Move over geeks. The jocks want their pop culture spot back, and they’re seething for revenge.
That is quite literally the idea behind Revenge of the Jocks, Jeff Tremaine’s first narrative, non-Jackass related film.
Originally written by Etan and Rami Cohen, but currently being reworked by Jeff Baena, it takes Revenge of the Nerds and reverses it. (I know, it’s difficult to figure that out from the title.) Three men, once the stars of their high school athletic teams, now find themselves in a world that doesn’t value their prowess. Everyone values the nerd and the geek, and the victims have now become the tormentors.
So, they will presumably become bullies again, and we’re supposed to root for them. Oo-rah! For the record, I’ve got nothing against jocks (I briefly played ice hockey. I had a brief flirtation with wanting to do sports journalism. I’ve been in both worlds!), but the concept just sounds ugly. With bullying making headlines more and more, I’m just not sure it’s funny or cool to celebrate being an asshole to any particular clique, be they jocks or D&D players.
Yes, that’s a totally pandering thing to say. But if there’s one place I can say it, it’s among we geeks who are sort of enjoying the new world order. Besides, when have sports, athletes, and jocks ever not dominated the social order? Last I checked, men still spoke freely about football as an ice breaker, not binary code or Earth-2, so all seems ordinary with the world.
6 comments
Ugh.
This movie will never come out. It’s just going to drift into the either like that J-Lo SUPERHERO PSYCHIATRIST movie. Fade away… fade fade fade away.
The only way this would work is if it were the actual jocks from Revenge of the Nerds (once again led by John Goodman) seeking revenge against the now-successful nerds for throwing a monkey wrench into their total dominance. You would paint the jocks as sad and washed up, so emotionally destroyed by their college experience that they are unable to succeed in life. They would be the underdogs. You could root for them, especially when you showed Anthony Edwards and Robert Carradine as smug Steve Jobs software tycoons. That would work.
I’d watch that… if only so I wouldn’t have to see Donald Gibb do another Capital One viking commercial.
This would work better if they went for the “geek chiq” or hipsters instead of nerds. If it was Popped Collar Bro angry that his girlfriend dumped him for Effeminate Flannel Hipster, it could be a cute little romp that everyone could come out of feeling good about themselves.
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