Brad Pitt’s F1 movie needs a huge box office performance to break even, so it will have to emulate Pitt’s other great sports movie, Moneyball. With a script written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, Moneyball is based on the true story of Billy Beane’s mission to reinvent baseball scouting at the Oakland Athletics in the early 2000s. It’s still one of Brad Pitt’s best movies, thanks to his compelling performance alongside a supporting cast which includes Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and several real-life baseball players.

Moneyball was a hit with critics, earning six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. It currently has a 94% score on Rotten Tomatoes, with an 86% audience score. It was also a commercial hit, eventually becoming the third highest-grossing baseball movie of all time, behind A League of Their Own and 42. Moneyball managed to pick up enough money in international markets to turn a healthy profit, even in countries that don’t have much interest in baseball. F1 will need to repeat this feat, so it can learn a lot from Moneyball.

Moneyball’s “He Gets On Base” Scene Is Just As Important As Anything That Happens On The Baseball Field

One Scene Condenses The Conflict Of The Entire Film In An Interesting Way

Moneyball is all about the tension between the old way of doing things in baseball and Billy Beane’s radical new ideas, inspired by a more analytical approach which values hard data over intangibles and perceived wisdom. If any one scene crystallizes this conflict into a single moment, it’s the scene when Billy introduces Jonah Hill’s Peter Brand to his scouting team at the Athletics. Pitt and Hill are both in fine form in this scene, and the witty, rhythmic dialogue makes it an infectious watch for anybody.

The key to the success of this scene – and to Moneyball as a whole – is that it appeals to people who might have no interest in baseball whatsoever. On one level, Billy’s confrontation with the rest of his team reveals that Moneyball is a story about trying to make a change in a hostile environment, and the ways that flawed systems can repeatedly sustain themselves when people aren’t receptive to new ideas. With the broader underdog story of the Athletics’ struggle to compete with teams on much larger budgets, Moneyball weaves together multiple themes and dramatic layers.

Moneyball‘s “He gets on base” scene also shows that the film pays just as much attention to its smaller, quieter scenes as it does to what happens on the baseball field. While the sequence in which the Athletics achieve their 20-game unbeaten run is capable of sending chills down anyone’s spine, Billy and Peter’s conversation in a dimly lit basement office is perhaps even more memorable. The dialogue is so тιԍнтly scripted that the conversation feels like action, and Bennett Miller’s careful framing of the characters shows who holds the power, who is working together, and who is sitting alone.

The Best Sports Movies Can Be Enjoyed By Anyone, Whether They’re Fans Of The Sport Or Not

Great Sports Movies Manage To Find Universal Truths

One big reason for Moneyball‘s success is the simple fact that it appeals just as much to newcomers as it does to hardcore baseball fans. It gives audiences just enough of the necessary information without ever feeling convoluted or condescending, and the bulk of the story plays out in more universal arenas than a baseball stadium. However, Moneyball also taps into the inherent poetry of baseball. The line “It’s hard not to be romantic about baseball” relates to the conflict between data and intuition, but it also reveals something true about what draws people to this sport in particular.

Most of the great sports movies follows this same playbook, no matter what sport they decide to focus on. Rocky, for example, barely features any boxing, but it still gives audiences an impression of what makes the sport so unique and thematically rich. Filmmakers have to find what makes any given sport inherently interesting, and communicate that to a large group of people who might otherwise not care. In Moneyball, it’s the game’s rich tradition and the way that a dense tangle of numbers can still create magic. For Brad Pitt’s newest sports movie, F1, it will have to be something unique to motor racing.