Tashi Duncan: You don't know what tennis is.
Patrick Zweig: What is it?
Tashi Duncan: It's a relationship.
Patrick Zweig: What is it?
Tashi Duncan: It's a relationship.
Challengers is an American romantic sports drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino, written by Justin Kuritzkes, and scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.
Meeting the young tennis superstar Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) complicates the friendship between teenagers Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor). Years later, Tashi has become Art's coach and wife, and has helped him go from mediocre tennis player to prospective Grand Slam champion. But when Art faces off against Patrick in a Challenger event, the Donaldsons find that it's not so easy to escape the past.
The film was released on April 26, 2024.
Previews: Trailer
Not to be confused with the manga of the same name.
Challengers contains examples of:
- 20 Minutes into the Past: The present day scenes are set in 2019, with flashbacks from 2006 to 2007 when the trio were in college, as well as Tashi and Patrick's one-night stand in 2011.
- Anachronic Order: The film has a non-linear narrative, starting with the challenger match between Art and Patrick and then flashing back to various points in the past to show the circumstances that led up to the event and occasionally going back to the match in between these flashbacks.
- Anti-Hero: Tashi, Art, and Patrick are portrayed as being incredibly flawed people who all get up to manipulative and selfish acts, especially when it related to their complicated relationships with each other, but are ultimately sympathetic characters who care deeply about each other at the end of the day.
- Ambiguous Ending: The ending doesn't actually reveal who won, though this is likely lost on those unfamiliar with tennis. Further, do Patrick and Art mend their relationship, and which, if either, ends up with Tashi? Or do the three supposedly form a throuple relationship?
- Ambiguous Situation: Patrick and Art disagree about whether the mutual masturbation they engaged in at twelve (while talking about a girl they were both interested in) counts as them having hooked up with each other or not. It is also unclear whether Art is telling the truth when he claims that it only happened once, and that they stayed in separate beds and did not touch each other.
- Ambiguously Bi:
- Tashi, Art, and Patrick have a three-way kiss in the hotel room, before Tashi pulls back and the boys continue making out with each other.
- As an adult, Patrick swipes right on several women and one man on Tinder, although it's worth mentioning in this scene Patrick is living out of his car and only looking for a date so he has somewhere to spend the night.
- Patrick is also perfectly comfortable discussing the time he and Art masturbated together in front of Tashi, who he is interested in dating. (Art is much less comfortable reminiscing about the mutual masturbation.)
- Ambiguously Christian: Tashi is prevalently seen wearing a cross around her neck in practically every scene. Whether it indicates she herself is Christian, or is a reflection on her family is left up in the air.
- Ambiguously Jewish: Patrick is described as Jewish in his introduction in Kuritzkes' script, though this is not mentioned in dialogue in the film itself. note
- Artistic License – Sports: Art and Patrick's final match is unusual, to say the least, and the last play depicted, with Art flying over the net and colliding with Patrick, likely would have lost Art the point, as outlined for ''Slate''. Also, this point on which the film ends would have only been the first of 7 points needed to break a tie in tennis.
- Auto Erotica: Tashi and Patrick have sex in Patrick's car the night before he's about to compete against Art in their challenger match.
- As Himself: Chris Fowler and Mary Joe Fernández as TV tennis commentators.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
- The movie ends with a moment of this between all three of the main characters. Art jumps up, smashes the ball across the net, and lands in Patrick's arms. The two men embrace each other while Tashi cheers enthusiastically from the sidelines, demonstrating that in spite of everything they've put each other through, these three characters all still care for each other.
- While it's ambiguous whether Tashi actually loves Art and she is, to an extent, with him so she can live her own tennis career vicariously through him, that doesn't mean she doesn't care about him. This is best shown when she tries her best to comfort him when he announces to her that he wants to retire, and her genuine remorse over having cheated on him by having sex with Patrick.
- Bait-and-Switch: When Tashi returns from hooking up with Patrick, it's suggested that Art may have left her after their argument as she finds his bed empty. In actuality, he's in the next room with Lily.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Between all three of the main characters; especially pronounced between Tashi and Patrick.
- Betty and Veronica Switch: Tashi is the Archie who initially dates and eventually dumps confident bad boy Patrick (the Veronica) and then marries and has a child with reliable boy-next-door Art (the Betty). However, toward the end of the movie, Patrick displays a surprising degree of tenderness toward Tashi and ultimately toward Art as well. Meanwhile, Art's killer instincts are on full display during the final tennis match. (It is also revealed fairly early on in the movie that Art has at least as much of a manipulative and entitled streak as Patrick.)
- Both Sides Have a Point: Tashi and Patrick argue over the merits of going pro at a young age versus going to college and playing collegiate tennis before turning professional. Tashi desires to be more than a tennis player and points out college will allow her to learn other life skills than "hitting a ball with a racquet". Patrick believes that once a person has the opportunity to turn pro, they need to do so to capitalize on their talent while they can. Interestingly, both Tashi and Patrick wind up suffering the worst case scenario of their respective decisions: Tashi winds up suffering a Career-Ending Injury in college that torpedoes her professional career before it can start, while Patrick's lack of professional success (partly as a result of turning pro as an undertrained teenager) means he's been reduced to slumming it at every low-level pro tournament that will accept him because he has no life skills other than playing tennis.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Patrick is said to be well endowed in this department, which he uses to try to intimidate Art. Given that only Patrick is shown hooking up with Tashi, it's implied that she agrees he's better in bed, but it's not confirmed.
- Bilingual Bonus: A sneakier example than most: Italian singer Patti Pravo's 1978 hit "Pensiero stupendo" can be heard briefly in a scene, its lyrics are explicitly about a menage à trois, and therefore very appropriate for the movie, given its premise. The director, Luca Guadagnino, is Italian.
- Bisexual Love Triangle: Zigzagged. It's not clear if either Art or Patrick are bisexual; they make out in the hotel room and talk about engaging in mutual masturbation once as tweens. They are, however, both attracted to Tashi, and the movie gets a lot of mileage out of the sexual chemistry and intensity between all three of them.
- Book Ends: While not literally occurring at the beginning of the movie, when we first see young Art and young Patrick, they jump into each other's arms to celebrate winning. At the end of the movie, Art jumps into Patrick's arms.
- Break the Haughty: In the sauna, Art brutally makes it clear that win or lose the match the next day, his place and stature in tennis history as one of the greats is already secured, while Patrick, who is getting older and having a harder time keeping up with the new crop of players, has never made it past prelims and will largely be forgotten.
- Brick Joke:
- Art asks Patrick to throw the U.S. Open Junior finals for the sake of his grandmother. When Tashi offers her number to whoever wins the match, Patrick shoots back (partly in jest) that he hopes she dies of a stroke. Later in the film, we discover that that was, indeed, how Art's grandmother died.
- At the U.S. Open Junior women's final, Tashi easily defeats Anna Mueller. Several years later (after her knee injury forced her to leave the sport), she sees a sports segment touting the now-pro Mueller as the favorite to win that year's Wimbledon; the announcer wonders audibly if there is anyone who could challenge her.
- Career-Ending Injury: Tashi is introduced as a teenage tennis phenom. However, when playing at Stanford, she blows out her knee on the court, an injury from which her career never recovers; she has to pivot to coaching instead.
- Character Tics: Patrick points out that Art always lines up his ball with the gap in the racket before a serve. It becomes a code throughout the film meaning "Patrick slept with Tashi".
- Chekhov's Gun: When Art and Patrick were training together in the past, Art asks Patrick to serve a tennis ball his way, centering the ball in the middle of the racket, if he had sex with Tashi; Patrick does so. At the Challengers final in New Rochelle, Patrick serves for the tiebreak by centering the ball in the middle of the racket, signalling to Art that he had sex with Tashi again the previous night.
- Chick Magnet:
- Patrick claims, half-jokingly half-serious, that most of the girls in the league are thirsting over Art.
- During their challenger match, a disgruntled Patrick accuses the female referee of intentionally favoring Art.
- Company Cross References: Lily watches Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, another film produced by Pascal Pictures. Crosses over with Actor Allusion, as Tashi is played by Zendaya who was of course MJ in the MCU Spider-Man Trilogy.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- Tashi essentially chooses a challenger event for Art to compete in at random, and it just so happens that Patrick is also competing in the same tournament.
- Patrick goes on a date at a hotel bar, which happens to be in the same hotel where Tashi and Art are staying.
- Didn't Think This Through: Patrick scoffs at Tashi's desire to go to college because she wants to learn other life skills than "hitting a ball with a racquet", dismissing it as a cynical way to make herself more marketable and assumes that he can coast through life on raw talent alone. In the present day, he's become a Jaded Washout slumming it in low-level competitions since he never bothered to become good at anything other than tennis.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Arguments and love scenes are treated with the same kind of back and forth cinematography and editing as the tennis matches, as well as featuring the same piece of intense musical score.
- Art and Patrick's relationship is underlined by sharing phallic food items like hot dogs, churros, eggs and bananas.
- Erotic Eating: Played for Laughs with the recurring motif of Patrick and Art eating phallic food together. At one point, in the middle of a contentious conversation, Patrick offers Art a bite of his churro, and Art willingly eats it from Patrick's hand.
- Even the Guys Want Him: There's an early shot of a gay couple checking out Patrick while he tries to check in to a hotel.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: All three of the main characters have different hair styles between the past and the present.
- Tashi wore her hair long when she was younger, usually keeping it in a long braid when playing tennis. In the present, she has her hair cut into a bob.
- Art's hair goes from longish and curly to neater and clean-cut.
- Patrick's hair is also shorter in the present, although still somewhat unruly.
- Famed In-Story: Tashi and Art are considered to be a power couple, with numerous celebrity endorsements and sponsorships backing them. During the challenger event, it's shown that Art has his own Estrogen Brigade fan club and he gets a lot more support than Patrick does from the audience at their match.
- Fanservice: The three-way kiss between beautiful Tashi, handsome Art, and hunky Patrick. Likewise multiple shots of beautiful tennis players of both sexes glistening from their sweat while on the courts, as well as Tashi wearing a see-through top in one scene and a long shot in the sauna focusing on a naked Patrick's bare ass.
- Femme Fatale: Tashi isn't above using her sexuality to manipulate the men in her life to do her bidding. Best demonstrated when she outright tells Patrick she'll sleep with him in order to get him to throw the match to Art.
- Freudian Trio: Art is the superego. While he occasionally acts out in anger (most notably when he finds out that Tashi and Patrick slept together the night before Challengers), he is the most restrained, level-headed, and cool of the Love Triangle. As a result, he's also the most washed-out — though he's much more successful than Patrick, multiple characters note that he's ready to be "done" with elite tennis and just wants to be a father and commentator. Patrick is the id. He's shown to be more Hot-Blooded, impulsive, and overtly arrogant, though also more sexual (it's implied that Tashi still prefers him to Art for this reason), more ambitious, and scrappier. Tashi is the ego. She's in the middle between Patrick and Art, and she's cool and levelheaded at times (most notably when she's watching Patrick and Art's match, and strategizing to get ahead in her career), but also passionate and sexual (such as during her screaming match with Patrick, and in having sex with him in his car).
- Get Out!: Tashi and Patrick have a fight right before the match in which she blows out her knee. She screams at him to leave when he finally comes to check on her at the first aid room, with an enraged Art, who was the first to rush to her side when he saw she was hurt, also screaming for him to get the fuck out.
- Guy on Guy Is Hot: Teenage Tashi certainly seems to think so. While hanging out with Art and Patrick in their hotel room, she asks if the boys ever hooked up with each other, and seems intrigued by the story of a sexual experience they had together when they were younger. She then sits on the bed, kisses both of them, and coaxes the two of them to kiss each other. When they do, she lies back on the bed with a satisfied smirk and enjoys the view.
- High-Pressure Emotion: Art has a massive blow up on the court, after Patrick signals to him that he slept with Tashi the night before.
- Hollywood Kiss: Subverted with the three-way kiss between Tashi, Art, and Patrick, which gets rather messy.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Art and Patrick's friendship is dripping to the teeth with homoeroticism. They've known each other since they were twelve, are very physically affectionate with each other, have a makeout session at Tashi's behest, share a conversation while nude in a sauna, and there's Running Gag of them eating phallic-shaped foods when they're together.
- If It's You, It's Okay: Shades of this between teenage Art and Patrick, who talk about masturbating together and share an intense kiss, but there's no indication of either of them being bisexual other than this.
- Ivy League for Everyone: Patrick doesn't attend college, as he wants to go pro, while Art and Tashi both go to Stanford. While Patrick refers to Pepperdine at one point, he does so mockingly, which is a little Artistic Licence since the best schools for sports are not always the best for academics, and vice versa.
- I "Uh" You, Too: Early on in the film when Art tells Tashi that he loves her, she simply responds that she knows. This serves as an early indication that she may or may not have actual romantic feelings for him.
- Jaded Washout: Art's reason for wanting to retire is the fear of becoming this. He's realized that his increasing age and decreasing drive are starting to affect his tennis, and would rather retire while he's still considered a great player.
- Love Triangle: The focus of the film is a love triangle between a tennis prodigy turned coach and the two male players who fall in love with her.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Patrick's opponents walk around the locker room in the nude. Averted for Patrick himself by Scenery Censor.
- Man Hug: Art and Patrick excitedly jump into each other's arms after winning their doubles match as teenagers. At the end of the movie, the two men share a surprisingly tender hug across the net during their challenger match.
- Moment Killer: Art and Tashi share a kiss in an Applebee's parking lot...only to be jolted apart by the sharp, loud sound of an employee tossing garbarge into a dumpster.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After sleeping with Patrick the night before the Challengers between him and Art, Tashi sneaking back into the hotel room is alarmed to find her husband not in their bed. Going to check on their daughter, she finds Art in bed with Lily instead, and goes out into their parlor, where the guilt seemingly begins to wash over her.
- Non-Actor Vehicle: A supporting cast example: the umpire during Patrick and Art's New Rochelle match throughout the film is played by Darnell Appling, Zendaya's personal assistant.
- Not So Above It All: While Art is portrayed as being a Nice Guy who lacks the killer instincts and manipulative streak that Tashi and Patrick possess, it's later shown that he is just as capable as sinking to their lows.
- Parents as People: Tashi and Art both clearly love their daughter Lily very much. Both are also somewhat preoccupied with their own marital difficulties and Art's career, and leave a lot of the actual child-rearing duties to Lily's maternal grandmother.
- P.O.V. Cam: During the film-ending portion of the Challengers match between Art and Patrick, the camera sometimes switches POV between Art and Patrick, to at one time even becoming the POV of the ball.
- Power Hair: Tashi's hair is longest when she's youngest. It gets progressively shorter over each iteration as she gains in fame and power, admittedly as a coach and celebrity and not in her preferred role of a tennis player.
- Product Placement: The film is about athletes who have their own endorsements:
- Tashi has a deal with Adidas, and prominently wears their merchandise in ads and on the court.
- Tashi and Art later have a partnership with Aston Martin, called Game Changer{s}.
- Tashi and Art are prominently shown using a MacBook to watch his match at the hotel.
- The tennis players wear a lot of branded clothing while playing on the court, most notably from Nike.
- Art and his team wear a lot of Uniqlo. note
- A famished, down-on-his-luck Patrick shares a bagel sandwich from Dunkin' Donuts with a worker at the challenger event.
- Art asks Tashi to be his coach at an Applebees in Cincinnati.
- Art and Tashi are shown staying in a suite at the New Rochelle's Four Seasons.
- Raging Stiffie: Art physically has a boner after their makeout session with Tashi. Patrick playfully smacks his erect dick, causing Art to recoil in pain.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The umpire during the challenger event is tough but fair, giving Patrick and Art penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct and reminding them repeatedly that they're in a professional setting where they're expected to be cordial towards each other.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Tashi gives one to Patrick after he asks her to be his coach to get him a comeback, something she considers disrespectful given their history together and with Art.
- Rejected Apology: Subverted, as it isn't exactly an apology, but the day before the challengers between the two, while in the sauna, Patrick tries to mend fences with Art and rekindle their friendship, yet Art harshly rejects this attempt as unknown to Patrick Art is well aware of the one night stand he and Tashi had in Atlanta circa 2011, during their engagement.
- Riches to Rags: Patrick is said to come from a very wealthy family, but in the present day, he's sleeping in his car and relying on the kindness of strangers. Tashi implies that he can always go back to his family for money or a job, however, and suggests that his poverty is performative on some level.
- Riddle for the Ages: Who actually won the challenger event, Art or Patrick? The umpire is never shown calling the match and their final play is framed in a way that's meant to be as deliberately ambiguous as possible, not to mention that it's technically impossible.
- A Storm Is Coming: Before the challengers between Art and Patrick, a massive storm sweeps New Rochelle, foreshadowing the massive changes that the main trio are to face in the next 24 hours.
- Scenery Dissonance: Much of the film's complicated relationship drama and cinematic flair takes place in decidedly unglamorous locations, such as Art and Tashi's Relationship Upgrade at an Applebee's in Cincinnati (which, in real life, is an extremely popular place for tennis players to go after matches) or the bulk of the film taking place at a low-level tennis competition in New Rochelle, sponsored by a local tire company.
- Slap-Slap-Kiss: Tashi and Patrick's relationship is highlighted by their constant violent arguments, in between make out/sex sessions. The night before the challengers, Tashi goes from literally spitting in his face in anger, to having sex in his car.
- Serious Business: Tennis is treated almost like a religion in the film, complete with hymns playing over some scenes, and Tashi comparing a tennis match to a romantic relationship between two people.
- Spiteful Spit: The night before the challengers match, Tashi meets Patrick in the middle of a big, windy storm. They have an argument and she spits in his face right before initiating sex with him.
- Throwing the Fight: Patrick's poor conduct on during the challenger match against Art is at least in part because he had slept with Tashi the night before in exchange for throwing the match. However, he can't resist letting Art know this, resulting in a great rally between the two.
- Turn of the Millennium: Most of the flashbacks, excluding Tashi and Patrick's hookup in 2011, take place between 2006 and 2009.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Subverted and the problem with Patrick, who has been trying to coast by in the leagues on his raw talent alone. Yet without the training to hone his skills like Art, who is now a world champion, Patrick has never made it beyond the preliminaries.
- Victorious Roar: After scoring the winning point at the U.S. Open Junior women's final, Tashi screams, a demonstration of her deep passion for tennis. She shouts again after the impressive rally between Patrick and Art at the end of the film, finally witnessing them play great tennis again.
- We Used to Be Friends: For many years, Art and Patrick were best friends, doubles partners, and boarding school roommates. They became estranged due to their romantic rivalry over Tashi. It's implied that they may be on their way to mending fences at the end of the movie.
- Would Hurt a Child: Tashi says that she would stab a kid or an old lady if it meant being able to recover from her Career-Ending Injury.
