Six of the Best Fictional Sports from Movies

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There are countless movies that are either about sports or feature sports, ranging from baseball to football to auto racing to pool.  There are a few, though, that are about or feature sports that are completely fictional and exist only on screen or in our imaginations.  Here are a look at six sports that exist only on the big screen:

Quidditch – Harry Potter Movies

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Everyone knows about Quidditch, because everyone has either seen a Harry Potter movie or read a Harry Potter book.  I’ve done only the former, and it seems like Quidditch is an exciting but very dangerous game.  The matches are played between two teams of seven players each, all on broomsticks, and involve three types of balls (for a total of four) and six goals.  One the balls – a small, golden ball called the Snitch – can be caught by a player designated the Seeker (who, in this case, is Harry) and its capture immediately ends the game.  Here’s what I don’t understand, and maybe it’s because I am missing a more detailed explanation from the book (possibly) or because I’m a complete moron (probably): if the game can go on forever until the Snitch is captured, then what’s the purpose of scoring points?  Doesn’t it all seem inconsequential if the capturing of the Snitch ends the game?  I’d really like an explanation for this.

Baseketball – Baseketball

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Baseketball is almost exactly what it sounds like – baseball mixed with basketball.  Players can reach base by making a basket, and the farther from the hoop the player is, the more bases he or she can advance.  It’s pretty simple.  The best part of Baseketball, of course, are the “psyche outs.”  A “psyche out” is when a player does what he can to distract the shooter, such as making faces, yelling, or verbally assaulting the shooter.  In the movie, some shooters get psyched out so bad that they actually fall to the ground.  One aspect of the movie that cracked me up were the team names, most of which were derived from geographic stereotypes: Miami Dealers, L.A. Riots, and San Francisco Ferries come to mind.

Rollerball – Rollerball

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The sport of Rollerball is incredibly popular in the year 2018 and somewhat resembles Roller Derby.  Teams – made up of ten players each – score points by placing a ball in a small, conical goal on the edge of the skating track.  Each team of ten has seven skaters and three players that ride around on motorcycles, and Rollerball is essentially full-contact.  It doesn’t seem like there’s anything preventing the players from seriously injuring or killing each other during the course of a game, but then again, that’s sort of the whole point.

Podracing – The Phantom Menace

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Podraces are popular racing events in the Star Wars universe and are prominently featured in The Phantom Menace.  According to Wikipedia:

Each pod contains the driver, and is connected by Steelton control cables to the turbine engines. The pod contains a repulsorlift engine, that keeps the craft at a specific, low altitude. The turbine engines – from two to four per pod – are incredibly powerful, and are connected by an energy binder that keeps them from flying apart.

Of course, we know that Anakin Skywalker was a sick podracer as a little kid, and his race in The Phantom Menace is one of the few cool scenes in the movie.  It’d be a lot cooler if I could get past the fact that a little kid was doing the racing.  Little kids are inept, mitochlorians or not.

Flamingo Croquet – Alice in Wonderland

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Sure, croquet exists in real life, but the type played in Alice in Wonderland substituted live flamingos for mallets, a hedgehog for the ball, and living playing cards for the wickets.  In the movie, all the flamingos and playing cards blatantly fix the croquet game between Alice and the Queen of Hearts so that the Queen wins, as failure to position yourself in such a way that benefits the Queen results in a beheading.

Gigantic Robot Fights – Robot Jox

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The fights in Robot Jox are held more for political purposes than for entertainment, but I think that, like the Gladiator fights in ancient Rome, they fall under the general umbrella of “sports.”  In the future, disputes that would normally be settled by war are instead resolved via one-on-one fights between giant, human-piloted robots.  The pilots are called “robot jox” and the robots themselves are really closer to humongous vehicles.  The robots are designed in such a way that they mimic the pilot’s body movements, making the robots essentially an extension of the pilot’s body.

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8 Comments

  1. I *think* the way the Golden Snitch thing works is that the team that captures it scores a bunch of points and the game end. However, the winner of the match is the team with the most points. So if the snitch is worth say 100 points, the team that catches it can still lose if their opponent has more than a 100 point lead.

  2. If i remember correctly, in the case of the quidditch cup finals between Ireland and Bulgaria, the bulgarians got the snitch, but ireland had more points, so they won. Showing my potter nerdity a bit here.

  3. Just to confirm, Xin is right, and there are a quite a few other examples in the book. Catching the snitch is worth 150 points, while scoring with the quaffle is worth 10 points. This means there are tactics, do the beathers try to disrupt (with bludgers) the chasers, and their ability to score many 10 points, or Harry Potter and other Seekers, who will end the game but only get a maximum of 150 points. Tension, you see.

    The films did a pathetic job of depicting this, giving it only half a line of dialogue.

  4. How’s about the gameshow “Running Man”, starring Schwarzenegger?

    Awesome game with enemies weilding chainsaws and all.
    And if you beat ‘m by cutting them in half, which is already very badass, you can even say something like “He had to split”.
    Which is simply the true definition of kickass.

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