Image Credits: “Challengers” (2024) Movie Poster via IMDb
“Challengers” (2024), the tennis movie with the sporty love triangle between Tashi, Art and Patrick, was released on April 26. It brought in over $70 million to the box office and currently holds a score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. When hearing about this movie, I was very excited to see Zendaya in another film on screen. The idea of a love triangle in a movie with many mainstream actors felt like a fresh idea to me.
“Challengers” follows Tashi — played by Zendaya — an extremely talented tennis player who injures her knee during a game. She then turns to coaching and living her past potential career through her husband, Art, played by Mike Faist. Of course, who is he competing against in his latest match? Tashi’s ex-boyfriend and Art’s ex-best-friend, Patrick, played by Josh O’Connor.
The movie starts off tense in the middle of the game between Art and Patrick. One of my favorite things about this movie was how the movie was shot. This movie would’ve been great if I saw it in 3D. So many scenes were close-ups filled with emotion, and I noticed a few scenes that weren’t directly addressed between the characters that had me wondering what they were trying to tell the audience. A lot of references were made throughout the movie that foreshadowed what was going to happen. Bouncing back and forth through the years, “Challengers” was chronicled through timestamps, beginning with the challenger match against the two best friends and what led up to it. When the boys met Tashi, she was an Adidas representative about to start her tennis career at Stanford.
Tashi described tennis as a relationship, and this movie shows the tension between sports and love. The tension between Patrick and Art can be seen throughout the entire movie, from watching Tashi’s game together to later on when they invite Tashi to hang out back at their hotel room. This was probably the most talked about scene throughout the whole movie. It follows a conversation between the three of them: Tashi asks about their relationship and how they met, claiming she doesn’t want to be a homewrecker. Tashi kisses Art and Patrick, leading to the two men kissing.
After getting together, Tashi and Patrick begin to go out. During a practice, Art asks Patrick a question raising the idea that if they slept together then he should serve the way Art seemingly does every time. This is one of the references I didn’t catch on to at first until the very end of the movie when Patrick later “serves how Art would.” Patrick and Tashi end up getting in a fight before one of her matches, resulting in the gruesome injury taking her chance of going pro out of the question.
After this scene, I saw an immediate switch in Tashi and her demeanor. It felt like I could feel her emotion through the screen. Zendaya did a great job of portraying her rage with her facial expressions alone.
During the present-set scenes, we saw that Patrick had joined the challenger match because he was broke. In some of the first scenes he was desperate to just find a place to stay after struggling to afford a hotel room. There was a scene of him scratching his arm, covered in bruises. It made me wonder if they were trying to depict a substance-use problem with Patrick or that he could have been donating blood. Thus, he joined tennis matches for extra money.
Leading up to the end, I learned that Tashi and Patrick continued their relationship after running into each other in Atlanta, and again the night before the challenger match. Tashi asked Patrick if he would let Art win, helping him boost his confidence. The final game was suspenseful; I was on the edge of my seat the entire final act of this movie. Given Patrick’s past, I knew he would tell Art about him and Tashi. When he looked at him and “served the tennis ball like Art would,” I was shocked in the theater.
Though I loved Tashi’s confidence and character, she only cared about playing tennis. Her life revolved around who she could see had the best game. She even threatened to leave Art if he didn’t win the challenger. Art and Patrick both cared for Tashi, but Tashi’s main focus was playing a good game of tennis.
Lauren Flynn-Miller is a fourth-year Interdisciplinary Studies Major with minors in Journalism, Media & Culture, and Professional & Technical Writing. LF954013@wcupa.edu