YMMV / Challengers (2024)

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Art's perspective on the Love Triangle, and specifically on Tashi and Patrick after Tashi's injury. Tashi yells at Patrick to leave, which is understandable; she presumably felt she acted out during the match due to their argument. But then Art yells at Patrick to leave, too. Is he genuinely angry by Patrick's behavior, is he just backing up Tashi as she doesn't want him there, or is he cynically wrecking their relationship in order to make a move on Tashi himself?
  • Does Tashi love Art? If so, how much? It's possible to read her anywhere on the spectrum between loving Art (for Lily's sake and the sake of their life together if nothing else) to thinking that she views him as a hindrance that she only married to get close to the big leagues, which were out of reach for her then, and that she wishes she had stayed with Patrick.
  • If Tashi had never gotten injured, would she have ended up with Art, Patrick, or neither of them?
• Awesome Music:
  • Many reviewers have agreed that this is one of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's best soundtracks since The Social Network, with pounding synths and beats that perfectly fit the back and forth play of the main trio's tennis matches. In particular, their track that plays during the finale, "Match Point", perfectly encapsulates the tension breaking point that the entire film has been leading to.
  • Reznor's end credits theme, "Compress / Repress", is a hard hitting capper that sounds like something straight out of his Synth-Pop Pretty Hate Machine era.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The three-way kiss between Tashi, Art, and Patrick very quickly made the rounds on the Internet as soon as the first trailer dropped and gave the film a lot of attention, something its marketing was very eager to capitalize on.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "This is Tom Holland's canon event". ^ExplanationThe trailer features a scene of Tashi (played by Zendaya) simultaneously making out with Art and Patrick. Zendaya was previously known for playing MJ in the MCU's take on Spider-Man, and for actually dating Spidey actor Tom Holland in real life to boot. This inevitably led to the internet classifying the aforementioned scene from the trailer as a "canon event", referencing the phenomenon from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
  • "The girls played tennis". ^Explanation Zendaya plays MJ in Spider-Man, and here plays a tennis champion. Kirsten Dunst also played MJ in a previous iteration of Spider-Man, and starred in Wimbledon.
  • The scene detailed under Best Known for the Fanservice has also made the rounds of as a reaction image, of Tashi sitting on the bed smirking as Art and Patrick kiss either cheek.
  • The Spider-Man to tennis player pipeline^ExplanationBy sheer chance, Emma Stone, who starred as Spider-Man love interest Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man Series, played real-life tennis champion Billie Jean King in Battle of the Sexes. This is typically used as another coincidental connection between all three Spider-Man leading ladies, the other one being a well-publicized Romance on the Set with their respective Spider-Man actor.
  • "Three tickets to Challengers." ^ExplanationUsed as a caption to a photo of three people, typically from another film that had a love triangle. Especially Past Lives, a similarly themed film written by the spouse of the writer of Challengers.
  • "Are Celine Song and Justin Kuritzkes looking for a third?"/"Who is the third person who tried to ruin their marriage?" ^Explanation Song and Kuritzkes are married. Kuritzkes wrote Challengers, while Song wrote (and directed) Past Lives, which is another romantic drama about a Love Triangle that involves a married couple being derailed by a face from the past.

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