Neil Calloway isn’t convinced by plans for a new film about High School football…
The news that there is going to be a new Friday Night Lights film should be greeted with trepidation. It’s not the big screen spin-off of the TV series that many hoped for (more on this later, but they’re wrong to want to see Coach Taylor and co return), but although by the time the film is out the book will probably be thirty years old and the film more than fifteen, why go back and scrape the barrel when you’ve already had one film and two TV series out of it?
Hold, on two TV shows? As well as the now iconic show that ran from 2006 to 2011, the book inspired 1993’s Against The Grain, featuring an early role for a young Ben Affleck. One film and two TV shows is enough for any source material, really. Anything else is just greedy.
I’ll put my cards on the table, and declare my interest; I couldn’t care less about American Football. I don’t really understand the rules, and if you have to sell your show-piece event on what adverts you’re showing at half time, then you need to work on your main product. So, why, in September 2015, did I find myself at a High School in the suburbs of Austin, watching a football game? The answer is Friday Night Lights. The book is great, the film a fine adaptation, but the series is something else. What could have been a simple teen sports drama became a story of a community, with characters that felt believable, relatable and admirable. When I watched the final episode, I both laughed and cried (twice). If it didn’t achieve the audience it deserved, it’s probably because it fell between demographic holes and nobody knew how to market it.
It’s not perfect – speak to any fan of the show and they’ll mention the ill-advised second season murder plot-line as the series low point, and there are a few subplots that could have been rewarding that are abandoned, but for me, you can keep The Wire, or whatever overhyped, over complex and overlong Scandi-Noir you like, FNL is the best TV show ever. Though a script was apparently written, the feature film follow up to the TV series would have been an unnecessary afterword, requiring too many illogical narrative hoops to be jumped through to work; in short, the series ended perfectly. Any project that stars a former cast member will always have something going for it in my opinion; I didn’t like the movie Carol because I found it hard to believe anyone would cheat on Kyle Chandler.
I’m sure the new film will be fine – David Gordon Green has been tapped up as director, and he has a Malickian style that will work well in West Texas, but I’m not exactly holding out much hope; with the series Peter Berg and Jason Katims created the best Texas High School Football drama you could wish for, and anything else will always be in its shadow. Beyond name recognition, what’s the point of a new film?
Neil Calloway is a pub quiz extraordinaire and Top Gun obsessive. Check back here every Sunday for future instalments.
