challengers cheat sheet

first, it has nothing to do with the exploded shuttle

I saw Challengers on Thursday and it is FUN. See it! Soon!

But in the meantime, you should be aware that this movie has absolutely taken over the Internet, and the reference-to-discourse cycle shows no signs of slowing down. Serena Williams wrote about it in Vogue; Coco Gauff reviewed it for Teen Vogue.

Challengers seems to exist somewhere between Saltburn and The Holdovers as a hot movie with vivid characters, a unique setting, quotable lines and meme-able images. I predict that we’ll get a week or two of excited (and spoiler-filled) discussion, then some Serious Takes (is it really that good? What does it mean for the gays? Which movies is it ripping off?), some backlash and snippy, snarky takedowns, then the dummies who couldn’t get their reviews published during the first round of excitement will come out with strongly worded but intellectually facile defenses, and we will come to the conclusion that Challengers is a good movie that the wrong people like too much. That’s kind of the worst-case scenario; maybe everybody will be cool! Maybe.

Just to get My Opinion on the record: Challengers fucks and if you’re interested in what it “says” you are missing the point, which is that it’s a ride. It will be nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Score.

My only real Take other than “that was good!” is that it’s a romantic comedy about adult-adults, in the vein of Broadcast News, Manhattan (sorry), Silver Linings Playbook (which I actually dislike) or Working Girl (which I dislike for different reasons). People keep calling it a “sexy” movie about a love triangle, which it is, but it’s also really funny, and there’s a word for that. It’s “rom-com.” Anyway…

Since I know many of you may be subjected to Challengers Conversations before you have a chance to see it, I thought it might be helpful to, with as few spoilers as possible, break down the basic talking points so that you can nod along in agreement or politely excuse yourself without having to ask “what’s a Tashi Duncan?” as you see fit. First things first, it has nothing to do with the rocket that blew up in 1986.

Challengers Cheat Sheet

Tashi, Patrick, Art

These are our three main characters. Zendaya (if you don’t know who Zendaya is…be fucking for real) plays Tashi, Mike Faist (Broadway guy) plays Art and Josh O’Connor (younger Prince Charles on The Crown) plays Patrick. Almost all of the negative reviews point out that Tashi is unlikable and one dimensional. Yes, correct, she’s a tennis prodigy and those kids suck. The boys’ performances are great and babygirl and Zendaya’s is fine but not mother.

Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor

They’re from a band I have no opinion on called Nine In Nails, and they also do movie scores, most notably the one for The Social Network (A+ movie). They did the score for Challengers and it’s honestly one of the best parts of the movie, thwacking you over the head with the intensity of each moment, showing how the rhythms of sexual pursuit and tennis competition are the same for these characters, and I’ve been listening to it on Spotify ever since I saw the film.

“Three tickets to Challengers”

This is the biggest meme to come out of the movie so far, and it’s a little lame, since it’s just one of the Barbenheimer memes recycled, this time using any piece of media with a MMF love triangle. What people are mostly missing, and what is literally the central theme of Challengers, is that Art and Patrick do not meet as a result of their mutual pursuit of Tashi. They are already friends when she comes along. The closest analog I can think of is Keeping The Faith, a deeply underrated rom-com about a priest and a rabbi who both fall in love with a Scientologist (she’s not a Scientologist in the movie, I’m just cracking wise about Jenna Elfman). It’s on Peacock and you should stream it.

Who is Justin Kuritzkes?

The writer. He’s from the NYC theater world and had a viral video during Web 1.0. But I’m sure 99% of the cocktail chatter about him will center on the fact that his wife is Past Lives writer-director Celine Song. As my friend Alex put it, “he’s the white husband!” Alex is Asian and allowed to say that.

Is it camp?

No, just very spirited. There are a lot of intense editing choices (at one point you get the POV of the tennis ball) that seem to be dragged out or punched up for no reason, but there is a reason, which is that the director is Italian. Be not joyless.

The timeline

The story is told out of chronological order. The match between Art and Patrick, which takes place in 2019, runs throughout, and then we flash back to various points in their lives between 2006 and the present (2019), with each extended flashback adding a new layer to our understanding of what this competition means. If you are talking to someone and they say that this was confusing, it is a sign that the person you’re talking to may be stupid, because it’s really not.

(Why does it take place in 2019? I assume it’s so we don’t have to deal with Covid.)

Coke, Taco Bell, Aston Martin

There is a lot of product placement in this movie and for some reason people think they’re geniuses for noticing product placement. I saw people playing “gotcha!” about the Chevy product placement in Barbie, as if the whole movie weren’t already about Barbies.

“I Told Ya”

Tashi has a shirt that says “I Told Ya” and then Patrick takes the shirt and wears it a lot. Rolling Stone called the tee “something of a character” in the movie, which it isn’t at all, but here, you can read all about the shirt and where to buy it. Annoying men are going to wear this shirt this summer to indicate to those “in the know” that they have good taste in movies, making it basically the Vote For Pedro of the 2020s, meanwhile I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of actually cute Challengers merch…SuperYaki, get on this!

The side characters

Truly THINKY people may notice that there are very few people besides Tashi, Art and Patrick who say more than a handful of words. Most are there to serve some function, like helping Art stretch or asking Tashi for an autograph. In the theater, I noticed that even Art doesn’t say anything until maybe ten minutes in. It’s a tight script. But there are a handful of characters — a motel owner, a gay couple at the motel, a woman on a date, a woman who works at a tennis club — who get a bit more personality, and they’re all a little weird and funny. Again, this is because we are in a rom-com, but also, I think we are meant to understand that whether we are in the POV of Art, Tashi or Patrick, Non-Tennis People just don’t make sense. My two cents, but I think it’s intentional, not bad acting.

Bananas, churros, homosexuals

Over the course of the movie, Patrick and Art eat a lot of phallic foods. The movie also asks us to consider that they might be in love with each other. The answer? Hot people should kiss.

What this image means

It’s a spoiler so I’m not gonna tell you.

The Hurricane

The dictionary definition of “pathetic fallacy” is ascribing human emotions to inanimate objections or phenomena, like calling a blister angry or the sea indifferent. It’s also applied in a broad literary sense to describe when writers pair the feelings of a character, or some part of the story, with the weather. Oh, there’s a storm a-brewin’ in both the sky and the plot? Great job, Hemingway! But also, it’s fine. In Challengers, without spoiling anything, I’ll tell you there is a big storm during a turbulent time in Tashi’s life, and some people are going to say this is overkill. Friends, the whole movie is overkill. Get on board.

Any other Challengers questions, please drop into the comments so I can tell you what to think.

Lizzie