Beyond Homage: How Challengers and Civil War Masterfully Evolved Cinematic Tropes

By BlockReel Editorial Team Cinematography, Directing January 2, 2026

Beyond Homage: How Challengers and Civil War Masterfully Evolved Cinematic Tropes

You hear it all the time, right? "There are no original stories." And yeah, sure, maybe on some cosmic narrative level. But that's a cop-out for lazy writers. The real craft, the work that makes you sit up and pay attention, is in how you take those familiar beats, those tropes that are practically etched into our collective film DNA, and twist them. Bend them. Break them, even, only to reassemble them into something that feels utterly fresh. That's what I saw happening in Challengers and Civil War (and yeah, I know, very different beasts, but stay with me). They aren't just paying homage; they're evolving the very language.

Let's start with Challengers. Luca Guadagnino, bless his meticulous heart, and Justin Kuritzkes' script, a real masterclass in tension, by the way took the sports movie, the love triangle, the character study, and then decided, "You know what? Let's treat a tennis match like it's a gladiatorial arena where the weapons are emotional damage and perfectly placed serves." It wasn't just the editing, which was frankly masterful (Walter Fasano, take a bow), cutting between the past and the present with a fluidity that never felt jarring, but rather built this incredible, almost suffocating psychological pressure cooker.

Visually, say what you will about Guadagnino's overall aesthetic, but he knows how to use the camera as a psychological weapon. Syed Rizvi, the DP, wasn't just shooting tennis; he was shooting desire, resentment, and obsession. The intense close-ups, often from unique angles-looking up at a player from the court, or down from the net, making them seem monstrous or god-like, it’s a direct descendant of the boxing film. Think of Scorsese's brutal elegance in Raging Bull (Michael Ballhaus's handheld work, still legendary) or even more art-house, the psychological torment that cinematographer Gordon Willis brought to Klute's character studies. Rizvi didn't just borrow; he adapted. He put us in the match, not as spectators in the stands, but as combatants. The POV shots during the serves, the ball speeding towards the lens until it almost shatters the fourth wall, it's an amplification of the visceral intensity sports movies have always aimed for, but often missed, getting bogged down in slow-motion heroics. Here, it’s all about the psychological warfare.

And the dialogue in Challengers? Sharp. Acrid. It’s like All About Eve on court. (Yeah, I'm going there.) Bette Davis and Anne Baxter trading barbs, but with jump serves. Kuritzkes understood that the sports narrative, at its core, is often about conflict and ambition. He just stripped away the nobility and left the raw, carnal, competitive drive. That final match isn't about winning a trophy; it's about two men finally laying bare their entire convoluted history for one woman. And it felt like a revelation, even though we’ve seen love triangles and sports rivalries a million times. It's not just about the outcome of the game; it’s about the emotional stakes that are so high they eclipse whatever the score is.

Then there's Civil War. Alex Garland, man. He’s always pushing. This film, visually, stylistically, and thematically, takes the war film trope and injects it with a chilling, almost documentary-style realism that's rarely seen outside of genuine combat footage. Or, perhaps, closer to films like Come and See (Larisa Shepitko, truly harrowing stuff). Rob Hardy, the DP, shot this thing (on ARRI ALEXA LF and Mini LF, mostly, with Panavision anamorphic lenses, I hear) with a stark, brutal clarity that immediately says, "This isn't your rah-rah war propaganda." There’s no glorification here. The desaturated color palette, the unflinching wide shots of destruction, the almost mundane portrayal of horrific violence, it’s a conscious rejection of the Spielbergian sheen or the hyper-stylized action we often get.

Think about specific war film techniques. The chaos of a battle sequence. How often is it shot with quick cuts, shaky cam, and close-ups to disorient? Hardy (and Garland's direction) often pulls back. We get the wide shots of burnt-out landscapes, the silent convoys, the sheer scale of the collapse. We see the snipers calmly taking positions, the journalists (Kirsten Dunst, incredible) observing with a kind of detached, professional horror. It’s not about the individual heroics; it’s about the systemic breakdown, the normalization of the unthinkable. The sound design plays a huge part here too, the sudden, deafening explosions followed by eerie silence, or the distant thud of artillery. It's a sonic trope turned up to eleven, stripped of any musical embellishment. It makes you feel the dread in your gut.

This isn't to say it rejects film history; quite the opposite. It recognizes the visual language of countless war films from Apocalypse Now's psychedelic horrors, to Platoon's grittiness, to Full Metal Jacket's clinical detachment, and then filters it through a contemporary lens of media saturation and political fragmentation. The photojournalists act as our eyes, and the film itself becomes a critique of how we consume conflict. Garland isn’t inventing the genre; he’s taking its established conventions of combat portrayal and then asking, "What if the enemy isn't so clear? What if the battlefield is our own backyard?" That ambiguity is where the trope evolves. It’s a horror film disguised as a war epic.

So, for us, the folks actually behind the camera, or struggling with script rewrites in some coffee shop, wondering how to make our next project sing, what's the takeaway? It’s not just about watching old movies (though, please, watch more old movies) or reading every script that ever won a Nicholl. It's about dissecting them. Don't just watch Seven Samurai and say, "Yeah, great ensemble." Analyze Kurosawa's blocking. His use of weather as a dramatic element. The way the camera moves (or doesn't move) to emphasize power dynamics. How Mifune's energy is contrasted with Shimura's stoicism. That's where the real education lies.

When you're designing a visual language, look at how Roger Deakins (who is, let's be honest, almost unfairly good) uses negative space and practical lighting in Blade Runner 2049 to convey loneliness and scale. How Bradford Young plays with shadow and light, creating almost painterly compositions in Selma or Arrival, where the emotional weight is carried as much by the frame as by the actor's face.

Think about the archetypes in your script. The hero, the villain, the mentor. Great. Now, how do you subvert them without making them unrecognizable? Challengers takes the idea of the athlete as hero and complicates it with arrogance and self-destruction. Civil War takes the idea of the "good guys" and blurs the lines until there are no clear sides, only survivors.

It means not being afraid to take something universally recognized the car chase, the confession scene, the "hero's journey" beat, and asking, "What if I did this differently? What if I switched the POV? What if it happened off-screen? What if the emotional core was presented as visually mundane?" It's like taking a standard studio workhorse (say, an ARRI Alexa Mini, which is pretty much everywhere on sets that can afford the $500-a-day rental, or a $50K purchase) and deciding, instead of a traditional prime set, to pair it with vintage anamorphic glass that has unique flares and fall-off (like Panavision C-series or Hawk V-Lite), because you want to evoke a specific, slightly imperfect, dreamlike quality. That's a conscious choice to deviate from the expected tool set to achieve an evolved aesthetic.

The trick is not to replicate. Scorsese could make a gangster film that feels like a Scorsese film, even if Coppola already made The Godfather. Tarantino can do a heist movie. They’re building on the shoulders of giants, but bringing their own unique voice, their own obsessions, their own technical prowess to the table. And that’s what Challengers and Civil War did so well. They understood the rules of the game so thoroughly that they knew exactly how to break them in ways that felt earned, not just for shock value.

So, yeah. Next time you're sketching out a scene, or pulling up storyboards, or even just agonizing over a line of dialogue, don't just think "What scene would work here?" Think "What scene have I seen a hundred times that's like this, and how can I make mine the one hundred and first version that actually sticks with someone?" It demands rigor. It demands a deep well of film knowledge. And it demands a certain fearlessness. But it's this kind of critical engagement with history that separates the technicians from the true artists.

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Related Guide: Learn to craft your own visual signature with our Cinematographer's Approach to Visual Storytelling.