What you need to know before watching Zendaya’s new sports movie Challengers

At Polygon, many of us are fans of watching a movie with as little information as possible beforehand, for the feeling of discovery. But sometimes it helps to know a few things, whether it’s an interesting fact about the film’s history or just knowing how many end credit scenes to wait for. Here are four things we think you should know about Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers before you start watching.

What is Challenger about?

The simple title doesn’t provide much clarity. But in general terms, and without spoilers: Challengers follows a complicated relationship between three people. Zendaya, who also produced the film, plays Tashi, a former teen tennis superstar. In a story that jumps back and forth in time, she meets best friends and tennis partners Art (West Side Story‘s Mike Faist) and Patrick (The crown‘s Josh O’Connor), dates them, marries one of them and becomes his tennis coach, then pits them against each other in an epic tennis match for complicated personal reasons that take most of the movie to unravel. to take.

The film starts at that match, when all three are in their thirties. Then it returns to their teenage years and jumps around in time to explore what happened between the trio’s first meeting and the present, more than a decade later.

Does Challengers have a post-credits scene?

No, there’s nothing after the credits, meaning there’s no further information about the aftermath of that final match. Director Luca Guadagnino (Call me by your name, Bones and all) and writer Justin Kuritzkes leave that to fanfiction writers. We like to think that the aftermath resembles the climactic scene in one of Kuritzkes’ favorite films: Y Tu Mamá Tambiénwhich…well, when you know, you know.

What should I know about tennis before watching Challengers?

Image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Everett Collection

The scoring rules for tennis are a bit complicated, and it’s worth fleshing them out before the movie if you want to fully understand the action and the specific setbacks and triumphs that Art and Patrick face. (Video gamers who have played a lot Wii Sports tennis-or one of many other tennis sims can have a big lead on the game here.)

The two men battle in one Matching challengers, one of the qualifying events that the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) uses to determine who advances to professional-level competition. When the film begins, Art is already a professional-level player, qualified for the biggest events in the sport, for example Wimbledon and the US Open. Patrick is trying to qualify to play at that level.

Key terms to understand: The two men face off in a match, which usually means three or five sets. A set is a series of games played until one player has won at least six cumulative games And has won at least two more games than his opponent. The winner of a game is the player who first scores four points, except when the game is tied at three points per player. We will go into that below.

Points have their own designations in tennis: love (zero points), 15 (one point), 30 (two points) and 40 (three points). Tennis has multiple umpires, but the one sitting over the match, known as the chair umpire, acts as the referee and indicates the score and any errors or penalties that could change the score. For example, if the chair umpire calls a score of ‘love-30’, it means that one player has zero points and the other two. When both players have the same number of points, the score is called “all,” as in “15-all,” meaning each player has one point.

A game that reaches an even score of 40 has its own special word: ‘deuce’. In a deuce situation, a player must score two points in a row to win. This means that a four-point game can pass for ten points. Whoever scored the most recent point in a deuce game after the score was tied is said to have “advantage”, as he is halfway to winning – so if player A scores one point in a deuce game, he has an advantage, but if player A scores one point in a deuce game, he has an advantage, but if player B then scores a point, the score goes back to 40-all, with player B now having an advantage. There are different ways to score points in tennis apart from successfully getting a ball past the other player. An opponent can give up points through a mistake. Or the chair umpire can impose penalties for unsportsmanlike behavior by the opponent, including cursing, throwing things, postponing a game and more.

Yes, all this is relevant Challengersmainly to understand why Art and Patrick play so many games against each other, and why some of those games last so long.

Can you enjoy Challengers without knowing anything about tennis?

Certainly. It’s pretty obvious when one of the players is on the rise and the other is losing just by their reactions. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ aggressive, driving score for the film heightens the tension and makes it clear when big, important things are happening. But being able to read the match scores on the screen and follow what’s happening in individual games gives you a lot more nuance about the status of a particular game and the overall match.

Do the actors really play tennis in Challengers?

They often hit real balls on real courts, but there are a lot of effects and editing tricks involved to make the games look seamless. Zendaya, Faist and O’Connor all went through extensive training to ensure their on-field forms were convincing. But if Zendaya has pointed it out in interviewsshe had never played tennis before, and she had to go through a steep learning curve, which allowed her to perform credibly as a world-class tennis prodigy.

Is Challengers a good movie?

Polygon definitely recommends it! It is a playful, sexy, exciting story, part romance and part compelling sports drama. From our review:

Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty, panting romantic sports and sex drama Challengers feels(s) like a thumb nose (or a raised middle finger) aimed at American puritanism and an increasingly sex-negative culture. Challengers is a sharp and punchy film, full of big emotions, expressed through rapid-fire dialogue in some scenes and through quiet, sensual physicality in others, all shot with creative verve and aggressive in-your-face energy. Everyone in this movie is chasing sex and success, and combining those things in unapologetically provocative ways.