YMMV / Remember the Titans

• Awesome Music
  • Titans Spirit from Trevor Rabin's score, which has since been reused for several different sports broadcasts, including NBC's coverage of the Olympic closing ceremonies. The section starting at 3:15 was also used for the 2018 Stanley Cup award ceremony.
  • The film also boasts a rocking soundtrack with classic hits like 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' and 'Spirit in the Sky'.
• Growing the Beard: Disney's first attempt at a more serious sports film. They carved a niche in the '90s of Ragtag Bunch of Misfits sports-themed comedies such as The Mighty Ducks, Angels in the Outfield, and The Big Green, but here is a more straight-told dramatic film aimed at an older audience. The film was such a success that Disney's sports films followed in this pattern with The Rookie, Miracle, Invincible, Glory Road, The Greatest Game Ever Played and McFarland, USA.
• Ho Yay: Lampshaded after Ronnie "Sunshine" Bass smooches Gerry Bertier just to mess with him, which Big Ju says "There's too much male bonding in here".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Girls can love Ryan Gosling all they want, but let's not forget he was a liability at cornerback in Remember the Titans." Doubles as a Mandela Effect; Gosling's character actually plays linebacker in the movie.
  • The iconic speech of Coach Boone about the Titans, being "greater than the gods themselves," is widely mocked and memed online due to how utterly inaccurate it is to anyone with a more than casual knowledge of Greek Mythology. Many joke about how the Titans lost the war and were overthrown and imprisoned by Zeus, and how their leader Cronos was a literal child-eater, prompting many to point out how the Titans are not exactly very good role models to give an inspirational speech about.
  • And on the topic of Titans, many jokes have been made comparing it to Attack on Titan and how Remember the Titans, Attack on Titan and Clash Of The Titans is "the weirdest trilogy ever".
• Retroactive Recognition: This movie is a Retroactive Recognition bonanza.
  • A young Ryan Gosling plays one of the white players.
  • Also, this is Hayden Panettiere's third appearance in a feature film.
  • In addition to little Gosling and Panettiere, there's Wood Harris as Julius, Donald Faison as Petey, Ryan Hurst as Gerry, Kate Bosworth as Emma and Ethan Suplee as Louie.
• Values Dissonance: The film presents Boone as in the right when he calls out Yoast for treating Petey kinder and gentler than the white players as "patronizing" him. These days, with mental health now considered just as important as physical, Yoast's style of "I teach them what they need to know, but I don't humiliate them" is seen as the correct way to coach, and Boone's method would likely get a modern coach disciplined and possibly fired (the real Boone was actually fired in 1979 for allegations of verbal and physical abuse of players).
  • Boone's treatment of his players at camp also qualifies, specifically when he makes the Titans do up-downs as punishment when Blue asks for a water break. Since the 2001 death of NFL offensive lineman Korey Stringer from heat stroke, football teams at every level take heat stroke much more seriously than in 1971. Today, any high school coach who denied his players a water break, especially in the middle of summer, would find himself out of a job before he ever got the chance to coach a game.