Friday Night Lights is a well-regarded movie, based on the book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. The movie follows a high school team from Odessa, Texas in 1988 who is prime position to win the state championship in football that year, and the adversity they went through along the way. The movie overall was solid, nothing innovative or special just a solid sports movie which in of itself makes it one of the better sports movies of all time which isn’t saying much. It was safe in its presentation of the material, but often I found myself desiring more from the movie.

The movie was very frustrating on many fronts, leaving a lot of undeveloped plot arcs, and just not taking some of the more interesting plot points further. One that comes to mind is the development of the character James “Boobie” Miles. Here is a boy that has such a promising future, an excellent athlete, one of the best in Texas, a future football scholarship to a D1 school, and it all gets derailed by a knee injury. This has the potential to be a driving point for the movie, an arc that can be focused on and have many complex themes that can add depth to the movie. Instead they threw the character arc to the wayside, and it was never really visited again outside of using it as an inspirational piece for the football team as they continue with their season. There are a few of these storylines that are tossed to the side, and these arcs would add the depth that the movie is lacking. This is a byproduct of the movies structure. Their entire season is squished into a two-hour runtime, and the final product feels fast paced and rushed. While the face paced nature is not all bad, more action and excitement are a few positives, the emotional depth in the plot is really lost. There is simply no screen time for those lines to develop so no real relationships with the characters or even the team can be made with the audience, so the emotional ending is a big miss in terms of what it set out to accomplish. Overall it was a solid movie, but it could have been a truly special movie if there was more focus on the plot arcs and characters they left undeveloped.

This past Friday, I attended Rose House’s screening of the classic sports film Friday Night Lights. As a lifelong athlete, I respected and appreciated this movie’s attempt to realistically represent an ugly truth of sport: success is never guaranteed, no matter how deserving you are of it.

The majority of sports-centric films I’ve viewed have ended with the main character or team rising above all odds, past failures, and personal struggles to emerge victorious in the final competition. Therefore, overall, I feel that athletic films tend to focus on success stories. But, as someone who has been playing sports her whole life, whether it be softball, basketball, cross country, or track, I can say that failure, disappointment, and heartbreak make up a large portion of competition. My dream throughout my high school track career was to beat my school’s 1500m record. Despite grueling hard work and an intense determination, I graduated from high school being just ONE second off of the record. I never accomplished my big athletic goal. Although I did beat other records and had many other accomplishments and successes as a runner, the point is that a lot of my races were tainted by thoughts that  “I should’ve run faster!” or “I should’ve beaten that girl!”

Therefore, I appreciated the fact that Friday Night Lights had the main team, the Permian Panthers, lose the State Championships at the end, despite grappling with personal conflicts and injuries throughout the film. We all felt that the Panthers were so deserving of that win. All those kids had worked so hard and dealt with so many hardships – their star running back, Boobie Miles, was terribly injured and consequently prevented from competing in the State Championships. The fullback, Don, dealt with a disappointed, abusive, and alcoholic father at home. The coach had to deal with the extreme pressure of a small Texas town completely focused on their football team emerging victorious. However, despite all their uphill battles, intense practice, and deep drive, the Permian Panthers lost in a devastating manner. This is a common story of sports that we often don’t see portrayed in film or on television — sometimes, the team that loses is your team. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t try hard enough, want it enough, or deserve it. In the end, only one team can win, and it may simply just not be your day to succeed. Sports is a beautiful, ugly amalgamation of pride, joy, conflict, struggle, despair, regret, and distress.

I love it.

The film Friday Night Lights covers the real-life story of a high school football team from a small Texas town as they attempt to win the state championship. As can be expected from a movie of this type, themes of never giving up, courage, perseverance, etc abound throughout the film with everything culminating in the “big game”. In perhaps a mildly unique twist from the usual plot of a sports movie, (stop reading now if you are bothered by spoilers) our high school team fails to secure the coveted state title, but rather learns that perfection can be found within themselves. The team takes to heart their coach’s words, “perfection means looking your neighbors in the eye with the knowledge you did everything you could”. This is a good message, and I agree with it. However, I feel like the actual story line of the film provides little supporting evidence as one player proves to his father that he is capable of being good at football…..by being good at football for one play, another player ruins his future career with an injury….and his story essentially ends there, and another player is worried about leaving his sick mother alone….until he goes to college hundreds of miles away anyway. We should be proud of simply knowing that we tried our best to make things right, particularly today when it seems like fixing the world’s problems is a Herculean task. The “best” result shouldn’t be what we focus on. We are going to lose at some point and we need to be ready to face that. I just think that a movie whose main thesis is “be proud that you tried” should at least show some evidence that the players tried to be something greater than a high school football player for four years.

This past Friday, I attended Rose House’s showing of the movie Friday Night Lights. Despite not being a particularly big fan of football, I was definitely looking forward to it throughout the week prior. In part because it was timely (being right before the Super Bowl and all), but largely because of the film’s soundtrack. Barring a few songs featuring other artists, the soundtrack to the movie was written and recorded by the band Explosions in the Sky, a contemporary post-rock band from West Texas. Strangely enough, it was actually through the band that I first heard about Friday Night Lights—they’ve been one of my favorite bands for quite some time, and I was even lucky enough to see them in concert last spring. Since I found out they spearheaded the soundtrack for this movie, it’s been near the top of my (ridiculously long) “movies-to-watch” list.

In spite of my general disinterest in football, I really enjoyed this movie. I was a little bit worried going in; I came from a place where high school football was largely peripheral to everything else going on, and I knew how seriously other places, especially the South, could treat it at times. It was never really a part of my culture—my idea of football for the longest time was “A couple of months out of the year where my dad would yell at the TV a lot because the Giants were always losing.” I was worried that the movie would seem melodramatic to me, given this context. Luckily, that concern ended up being completely unfounded.

I have to believe this is almost entirely due to the soundtrack. Obviously I am biased since I already know and love the band who produced it, but I firmly believe it is true. The soundtrack can make or break a movie, and Explosions genuinely did the movie justice. (1) Being personally asked by the producer of the movie, Brian Reitzell, to tackle the project, (2) being familiar with the book the film was based on, and (3) being from the area the movie was set, you can tell they were genuinely passionate about the project. I think that really bleeds through into the music.

Often times you hear artists being called “sellouts” for writing music for film, but I strongly disagree with that sentiment. Writing a soundtrack presents a whole new set of challenges, and I can imagine it being a difficult, and largely thankless, job. I wish the role of soundtracks was more talked about in the music world. I would love to learn more about their history and the creative process behind making them—perhaps Friday Night Lights is the perfect place for me to start learning.

It’s said that people can learn a lot from sports. While I definitely agree with that, watching the film Friday Night Lights gives me more insight on this idea.

It’s true that we gain a lot from doing sports. Sports can make people happy, energetic and healthy. It’s also part of our lifestyle. Many people do sports regularly and enjoy their life more because of the happiness, fitness and relaxation. Rather than hanging out for dinner, more and more people might hang out doing sports together. Moreover, sports help people find friends sharing the same interest, motivating communication and sharing.

I might say that anyone who loves sports may reach the above conclusions but that’s not the only meaning of sports. While I do some recreational physical exercise for happiness, relaxation and  health, I can never classify myself into a sport person. I’m not professional and sports is not all of my life. Hence, for professional athletes, sports mean a lot more things. Take the film we watched as an example, which is football.

Being in a football team not only requires each individual to have good skills of playing football but also team work between team members, the strategy of playing against the opponents, mental stress from the audience, etc. There’s no doubt that everyone who joins the team should be really good at playing football. However, when in a game, players are largely affected not by their skills but by some outside factors such as points and response from the audience, either positively or negatively. Bobbie in the film is definitely a genius player but to some extent, his mental is not strong enough. He cares a lot about the result and also the public’s expectation. Hence, in the end he bears too much pressure and hurts himself. However, I’m still moved by his persistence and love for football and its understandable that he’s still in high school.

Watching Friday Night Lights before the Super Bowl is an unforgettable experience . This film seems to only focus on football but it actually applies to many situations in our life.

I have always been a sucker for sports movies. I will never understand why, since I don’t understand most sports, and most of these movies are about football, which is even more confusing to me. I’ve only played kiddie soccer until I realized that I didn’t like it, and then I was on my high school’s crew team as a coxswain. Although the four years that I spent on the crew team had a large impact on the way that I view sports, I had a liking for sports movies long before I joined the team.

The struggles that are portrayed in sports movies are some that can affect any viewer. The issues of teamwork, endurance, and stress to perform are some that people encounter everyday. In this way, Friday Night Lights is very much like the other sports movies. The conflicts that occur in the film are some that are recurring among the genre. However, unlike other sports movies, the film had less than satisfactory outcomes for many of the characters. Although in some way they were able to come together, in the end many were still unable to move on from their town or succeed in the way that they wished to. Held down by a system that does not work for them, if they are not able to achieve through sports, they will not be able to achieve their long-term goals. It is a systematically perpetuated oppression that can make it difficult for people of low socioeconomic status to succeed. I believe that this is the way that the film differs from many of the other films in the sports genre. Instead of coming out with a happy ending or decent ending for the characters, viewers are left somewhat unsatisfied with the outcomes of the characters. It makes a statement about the difficulties that can arise from not having the resources that are lacking among lower socioeconomic statuses.

I wanted “Friday Night Lights” to answer one question: Why football? Specifically, why on earth would people care so much about football, and especially about a small town high school football team? As such, I’d like to talk about what I think football meant to the town of Odessa in the film “Friday Night Lights”.

The film makes the point early and often that football represents a unique opportunity for the Odessa-Permian players. One of the opening scenes shows the quarterback, Mike Winchell, reviewing a book of plays with his mother, who then pointedly asks if he is going to get a scholarship. Don Billingsley’s father, who in the film is a high-school football state champion, tells his son to enjoy his senior year playing football, essentially telling him that he will never get another opportunity like this and that he should make some memories while he can.

Odessa’s football team seems to fill a void for the town: Odessa might lack economic opportunities, it might not be famous or cosmopolitan, but when it comes to football, Odessa-Permian can win. And when the Permian-Panthers win, the whole town wins vicariously through them. Watching the film, I could understand why the Odessa-Permian fans would feel such an intense “local-nationalism” for their town and team. That said, the film is not uncritical of the Odessa fans’ football hyper partisanship, and does an excellent job of showing how toxic it is. In one particularly striking scene, Coach Gaines’ daughter asks if the family will have to move if the team loses the big game. Clearly, Coach Gaines’ has experienced some truly reprehensible behavior at the hands of the disappointed football fans in the past.

I do not enjoy football, but watching Friday Night Lights made me understand why the Odessa-Permian players played, and why the fans cared so deeply about the outcome of their play. The film humanized all its characters, and made it impossible to feel the same easy contempt that one might feel for Philadelphia Eagles fans breaking things because their team won.

That said, the film doesn’t really touch on the more lasting destructive impacts of football – particularly CTE. For the people of Odessa and the other towns, football is bound up in issues of race and class and privilege. And yet, it is a terrible medium for addressing any of those issues. I think we can all agree that making children give each other concussions is not an effective way to solve any problem. The film points out some problematic aspects of football culture but does not seem to go so far as to say that football is a genuine problem. But, given what we know about the effects of football on those who play it, I think it is past time to admit that football is a problem.

Odessa-Permian loses the climactic state championship game. But, seeing how the players were getting beaten up, that’s not how I thought the movie was going to end. I thought the quarterback was going to die.

Warning, this blog reveals major plot points in the movie Friday Night Lights.

Friday Night Lights: a movie about dedicated athletes, adoring fans, and supportive families. Or so you’d expect. But in reality, the star quarterback repeatedly lets down his team, the fans obsess over the athletes, and the families–they only hurt their children with every action.

When the viewer first meets Boobie, the star quarterback with offers from major football colleges nationwide, they are struck with a sense that Boobie is not just talented, but dedicated and driven. When the local TV station interviews fans, each interviewee  claims Boobie to be their favorite, and the best football player their town has ever seen. But when the viewer encounters Boobie in the weight room, the viewer is left more than disappointed when Boobie exclaims that he doesn’t need to lift, and his talent is “God given.” The viewer then realizes that Boobie is nothing more than an arrogant athlete, with little drive to improve his talent. Then, after Boobie tears his ACL, he refuses to acknowledge the injury and plays before he has healed, further letting down his team by increasing the state of his injury before the state championship playoffs.

While the movie opens with obsessive fans that portray a small town pride in the team, as the team moves closer to the championship playoffs, townsfolk start to pressure the team and the coaches into absolute victory. At one moment, just before the state championship, two townsmen share their good wishes to the head coach and his family, but after the men leave the coach’s daughter timidly asks if a loss would mean the family would have to move, again.

The player’s families, similar to the fans, also appear at first, to be warm and supportive. However, when the second string quarterback misses a catch in practice, his father runs onto the field to verbally abuse his son, and give an implicit threat of physical abuse out of the public eye. This trend continues throughout the movie, with the father chasing or beating his son due to the son’s decreasing skill at football. When Boobie tears his ACL and his MRI reveals the serious injury, his uncle dismisses the injury and encourages Boobie’s coach to let Boobie compete. The uncle’s action shows his support for the success of the high school team, rather than the protection of his nephew.

At first glance, the movie Friday Night Lights may present an air of dedication and strength, but underneath, all one can see is the pain and suffering at little emotional satisfaction.

On Friday, Flora’s Friday Film showed Friday Night Lights, a 2004 sports drama film which depicts a high school football team in Odessa, Texas fighting its way to the state championship game amidst many obstacles.  Although the movie centered around football, I found that much of the movie can be applied to many other situations.  

For example, the movie shows how one’s attitude has a huge effect on whether the desired outcome can be reached.  In the movie, superstar quarterback Boobie Miles is severely injured shortly before the regular season was ending.  The entire town is dismayed at the news of his unclear future for the season and wonders how the team could possibly go on and win without its star player.  Coach Gaines does not let the media coverage affect him, as he works to make the best of the current situation.  The team goes on to make it to the playoffs after Gaines has the players make an attitude adjustment.  Gaines also says that a bad attitude can cause you to be your own enemy.  

One of Coach Gaines’ quotes struck me during the movie regarding perfection.  He says that perfection is not about the scoreboard, but rather “being able to look your friends in the eye and know you did everything you could not to let them down.”  Gaines exemplifies this by trying his best each game to secure a win while being able to adjust after tough losses.  This quote is so important in life because so many people worry about trying to be “perfect” according to their own definitions.  With perseverance, people can try their best to achieve what Gaines calls “perfection.”  

Overall, I enjoyed this movie, especially the perfect timing with the Super Bowl.  I look forward to watching more inspiring movies like this one later this semester.  

In honor of Super Bowl weekend, I attended the Flora Film Friday where we watched Friday Night Lights. The movie portrays the 1988 football season for Odessa-Permian high school and the struggles they faced both on and off the field. As a huge football fan generally, the most memorable part of the movie was the coach’s pep talk at half time of the state championship game. In this speech, he defines perfection not as being without flaws, but rather by not letting down your teammates. And this was the through-line for every issue off the field in Odessa. Whether it was Charles Billingsley abusing his son Don for fumbling too often or Boobie Miles attempting to play on a torn ACL, all of the problems the community faced were due to putting self above team and lacking perfection.

What’s interesting about this definition of perfection is that it completely ignores the concept of winning and losing. Rather, it is a comprehensive, long term picture of winning. The best analogy would be a war, so let’s take the American Revolution. When the British first arrived, America lost a lot generally, but built a sense of unity around the cause. Even though the losses piled up early, this information was used to get stronger and improve, so that America won more and more battles, eventually winning the war. When we look back at history, we think first about America’s victory long term. They were 1-0 in this war, even though they lost a lot of the individual battles. So this definition of perfection states that as long as you are improving your skill set, you will be perfect. And that is the kind of definition of perfection that would make me want to tackle Dallas-Carter even harder.

While I have mixed feelings about the content of the movie “Friday Night Lights,” I think there’s a lot to be said about the characters’ attitudes and how they influence the plot.

One of my favorite characters in the film was Boobie Miles. I think that if you overlook his questionable, yet somewhat justifiable, behavior towards his attending doctor at Midland Hospital, he was a consistently positive force throughout the entire movie. Throughout his personal highs and lows, he never failed to act accordingly to what would be most beneficial for his team and friends (other than his lack of discipline to train with them). When everything was going his way, he consistently attempted to make his teammates smile and feel as part of the family, despite being the superstar that everyone relied on. After being told he would not play football again, he kept his chin up in front of his friends, which may have been intended to save face, but he also gave each of them encouraging words before leaving.

Coach Taylor was another positive force in influencing the team’s attitudes. I think the way he handled the pressure being placed on him was relatively respectful, given that he was threatened and pressured from all sides at various points in the movie. His ability to guide his mentees through example, particularly through his positivity during the coin-toss to decide if they would play at states, was a powerful force that I thought influenced the team to stop looking negatively at the situations presented going forward.

Overall, I think that was the most powerful message that I received throughout the movie. “The only difference between winning and losing is how the outside world treats you.”

I’m a tennis fan who used to be an avid football fan. I’ve criticized football plenty since I stopped following it. But there’s nothing I can criticize about Friday Night Lights. I mean, what a movie. In a West Texan town where football is everything, the Permian Panthers, a competitive high school football team, don’t just play for fun. Every time they step onto the clean-cut grass of a field they wear the label of their hometown. The whole school knows each and every player. It’s a ghost town whenever there’s a game – local businesses close as everyone heads to the bleachers. College recruiters and cameramen left and right. All eyes on the Permian Panthers. All the time. But it doesn’t take long to realize that the pressure gets to each and every one of the players. This is clear in just about every scene involving Mike Winchell, the 17-year-old quarterback. From his ill mother to a past state champion and alumnus asking for a photo with his baby daughter, Mike battles with expectations and with his own self-belief. Other players, such as Boobie Miles, relish in the spotlight, fame, and potential, but Mike is different. No matter how well his team is doing on the field, he holds onto a pessimistic belief that somehow he is bound to fail. Fail them, fail his coach, fail his mom, fail himself. Gaines, the coach, eventually notices what’s going on inside of Mike. There’s a scene where Gaines urges Mike to let go of his doubts, and throughout the conversation Mike fiddles with a toy car. What I love about this scene is that the way film portrays it, it’s as if Mike and that toy car are one in the same. A toy car is a symbol of both innocence and immaturity. All of Odessa depends on Mike and his team to win the state championship as if life would end otherwise. But in reality Mike and his team are just a bunch of toy cars. They’re young. They still have years to learn, grow, and succeed. A toy car is also a symbol of enjoyment. They just want to play football under lights on a Friday night. Sure, their futures and careers may depend on the team’s results. But not at the expense of the joy they’ve had since they first picked up a football. By the time the state championship comes, the team is no longer there for the hedonistic pleasure of winning a game. They’re there to put their hearts into one final game regardless of what happens. So when they lose the closest game they’d ever played, they don’t pout. They don’t throw their helmets at the ground. They don’t talk smack about the other team. They smile, embrace each other, and acknowledge that they got to play the game they love under bright lights on a Friday night. And that’s all that matters.

This Friday, I watched the film Friday Night Lights. I was shocked by how the people of the small Texas town of Odessa hinged their entire lives on the outcome of their high school football games. Not only were the players under tremendous pressure, but their coaches, parents, and guardians were under pressure as well. One theme that I think was evident throughout the film was the relationship between the athletes and their bodies and how that relationship affects everyone around them.

In order to get a scholarship to play professional football, which none of their real life counterparts did, the characters pushed their bodies to the limit. Specifically, in the beginning of the film, the star player Boobie felt invincible due to the positive reactions from everyone around him. It seemed as if his success would never end. When a teammate points out that he didn’t lift before practice, he states, “this is God-given.” However, as he realized he would no longer be able to play football, he felt helpless and as if his life had ended. A heart-wrenching scene portrays him crying in the car after packing his bags in the locker room and saying that he cannot do anything besides play football, which is not an option anymore for him. I think that if Boobie had focused on school more than football, he would have other career options that would enable him to buy his uncle a house.

I think this scene demonstrates that children should play sports recreationally, and not hinge their entire lives on their sport-playing ability. Today, some parents try to live vicariously through their children by pushing them into certain activities and career paths that might not be suitable for their children. Of course, parents should encourage the interests of their child, but forcing them to shoulder the responsibility of winning for an entire town as is portrayed in the film is a tremendous undertaking. Overall, I think that instead of spending money emotionally and physically draining seventeen year olds, the town should be investing in those children’s education. At one point in the film, a radio announcer surmises that the reason the football team isn’t doing well is because “they’re doing too much learning in those schools.” I hardly think this statement is true due to Boobie’s difficulty in reading the word “distinguished” in a letter he receives from USC.

In conclusion, Friday Night Lights is a movie about a football team’s ability to individually fight their way to a better world in which the town of Odessa doesn’t heave so much expectation onto their shoulders. It is a also a movie that reveals the impact of a seemingly insignificant event, a high school football game, on many individual lives. It also exposes the intellectual tragedies that can occur when children are trained to depend on their bodily strength at such a young age.