The first actor to ever win two consecutive Oscars didn't exactly break the mould to do so.
Spencer Tracy snagged his first trophy for the 1937 sleeper hit Captains Courageous β a Rudyard Kipling adaptation starring Tracy as a questionably accented Portuguese fisherman, forced to care for and educate a belligerent youngster β a youngster who, it turns out, wants and needs nothing more desperately than a velvet-glove father-figure to thrive under.
Then the next year he followed it up with Boys Town β a movie based on a true story about a Catholic priest so self-sacrificing, he founded an entire boarding school (still in operation today) for misbegotten street kids with nowhere else to go.
It was a tale apparently so affecting that in his acceptance speech, Tracy himself claimed the Oscar shouldn't go to him but to the real-life Father Flanagan β to whom he ended up giving the statue anyway.
So when asking why a movie like Steve exists, or why we might be drawn to watching it, there's a long track record to pull from.
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