“Challengers”- I just got out of it and… it’s fucking AWESOME!

Did we need another thread on this?

If Tashi Duncan was a real celeb the gays would worship her. Loved this movie!

Row 1, Seat 1. Why?

It's truly insane, and I loved it. Who are they marketing this ridiculous tennis, love triangle, homoerotic tale staring Zendaya to? It's deep camp, but sort of takes itself seriously. I honestly don't know how to describe it. From the Pray Tell line judge, to the club music slow-mos when drama is about to go down, to the hail storm of tennis-as-life philosophizing, to the sweaty bare skin and asses and dicks (well not that many dicks, but still), to that absurd ending sequence. Plus, Mary Jo, Patrick McEnroe, Chris Fowler commentary cameos. I wasn't doing a ton of cackling, just consistently grinning and asking "what the fuck is this?" - in a good way.

In more important news, I suspect OP is very poor and lives in a shit hole of an apartment. He should also invest in some cuticle cream, a manicure, and start wearing moisturizing gloves at night to stave off old lady hand syndrome.

It’s a very fun movie.

R4 it’s a movie aimed at young adults, obviously.

The ending was great OP

[quote]They have a close, playful friendship, but I did not sense any homoeroticism, that is, no lingering looks or gentle touches or anything else that would lead me to believe there was some unrequited feelings between the two.

Are you Helen Keller r90? When they kiss each other for the first time they get so caught in that moment they forget about Zendaya. The movie is not subtle about this.

I really liked the movie, but I continue to think that Zendaya is just incredibly limited as an actress. She’s okay if she has to play a teenager, but lacks the depth or skill to credibly play an adult. Couldn’t buy her either as a mom or as a ballbusting tennis coach in this. Too callow.

Unfortunately, because she helped produce the movie, it was built around her. The two main guys, the script, the editing, and the score were all so great that she didn’t sink the picture, thankfully.

R9 disagree. She proved herself as a force in this film. She was great from start to end. She has a massive screen presence and really dominated in this.

All three actors were phenomenal.

R9 100%. Also, there are endless amounts of homoerotic undertones throughout the film. My sister picked up on them almost immediately. Only an idiot will say they don’t exist.

Even when they’re in the sauna, the way Patrick gets super close to Art while he’s naked, almost like he wants to seduce him. And then when Patrick asks Art if he doesn’t matter, and Art says not even to the most obsessed tennis fan, leading Patrick to say “I’m not talking about tennis”, like a sad puppy talking to his ex he still has feelings for.

Here is the sauna scene. Tons of homoerotic undertones

It was not subtly but it was too coy for its own good.

The movie makes this calculation that if they put a vagina between two men, they can get away with a bunch of heavy-handed homoeroticism. But there isn’t any real heat between its players. Josh O’Connor is like a greasy horn dog with a face like the guy in an ‘80s teen comedy who could never get laid. Zendaya has more chemistry with the camera than she does with either of these guys. Mike Faist has a very appealing bottom boy neediness but the film never goes there, despite displaying his lovely humps like he’s an underwear model (and he is worthy), so that never escalates. That energy never gets revealed. (The idea of an actual spawn between Faist and Zendaya is more compelling than anything actually in the film.)

Also this isn’t camp. It’s all done with a very straight face.

Also, boys do not have to be taught to masturbate. That’s a Christian fundamentalist view of “if we don’t tell them about sex, they’ll never find out” level of nonsense.

Tashi Nasty!

I thought it was intentionally homo erotic, more so than hetero in spades. I thought the two men making out after the three way kissing and at least one getting a hard on was close to implausible if both were supposed to be hot for the girl. From then on the male shower scenes, soft focus on male body parts, the sauna… really why did the two need to be artfully draped in towels and poses to have that discussion, etc etc. lots of teasing going on.

It was entertaining but clearly manipulating the gay male audience to engage. Also (I’m a tennis player, ranked and expert as a young man) the ending is completely off the wall. May serve the film and give vibe of the real love story but pretty impossible in reality..

It was entertaining, but not really very good.

Great post, R16.

As a player, what did you think about how the “tennis” was all in their head - particularly with the character of Art? Obviously, there’s sports psychology but is that really predicated on, I don’t know, being a cuck? lol

The film wouid have you believe that was the difference between winning and losing but it takes an awful lot of skill and command of one’s abilities, doesn’t it? Especially in that bush league of a tournament - which is unlikely to be televised at all, despite the film’s assertion that it would receive wall to wall coverage on sports channels, sort of defeating the purpose of such a league. Isn’t the whole point that Art is playing there because it’s such an easy win?

It really felt like the Tashi character was only there to obfuscate the relationship between the two guys - to make it permissible. And even then, it was mostly coy - suggesting the only reason their lips were locked was because Tashi leaned back and removed herself from the equation but was somehow still holding space between their mouths. It seemed kind of homophobic, which is disconcerting if not surprising coming from Guadagnino.

There are a lot of homosexual implications when it comes to Patrick and Art’s relationship. That doesn’t mean they weren’t into girls also. I do feel they all used one another to some capacity.

Gay baiting horse shit. And it is out to download already.

R19 it didn’t flop retard. And it’s available on VOD. Not free streaming. For someone who claims to have worked for CBS, you would think you know about this stuff. That Gosling movie is a flop, out on VOD today, just two weeks after release.

This one was in theaters for over a month beforehand at least.

All movies come out on streaming fast now. Welcome to 2024. You were born in 2005? Yet you think it’s still 1990?

“tightly knitted”

R20 It is a fat fucking flop, with advertising not even close to breaking even.

Any homoerotic screencaps yet?

The film bombed. Next.

It'll probably be a hit on streaming though.

Not at $19.99, r25.

I love the ending.

R26, don't be a moron. When I say "A hit on streaming" I mean Netflix or MAX or Prime... not pay-per-view/rent/buy on digital. Dumbass.

It's on Prime, r28, which is streaming, n'est-ce pas? It's $19.99. All the others are streaming, too. Try for greater clarity in your writing. Earn that 166 IQ of which you are so justifiably proud.

Just download the gay baiting piece of shit film.

This is of course another Sea Cow thread. Notice that the receipt in the photo is from a movie theater in Brooklyn (if you didn't know it was he already from "Zendaya is a fucking force!").

This is particularly pathetic given how many other threads he's already started about this movie.

This was so much better, more original and entertaining than I expected it to be. I went in blind and really enjoyed it.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago at the movie theater. It was pretty good, but the ending is strange. It's like they didn't know how to end it.

Why is Prime charging it $19.99 to stream it? It cost me less to see it at matinee showing in Manhattan.

Who's the top? Zendaya?

No, R29. It's for sale or rent on digital platforms.

When something is "streaming", it's free for the subscription prices of the streaming service.

This isn't rocket science and this isn't new.

Google "Challengers streaming"

it's for fat teenagers who've never seen a tennis match.

It’s a romantic comedy.

There are two kinds of gays in the world. Gays who don’t like romantic comedies, and annoying gays.

They could have cut 45 minutes and released an extended version for gays of all the slow mo sweating and close ups on the male body parts.

Everyone in the theater I saw it in started laughing at a certain point. When the techno music started for the 400th time, it just became silly.

Zendaya. Again.

Whether he is one or not, OP writes like a PR shill.

OP, please do something about that in the future.

“Streaming” has nothing to do with how or whether you pay to watch something. It’s referring to how your tv or device accesses the digital file you are watching.

R22 it didn’t flop. No matter how many times you say it.

I saw straight men saying they won’t go pay to see it because it was basically promoted like a gay film starring Zendaya. All the publicity for the movie was hyper sexual but then they decided to use the gay kiss to promote the film and it isolated many straight men. I saw complaints about the only nudity in the film being male nudity, something that leaked about the film early. Again, isolating a demographic. Here is the catch, the demographic being isolated is the demographic who makes up the majority of movie going, straight men.

The way you all say catering to black people doesn’t return big numbers is the same thing when catering to gays.

Had Luca toned down the homoerotic undertones and gay publicity, and added female nudity, it would have done better. Issue is Zendaya doesn’t do nudity, so they would have had to have another female character to add that.

However, the film didn’t flop. It’s very obvious the retard knows nothing about the film industry despite his (inconsistent) lies. It will make more money on VOD and here is the biggest catch the retard doesn’t understand…. Merchandising in films. A film like this with blatant merchandising got paid MILLIONS to have their product shown in the film. Adidas, Nike, Pepsi/Gatorade, Applebees… all of them were blatantly mentioned and shown. All those major corporations had product placements in this one film. Wanna know why? Because they paid millions to be shown. And the price for product placements isn’t $1 million. They are always multi-millions, otherwise the film uses generic products with no label.

In other words, the movie earned back a chunk of its budget (or paid for it’s promotional costs) through the millions earned via product placement. Adidas had to pay A LOT because they are heavily featured in this film. This is why the film isn’t considered a flop financially. It made back a chunk of its costs via merchandising before it ever released.

If you wanna discuss films, cool, but don’t discuss the financial aspects of films without understanding there is a lot more to it than “box office numbers”. Hence why some films you deem a flop get sequels. Because in reality they made profit off the film behind the scenes through other aspects other than box office.

My frau friend’s husband refused to see it because it’s a gay guy movie.

Meanwhile there’s only one gay kiss and the rest of it is just endless close ups of the men sweating with porn techno music blasting (so I guess it was pretty gay).

Flop, not a bop!

I didn't love the movie. Zendaya definitely saved it. Had it been anyone else I would have hated it.

I actually think she was great r47. She definitely was the highlight. Not the men.

I thought Zendaya was STUNNING (like always) but a bit vacant behind the eyes. I blame the writing. She was also too young to be playing a 30 something mother - I wasn’t buying it. She was better in the scenes where she was in college. The part where she got injured was compelling.

Overall, it felt very much like a female character written by a man.

I found her great as Tashi but yes, less believable in the 2019 scenes where she’s a mother in her 30s. She was great in the 2006 scenes (before college), 2007 scenes (starting college) and then it jumps to post college where she meets with Art and they go to Applebee’s. That’s probably around 2012 or so.

The modern day takes place in 2019.

I liked it but it would’ve been better if the two male leads were conventionally hot like Zendaya. Like Jacob Elordi. Although that may have been awkward since they dated in real life.