YMMV / The Wrestler

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• Award Snub: At the Academy Awards:
  • Mickey Rourke losing Best Actor to Sean Penn.
  • Marisa Tomei losing Best Supporting Actress to Penélope Cruz.
  • The film itself wasn't even nominated for Best Picture, Director, or Screenplay.
  • Due to a technicality, Bruce Springsteen's ending credits theme "The Wrestler" was disqualified from being nominated for Best Original Song. It did win the Golden Globe, though.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Randy uses the Diving Headbutt as his finisher, the move that caused a lot of Chris Benoit's brain damage.
  • In the very first scene, someone praises Randy backstage because he "put [his opponent] over", meaning that Randy lost in a way that made his opponent look good. In wrestling parlance, "getting over" refers to winning the audience's support ("over" meaning "popular" or "well-liked"), while putting someone else over refers to helping them gain the audience's support (usually by allowing them to win).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The film was critically lauded in France.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In the film, Randy buys steroids from a steroid dealer. In 2009, Scott Siegel, the actor who played said dealer, was arrested for possessing and distributing steroids and assaulting a federal agent.
  • The film in general is difficult to watch for a lot of wresting fans due to how accurately it portrays the lives of various 80s and 90s wrestlers after their time in the spotlight is over — just look at Roddy Piper's breakdown after he had a private screening of the movie as proof. Piper had repeatedly stated that, due to the abuse his body has gone through over the course of his career (not unlike the abuse Randy's body goes through in the movie), he was unlikely to make it to sixty-five, and indeed, he didn't. He died at age of sixty-one in 2015.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: While this movie and Black Swan were originally planned to be connected, it did not work out. Years later, in 2020, Russian animator Anton Dyakov independently came up with a story involving a ballerina who performed in Swan Lake and a boxer. His film, Box Ballet, earned an Oscar nomination.
• He Really Can Act: After spending almost two decades doing movies far beneath his abilities, this was the general consensus concerning Rourke's performance.
• Hollywood Homely: Cassidy is supposed to be a washed up stripper who can't get customers for lap dances. The problem is that Marisa Tomei is way too hot to pull it off and most people believe she's only gotten more attractive the more she's aged.
• Jerkass Woobie: Randy, for his struggles with the world outside of pro wrestling.
• Tear Jerker:
  • The film is a manly example of this. Most notably, Roddy Piper broke down in tears in Mickey Rourke's arms after a private screening.
  • Randy's whole life is this.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The film captures the pro wrestling industry of the late 2000s to the point of being a time capsule:
    • Even five years later, the internet had already proved to be a huge game changer when it came to the indies; numerous promotions were able to broadcast their shows via iPPV, and indie wrestlers who'd never signed to major promotions were able to build up followings equal to those who were.
    • The film was also made in the middle of one of pro wrestling's Audience Alienating Eras - and it wouldn't regain even a modicum of mainstream popularity until the near end of The New '10s. Also, Ring of Honor at the time was still distributing its shows via DVD sales - when it would get a television deal just a year after the film's release.
    • There's also no mention of Twitter or YouTube being an avenue for Randy to reintroduce himself to the modern audience. By the end of The New '10s, social media would become a huge part of most wrestlers' lives after Zack Ryder proved the viability of a major social media presence in the absence of on-screen spotlight, and pretty much every popular retired wrestler would start up a podcast by the dawn of the 2020s.
  • More superficially, the most current video game Randy's young neighbor references is Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, released in 2007.

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