Everything you should know about Challengers (and tennis) before watching

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Everything you should know about Challengers (and tennis) before watching

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At Polygon, many of us are fans of watching a movie with as little advance information as possible in order to feel like we’re being discovered. But sometimes it helps to know a few things, be it an interesting fact about the film’s story or just knowing how many end credits scenes to wait for. Here are four things we think you should know about Luca Guadagnino challenger before watching.

What is “Challengers” about?

Tennis star Tashi (Zendaya) sits outside at night having a drink with Patrick (Josh O'Connor) in Luca Guadagnino's Challengers

Photo: Niko Tavernise/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures

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

The film begins with this match when all three are in their 30s. It then goes back to their teenage years and jumps back in time to explore what happened between the three of them first meeting and the present, more than a decade later.

Does Challengers have a post-credits scene?

No, there is nothing after the credits – that is, there is no further information about the aftermath of this endgame. Director Luca Guadagnino (Call me by your name, Bones and everything) and author Justin Kuritzkes leave that to the fanfiction authors. We like to think that “Aftermath” is similar to the climactic scene in one of Kuritzkes’ favorite films: And your mother toowhich… well, if you know, you know.

What do I need to know about tennis before watching Challengers?

Tennis player Tashi (Zendaya) sits in the stands at a Luca Guadagnino Challengers game.  The fans around her applaud something happening on the pitch, but she smiles and shrugs, eyes closed.

Image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Everett Collection

The scoring rules for tennis are a bit complicated, and they’re worth reading up on before watching the film if you want to fully understand the plot and the specific setbacks and triumphs that Art and Patrick face. (Video gamers who have played a lot Wii Sports Tennis or one of the many other tennis simulations might be way ahead of the game here.)

The two men compete in one Challenger Match, one of the qualifying events that the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) uses to determine who enters professional competition. When the film begins, Art is already a professional player who has qualified for the sport’s biggest events Wimbledon and the US Open. Patrick is trying to qualify to play at this level.

Key terms to understand: The two men compete in a match, which usually means three or five sets. A set is a series of games played until a player has won at least six games in total And has won at least two more games than his opponent. The winner of a game is the player who scores four points first, unless the game is tied at three points each. We’ll go into this below.

Points have their own names in tennis: love (zero points), 15 (one point), 30 (two points) and 40 (three points). In tennis there are multiple referees, but the one who sits over the game, known as the chair umpire, acts as the referee and decides the score and any errors or penalties that would change the score. For example, if the chair umpire gives a score of “Love-30,” that means one player has zero points and the other has two. If both players have the same score, the score is called “all,” as in “15-all,” meaning each player has one point.

A game in which there is a tie of 40 on all points has its own special word: “Deuce”. In a deuce situation, a player must score two points in a row to win. That means a four-point game could be down to a dozen points. Whoever scores the last point in a deuce game after it is tied is said to have the “advantage” as they are halfway to victory. So if player A scores a point in a deuce game, he has an advantage, but if player A scores a point in a deuce game, he has the advantage he has the advantage, but if player A scores a point in a deuce game, he has an advantage, but if player A scores a point in a deuce game, B then scores a point, the score is back to 40, with player B is now at an advantage. There are There are several ways to score points in tennis Apart from managing to get a ball past the other player. An opponent could lose points due to a mistake. Or the chair referee could award penalty points for an opponent’s unsportsmanlike conduct, including Swearing, throwing things, delaying a match and more.

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

Can you enjoy Challengers? without knowing anything about tennis?

Secure. If one of the players is on the upswing and the other is losing, it’s pretty clear just based on their reactions. The aggressive, driving score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross heightens the tension and makes it clear when big, important things are happening. But being able to read the game results on the screen and keep track of what’s going on in individual games gives you a lot more nuance about the status of a particular game and the game as a whole.

Do the actors in Challengers really play tennis?

They often hit real balls on real playing fields, but numerous effects and editing tricks were required to give the games a seamless look. Zendaya, Faist and O’Connor all underwent extensive training to ensure their forms on the court were convincing. But Zendaya has pointed this out in interviewsShe had never played tennis before and had to go through a steep learning curve that gave her a credible performance as a world-class tennis prodigy.

Is Challengers a good movie?

Polygon definitely recommends it! It’s a playful, sexy, exciting story, part romantic, part captivating. Sports drama. From our review:

Luca Guadagnino’s sweaty, gasping sports and sexual romance drama challenger feel[s] like a thumb nose (or a raised middle finger) aimed at American Puritanism and an increasingly sex-negative culture. challenger is a sharp and biting film full of great emotions, expressed in some scenes through fast-paced dialogue and in others through quiet, sensual physicality, all shot with creative verve and aggressive, direct energy. Everyone in this film strives for sex and success and mixes those things together in shamelessly provocative ways.

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