150 Word Review: 'Challengers' (2024) + 'Reign of Fire' (2002)
Throuple trouble
The strongest shape in nature is the triangle, but not in relationships.
Challengers tells the story of a yearslong ménage à trois between three tennis stars played by Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O'Connor, a smirky, rakish actor who dominates every scene he's in. Hearts, vows, and racquets are broken. Zendaya gives a noticeably low-key performance as a calculating, wounded antagonist obsessed with tennis.
The two male leads have chemistry, and the movie is most intense when their unconsummated sexual connection is explored. The boys love to share snacks. Phallic imagery abounds. Plenty of sweat on the courts but not enough in the sheets.
The movie builds to a satisfying climax, both emotionally and visually. Luca Guadagnino directs a sporty soap opera but an experimental one—he has fun with tennis balls. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's addictive electronic soundtrack is a welcome condiment that helps hold this love sandwich together.
Grief, friendship, Jazz Hands. My debut memoir, Theatre Kids, comes out June 18th.
New 150 Word Review: ‘Monkey Man’ (2024)
Essay: ‘Reign of Fire’ (2002)
There are two reasons to immediately watch or rewatch the 2002 post-apocalyptic blockbuster flop Reign of Fire. There are also about a dozen or so secondary reasons, including Matthew McConaughey’s smoldering performance as Van Zan, a greasy, USDA-grade lunatic dragon hunter with a shaved head. He is a cigar-chomping scene-smiter.
The sight of McConaughey leading a ragtag army prompts the leader of a small band of survivors in the UK countryside to deliver a slyly political one-liner about the only thing more destructive than a dragon… which is Americans. In 2002, you see, the U.S. was in a fightin’ mood. This is all good stuff.
The first reason to stream Reign of Fire is a scene at the movie's beginning that establishes a colony that has survived the end of the world.
In two of their most likable roles, Christian Bale and Gerard Butler are survivors performing their interpretation of the climactic lightsaber fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back for a crowd of wide-eyed children, all orphans.
It is a touching moment as these two rising action stars mug and play make-believe for parentless kids and a handful of families hiding in the bowels of a broken-down castle, safe from dragons but slowly starving.
This simple scene establishes high stakes for Reign of Fire. As the song goes, I believe the children are the future.
As Quinn, the leader of this motley crew, Bale is in peak form, as intense and vulnerable as he’s ever been, and this movie came out a couple of years before he dons Batman’s cape and whispery baritone becomes famous. Quinn’s best buddy is Gerard Butler’s Creedy, and Butler’s unique macho vibe is also on full blast in this movie as a growly, bug-eyed bro-mensch. These two have great best friend chemistry, and I’d love to see them do another movie together, maybe something heist-y.
The movie includes brief performances from blue chip character actors Alexander Siddig, Alice Krige, and Izabella Scorupco as a hardbitten helicopter pilot who helps McConaughey’s Van Zen take down dragons.
The second reason to stream Reign of Fire is, well, because the action is tight like a crossbow string pulled back. The dragons are genuinely terrifying, and McConnaughy’s character’s tactics for taking them down are insane. The movie is 100% heavy metal fury.
Reign of Fire is a bleak, inventive, and original genre-bending action movie. Director Rob Bowman’s dystopian future is where humans hide while dragons feast on ashes. Bowman was a television director with many beloved shows on his resume — like The X-Files and Star Trek: The Next Generation — and four so-so feature films, including the pre-MCU superhero movie Elektra starring Jennifer Garner. But Reign of Fire is special, a popcorn blockbuster par excellence. Bowman must have been inspired.
While most movie dragons star in medieval-inspired fantasies, Reign of Fire drops them into the middle of modern times, with a bit of narration thrown in to explain why the Earth is overrun with beasts that can breathe napalm. But even that narration lacks details: the dragons woke up one day. Humans dug too deep. That’s it. Let that be a lesson to future generations: drilling for oil and burning fossil fuels is wrecking the environment. Also, mythological behemoths could be unleashed.
The dragons are an elegant stand-in for climate change or just man’s hubris in general. The world’s governments responded to the dragons with nukes, further destroying civilization. Reign of Fire is two timely cautionary tales: human greed and industry will destroy us all, and so will nuclear weapons.
Two-thousand and two was a competitive year for special-effects-stuffed spectacles — Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man swung into theaters, as did the second Star Wars prequel Attack of the Clones and the first Harry Potter movie. That’s some stiff competition. And the elevator pitch is, even now, quirky: Reign of Fire is Mad Max meets flying dinosaur flamethrowers.
Hollywood has been addicted to the safe bet of IP for two decades now and it wouldn’t kill the industry to invest in more original, batshit ideas instead of betting so heavily on familiar IP and sequels and reboots. The industry has forgotten the value of surprise, a bet that pays off big (when it pays off.)
The dragon movie genre is limited. The best is probably 1981’s deadly serious Dragonslayer, a Tolkein-esque story about a boy and a surprisingly realistic, virgin-hungry relative of The Hobbit’s Smaug. In 1996, Sean Connery lent his voice to a CGI dragon in Dragonheart, a movie I would not recommend watching or rewatching.
Recently, there was the animated How I Trained My Dragon trilogy, and those movies are perfectly watchable if you’re a grown adult trapped on a red-eye flight, for instance.
Speaking of The Hobbit, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Smaug was an incredible creation. It’s just too bad his performance is buried deep inside Jackson’s tedious follow-up to his Oscar-winning The Lord of The Rings adaptations. They should never have stretched The Hobbit into three long-ass movies, but money talks.
The popularity of HBO’s hit fantasy-drama Game of Thrones and its spin-off House Of Dragons has returned dragons to the center of pop culture. If you’re drawn to HBO’s winged lizards, you’ll enjoy Reign of Fire’s prehistoric beasts. The dragons of Game of Thrones resemble Reign of Fire’s monsters, with tattered bat-like wings and sleek demonic faces that can launch fire tornadoes from their mouths.
It’s too bad there was never a sequel to Reign of Fire — the somewhat happy ending is a little too pat for me, and, oh, spoiler alert about the ending. Humanity survives, but I can’t help but think there are more dragons out there, patiently waiting for more hairless monkeys to flame-broil.
New 150 Word Review: ‘Hundreds of Beavers’ (2024)
Can't wait to watch Challengers. We're going on Wednesday.
I know one person who desperately wants Hollywood to kick its IP habit- right after they buy the film/TV rights to my ideas.
That "Hundreds of Beavers" thing looks weird as hell....