fascinating story vigorously depicted and acted, featuring characters whose heroism is unusual and whose place in history is both secure and obscure. The movie, directed by Ben Affleck, who also co-stars, depicts how Nike recruited Michael Jordan to the company, creating the Air Jordan line and thereby making the company very profitable and Jordan very rich. It’s a story of cultural change, of the invention of a ubiquitous style and its wider implications. Yet the film is a hermetic one, self-contained and nearly context-free, that thrusts its protagonists so far into the foreground that they block the movie’s purview. Rather than magnifying these characters, the close view diminishes them, elides their accomplishments from society at large, and renders them a mere success story .

The film delivers its own backstory. (It differs, of course, from some accounts of how Jordan came to join Nike.) In 1984, Nike is mired in third place behind the two industry leaders, Converse and Adidas. Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a basketball guru and a major promoter in the high-school and college game, is employed by Nike to provide contacts in the basketball world. The company is seeking endorsements from incoming rookies chosen in that year’s N.B.A. draft, and has committed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be spread among multiple players. But Sonny is fixated on the idea of putting all the eggs in one basket, concentrating the entire sum on one incoming player: Michael Jordan, taken third in the draft, by the Chicago Bulls.

Sonny’s plan poses a large risk to the company; his colleagues, other executives, and the company’s C.E.O., Phil Knight (Affleck), are leery of the plan. Moreover, Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), is guiding the athlete toward either of Nike’s two bigger and richer competitors. So, aided by wise counsel from two Black men—Howard White (Chris Tucker), the only Black executive at Nike who figures in the film, and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans), a prominent college-basketball coach who’s also Sonny’s longtime friend—Sonny makes an end run around both David and Phil and takes his pitch for Nike directly to the de-facto boss of Jordan’s business concerns: the athlete’s mother, Deloris (Viola Davis), at the family home, in Wilmington, North Carolina. (Michael, played by Damian Young, appears only as a background character.)

The question of why in the world this quest is of any dramatic significance is rooted in the three prime lines of drama that the movie’s script, by Alex Convery, boldly sketches: Sonny’s quest, Deloris’s quest, and Phil’s quest. The movie rushes by agreeably because its story is constructed three-dimensionally; every action, every moment, is plotted simultaneously on three lines of effort, which don’t all cohere into a single shape until the happy ending.

Sonny sparks the action as the only sports marketer who recognizes Jordan as not just a very talented player but a great one, because of the combined superiority of Jordan’s athletic ability and unique sense of will, determination, even destiny. Affleck cannily, even cagily, reveals the insight on which Sonny’s judgment is based, in a scene that’s among the movie’s most enticing. Sonny watches, over and over, a videotape of Jordan’s signature moment in college ball—a championship-winning shot that he hit in 1982. Shortly thereafter, Sonny forces Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), an executive who runs marketing, to watch the same snippet of tape. Sonny explains that he sees hidden in it, in plain sight, Jordan’s awareness that he’ll be getting the ball on a planned play, his relaxed confidence in taking a shot that’s critical to his own career, his coach’s career, and the team’s fortunes. It’s the quality that Sonny defines as greatness, and he can detect it both as a student of the game and an insightful psychologist (like a filmmaker who perceives the transcendent star quality of an untested actor). That intuition is what drives Sonny’s all-out effort to recruit Jordan for Nike.

When Deloris is convinced that Nike is the right choice, she adds a contractual stipulation that is both an inspiration and a grand, even historic, declaration of principle: that, in addition to his fee, her son be paid a percentage of every sale of an Air Jordan shoe, anywhere in the world. The principle, of course, is that the athlete is no mere adornment for the brand but, rather, the prime source of the shoe’s value, not an amplification to the business but the crucial participant in it. The moral essence of her insistence is that the athlete is entitled to a part of the wealth that they create—and the political implication, unvoiced but resonant, is that Black athletes should have a share of the vast wealth that they’re creating for white-run businesses.

Affleck, both as an actor and a director, emphasizes Phil’s idiosyncratic temperament and his co-creation of Nike as a reflection of his personality. (This approach is reflected in the deployment of the company’s aphoristic statement of principles, which are quoted onscreen and illustrated in dramatic scenes.) Yet, after the company went public in 1980, Phil is beholden to a board of directors, who, with an eye on the bottom line, scrutinize his decisions and could even fire him. Sonny asserts that the spirit of the company is at risk of being lost if Phil loses confidence in his own judgment (which is to say, in Sonny) and yields to corporate routine, boardroom prudence, and business-school calculations. Consider Sonny a filmmaker and Phil a producer.

That analogy, far from being merely a hint of Affleck and Damon’s personal investment in the story of “Air,” is at the core of Affleck’s direction. The drama is something like a parody and a perversion of auteurism—a top-down and mastermind-centric view of the recruitment of Jordan, one that takes little interest in the wide range of activities involved in the project and in the development of the shoe, little interest in who’ll be buying the shoe and what it will mean to the buyer. Howard underscores the market importance of basketball shoes because of the racial gap in the running-shoe market, joking that Black people are unlikely to go jogging for fear of being mistaken for fleeing suspects. It’s a line of dialogue that does a huge amount of work, in lieu of drama.

“Air” is a story of fashion, of music, of sports and athleticism themselves as a kind of style and even of artistic expression; of the sudden ubiquity of popular musicians by way of music videos and MTV; of the relationship of American racial politics to style; and of the rapid and definitive emergence of hip-hop as the prime national and international music. The shoes are being marketed foremost to young Black consumers, yet the prospective buyers are never heard from, hardly even seen. The only young Black character in the film (other than Michael Jordan) is a clerk (Asanté Deshon) at a 7-Eleven, a basketball fan who opines to Sonny that Jordan is “too small for the N.B.A.” (Later in the film, after Jordan has become a star, he tells Sonny, “We all knew.”) The point is, doubtless unintentionally, a sordid one: that, in the street, the prevailing wisdom holds sway, but, to lead public opinion, to create a phenomenon, it takes the leadership of an expert—someone like Sonny.

The process that “Air” details is nonetheless absorbing. Sonny’s acumen extends beyond the basketball court into the business side, as when, at his first meeting with Deloris, he’s both unusually candid and insightful about the disadvantages that a contract with Converse or Adidas would pose to Michael. (Her confidence in Sonny’s judgment is reinforced when his predictions about the course of the Jordans’ meetings with those companies’ executives prove correct.) Sonny stage-manages the actual business of persuasion—the pitch that Nike will formally make to the Jordans, Deloris and James (Julius Tennon, Davis’s real-life husband)—and it involves a twist of clumsiness that’s amusing, and a burst of inspiration that’s thrilling. (I won’t spoil the backstory, which involves a lesson that George, as a long-ago witness to a historic event, imparts to Sonny.)

“Air” is a dialogue-rich film, as befits a movie about negotiations, and the dialogue is delivered with flair and enthusiasm, not least because its actors contributed greatly to crafting it. The script is the first by Convery to be produced, and he reports (in a fascinating interview by Kate Erbland ) that Affleck and the cast—mainly Damon, Tucker, and Davis—subjected the screenplay to a high level of revision. Tucker wrote most of his own dialogue, and Davis wrote the most important part of hers. (Don’t trust the credits: in general, directors and actors with significant artistry and clout are surely doing a significant amount of writing.) Damon is both commanding and miscast, both conspicuously gleeful in the role of Sonny yet all too breezy and lacking spice and rough edges; it’s Davis who, in a relatively little amount of screen time, gives the film its anchoring performance.

However, the movie’s florid talk doesn’t only serve the drama or provide the sheer pleasure of the back-and-forth. The talk fills the movie like dramatic spacing and padding, delivering moods—man-to-man ballbusting, sentimental bonding, earnest confessions—as a way of marking time and building suspense without actually conveying much about characters, their experiences and their thoughts, or yielding the screen to characters or situations who aren’t at the center of the story and the top of the pyramid.

The most crucial of those additional presences is Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), the shoemaker. He’s at once a scientist and an artist, an engineer and a fashion designer, who cocoons himself in his underlit, laboratory-like studio. Inspired by Arthur Ashe’s line of tennis racquets, Sonny wants Peter to make a shoe to Jordan’s own specifications; as I watched the movie, I was intensely curious about what this notion would mean in practice. But the movie spends very little time in the laboratory or with Peter. When Sonny goes to see what Peter has come up with, the engineer proudly declares that he has achieved something new: “It is the logic of water.” It’s a nice line, but what does he mean? It’s negatively exemplary of the film that its crucially physical aspect—the one where the foot goes into the shoe, where the rubber hits the road—is elided in favor of a one-liner and a conceptual hand wave.

Lack of physicality is perhaps the defining trait of Affleck’s direction, both here and in his Oscar-winning “ Argo .” (Both films were the result of a script from the Black List , the Hollywood honor roll of notable unproduced screenplays.) What Affleck creates, as a director, is fishbowl cinema, observing his characters’ action without any seeming point of contact with the actors, without any sense of presence, through walls of glass thicker and more airtight than those of his camera’s lenses. His sense of story is so specific that he displays it whole and closed off, without any apparent curiosity about what goes into it and what arises from it; his conception of characters is so closely tied to dramatic necessity that he neglects to consider them as people. The movie’s substance remains largely implicit; its pleasures are partial, detached, and superficial. It offers little context, background, personality, or anything that risks distracting from the show. ♦

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By Justin Chang

By Zach Helfand

Review: Ben Affleck’s entertaining Michael Jordan-Nike drama is more than hot ‘Air’

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One of the pleasures of the movies is the way they can complicate and undermine the idea of history as destiny, taking unbeatable sure things and reminding us that they were once untested, unknown quantities. It’s not, admittedly, the easiest thing for a filmmaker to pull off. Too often the clarity of hindsight can become the enemy of real drama; the more phenomenal the legend, the more inevitable and even circumscribed their success can seem. There’s a moment near the end of “Air,” Ben Affleck’s shrewd, hugely enjoyable and fitfully ruminative new movie, that deftly gets at this point, when a basketball fan opines that “everybody knew” from the beginning that Michael Jordan would be an all-timer — never mind that, sometime earlier, said fan could be heard declaring precisely the opposite.

Not that “Air” treats Jordan as some kind of underdog, or even as its central subject. An NBA rookie when the movie opens, he’s already marked for greatness — a greatness of such untouchable, godlike proportions that, beyond some TV footage of the real Jordan on the court, the movie dares not even show his face. (Damian Delano Young, the actor who plays him, appears only briefly and is almost always filmed from behind.) No, the truer underdog here — and the other legend in the making — is Nike, the upstart Oregon-based footwear company with the swoosh logo, the “just do it” slogan and an initially lackluster profile in the basketball sneaker market. That last part will change forever, of course, once Nike manages, through a campaign of extraordinary savvy and daring, to outbid and outmaneuver its deeper-pocketed rivals, Adidas and Converse, and hitch its own fortunes to Jordan’s meteoric rise.

A new film about Air Jordans almost benched a Black Nike exec. Enter Chris Tucker

The actor talks about scripting his ‘Air’ character, Howard White; the prospects for ‘Rush Hour 4’ and returning to ‘Friday,’ and more.

April 3, 2023

Boasting a punchy, phone-slamming, expletive-hurling, heavily Aaron Sorkin-indebted script by Alex Convery, “Air” is an ode to the art of the landmark celebrity-endorsement deal . It’s also something of a feature-length Nike commercial, albeit a deft and entertaining one. Mostly, it’s a tribute to classically American values like branding and publicity, ambition and swagger, wealth and more wealth (the Air Jordan line has earned billions and counting) and good, old-fashioned competitive cunning. Like “Argo” (2012), Affleck’s Oscar-winning hit about how Hollywood helped rescue six Americans amid the turmoil of the Iran hostage crisis, the movie dusts off decades-old headlines and invests them with the breezy urgency of a comic heist thriller, one with far lower human stakes but an incalculably higher payout. The year may be 1984, but any hint of Orwellian gloom here is dissolved in a wave of merry capitalist brinkmanship.

The mastermind is Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, paunchy and polo-shirted), the sharpest, most stubborn mind in Nike’s flailing basketball division. Possessed of a keen understanding of the game and its players, he also has a gambler’s streak that loses him more than it earns. (His talent-scouting trips tend to detour through Las Vegas, where the script establishes his risky impulses and drops a sly beaut of a Kurt Rambis joke.) It’s Sonny who grasps and articulates the singularity of Jordan’s brilliance a few crucial beats before everyone else does. And it’s Sonny who argues that Nike, rather than dividing its annual $250,000 basketball budget among three or four lower-ranked players, should offer the whole pot to Jordan and tailor an entire shoe line to the athlete, rather than the other way around. (Matthew Maher, so good in last year’s “Funny Pages,” steals a few scenes as Nike shoe wizard Peter Moore, who designs the Air Jordan in all its prototypical Chicago Bulls red-and-black glory.)

It’s a potentially game-changing proposition — and a potentially business-killing gamble. Sonny has a lot of skeptics to convince, including Jordan, a die-hard Adidas fan, and (more importantly) Jordan’s mother, Deloris, the solid rock and gently guiding hand behind his every career move. Deloris is played, superbly, by Viola Davis, whose soft-toned, gravel-edged voice is authority itself. (In a nice touch, Davis’ husband, Julius Tennon , plays Michael’s father, James Jordan.) Two of the movie’s most beautifully written and played scenes find Sonny approaching and later negotiating with a thoughtful, quietly unyielding Deloris, setting the pattern for a story in which nearly every turning point is structured as a two-way conversation — a one-on-one master class in the art of persuasion.

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When it comes to the surprising history of athlete endorsements, Nike’s pursuit of Magic Johnson in ‘Winning Time’ only scratches the surface.

April 17, 2022

Sonny’s many sparring partners include Jordan’s potty-mouthed agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, a scream), and Nike’s good-natured but beaten-down marketing director, Rob Strasser (an effective Jason Bateman). Strasser gets a poignant if overly calculated heart-tugger of a speech that kicks “Air’s” already solid dad-movie cred up several notches; he also gets one of the script’s few moments — an oblique reference to Nike’s use of Asian sweatshop labor — that puncture the feel-good corporate vibes.

Most of those vibes emanate from the company’s affable, Zen-minded CEO, Phil Knight, a wearer of track suits and spouter of Buddhist koans played by Affleck himself as the risk-averse yin to Sonny’s reckless yang. Unsurprisingly, the well-worn Matt-and-Ben screen rapport gives Sonny and Phil an instantly readable, affectionately combative dynamic, as well as an understated emotional core.

It’s not the only time Affleck uses casting to suggestive, even subversive ends. On the surface, “Air” may look like an unrepentant valentine to the ’80s, from the amusing overkill of its extended opening montage (President Reagan and Princess Diana , Ghostbusters and Cabbage Patch Kids) to its steady stream of Violent Femmes/Cyndi Lauper/Bruce Springsteen needle drops to the simultaneously spot-on and comically exaggerated ugliness of its offices, all dim greenish lighting and chunky computer hardware. (The grubbily ancient production design is by François Audouy, the cubicle-panning cinematography by Robert Richardson.) But in some ways, the movie is also carrying on a subliminal, more subtly nostalgic conversation with the ’90s , the decade that transformed Affleck and Damon into household names and saw some of their key supporting players here first rise to prominence.

The latter include Marlon Wayans, delivering a charming cameo as George Raveling, the Olympic basketball coach who would prove instrumental in persuading Jordan to sign with Nike; and Chris Tucker , funneling his motormouthed comic gusto into the smart suit and warm, welcoming vibes of Howard White, the future vice president of the entire Jordan brand. In ways that sometimes register more potently than the action or dialogue, “Air” is haunted by the specters of these actors’ career highs and lows; this is Tucker’s first movie in seven years. It’s also haunted by the sight of Affleck and Damon, two aging Hollywood golden boys who at times seem to be confronting their own mortality alongside their characters. They’ve made a movie about the ravages of time, the fleeting, sometimes arbitrary nature of fame and the general rule of failure to which success proves an all-too-rare exception.

This meta-melancholy subtext rises to the surface late in the movie, when Sonny delivers a deal-clinching, throat-tightening boardroom speech about how few legacies endure and how few legends are remembered. It’s a message that consoles and stings, not least for the way it seems to knock even movie royalty down a few pegs. Success and fame on the level of a Michael Jordan, Sonny reminds us, has a way of throwing even great accomplishments into perspective.

“Air” comes by these ideas honestly and thoughtfully, and they’re rich enough that you sometimes wish Affleck and Convery had given them freer, unrulier reign, rather than shoehorning them (so to speak) into all the story’s busily, efficiently moving parts, its blue Slurpee sight gags and Adidas-skewering Hitler jokes. Crucially, it’s in the scenes with Wayans, Tucker and Davis that the movie engages meaningfully, if too briefly, with the role of race in the overlapping arenas of sports, celebrity and social progress, and especially the question of what Black athletes are owed by an industry that uses their names, likenesses and talent to invest a product with meaning.

Unsurprisingly, it’s Deloris who brings these issues to the fore — and also cuts through them with clean, unerring logic — when she argues for a fundamental shift in the balance of power between her son and Nike, and by extension between all athletes and the companies seeking to trade on their fame. The movie is on her side — or rather, it pivots to her side at just the right moment, pulling the rug out from under Sonny and his colleagues and also, perhaps, from under itself. In these earnest, cheer-worthy moments, “Air” almost convinces you that it’s more than just a feel-good celebration of capitalism and corporate power, that it has its eye not just on the prize but on the entire game — and that it’s looking out for all the underdogs as fervently as it wants you to believe.

'Air'

Rating: R, for language throughout Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes Playing: Starts Wednesday in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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‘Air’ Review: The Game Changers

In Ben Affleck’s enjoyable movie, Matt Damon stars as the Nike exec who’s trying to sign a young Michael Jordan. But first he must contend with Viola Davis.

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By Manohla Dargis

It’s ridiculous how entertaining “Air” is given that it’s about shoes, even if it works overtime to persuade you that it’s also about other, nobler truths, too. Mind you, the pair that Nike presented to Michael Jordan in a 1984 meeting were custom. The company wanted badly to sign Jordan to an endorsement deal, so it created black-and-red high tops with a white midsole and a multimillion-dollar sweetener. Jordan may have preferred Adidas, but he soon laced up for Nike, changing footwear, sports stardom and athletic marketing forever.

Directed by Ben Affleck, the frothily amusing and very eager-to-please “Air” tells the oft-told tale of how Nike signed Jordan to a contract that made each astonishingly rich. Yet while the man and the money are inevitably central to this deeply American story, both remain strategically obscured. Jordan (Damian Young) is shown only in teasing partial view, his face concealed (you see the real Jordan in archival images), an initially distracting decision that grows less gimmicky and seems more natural as the story shifts focus toward virtuous, less fungible human values like love, genius, grit, perseverance, righteousness and faith.

The movie’s principal true believer is Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon). (Like most of the main characters, Vaccaro is based on, and named after, a real person , though the actual Sonny is far juicier than he is here.) A vision in beige with a beeper attached to his belt, his belly spilling over that same belt, Sonny is a familiar, cartoonish sad-sack, a figure right out of Mike Judge’s “Office Space.” He’s divorced and still unattached, and his workaholic habits don’t bode well for romance. He routinely buys his nightly dinner at the local convenience store, making small talk with the clerk, then eats alone while staring at the TV or, in his case, side-by-side sets.

The story heats up when Sonny and his colleagues at Nike start looking at the latest N.B.A. draftees to sign. Nike doesn’t want to spend much, so most of its execs are scouring the lower picks. But Sonny has a gift for spotting talent, and he’s aiming high: Jordan, the 21-year-old who’s left college early and whose moves he studies on smeary tape. Not everyone can read the future or see talent like Sonny, and much of the movie involves his wooing of two notably different dealmakers and breakers: Phil Knight (an amusing Affleck), Nike’s preening co-founder and chief executive, and Jordan’s mother, Deloris (a sensational Viola Davis).

Written by Alex Convery, “Air” nicely hits the sweet spot between light comedy and lighter drama that’s tough to get right. It’s funny, but its generous laughs tend to be low-key and are more often dependent on their delivery than on the actual writing. Damon is crucial to selling the humor. He’s packed on weight for the role, and he gives the character a stolid, tamped-down physicality, but he also lets you see the eddies of anger and frustration raging under the character’s skin. Sonny is put-upon and dejected, but he’s quick witted and doesn’t suffer fools (or Knight), and his patience has already been worn perilously thin when the story opens.

Waiting for Sonny to explode helps build the comic tension; watching him try to sign Jordan creates the relatively less punchy drama. Some of the juiciest laughs come from Sonny’s interactions with the gnomic Knight, a showboating supporting role that Affleck embraces with a sly, vacant deadpan and tragically unhip styling. Affleck knows how to steal scenes, and he pilfers a few, but he’s a very good and generous director of actors. He’s loaded up “Air” with terrific supporting players, including Jason Bateman and Chris Tucker, who, as Nike suits, add distinct flavor and some brilliant contrapuntal timing to the mix.

Along with Damon, the movie’s other M.V.P. is Davis, whose beautifully modulated performance helps deepen the story and expand its emotional palette. Davis is often called on to go big in her roles, to let the emotion and snot flow, so it’s a pleasure watching her hold back and change it up with lapidary, minimalist precision. Like Damon, she gives her character a palpable physical solidity, but Deloris is entirely comfortable, at ease in her body and in the world, and she’s in charge. You only read her face when she wants. Michael is the star of this world, but it’s Deloris who exerts the family’s greatest gravitational force.

Affleck handles all the story’s many parts gracefully, mostly by keeping them continually spinning. There’s a lot of walking-and-talking both in offices and in halls, which never gets dull largely because of who’s doing the walking and talking. What they’re chattering about is critical, even if the movie has distilled the hard-charging, world-shifting, sometimes (oftentimes!) ethically challenged business of professional sports into a group of really nice, funny, well-meaning personalities and one not-as-nice agent, David Falk (Chris Messina), a trash-talking, phone-smashing, profane motormouth right out of HBO’s “Entourage.”

“Air” is enjoyably facile and light as a feather, though sometimes touching, never more so than in a late, deftly handled face-off between Sonny and Deloris that brings the larger racial stakes of the landmark deal into crystalline focus. Here, as elsewhere, the movie deviates from the historical record — including the sometimes divergent , widely published accounts — to make a richer, heftier, more meaningful story. As Affleck cuts back and forth between Sonny and Deloris, filling the screen with close-ups that let you track every rivulet of emotion, it’s hard not to be moved, including by the sight of these exceptional actors who, with heart and talent, ever so briefly turn a story about capitalism into a referendum on the soul of a nation.

Air Rated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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‘Air’ shoots and scores, with story, character, catharsis and depth

We all know how the tale of Michael Jordan and Nike ends up, but Ben Affleck’s film about it is a smart and entertaining delight

“Air,” Ben Affleck’s funny, moving and surprisingly meaningful tale of how Nike came to create Air Jordan basketball shoes, might have been a real snore. We all know how the story ends, and do we really need a movie that perpetuates yet another David-and-Goliath myth about a world-dominating corporation?

Apparently, the answer is yes: Working from a well-judged script by first-time screenwriter Alex Convery and enlisting a superb cast of appealing ensemble players, Affleck has created something that Hollywood has seemed incapable of making in recent years: a smart, entertaining movie that, for all its foregone conclusions and familiar beats, unfolds with the offhand confidence of the most casually impressive layup.

The key to any story, especially one the audience already thinks it knows, is choosing the right donkey — the person who will not only lead us through the plot but make us care. Enter Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike talent scout who, as the movie opens, is working college games and nursing a compulsive gambling habit. “Air” begins in the 1980s, shortly after the company has gone public; although co-founder Phil Knight had attained a 50 percent market share in the athletic shoe market, in basketball he was trailing behind Converse and Adidas. During the era of Rolodexes, Rubik’s Cubes, Reagan and rappers — all of which are name-checked in “Air’s” snappy opening montage set to Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” — Nike’s hippest product was tracksuits, not sneakers.

Sonny’s colleagues at Nike, including marketing executive Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman), field rep Howard White (Chris Tucker) and Knight (Affleck), seem to have accepted their lot as also-rans when Sonny suggests betting their entire sponsorship budget on the young North Carolina phenom Michael Jordan. What ensues might best be described as “Jerry Maguire” meets “King Richard,” as Sonny goes head to head with his bosses, Jordan’s fast-talking agent (Chris Messina), and the ultimate decision-maker and toughest negotiator of them all: Jordan’s mother, Deloris.

Affleck has said in interviews that Michael Jordan had only one stipulation in the making of “Air”: that Viola Davis would play Deloris. Affleck granted that request, and when Davis enters the proceedings, the weather changes. Up until her appearance, Damon, Bateman, Tucker and Affleck — who as Knight drives an absurd purple Porsche, wears goofy running get-ups and spouts corny New Age aphorisms — keep the balloon afloat with pacey jocularity and a slick, fast-moving business story. Once Sonny goes to North Carolina to meet Deloris and James Jordan (the latter is played by Davis’s real-life husband, Julius Tennon), “Air” transforms from a worthy if conventional underdog tale to the chronicle of a seismic cultural shift.

“Air” is that rare sports movie that is virtually guaranteed to appeal to both hardcore NBA fans and people who don’t know a three-point line from a field goal (thanks, Wikipedia!). The key, of course, is the human factor, here channeled through consistently relaxed, irresistibly likable performances, especially from Damon at his most relatably chunky, Davis at her most serenely commanding, Bateman (alternately quippy and disarmingly sincere), and Affleck, who between this and 2021’s “The Last Duel” might deserve an honorary acting Oscar for being willing to make himself look utterly ridiculous for the greater good.

As a director, he’s also willing to indulge the audience’s craving for pleasure, whether by way of “Air’s” thoroughly rewarding plot or delicious period-piece touches, which include an ’80s-tastic soundtrack and the re-creation of Nike’s Beaverton, Ore., headquarters, where smoking corners and sundae bars are the order of the long-bygone day. (He also wisely shoots the actor playing Jordan only from behind, avoiding inevitable and distracting comparisons.)

Spouting his own aphorism, at one point Sonny reminds his colleagues that “you’re remembered for the rules you break.” Affleck doesn’t break rules with “Air” as much as restore them, obeying principles that have seemed mortally endangered in recent years — about sound structure, recognizably human characters, satisfying catharsis, authentic but not overreaching depth. The modest but gratifying gifts of “Air” lie in its seeming effortlessness, reassuring viewers that a good movie can still be a good story, well told. It’s a movie that shoots and scores. And, miraculously, it turns out that’s still enough.

R. At area theaters. Contains strong language throughout. 112 minutes.

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No substance, just 'Air'

Aisha Harris

Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro in Air. Ana Carballosa/Amazon Studios hide caption

Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro in Air.

In 1984, a young Michael Jordan signed what was then the NBA's most lucrative sneaker deal with Nike. The Air Jordan line was a culture-shifting juggernaut, impacting not just the business of sports but fashion, celebrity, hip-hop, and street culture for decades to come. It inspired an encyclopedia. It became a status symbol. It renewed hand-wringing over American consumerism and " Black-on-Black " crime.

Over the years, there have been plenty of examinations of the Air Jordan brand's fraught success and influence, including a 2018 documentary, Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1. But we're living in the era of the nostalgic headline-to-Hollywood pipeline and in an age where entrepreneurs are obsessed with being credited as artistic visionaries, so perhaps it was inevitable something like the movie Air would come to exist. Directed by Ben Affleck with a screenplay by Alex Convery, Air is a soulless dramatization of how a giant corporation convinced a promising NBA rookie to make its already wealthy and well-off board members, CEOs, and salespeople even wealthier and set for life.

OK, that's the crass way of describing it; the film's creators would undoubtedly characterize their aims as being more "inspiring" than that. It's presented as a classic sports movie about an underdog team (in this case, Nike) achieving greatness with a game-winning score (a rousing boardroom sales pitch). It's imagined as a classic American tale of ambition and a singular vision, in the form of the underestimated salesman Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon). It's set up as an affirmation of Black Excellence writ large, of a budding superstar demanding, via his sharp-witted mother Deloris (Viola Davis), he is paid his worth in a business known for exploiting its athletes, especially its Black ones. (Interestingly, the faceless actor playing Jordan is only seen from behind and mutters just a handful of words throughout the entire film.)

But for all that Don Draperesque spin, Air really is crass. It's nothing more than a craven exercise in capitalist exaltation. The dramatic "stakes," if one wants to call them that – and if one does, they're being overly generous – are as follows: It's 1984, and Nike trails behind Adidas and Converse in sales. If you work at the giant corporation that is Nike at that time, that's a problem. This is especially true for Sonny, the longtime Nike salesman who's decided to bet his career on trying to secure the Chicago Bulls' NBA draft pick Michael Jordan for an unprecedented sneaker deal. (We know this because he says, "I'm willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan.")

The 'Disrupter'

Julius Tennon as James Jordan Sr. in Air . Ana Carballosa/Amazon Studios hide caption

Julius Tennon as James Jordan Sr. in Air .

Sonny is positioned as a "disrupter" who sees "greatness" in Jordan at a time when few others do. After replaying a VHS tape of the athlete's game-winning shot at the 1982 NCAA Championships, he decides the company has to break traditions and make an offer the other brands won't. Instead of spending its budget on signing multiple new basketball stars, Sonny wants Nike to go all-in on Jordan.

Unfortunately for Sonny, being a disrupter means facing opposition from those content with the status quo – including his boss, the cantankerous CEO Phil Knight (a red-haired Affleck); the by-the-books VP of marketing Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman); and Jordan's misanthropic, hard-bargaining agent David Falk (Chris Messina), who doesn't even want his client to take a meeting with Nike. And so Sonny does what all "great" men in Movies About Great Men do – he goes rogue, secretly driving from Oregon to the Jordan family's home in North Carolina to pitch himself directly to Deloris. Exactly how will Sonny finally break through all that defense and drive this deal to the net, huh???

Air is convinced there's enough nail-biting tension to be gleaned from this conundrum and enough audience buy-in of the Jordan mythos and brand to overcome such a flimsy premise. And to be fair, the performers are fully committed to what little character development they're given – Davis is, per usual, giving off convincing gravitas; Messina's prickly and lends some levity to the proceedings.

But just as there are many meetings that could've been an email, this is one movie that could've been a narrative podcast. (Many of the major figures involved, including Vaccaro and Knight, are still with us.) Sonny, our erstwhile hero, is by far the least interesting character; a bland descendant of countless white guy protagonists who have nothing left to lose, including Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire. This becomes painfully clear somewhere around the midway point of Air when Rob delivers a monologue about how he's wary of Sonny's wild plans and that he really, really needs to keep his job, not just for a paycheck, but because working at Nike has allowed him to connect with his young daughter. (He only gets to see her once a week following his divorce and always brings her a new pair of complimentary Nikes. Her love, it seems, is conditional upon being able to sport the latest kicks.) In those few minutes, we learn more about this secondary character than our disrupter, whose only defining characteristics are that he likes to gamble and that he's out of shape (several characters comment upon his weight). Rob's monologue is obviously thrown in to lend some weight to the Jordan recruitment that doesn't exist within the depiction of Sonny himself.

Show him the money

Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) and Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis). Amazon Studios hide caption

Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) and Deloris Jordan (Viola Davis).

And on the subject of Jerry Maguire : Like Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Rod Tidwell, Michael Jordan's strategic aims to secure the best deal possible are steered by the most important Black woman in his life – in both cases, there's a nod to subversiveness that doesn't quite hold water if you think about it too hard. (" We determine our worth," Rod's wife Marcee, played by Regina King, says while persuading him not to take an underwhelming offer. "You are a strong, proud, surviving, splendid Black man.")

Likewise, Jordan's mom Deloris is the one who holds the key to Sonny's future at Nike, and when she shrewdly negotiates with him over the phone – she insists her son get a cut of the revenue, unheard of at that time – Air wants the audience to believe there's a deeper purpose here beyond an exercise in championing capitalism. A Black man disrupting the historically racist system that undervalues Black talent by forcing that same system to run him his bag, and then some – this will undoubtedly appeal to a certain demographic that still reveres the old-school definition of the American Dream and celebrates Black billionaires as meaningful "progress." In my screening of Air , there were whoops and cheers when Nike finally accepted the terms of Deloris' negotiations.

Yet there's something ultimately hollow about trying to extract FUBU mentality from what amounts to a two-hour ad for Nike and the uber-rich, especially in this economy. It's marked by the same odd dichotomy that comes with hearing one of our beloved musicians, herself a billionaire, sing about being "paid ... in equity" and buying her husband a jet. Do they deserve to be compensated for their worth? Of course. But let's not pretend as if more insanely wealthy Black people are some sort of "win" for all of us.

Though at least when said pop star boasts about her riches, there's an engaging tension between her sheer artistry and the awareness of inequalities that exist in this country and everywhere else. With Air – which concludes with subtitles pointing out how the lush benefactors of this sweet, sweet deal have donated money to good causes in the years since – there's no there there, no feeling to latch onto besides, "Why was this made?" It's nothing but air.

Air is now playing in theaters.

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Air review: ben affleck's sports drama is a crowd-pleasing slam dunk.

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Almost everyone who knows a thing or two about the sports world can recognize that Air Jordans are some of the most popular sneakers of all time. What very few people know is that this partnership between Michael Jordan and Nike almost never existed. In Amazon Studios’ latest sports drama, Air , director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery highlight the struggles and hurdles it took Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro to overcome to secure a game-changing collaboration that would change the world of sports partnerships forever.

Matt Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, a Nike executive who aims to change his luck and that of his company's by scoring the biggest contract of his career with rookie Michael Jordan . With a fledgling basketball division, Nike was never an interest for the young basketball star. But with his back against the wall, Vaccaro pulls out all the stops to make a career-defining move and gamble with his CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck). The two things standing in his way? A reluctant Michael Jordan, who has his sights set on Adidas, and his mother, Deloris (Viola Davis), who only wants the best for her son and knows what Jordan’s talents are worth.

Related: Ben Affleck & Matt Damon Open Up About Affleck Finally Directing Damon

Air , featuring great performances and an incredible script, is one of those special sports movies that only comes along once in a while. It isn’t a long-winded marketing ploy for shoe giant Nike, though it can come off that way. Instead, Affleck’s latest is an inspirational feel-good story about believing in something (or someone) so much that one would bet all the stakes on it. The film zeroes in on this human aspect, opting out of the mundanity of detailed business talk, legalities, and contractual details, which is why the film succeeds. Convery recognizes that all movie-goers may not care too much about basketball, so, together with Affleck, he strategically and beautifully focuses his story on the people. And it’s exactly what will hook viewers of all types.

One of the greatest achievements of Air ’s script is the believability of it all. Even knowing how it all plays out today, watching the depiction of Nike execs chase after a game-changing partnership with Michael Jordan is believable. Affleck plays his cards incredibly well, incorporating the back and forth between Nike and the Jordan family. Everything leading up to the finale is well-intentioned and thrilling, to say the least, but these elements are only half of what makes Air so great. Some may attribute this to the film’s subject matter, but in reality, the entire cast and crew put together an exceptionally infectious feature worth watching on the big screen.

The stellar cast, in particular, is reason enough to run to the theater to see Air . Matt Damon, for example, is sensational as Sonny, balancing humorous moments with heartfelt ones. Even as an actor, it has to be challenging to come off as passionate as Damon does here (especially without a love of sports). But thankfully it oozes through him, which is why he’s perfect for the role. Other noteworthy performances include Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Chris Messina (whose interactions with Damon are some of the most fun onscreen this year), Affleck, and Davis, all of whom make this feature thoroughly enjoyable. Good luck to anyone walking out of Air trying to determine a favorite because they all come with their A-game and nail every minute of their screen time.

It would be remiss to mention all these great elements without stating the obvious: Affleck’s direction in Air is stupendous work. The way in which he interweaves footage and sequences with real life imagery is fantastic. Additionally, the level of detail Affleck incorporates in nearly every scene to capture the setting of that time highlights his passion for the subject and how he has improved as a director. But above all, his latest is simply a joyous experience consisting of electrifying cast chemistry, inspiring messaging, and an uncanny desire to root for the sneaker giant even though the outcome is already known. The Air Jordans and Nike partnership is legendary, and thanks to it, this film is soon to be the same.

Air releases in theaters on April 5. The film is 112 minutes and rated R for language.

Our Rating:

• 4.5 star movies

'Air' review: It's all about the shoes, and A-list cast, in Ben Affleck's slam-dunk drama

Ben Affleck's  superbly crafted drama “Air” lands like a classic Michael Jordan dunk – you can even imagine Affleck’s tongue wagging and legs splayed in mid-jump akin to his Airness.

Like “Moneyball” before it, “Air” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; streaming on Amazon Prime Video ) is more concerned with the business of the sport than the actual game, though the central plot line is just about as thrilling as a close finish. The film is a captivating tale boasting a deep bench of talent (most notably Matt Damon and Viola Davis) and a shoe at its center, a Cinderella tale for dads and dudes – and protective moms, too – that oozes 1980s style and finds something to say about the value of athletes still true to this day.

'Best movie of the year': Ben Affleck's Michael Jordan biopic 'Air' gets raves at SXSW

In 1984 following the NBA Draft, shoe companies are scrambling to sign rookies to endorsement deals and Nike’s situation is more dire than most. Led by high-strung, philosophy-spouting Phil Knight (Affleck), the brand is famous for its running gear but its basketball division, on the cusp of being axed, is in desperate need of star power. With only $250,000 to spend on a few players, schlubby basketball scout Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) is the one tapped to find the court stars who can take Nike to the promised land, though most of the big guys have already signed elsewhere.

Sonny sees something magical in the third pick, a skinny kid out of North Carolina drafted by the Chicago Bulls, though Jordan – according to prickly agent David Falk (Chris Messina) – is set to be an Adidas man. Willing to risk his job and remembering what his co-worker Howard White (Chris Tucker) told him about the power of a Black mother, Sonny goes rogue and travels from Nike’s Oregon headquarters to Jordan’s home in Wilmington to meet with parents Deloris (Davis) and James (Davis’ real-life husband Julius Tennon).

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While Deloris suffers no fools, she doesn’t discount Sonny’s hard sell and ponders his perspective of the situation as the clock ticks down on Nike’s chances to ink this culture-changing phenom.

Ranked: Stream the 20 best basketball movies

Most sports fans or any sneakerheads who’ve bought a pair of Air Jordans in the past four decades know how the story ends, but Affleck and screenwriter Alex Convery are still able to ratchet up the right amount of tick-tock tension. The joy is in the journey, with dramatic scrambling within Nike as Knight weighs happy shareholders vs. being a shoe company maverick and Deloris maintaining her steely facade as the Jordans meet all the potential suitors. Even though we’re talking about corporate brands here, the competition between Converse, Adidas and Nike is tantamount to a Lakers vs. Celtics playoff game and Affleck really leans into it in crowd-pleasing fashion.

On screen, Affleck’s bare-footed honcho is one of several colorful supporting turns that lift “Air.” Jason Bateman co-stars as a snarky Nike marketing man with real stakes in Jordan’s potential signing, Matthew Maher is enjoyably eccentric as the shoe-designing mad scientist who hatches the legendary footwear, and Tucker brings a comedic side to the movie as White, who along with assistant Olympic coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans) are key figures in Jordan’s ultimate choice.

New movies this week: Watch Ben Affleck's 'Hypnotic,' stream Jennifer Lopez's 'The Mother'

Damon and Davis together are phenomenal: Sonny doesn’t take no for an answer when it comes to this once-in-a-lifetime player while Deloris is clear-eyed and honest about her boy’s future and how valuable he truly is. Interestingly, Affleck presents Jordan as a mostly passive participant, a character whose face you never see, instead focusing on the wheels turning around him. (Jordan's hoop skills do get featured in one sequence that both gives an important moment weight while also in a way taking away from it. Your mileage may vary depending on your MJ fandom.)

“Live by Night” aside, Affleck’s directorial record is pretty impressive and “Air” feels like his most inspired effort to date, an underdog story with the greatest basketball player of all time at its heart.

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Review: A different kind of underdog story in ‘Air’

This image released by Amazon Prime Video shows Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, left, and and Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan in a scene from “Air.” (Amazon Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Amazon Prime Video shows Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro in a scene from “Air.” (Ana Carballosa/Amazon Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Amazon Prime Video shows Ben Affleck as Phil Knight in a scene from “Air.” (Ana Carballosa/Amazon Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Amazon Prime Video shows Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan, left, and Julius Tennon as James Jordan in a scene from “Air.” (Ana Carballosa/Amazon Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Amazon Prime Video shows Viola Davis as Deloris Jordan in a scene from “Air.” (Ana Carballosa/Amazon Prime Video via AP)

This image released by Amazon Prime Video shows Jason Bateman as Rob Strasser in a scene from “Air.” (Ana Carballosa/Amazon Prime Video via AP)

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The new movie “ Air ” is technically about a shoe. There is nothing especially extraordinary about this shoe. As the Q-like Nike designer Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) explains, the last significant change to footwear was made some 600 years ago when the decision was made to differentiate the right and left feet. The Air Jordan is, at the end of the day, just another shoe.

No one coos about how comfortable it is. No one waxes poetic about its performance enhancing abilities or how many podiatrists recommend it for sporting purposes. No one even tries it on.

That’s because “Air,” directed by Ben Affleck from a smart script by Alex Convery, is not really about the shoe at all. Nor is it about Michael Jordan, who has exactly one line in the film and is mostly seen from behind and in silhouette. It is about the men – and they were all men – of Nike who defied the odds and signed the rookie despite being a very distant third to Adidas and Converse in the basketball sneaker game in 1984.

This is not a sports movie, however. If “Moneyball,” a spiritual cousin to “Air,” was baseball-adjacent, “Air” is about as far away from the game of basketball as one can get. The sport and romance of basketball in “Air” is almost completely beside the point, which is in some ways the most honest way for a couple of Gen-Xers to make a sincere movie about a corporate brand’s biggest success.

“Air” is more “Mad Men,” but without the glamour. In 1984, everything was brown and drab, except for the grape-colored sports car driven by Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck, in a comedic role about C-suite eccentricities and ineffectuality). Even the new stuff looked old. There are only so many ways cinematographer Robert Richardson can shoot a corporate office park and series of conversations between men in ill-fitting polos and khakis. But Affleck and his music supervisor do have fun with their conventional but not ineffective needle drops.

The center of “Air” is Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), a Nike exec with a basketball scout’s eye for rising talent. He is not, at least on the surface, a slam dunk movie hero. Sonny is out of shape, as the movie reminds us with cruel frequency, he’s middle aged, he doesn’t have a family and he seems to do all his grocery shopping at the gas station. All he has is this job, which isn’t going especially well. And his big idea to bet on Jordan, and Jordan alone, has everyone — Knight; Jordan’s hot tempered agent David Falk (Chris Messina); Nike execs Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and Howard White (Chris Tucker); college ball coach George Raveling (Marlon Wayans); and Jordan’s mom Deloris (Viola Davis) — essentially telling him he’s crazy.

One big issue with “Air” is that the dramatic stakes never really quite crystalize or spark excitement in the way that the best movies do when you go in knowing the ending. There are no life-or-death scares or thrilling plane escapes at the end for Affleck to fall back on for tension. Nike was not even an unsuccessful company on the brink of collapse, they just hadn’t cracked the basketball market to the satisfaction of their shareholders yet. It’s hard, as an audience member, to discern whether your own apathy is because you know the outcome or because the story hasn’t convinced you to care enough.

Still, this is movie that also has the potential to get better with time and rewatches. “Air” coasts quite well on its compelling, funny and self-aware script (which even allows room for an amusing disagreement about who exactly came up with the name Air Jordan) and charismatic movie stars. And Damon, who gets one show-stopping monologue, is the perfect actor to carry the film in his first time acting for his old pal . Here’s hoping that the longtime friends make this a habit.

“Air” pivots about halfway through when the Jordans finally enter the picture and, through Davis’ stoic performance, add a much-needed human element. It’s easy to forget that athletes being compensated justly for the value of their image is a relatively new phenomenon. One wonders why the movie couldn’t have mainly been about her and her savvy.

There is an admirably sly subversiveness to the whole endeavor in its refusal to glamourize the shoe, the company or the guys they’ve made a movie about. These are white-collar cubicle dwellers just trying to make it through the week and keep their jobs. I’m not even sure the movie buys into its subjects’ self-written and occasionally contradictory mythologies. Credit to the filmmakers that this is not a TED talk.

How can you be romantic about a billion-dollar shoe company?

“Air,” an Amazon Studios/MGM release in theaters now, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language throughout. Running time: 112 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPA Definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr .

Air: almost enough to make you care about a shoe

Ben Affleck directs himself and other big names (Matt Damon, Viola Davis) in this absorbing and well-acted tale of the titular Nike trainer

In Hollywood’s ongoing mission to present its customers with things they know they already like, here is an odd but logical new development. Call it the brand biopic: films that relive the creation of successful products such as the video game Tetris, the Blackberry smartphone, and even Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, the angry orange corn snack.

All three of these are due to arrive over the next few months, as is Ben Affleck’s Air: a dramatisation of the boardroom wrangling that led to the 1984 release of the Nike Air Jordan trainer, which is presented here as a cultural breakthrough roughly on a par with the dawn of Cubism.

Featuring a conspicuously highly qualified cast including Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman and Affleck himself, it is a consistently watchable, handsome and solidly built entertainment – or at least a two-hour footwear advertisement convincingly disguised as one. And it works on exactly the level it is supposed to, which is to say that a few days after seeing it I went out to buy some new gym shoes and was already holding a pair of Nikes at the till before I even realised I’d been got.

Damon stars as Sonny Vaccaro, Nike’s paunchy fortysomething in-house basketball guru. It’s his job to book sponsorship deals with athletes who would overwhelmingly rather be associated with cooler manufacturers like Converse and Adidas, and don’t want to be seen within miles of a firm whose core customer base is middle-class joggers. But after watching and rewatching game footage in the office VHS suite, he recognises something special in a then-21-year-old Chicago Bulls recruit who seems at an almost supernatural ease on the court.

Affleck’s Phil Knight, the CEO, is unconvinced that his company should spent its entire annual budget on pursuing this stripling, but Sonny talks him round, and sets off to persuade Jordan’s redoubtable mother Deloris (Davis) to bring her boy onside. Young Michael himself is only ever shown at a distance or from behind: a choice that creates as many problems as it solves.

The clunky, fuzzy textures of the 1980s business world are nicely captured, while the soundtrack seemingly contains every popular chart hit released within around three years of the depicted events. As comfort viewing for dads, it occasionally approaches the realm of self-parody: there is a sequence set to In a Big Country in which we watch Damon smoothly overtaking a fellow driver on the motorway, apparently just for the joy of it.

Alex Convery’s script frames the story half as a Moneyball-like cracking of the sports world’s cosmic code, half as a Jerry Maguire-style triumph against the corporate odds. Is Air as polished or distinctive as either of those films? Not nearly, no. But it’s absorbing and well-acted enough that at times you could almost forget you were being asked to emotionally invest in which company gets to slide its wares onto a rich young sportsman’s feet.

U cert, 112 min. In cinemas now

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24 Mar 2023

If it’s successful, Air might just prove to be the first in a wave of films about shoes. Can we expect a feature explaining how Hush Puppies got their name? A Cole Haan origin story, starring Cole Hauser? ‘Crocs: The Movie’? It’s easy to joke, but Ben Affleck ’s Nike thriller pulls off a pretty darn difficult task: making you care about how a pair of basketball shoes came to exist. Even if it doesn’t hit the heights of Affleck’s best directing work ( Argo , The Town ), it’s still gripping, deftly finding the human dramas pulsing throughout what is, on the surface, a pretty niche subject.

The cast-list juices up the proposition, not least its Affleck/ Matt Damon reunion — the second in recent years, after 2021’s The Last Duel . In that movie, Damon knelt before his old friend; in this one, their relationship is more fractious, and all the better for it. Affleck has cast himself in a zesty supporting role, as billionaire Nike co-founder Phil Knight, entertainingly playing him as an aphorism-spouting Buddhist who frets about his cherry-coloured sports car.

It's a crowd-pleaser, powered by kicky dialogue – but Air has a bit of a Michael Jordan problem.

Knight’s love of jogging is not shared by Damon’s exec Sonny Vaccaro, the movie’s main character, a doughy sharpshooter who does his best brainstorming while watching two TVs at the same time. Around them is a crackerjack ensemble: Jason Bateman as a sceptical exec, Chris Tucker (in his first film role for seven years) as a fast-talking marketing wonk, and especially Viola Davis as Michael Jordan’s mother Deloris, whom Vaccaro needs to woo if he’s going to fulfil his hoop dream and make the deal of a lifetime.

It's a crowd-pleaser, powered by kicky dialogue, tossed out at speed by its players. But Air has a bit of a Michael Jordan problem. Presumably in deference to the basketball legend, Affleck makes him an oddly invisible figure in the drama — Jordan (Damian Delano Young) gets just one word to say, and when he’s present, the film shoots and cuts around him (it’s unintentionally hilarious when, in one crucial boardroom scene, he hastily turns his head away to study something on a wall before you can catch a proper glimpse).

The by-product of this is that Jordan becomes a strangely inconsequential presence in a film that’s all about him; a man who leaves his mother to do his talking, and who seems to have little agency of his own. Deloris, on the other hand, emerges as a tower of strength and empathy, the Jordan of the movie that you’ll come away thinking about. Even if the role is a little one-note, Davis is superb: in basketball parlance, her performance is all swish.

The film as a whole isn’t quite so swishy, sometimes feeling generic (the “Look! We’re in the 1980s!” montage that opens Air could come from a hundred other films) and occasionally falling into generic sports-movie tropes. It’s a lot of fun, way more than a film about a large company striving to make even more money should be. But it could have paid a little more heed to #3 on Nike’s famous list of ten corporate principles: “Break the rules.”

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‘Megalopolis’ Review: Francis Ford Coppola’s Wild and Delirious Fever Dream Inspires New Hope for the Future of Movies

David ehrlich.

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After more than 40 years of idly fantasizing about the project (and more than 20 years of actively trying to finance it), Coppola is bringing “ Megalopolis ” to screens at a moment when his chosen medium is struggling to find a way forward, and the world around it seems teetering on the brink of collapse. Just as in 63 B.C., when an evil patrician named Catiline appealed to a coalition of malcontents in a bid to overthrow the Republic, we are choked by the grip of delusional aristocrats and vertically integrated conglomerates whose lust for power and profit is only matched by their lack of foresight. Even with the past as our guide, we are at imminent risk of allowing the now to destroy the forever.  Related Stories ‘The Place Between’ Teaser: Visual Artist Chris Peters Recreates Purgatory With Literal Found Footage Vintage 16mm Films Francis Ford Coppola’s Cannes Press Conference Gets Reflective: ‘When I Die, I Won’t Notice’

Coppola has always believed in America, but his faith is eroding by the second, and “Megalopolis” is nothing if not the boldest and most open-hearted of his many bids to stop time before it’s too late (an effort that has informed so much of his career, from “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to “Youth After Youth” and “Jack”). As ever, he recognizes the futility in the attempt, even if his characters are sometimes a bit slow on the uptake. 

With “Megalopolis,” he crams 85 years worth of artistic reverence and romantic love into a clunky, garish, and transcendently sincere manifesto about the role of an artist at the end of an empire. It doesn’t just speak to Coppola’s philosophy, it embodies it to its bones. To quote one of the sharper non-sequiturs from a script that’s swimming in them: “When we leap into the unknown, we prove that we are free.”

Like Cesar, it might be for the best if we take a step back. Let’s start with New Rome, which is pretty much just downtown Atlanta cosplaying as a modern-day Manhattan that’s been artificially saturated with a vanilla skyline and set-dressed to resemble a Joel Schumacher Batman movie (complete with the same faux-debauched energy, and a host of glaring digital flourishes that also locate “Megalopolis” somewhere in the vicinity of Vera Drew’s “The People’s Joker,” the only other movie so far this year that can match the go-for-broke visual exuberance on display here).

Cesar’s great hope for the future of this hodgepodge city is a new element he invented called Megalon, which glows yellow, does whatever is most convenient for the scene at hand, and may or may not have played a role in the tragic death of his wife. “Megalopolis” is of course dedicated to Coppola’s late wife Eleanor, who died after the completion of the film , but whose loving memory nevertheless casts a long shadow over this story about a self-involved iconoclast whose mind is always obsessively preoccupied with his work. 

The DA who prosecuted the city’s failed homicide case against Cesar is now the mayor of New Rome, and our hero’s rival in the bid to control the megalopolis’ levers of power; his name is Franklyn Cicero (natch), he’s played by a game and jowly Giancarlo Esposito, and his beautiful daughter Julia will soon become Cesar’s closest advisor and most intimate muse (credit to Nathalie Emmanuel, doing her best with a wooden character in a film that reduces all of its women to cartoons in the face of male genius). Cesar envisions a New Rome that “people can dream about,” while Cicero hopes to build “a fun casino” with more practical dividends. 

That sort of creatively unbound approach may not have resulted in a surplus of dramatically coherent scenes, but it undergirds the entire movie with a looseness that makes it almost impossible to look away. You never know when Grace VanderWaal might split into five identical clones of herself while singing an original pop anthem about her virginity, or when Laurence Fishburne — back for more of the fun he had with Coppola on the set of “Apocalypse Now” — might invoke some more wisdom via his voiceover narration, or when Aubrey Plaza’s gold-digging seductress/news anchor might shift her overt sexual attention to a different member of New Rome’s ruling class. Her character’s name is Wow Platinum, because every generation gets the “Southland Tales” it deserves. First she’s hot for Cesar, then for his gazillionaire banker uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), and finally for Crassus’ sociopathic court jester of a son, Clodio Pulcher (a palpably malevolent Shia LaBeouf). 

The story is sustained by the sheer force of Coppola’s enthusiasm for it, and it hardly seems to matter that each scene feeds into the next with the grace of a wave crashing into a jetty — not when it’s so exciting to see what might happen next, and stray moments of transcendent surprise can be found hiding in even the flattest stretches. Two people connected by an invisible rope as they run through a hallway. A fallen rose suspended in mid-air. A rain-slicked noir chase sequence melting into a vision of eternal devotion. 

So while it might be tempting to see this kooky, nepotistically cloistered, and unconscionably expensive magnum opus as the self-involved work of a fading artist who’s lost whatever was left of his ability to tell good ideas from bad, “Megalopolis” does everything in its power to remind the audience that we share in the outcome of its demented fever dream. Which isn’t to say that we’re obligated to make this particular movie a success, only that we’d do well to examine the source of whatever hostility it might reflexively produce within us. Why does change scare us so much that we’d sooner forfeit our freedom to imagine a better world than reckon with the possibilities such freedom allows? Quoth Marcus Aurelius again: “The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make of it.” 

“I will not let time have dominion over my thoughts,” Cesar repeats to himself as a compulsive mantra. “Artists can never lose their control of time,” Julia tells him. “Painters freeze it, poets sing of it, musicians rhythmatize it…,” she trails off. What do filmmakers do? They stop it to remind us that we can’t. With the profoundly moving final shot of “Megalopolis,” Coppola insists that’s all the more reason to fight for the future. 

“Megalopolis” premiered in Competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.

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iPad Air (2024) review: Of course this is the iPad to get

My heart longs for apple’s ipad pro, but my head (and wallet) know better..

The expensive and gorgeous iPad Pro M4 is a complicated device that’s hard to outright recommend — does it make sense to spend well over $1,000 for a tablet with the inherent limitations of iPadOS compared to a Mac or Windows PC? The iPad Air , however, is much easier to evaluate. Since its 2020 redesign , the Air has had nearly the same form factor as the Pro, with some corners cut to differentiate the two. But the Air is also a clear upgrade over the base iPad, appealing to someone like me who appreciates its excellent screen, superior chip, improved multitasking capabilities and a better accessories experience.

It’s pretty easy to sum up what’s new about the iPad Air this year. It has a faster M2 chip compared to the old M1, it works with a new Apple Pencil Pro, the front camera has moved to the landscape edge and it starts with 128GB of storage (double the prior model) at the same $599 price. These are all expected updates given that it’s been two years since the last iPad Air. But with the 2024 iPad Air, Apple is also offering an intriguing new option : the first 13-inch iPad that doesn’t carry the “pro” designation and associated costs. The 13-inch Air starts at $799, which is $500 less than a comparably-sized iPad Pro. (The model I tested with 512GB of storage and 5G costs $1,249.)

Apple iPad Air (13-inch, 2024)

The first large-screen ipad air is a winner.

The iPad Air remains Apple’s best overall tablet, offering a compelling blend of features while keeping a reasonable price. And the new 13-inch Air is a great option for someone who wants a big display without spending as much money.

• Apple’s first affordable large-screen iPad
• Powerful M2 chip
• More base storage than before
• Front camera is finally on the landscape edge
• Apple Pencil Pro offers some smart new features
• Uses old Magic Keyboard

Photos of Apple’s 13-inch iPad Air, released in 2024

Apple’s iPad Pro in its keyboard case on the left, with the iPad Air and its keyboard on the right.

Apple’s new iPad Pro on the left and iPad Air on the right

Apple iPad Air (2024)

Hardware updates.

I’ve never considered buying a 13-inch iPad Pro. Besides the high price, I also find such a large and heavy iPad difficult to use handheld. It’s great when in a keyboard dock, as the bigger screen is much more suitable for multitasking, but I also want my iPad to be easy to hold for casual tasks, playing games, watching movies and all the other basic stuff tablets are good for.

My current personal iPad is an 11-inch Pro from 2020, so I’m an obvious mark for the new iPad Air. And after testing the 13-inch Air, I’m thinking about jumping on the big tablet bandwagon for the first time. Part of my reasoning is that the 13-inch iPad Air weighs less than the previous-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro it is based on. Those tablets typically weighed in around 1.5 pounds, but the Air comes in at 1.36 pounds.

That doesn’t sound like a major difference, but it’s been just enough for me to feel more comfortable using the Air as a tablet rather than just docked in a keyboard case. It’s still a little more unwieldy than I’d like, and it’s still heavier and thicker than the new 13-inch iPad Pro. But, the iPad Air is $500 cheaper; at that price, I’m willing to accept a little trade-off.

The new 11-inch model is indistinguishable from the 10.9-inch one it replaces in dimensions, weight and screen size. Don’t let Apple fool you into thinking the screen is a whopping .1 inches bigger this year, because it’s not — the company is just rounding up. (The same goes for the 13-inch Air; it has the same 12.9-inch screen size and resolution as the old iPad Pro.)

The M2 chip is a big selling point for the iPad Air, but note that if you have the 2022 model with an M1, you won’t experience massive performance gains here. Geekbench 6 tests show that the M2’s GPU is about 30 percent faster than the M1, with lesser gains in single- and multi-core performance. But, compared to my 2020 iPad Pro with an A12Z processor, the M2 is more than twice as fast. So if you don’t have an iPad with an M-series chip, the new Air will be a major step forward.

That camera is basically the same as the one in the last iPad Air, but now that it’s on the landscape edge it’s much better for video calling when you’re using it with a keyboard. I’d actually consider taking work calls with the iPad now, something that wasn’t the case before.

I’m also very happy that the base iPad Air comes with 128GB of storage rather than the stingy 64GB it was stuck on last time. It’s far easier now to recommend people pick up the cheapest configuration. And you can also get up to 1TB of storage in the Air for the first time, if you need it.

Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil Pro

The Air is stuck with the old Magic Keyboard, which is heavier and thicker than the new model and lacks the helpful row of function keys. The Magic Keyboard remains crazy expensive — $299 for the 11-inch and $349 for the 13-inch — but it’s still my favorite keyboard for an iPad. Well, it’s my favorite after the updated version for the iPad Pro. It’s comfortable, quiet and responsive, particularly considering how thin it is, and I have no problem banging out stories on it for hours at a time.

If you’re a fan of the Apple Pencil, though, the good news is that the iPad Air supports the brand-new Pencil Pro . I cover it in more detail in my iPad Pro review, but it does everything the older second-generation Apple Pencil can while adding new features like haptic feedback, Find My support, a squeeze gesture for bringing up menus and the ability to roll the Pencil in your hand to change the width of a brush thanks to built-in gyroscopes. It costs $129, which is the same as the second-generation Pencil. The only bad news is that the old Pencil isn’t compatible with the iPad Air because of a redesigned charging and pairing system that accommodates the landscape front camera.

What hasn’t changed

That’s essentially everything new about the iPad Air this year. The display remains the same standard Apple LCD, which looks very good for everything I use an iPad for. It’s definitely not in the same league as the new tandem OLED screen in the iPad Pro, or even the mini-LED display that came before it. I definitely noticed the comparatively worse brightness and contrast in the Air’s screen when comparing it side-by-side with the Pro. But, the good news is that I don’t spend all of my life comparing screens, and the iPad Air’s is still a strong selling point for the tablet. It’s laminated to the front glass, unlike the screen on the basic iPad, and it’s more than bright enough for indoor use.

The only thing I wish it had was a higher frame rate. The iPad Pro’s “ProMotion” feature adjusts the frame rate from 10-120hz, while the Air maxes out at 60hz. Over time, I stop noticing that the UI feels comparatively jerky in animations and don’t think about it too much. But whenever I switch back to the iPad Pro, I quickly appreciate how much smoother and more fluid everything feels.

The back camera is identical to the one on the prior iPad Air, which is fine. It’ll take a decent snapshot in good lighting and you can shoot video in 4K at a variety of frame rates. But you can’t record in the ProRes format — Apple limits that to the iPad Pro. But that likely will not be an issue for anyone considering an iPad Air. Similarly, the iPad Air’s USB-C port doesn’t support faster Thunderbolt 4 speed, but in my testing it was fine for pulling in RAW photos from my camera. If your workflow is such that you’ll use that port a lot and benefit from faster speeds, I will shockingly recommend you check out the Pro.

I haven’t even had the iPad Air for a week, so I’ve yet to run our time-intensive battery test. But from the daily use I’ve put in, it typically meets Apple’s 10-hour rating for light tasks like internet browsing or watching videos. Doing more processor-intensive tasks will surely wear it out faster, and I’ve noticed battery life tends to dip a bit when I’m using the Magic Keyboard. But, as with most iPads, you won’t need to reach for the charger too often.

Jumping back and forth between the iPad Air and Pro has emphasized how great of a value the Air is. I can’t deny there are a number of niceties that all add up to make the iPad Pro experience better. Face ID is clearly superior to Touch ID, for example — I quickly got tired of reaching for the power button to unlock the Air. The iPad Pro’s screen is the definition of luxury, and the improved keyboard case provides a slightly better experience. It’s also lighter and easier to hold, with better speakers, too. And, of course, it has that new M4 chip.

These things are all important and useful, but after getting used to the Air again, I don’t miss them too much. The M2 is plenty powerful for my needs, the Apple Pencil Pro experience is identical, the old Magic Keyboard is still great to type on, the screen is bright and colorful and — perhaps most importantly — it’s $500 cheaper than a comparable iPad Pro.

For some, that extra cash might be well worth it. There are some things the Pro can do that the Air cannot, like shooting ProRes video or go into Apple’s Reference Mode for improved color accuracy and consistency against a bunch of color standards. And the M4 will save time on processor-intensive jobs like rendering video. And some people will simply want to get the best iPad they can, money be damned.

But for the rest of us, the iPad Air is still here, offering 80-ish percent of the iPad Pro experience for a lot less money. And for the first time, there is a large-screen iPad at a much more approachable price. My heart may want an iPad Pro, but my head (and wallet) agree that the iPad Air is a far more reasonable option.

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Apple 13-inch iPad Air 2024 review: Pro enough

A new larger size, faster m2 chip and support for the apple pencil pro make the 13-inch ipad air a good value.

Tom's Guide Verdict

The iPad Air 2024 delivers a larger 13-inch display, impressive M2 performance and long battery life for considerably less money than an iPad Pro. You also get Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard support and strong audio. But I wouldn’t replace my laptop with this tablet.

Strong M2 performance

Long battery life

Supports Apple Pencil Pro and Magic Keyboard

Robust audio quality

No Thunderbolt support

iPadOS still not good enough to replace laptop

Why you can trust Tom's Guide Our writers and editors spend hours analyzing and reviewing products, services, and apps to help find what's best for you. Find out more about how we test, analyze, and rate.

• Cheat Sheet
• What I Like
• What I Don’t Like

The iPad Air now has a bigger brother — good timing, as Apple has decided to go even more premium on the iPad Pro 2024 . The new 13-inch iPad Air has everything the 11-inch Air has, including a more powerful M2 chip, support for the new Apple Pencil Pro and a repositioned front camera for video calls. But you get much more display real estate for apps, games and more.

Starting at $799, the 13-inch iPad Air is $500 less than the 13-inch iPad Pro, but it doesn’t feel like an also-ran based on my testing. Yes, you miss out on the glorious OLED display on the Pro, the thinner design and even more powerful M4 chip. But the new Air delivers strong performance and battery life, and it works with the previous Magic Keyboard for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, so this tablet can double as a laptop. 

I personally would not replace my MacBook with this computer for reasons I’ll explain in my iPad Air 2024 review, but for those looking for a supersized slate without the Pro sticker shock, it’s one of the best tablets around and well worth the money.

iPad Air M2: Cheat Sheet

What is it? An iPad with Apple’s M2 chip and a larger 13-inch display

Who is it for? People looking for iPad Pro-like performance and features for less money

What does it cost? $799 for just the tablet, $349 for the Magic Keyboard and $129 for Apple Pencil Pro. $1,277 total. 

What do I like? The snappy M2 performance for machine learning tasks and gaming, over 11 hours of battery life, the landscape front camera for video calls and booming speakers . 

What do I not like? iPadOS + Magic Keyboard is not quite good enough to replace my laptop, no Thunderbolt support and no Face ID

iPad Air M2: Specs

Ipad air m2: what i like, a bigger canvas.

The iPad Air 13-inch is a first for Apple — bringing a large-screen option with 30% more room to the mid-range, and not limiting it just to the iPad Pro. This is the model to get if you want to run two apps side by side or a more immersive video or gaming experience, and it’s certainly the choice if you want your iPad to double as a laptop.

So how is that canvas exactly? The new iPad Air’s display is a LED IPS panel, which means it’s not as bright or colorful as the OLED screen on the Galaxy Tab S9 or new iPad Pro 2024, and it’s also not as vivid as the miniLED equipped iPad Pro 2022 . You also get only a 90Hz refresh rate. Nevertheless, this is a pretty solid display for the price.

When watching the trailer for Deadpool and Wolverine, the yellow in Hugh Jackman’s suit popped, and I could easily make out the veins in his biceps. I could also make out nearly every crevice in Deadpool’s face without the mask. I also appreciated have the extra room on the 13-inch screen when surfing the web and checking emails; I just wish the screen got a bit brighter outdoors, as it can look a bit dim in direct sunlight.

Based on our lab testing, the iPad Air 2024’s screen is brighter than the previous model but it has the same color performance and accuracy. The OLED-equipped Galaxy Tab S9 gets considerably brighter and can deliver much punchier hues. The Tab S9 also benefits from a smoother 120Hz refresh rate while the iPad Air is stuck at 60Hz.

Serious M2 performance

The iPad Air’s M2 chip promises a sizable speed boost with a 15% faster CPU, 25% faster graphics performance and 40% faster Neural Engine. I felt this power while playing Diablo Immortal — even with several evil spiders on screen, the action felt smooth on the iPad Air 2024 as I launched Lightning Nova and Scorch attacks. The graphics looked somewhat blurry at first but turning on image sharpening helped.

I was also impressed with how well the Air made quick work of enhancing images in Photomator. The machine learning–powered Super Resolution option sharpened a zoomed-in photo of a building in less than 10 seconds, as well as a close-up of a peony flower. It’s especially cool that you can see the difference before and after using a slider on screen.

In our lab testing, the iPad Air 2024 blew away the Galaxy Tab S9 on various benchmarks, though to be fair the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip is now a generation behind the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 found in the latest flagship phones. Still, the iPad Air was nearly twice as fast in the dual-core portion of the Geekbench test, and twice as fast when transcoding 4K video to 1080p in Adobe Premiere rush.

To test the AI performance of the M2 chip we used Geekbench ML, which measures the power of NPUs. The iPad Air 2024 is in its own league, though the performance gap could be artificially higher as we ran a newer version of the test on the new iPad Air.

Apple Pencil Pro 2 is a winner

The iPad Air 2024 supports the new Apple Pencil Pro ($129), which offers a couple of key advantages for those who like to use a digital pen for sketching, taking notes, making fine edits to photos and more.

My favorite feature is squeeze, which brings up a quick menu whenever you squeeze the Apple Pencil Pro while floating just above the screen. For example, in the Notes app you’ll see a pop-up toolbar that includes the undo button, eraser, marker, pen and color picker. It’s nice to have these options always at the ready.

Another perk is that you’ll feel haptic feedback when you squeeze the Apple Pencil Pro, which is a nice touch, or when a smart shape snaps into place. Apple has already let third-party developers make their own tool palettes for their apps (such as Procreate), and in many cases you can customize the squeeze menu.

Last but not least, barrel roll is a clever new feature that changes the orientation of your pen stroke or brush tool based on how you’re rotating the barrel of the Apple Pencil Pro. I appreciated being able to preview a broader stroke as I angled the device when trying to paint a blue sky.

Longer battery life, stronger speakers

Despite the added oomph the M2 chip provides, the iPad Air 2024 offers excellent battery life. After a busy day of surfing the web, writing this review in Google Docs, playing games and watching Netflix, it was down to 50% after several hours. And our lab test results back up this strong real-world endurance. 

On the Tom’s Guide battery test, which involves surfing the web over 5G at 150 nits of screen brightness, the new iPad Air 2024 lasted an excellent 11 hours and 30 minutes. That’s an hour and a half longer than the previous iPad Air, which could be due to the larger battery inside this bigger 13-inch model and the more efficient M2 chip. The iPad Air M2 also outlasted the Galaxy Tab S9 by over 2 hours.

If you’re on the fence between the 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air, you get more than just a bigger screen. Apple also promises double the bass from the landscape stereo speakers. When playing “Could Have Been Me” from The Struts on Spotify through the new iPad Air, the screeching vocals soared but the snappy percussion still punched through. 

I also enjoyed watching and listening to Palm Royale on Apple TV. Kristen Wiig’s southern accent sounded crystal clear over the groovy late ‘60s soundtrack.

Better camera for video calls

Apple did this already with the iPad 10th gen, so it only makes sense to do the same with the new iPad Air. The front 12MP camera is now on the wider edge, which makes this device easier to use for video calls when docked in the Magic Keyboard.

I did a Google Meet call with my colleague Tony Polanco and he said that I came through clear and the colors were accurate. I also took a selfie with the front camera and I’d say my blue shirt looked vibrant but my face was a bit fuzzy. It’s certainly not one of the best webcams , but it does the job for video calls.

The rear 12MP wide back camera is serviceable. It snapped a fairly crisp photo of my dog indoors, capturing her fur and whiskers well. And it captured a well exposed pic of white, magenta and baby pink peonies in a vase. 

iPad Air M2: What I don’t like

Listen — it’s not hard to use the Touch ID button on the iPad Air. It’s on the left side in landscape mode and up top in portrait mode. But it just feels chintzy not to put Face ID on an iPad when the technology has been around since the iPhone X in 2017.

The good news is that you can register multiple fingers and when logging in press the power button and keep your hand resting on it to log in.

The rest of the iPad Air’s design is good though. It’s a fairly light aluminum slate at 1.36 pounds and just 0.24 inches thin. Plus it comes in fun colors like blue and purple in addition to the more subdued Starlight (our unit) and Space Gray.

Awkward laptop replacement

This is my biggest problem with the iPad Air. It’s not quite versatile enough to replace my laptop even though it costs as much as one with the accessories. If you spring for the Magic Keyboard with the 13-inch iPad Air you’re looking at a minimum of $1,148. And that’s before you throw in the Apple Pencil Pro, which would bring the price to $1,277.

The Magic Keyboard itself offers pretty good tactile feedback, and I like that you can swivel the display away from the base for the optimal viewing angle. But typing with this tablet + keyboard combo on your lap feels unbalanced and shaky compared to a sturdier MacBook Air M3 (from $1,099). You also don’t get a function row on the keyboard, which the new iPad Pro 2024 offers with its Magic Keyboard.

Another issue is iPadOS itself. Apple has tried to make multitasking more intuitive with its Stage Manager feature, which puts your main app front and center and puts other recent apps off to the left side in a peek-a-boo thumbnail view. And you can run two apps side by side in Split View. But frankly, none of this holds a candle to multitasking on macOS.

I found it extremely difficult to get my regular work done on the iPad Air. Selecting from drop-down menus in Google Sheets was a chore, having to jump down to the bottom of the screen instead of within the row itself. And as someone who lives in Chrome I don’t like being forced to use dedicated apps for Gmail , Sheets and Docs instead of jumping from tab to tab in a browser.

Even the cursor in iPadOS is needlessly different. How is a circle better than an arrow? At least the touchpad gestures work well, such as swiping up with two fingers to return to the home screen. But why isn’t iPadOS smart enough to know that when I type something while on the home screen that I’m searching for an app? You need to swipe down first to launch Spotlight.

No Thunderbolt port

I should have looked at the specs first, but I was displeased to see an error message when I tried to plug the iPad Air into my CalDigit docking station at home. I wanted to be able to instantly connect the slate to my 34-inch LG monitor and other peripherals. No dice.

Alas, only the iPad Pro supports Thunderbolt, which seems lame to me. This tablet is certainly powerful enough with its M2 chip to easily connect to Thunderbolt displays and docks, but it’s a Pro-only feature.

Overall, the 13-inch iPad Air is a winner. You get Pro-like M2 performance and long battery life for a reasonable price. The display is roomy enough to get real work done on the go, and I like how smooth and responsive the Apple Pencil Pro feels.

However, I wouldn’t replace my laptop with the iPad Air. macOS is still better than iPadOS for multitasking, and the Magic Keyboard isn’t as sturdy as a MacBook — especially in your lap. I also wish the iPad Air supported Face ID and Thunderbolt.

The bottom line is that the iPad Air 2024 is one of the best tablets around. If it were my money I’d be tempted to spring for the iPad Pro 2024 for its brighter and more colorful OLED display, thinner design and more future-proof M4 chip. But the 13-inch Air is essentially Pro enough.

More from Tom's Guide

• Apple unveils M4 chip for iPad Pro — here’s what it can do
• iPad Air 2024 vs iPad Air 2022: Here’s everything that’s new
• Where to buy the new M2 iPad Air — how to get yours

Mark Spoonauer is the global editor in chief of Tom's Guide and has covered technology for over 20 years. In addition to overseeing the direction of Tom's Guide, Mark specializes in covering all things mobile, having reviewed dozens of smartphones and other gadgets. He has spoken at key industry events and appears regularly on TV to discuss the latest trends, including Cheddar , Fox Business and other outlets. Mark was previously editor in chief of Laptop Mag, and his work has appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Inc. Follow him on Twitter at @mspoonauer.

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Animal Well review

A sprawling puzzle metroidvania with a bottomless well of mystery., our verdict.

A sleep-destroying puzzle metroidvania of baffling depth, Animal Well may go down in history as one of the genre's best.

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At first Animal Well presents itself as a quiet, ruminative metroidvania. A simple time-worn videogame blob wanders a psychedelic subterranean labyrinth towards some obscure purpose, solving puzzles with a growing collection of tools. My cherished blob is neither armed nor dangerous, because while animals populate this murky realm—cats, dogs, crows, kangaroos, worms, stingrays—few are hungry for blobs. Most are content just to sit and watch, often in proximity to the many bizarre statues built in their honour. Built by who or by what? I've got no idea. I'm so far down the food chain most creatures don't even consider me food.

What is it? A free-roaming puzzle game with a bottomless well of secrets. Expect to pay: TBC Developer: Billy Basso Publisher: Bigmode Reviewed on: RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM Multiplayer? No Steam Deck: Verified Link: Official site

But in the rare cases animals do take issue with my presence the noise is terrifying. Shrieks pierce through the reverberant gloom with an exaggeration matched only by the oversized animals themselves, whose limbs don't perambulate so much as they ooze across the screen. The whole world seems to wobble when shit hits the fan; loud drones breach the quiet. These encounters aren't usually difficult per se, but they are unutterably stressful, cutting through the tomblike tranquillity with abrupt violence. There are never two animal species on screen at once, because all have staked their territory.

Animal Well is one of the most atmospheric metroidvanias I've played, and there's a lot of strong competition. The subtle ambient synth score lends a tense ambiguity to its crypt-like passages, and the sound design cloaks everything in an uneasy subaquatic quiet. The air is full of distant sounds of mysterious provenance. Is that a meowing kitten? Is that a shrieking human child? The art style is a gentle mix of muted neon pixels with cavernous blacks, scanlined to dreamy effect. Rare is the room without some unique hieroglyph or statue. This is a game world dabbed by an ultra-meticulous hand. When a room appears featureless, my suspicions are put on high alert. 

There is no dialogue and direction is minimal. I spent about five hours roaming this world before I got a sense of what I was meant to do but I always felt like I was getting somewhere. First I found a bubble wand, which makes it easier for my blob to reach higher platforms. Then I found a frisbee for flicking out-of-reach switches and distracting curious dogs, though I later discovered that with careful timing I can ride this frisbee over dangerous chasms too. There's also a slinky, a yoyo and—most mysteriously—a panpipe, which can play eight notes, though I only ever needed to honk it carelessly as a means of distraction or attraction. All these and more can be used for either traversal, puzzle solving or both, in ways ranging from obvious through to surprising. Best of all, I often wondered whether I was accidentally sequence-breaking this game. 

Creature feature

For a long time Animal Well feels more forgiving compared to most of its indie contemporaries. There's no conventional combat, meaning no repeated laborious attempts at bosses. When it comes to rare prickly encounters with oversize wildlife it's usually wise to run, or else figure out what's angering them and put a stop to that. The map sprawls in typical metroidvania fashion but once the objective sank in—itself of extremely vague purpose—I didn't get as lost as I did in Hollow Knight (but more on this later). 

The puzzles can be taxing, but they always clicked just on the threshold of tedium. Sometimes they involve setting Rube Goldberg-style systems into motion, or coaxing friendly animals into doing my bidding, or discovering new ways to use the items at my disposal. Sometimes the puzzles are single-screen problems, while at other times they span whole regions. There's also some tricky platforming, which is at its best when requiring quick and smart use of blobbo's tools with pixel precision. If I'm really clever, I can find hidden eggs spread throughout the map, all with unique names (I found one called Egg as a Service). After about fifteen unrushed hours I watched the credits roll, surprised by how breezy—almost easy—Animal Well was. If that had been the end, it would have been a memorable metroidvania for the pile.

But it is not the end. The credits rolling in Animal Well just marks the end of one game and the beginning of another. After moseying about the world for a few more hours post-credits, I was ready to close the game and start this review, until I found a certain-shaped object that could fit in a certain-shaped hole, which led me into a new region hiding a new tool that, no exaggeration, changed everything. In Elden Ring-style sleight of hand, the UI had suggested to me that there were no further tools to be discovered. But suddenly the map, which had grown stale for me, became riddled with new opportunities. Every previous deadend needed to be revisited. Animal Well morphed from a fun-verging-brilliant indie metroidvania into something that now keeps me awake at night. I'm not ready to move on, and I won't, but I'm going to need a hivemind's help to unpick its deepest secrets. 

And that's not to mention all the clear evidence of conundrums I haven't really begun to scratch the surface of. What's with those monkeys throwing peanuts at me in that one particular room? Why is there a giant clock at the foot of the well? What's with the chrome-hued rotating donut? What are those directional hints that appear in certain hard-to-reach areas? My panpipe can play eight notes: which among this well's inhabitants wants to hear a particular melody? (And are those directional hints melodies? If so, who wants to hear them?) I've found a giraffe statue, so where's the giraffe? Nestled within a stylish and moody metroidvania is an even bigger metroidvania, kinda like a reverse matryoshka doll. For genre enthusiasts, this might make more sense: it starts as critical path Fez, and then morphs into La-Mulana.

Still, it was when the game "ended" and I needed to take a more exacting approach to exploration when Animal Well's only glaring imperfection came to the fore. The map is woeful, especially if you sit more than a metre away from your screen (I recommend turning scanlines off when viewing the map, because it's easy to mistake the lines for unexplored gaps in walls). Some areas are connected via chutes—basically a fast travel system—but these chutes are marked on the map with a single white pixel. This didn't matter so much during the main game, when movement around the world can be achieved by gut instinct, but when the aim shifts to discovering the hidden nooks and crannies left behind, the map proves frustrating. There are a range of stamps that can be applied to the map as reminders, but these have the opposite problem of being too large. A metroidvania with an easily parseable map is a true rarity, yes, but few metroidvania maps are as intestinal as this one. Still, you should accept the existence of a free-range drawing pen for the map as evidence that you'll probably need it.

Animal Well is a puzzle game designed to keep players busy for up to a decade . “Finishing" it may suffice for the majority of players, but it'll likely remain an ongoing mystery for its (at this point theoretical) online community, just like Fez did over a decade ago. I can't see why it won't attract a healthy community of sleuths and spectators considering the intrigue of its pre-release ARGs , the fact that the publisher Bigmode is a videogamedunkey concern , and not insignificantly, that the game feels brilliant and more-ish in the hands. 

It's rare for a game that hints towards fathomless depths to so continually reward curious prodding—especially when that game is under 50 megabytes!—but Animal Well, like Fez, Spelunky and Hollow Knight before it, feels like it could be a concern for years to come. Whether its deepest mysteries pay off or not is a matter for the future, but right now, this is the most engrossing exploration platformer I've played in years. 

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day. 

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• MacBook Air 15 (2024)

Apple MacBook Air 15 (2024) Laptop Review

The Apple MacBook Air 15 (2024) is a premium ultraportable laptop. It replaces the M2 Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023) . This new model sports an M3 SoC with eight CPU cores and ten GPU cores, which brings a few new features, like hardware-accelerated ray tracing, Dynamic Caching, and an AV1 decoder engine. RAM and storage max out at 24GB and 2TB, respectively. Other changes include support for two external displays (with laptop closed), Wi-Fi 6E, and a more smudge-resistant coating on the Midnight model. It has a 60Hz 2880 x 1864 Retina display, a 1080p webcam, and a 67Wh battery. Its port selection comprises two USB-C/Thunderbolt 3s, a MagSafe charging port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. It's available in four colors: Space Gray, Silver, Starlight, and Midnight.

See our unit's specifications and the available configuration options in the Differences Between Variants section.

Our Verdict

The Apple MacBook Air M3 is excellent for school use. It feels incredibly well-built, and thanks to its compact design, it's easy to carry around. Overall, it provides a great user experience with a sharp, bright display, a spacious keyboard, and a large, haptic touchpad. Its M3 SoC can handle general productivity tasks like text processing, web browsing, and video playback. You can perform more demanding tasks like video editing, programming, and 3D graphics, but you might not get the smoothest experience if the material is highly complex. Battery life is amazing at around 12 to 13 hours of light use. Unfortunately, it only has two USB-C ports, and while it can output to two external displays—an upgrade over its M2 predecessor—it can only do so with the laptop closed.

• Well built and easy to carry around.
• Sharp, bright display.
• Comfortable keyboard, gigantic touchpad.
• All-day battery life.
• M3 SoC can handle some demanding tasks.
• Limited port selection.
• Some thermal throttling under load.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 is sub-par for gaming. Although its M3 SoC can handle some older and highly optimized titles, it'll struggle to maintain playable frame rates in graphically demanding games. Also, most games must run through Rosetta 2 since they lack optimization for Apple silicon, so the performance can vary greatly depending on the game. It has a 60Hz display with a slow response time, resulting in a blurry image with visible ghosting in fast-moving scenes, and it doesn't support variable refresh rate to reduce screen tearing. On the upside, it doesn't get hot under load, and there's no fan noise since it's a fanless device.

• Few games optimized for Apple silicon.
• 60Hz display with slow response time and no VRR.
• Soldered RAM and storage drive.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 is great for media consumption. It's easy to carry around, and its battery lasts around 12 hours of video playback, giving you plenty of time to get through multiple full-length movies and TV show episodes. The display looks sharp, bright, and color-accurate; however, it isn't the best for dark room viewing, as its low contrast makes blacks look gray. The speakers are among the best you can get on the market; they get very loud, producing a full and well-balanced sound with a good amount of bass.

• Loud speakers with a full, well-balanced sound.
• Superb factory calibration.
• Blacks look gray in dim settings.
• No touch input.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 is very good for use as a workstation. Its M3 SoC can handle some demanding workloads, like video editing and programming; however, you might experience some slowdowns and stutters if the material is highly complex (particularly GPU-intensive workloads), and completion times will be slower than most workstations with an active cooling system. Also, you can only get up to 24GB of soldered RAM, which might not be enough for some people. Color correction work is possible, as the display has full DCI P3 coverage and exceptional factory calibration. The keyboard gets quite toasty under load and can cause some discomfort, but thankfully, there's no fan noise since it's a fanless device. Unfortunately, it only has two USB-C ports and can only support two external displays (with the lid closed).

• Display has full DCI P3 coverage.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 is great for business use. It's very portable for a 15-inch model, and its battery lasts comfortably through a full workday of light use. Its M3 SoC can handle most productivity tasks, like text formatting, spreadsheets, and presentations, and you can even do some light photo and video editing. The display looks sharp and bright, the keyboard is comfortable to type on, and the touchpad is large and responsive. Its 1080p webcam is excellent, so your colleagues and clients can see and hear you clearly on video calls. The main downside is that it only has two USB-C ports. It can output to two external displays, which is an improvement over its M2 predecessor, but it can only do so with the laptop closed.

• 8.1 Multimedia
• 8.1 Workstation
• 8.1 Business
• Updated May 14, 2024: Review published.
• Updated May 06, 2024: Early access published.
• Updated Apr 24, 2024: Our testers have started testing this product.
• Updated Apr 09, 2024: The product has arrived in our lab, and our testers will start evaluating it soon.
• Updated Apr 02, 2024: We've purchased the product and are waiting for it to arrive in our lab.

Differences Between Sizes And Variants

We tested the Apple MacBook Air 15 with an M3 SoC (10 GPU cores), 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The RAM, storage, and color are configurable; see the available options in the table below.

See our unit's label here .

Compared To Other Laptops

The M3 Apple MacBook Air 15 is one of the best ultraportable laptops on the market. Its build quality, as well as the quality of its speakers, touchpad, and webcam, are industry-leading. Its battery life is also among the best in its class. However, its port selection is very limited. Additionally, while its Retina display is among the brightest, it's starting to fall behind the competitors, as many Windows laptop manufacturers are offering displays with a higher refresh rate and a wider color gamut.

See our recommendations for the best lightweight laptops , the best travel laptops , and the best laptops for college .

The Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023) is much better than the Apple MacBook Air 15 (2024) for most uses. The MacBook Pro is a much more powerful device designed for demanding workloads like content creation, while the MacBook Air is an ultraportable designed for general productivity tasks. While both devices sport a nice display, the MacBook Pro's is much more advanced, as it has a Mini LED backlight, allowing for local dimming, and it gets significantly brighter, up to 1600 cd/m² in HDR. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate (60Hz on the MacBook Air), improving motion smoothness and system responsiveness. Other improved features on the MacBook Pro include a wider port selection with better multi-display support, better-sounding, up-firing speakers, and a better active cooling system, allowing for better performance in heavy, sustained workloads.

The Apple MacBook Air 15 (2024) is a newer version of the Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023) . The 2024 M3 model’s outer design is identical to its M2 predecessor from 2023, as it’s mainly an internal upgrade. The newer model has a slightly faster M3 SoC, Wi-Fi 6E (up from Wi-Fi 6), and support for two external displays (with the laptop closed. Apple’s M3 SoC brings a few new features, including hardware-accelerated ray tracing, Dynamic Caching (helps with graphical performance), and an AV1 decoding engine (makes playback of AV1-encoded videos more efficient, resulting in longer battery life). The Midnight model also has a new coating that’s more fingerprint- and smudge-resistant.

The Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 2023) is better than the Apple MacBook Air 15 (2024) for most use. While they share a lot of similarities design-wise, the MacBook Pro is a device designed for professionals like content creators and other demanding workloads like 3D graphics and simulations, while the MacBook Air is mainly for general productivity tasks. The MacBook Pro has a few improved features, like a brighter 120Hz Mini LED display, better-sounding up-firing speakers, and a wider port selection with better multi-display support. It’s available with M3 Pro/Max SoCs, which perform better than the MacBook Air 15’s base M3 chip, especially on the graphics side. You can get the MacBook Pro with a base M3 SoC; it’s the same chip as the one in the MacBook Air 15, but because the MacBook Pro has an active cooling system, it’ll still outperform the MacBook Air in heavy, sustained workloads.

The Apple MacBook Air 15 (2024) is a larger version of the Apple MacBook Air 13 (2024) . These two laptops are very similar overall, so the buying decision largely comes down to size preference. The 15-inch gives you more screen space for multitasking, and you also get more space on the keyboard deck to rest your palms when typing. It also has better speakers than its smaller sibling; they sound fuller and richer, with more bass. Configuration-wise, although both are available with an M3 SoC, know that the base 13-inch model has an 8-core GPU (upgradeable to 10 cores), while the base 15-inch model only has a 10-core GPU option. The performance difference between the 8- and 10-core GPU is noticeable in some workloads but not significant. If your workload requires good sustained performance, it's best to go with the 15-inch, as it doesn't throttle as much.

Test Results

The Apple MacBook Air M3 is available in four colors: Space Gray, Silver, Midnight, and Starlight. See the bottom of the laptop here .

The Apple MacBook Air M3's build quality is outstanding. It has a full-aluminum chassis that feels solid and hefty. The display doesn't twist when manipulating it, and the lid and keyboard deck have little to no flex. The finish is fairly scratch-and-smudge-resistant; you'll get more fingerprints on the Midnight model, though not as much as the M2 MacBook Air, thanks to a new coating. The feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom of the laptop.

It's worth noting that many MacBook users have commented on how quickly the keycaps pick up smudges and develop a permanent 'shine' (often seen on keyboards with cheap ABS keycaps), which is disappointing for such a premium laptop, as it makes it look dirty and used. This isn't a grease build-up, and regular cleaning doesn't help much in preventing it. There are third-party solutions to protect the keycaps, like keyboard covers and stickers, but they may alter the typing experience.

The hinge is outstanding. It feels smooth when opening and closing the laptop, and it has just enough resistance to keep the screen in place without feeling overly stiff, so it's easy to open with one hand and adjust to your preferred position. The screen only wobbles a little bit when typing heavily.

The Apple MacBook Air M3's serviceability is bad. To access the internals, you need to remove four P5 screws and unclip the bottom panel. Some of the clips are hard to undo and require care, as the bottom panel can bend. Unfortunately, the only replaceable part is the battery since everything else is soldered onto the motherboard.

• 35W dual USB-C power adapter
• USB-C to MagSafe charging cable (color-matched)
• Documentation
• Apple stickers

Note: When purchasing through Apple, you can choose between 35W dual USB-C or a 70W single USB-C charger.

The 15-inch Apple MacBook Air M3's display looks exactly like the 13-inch in terms of sharpness, as they have the same pixel density. The increase from 13.6-inch to 15.3-inch isn't huge; it makes split-screen multitasking a little more comfortable, as side-by-side windows can feel cramped on the 13.6-inch display. See the comparison (in the 'more space' scaling) here . You can hide the notch if it bothers you, but you'll lose some screen space and have a thicker bezel at the top.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 is only available with a 60Hz display. Its slow response time causes noticeable ghosting, which isn't ideal for viewing fast-moving content or gaming.

The display's contrast ratio is good and within the typical range of most IPS panels. However, it's relatively low compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings.

The display is bright enough for use in most settings, even outdoors in broad daylight. However, you may have trouble seeing some content in direct sunlight, especially with dark-colored content. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for dark room viewing as it causes less eye strain.

The display's reflection handling is outstanding. Its glossy finish does a good job of reducing the intensity of direct, mirror-like reflections and indirect reflections from bright ambient lighting. You can still see some reflections when viewing bright-color content with the screen at max brightness, but they aren't overly distracting.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out fairly quickly when moving to the side. The picture quality is still good enough to share text documents and other casual content with someone else, but it isn't ideal for work that requires perfect accuracy.

The vertical viewing angle is okay. Again, the image looks dimmer and more washed out from above or below. You need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image.

The Apple MacBook Air M3's out-of-the-box display accuracy is superb. Most color and white balance inaccuracies are extremely minor and hard to spot. The color temperature is slightly cooler than the standard 6500K target, giving the image a slight, near-imperceptible blueish tint. The gamma follows the sRGB curve almost perfectly except in very dark and bright scenes, which are a little too dark.

The display's color gamut is outstanding. It has full sRGB and near-full DCI P3 coverage, the color spaces used in most SDR and HDR content, respectively. Its Adobe RGB coverage is excellent but not enough for professional print photography as it's missing the saturated greens that define Adobe RGB.

The backlight technically flickers, but the flickering isn't noticeable to most people as the frequency is very high.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 has a great keyboard. It's the same keyboard as its predecessor, the Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023) . Its layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. The keycaps feel smooth and high-quality, but as mentioned in the Build Quality section, they pick up oil and quickly develop a permanent shine with regular use. The keys are stable and tactile; however, they have a very short travel, and combined with the keyboard deck's stiffness, it can feel like typing on a hard surface, resulting in fatigue. Typing noise is relatively low and isn't bothersome in quiet environments. As for the backlighting, you can adjust the brightness manually through the settings or let the system adjust it automatically based on the amount of ambient lighting.

The Apple MacBook Air M3's touchpad is outstanding. It's large (roughly 33% bigger than the Apple MacBook Air 13 (2024) 's touchpad), smooth, and responsive to all movements and gestures. Like most recent MacBooks, it uses haptic feedback to simulate the clicks instead of physical buttons, allowing you to click anywhere. The haptic engine provides great tactile feedback and is relatively quiet.

The speakers get very loud with minimal compression artifacts at higher volume levels. They sound clear, full, and natural, with a good amount of bass. Although the frequency response chart looks quite different from the M2 Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023) , both laptops sound nearly identical in person. The only perceivable difference is that this newer model sounds more spacious, and vocals aren't as forward as on the M2.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 has an excellent webcam. The image looks detailed, with true-to-life colors and proper exposure. Voices sound loud and clear over the microphone with little to no background noise.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 has the same port selection as its predecessor, the Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023) . Both USB-Cs support USB 4/Thunderbolt 3 data transfer speed (up to 40Gbps), USB 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10Gbps), DisplayPort, and charging. The only change in the new M3 model is its support for an additional external display (2 total); however, this only works with the laptop closed. This means you can use the built-in display alongside an external monitor with a max resolution of 6k @ 60Hz or two external displays, one with a max resolution of 6k @ 60Hz and the second with a max resolution of 5k @ 60Hz.

We can't confirm which wireless adapter the Apple MacBook Air M3 uses. Wi-Fi 6E gives access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The Apple MacBook Air 15 2024 is only available with an M3 SoC. This chip is identical to its M2 predecessor in core composition, meaning it has four performance and four efficiency cores. The M3 chip brings slightly better performance, as well as new features like an AV1 decoding engine (which makes playback of AV1-encoded video more efficient, resulting in longer battery life) and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The M3 SoC is mainly designed for general productivity tasks like web browsing, text processing, video playback, spreadsheets, and presentations. It can handle more intensive tasks like programming and A.I. development, but due to this laptop's fanless design, it'll throttle under load, so you aren't getting the full performance in heavy, sustained workloads. Video editing is possible, thanks to the dedicated video decode/encode engines, but again, you might not get the smoothest experience if the material is overly complex, and video rendering times will be noticeably longer than on a laptop with active cooling, like the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (M3, 2023) .

Unlike the Apple MacBook Air 13 (2024) , this 15-inch model is only available with a 10-core GPU M3 SoC, giving you slightly better performance than the base M3 SoC with eight GPU cores on the 13-inch model. This integrated GPU is mainly designed for general productivity tasks; however, it's fast enough to handle some gaming at 1080p if it's an older game like World of Warcraft Classic or a well-optimized title like the Resident Evil 2 remake. Games from Apple Arcade will also run well. That said, Macs are still less ideal for gaming than Windows devices, as there are far fewer games that run on macOS, and most of them must run through Rosetta 2 (due to the lack of optimization for Apple silicon), which can cause some performance loss or instability.

This laptop can be configured with 8GB, 16GB, or 24GB of memory. The RAM isn't user-replaceable.

You can configure the Apple MacBook Air M3 with 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, or 2TB of storage. Unlike its M2 predecessor, the base 256GB storage configuration on the M3 model has two NAND chips for faster speeds. The SSD isn't user-replaceable.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 has an outstanding overall score in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. Compared to its M2 predecessor, the M3 chip is roughly 19% faster in single-thread and 16% faster in multi-threaded workloads. This level of performance is more than adequate for general productivity tasks like web browsing, text processing, and video playback. Heavy multitasking isn't a problem unless the applications involved are extremely demanding. As for demanding tasks like video editing, remember that the video encoders and decoders do most of the heavy lifting, so these synthetic benchmark scores aren't fully representative of the performance. The GPU (with ten cores) is 11% faster than its direct M2 predecessor and the M3 with eight GPU cores. This performance level is great for an integrated GPU but still falls short of even entry-level discrete GPUs like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 has an outstanding overall score in Cinebench R23. Compared to its direct M2 predecessor, the M3 chip is 19% faster in single-threaded and 11% faster in multi-threaded workloads. This performance is adequate for heavy multitasking. You can run some intensive multi-threaded applications but know that there are significantly faster processors on the market, like the Dell Alienware m18 R2 (2024) 's Intel Core i9-14900HX and Apple's own M3 Max chip in the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023) .

The base M3 SoC's GPU renders images in Blender relatively quickly. If you want faster rendering times, you'll have to go up to an Apple MacBook Pro (14- or 16-inch) with a Pro/Max SoC, or a Windows laptop with a dedicated GPU. In the case of the latter, even an entry-level GPU like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 can render images faster this the base M3 SoC's GPU.

The Basemark GPU score is pretty good for integrated graphics, scoring in the same ballpark as an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 discrete GPU, but it isn't quite powerful enough to handle truly demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption 2. While you can play some older or highly optimized titles at 1080p, you'll have to turn down the graphical settings a fair bit to get playable frame rates. Even then, performance can vary wildly because most games must run through Rosetta 2 (due to the lack of optimization for Apple silicon). This 10-core GPU is roughly 23% faster than the 8-core GPU on the base M3 Apple MacBook Air 13 (2024) but isn't a significant upgrade over its direct M2 predecessor .

Unlike the M2 Apple MacBook Air 15 (2023) , the M3 model with 256GB of storage has two NAND chips, resulting in much faster speeds.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable on the Apple MacBook Air M3 at 1080p. The gameplay is very choppy, even with low settings.

Civilization VI is playable with only a few tweaks in the graphical settings. The gameplay isn't always smooth, as there are occasional stutters, but it isn't a huge issue since it's a strategy game that doesn't require precise aiming or a fast reaction time. The main downside is the long average turn time.

Counter-Strike 2 doesn't run on macOS, as Valve has discontinued support.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs poorly on the Apple MacBook Air M3 at 1080p. Although you can get over 30 fps with some tweaks in the settings, the gameplay is very choppy due to frequent frame drops.

The keyboard gets hot under load and can cause some discomfort. Thankfully, the bottom is much cooler, reaching only a maximum of 39.5°C . There's no fan noise since this is a fanless device.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 comes with macOS Sonoma (14). There's no additional pre-installed software other than the ones that typically come with macOS.

The Apple MacBook Air M3 has a fingerprint sensor built into the power button. You can use it to log in quickly, authorize purchases in the Apple App Store, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.