The Teen Movie Bracket, Round 2: Here Comes Harry Potter
After a mostly chalk first round, things are about to heat up …The Teen Movie Bracket, Round 2: Here Comes Harry Potter
After a mostly chalk first round, things are about to heat up …
Tied to the 20th anniversary of Bring It On, we hereby dub the next five days Teen Movie Week. Dig up your varsity jacket, pull up to your cafeteria table, and re-live your adolescence as we celebrate the best coming-of-age movies ever made.
One round down in The Ringer’s Teen Movie Bracket and I’m—hang on, this can’t be right—I’m not even mad? I’m not working overtime trying to figure out how, or more importantly why, someone sicced an army of bots on an internet-based contest? I’m growing concerned that our readership has suddenly morphed into a group with reasonable opinions?
The power of teen movies.
Round 1 went almost completely chalk, minus a couple head-scratching results (which we’ll get to). All in all, there were only seven upsets (out of 32) and of those seven, five involved a 9- or 10-seed. That means a couple things: First, that despite all of the people in my mentions calling me a “criminal” or “an incredible failure,” we actually did a pretty good job seeding this thing. Sure, some movies were saddled with bad matchups, but in general, the movies we put in the Top 32 were the movies that actually made it into the Round of 32. So, uh, ya know … in your face, high school bullies.
But more importantly, this means that Round 2 is going to be intense. There were 18 movies in Round 1 that earned more than 70 percent of the vote in their matchups, but the cake walks are over—now the movies that won in a rout are going to have to face off against the other movies that won in a rout. Voting is about to get much harder.
Just like in Round 1, you can vote here on the website, on Twitter, and on Instagram every day till 6 p.m. ET. Here’s every matchup in the Round of 32.
High School Drama
The Story of the Round: Watch Out for Back to the Future
I thought Marty McFly had a hard road ahead of him. Not only was Back to the Future facing off against Marvel’s active fan base in matching up with Spider-Man: Homecoming, but I also expected the movie to take some dents because of its slightly ambiguous status as a teen movie. Not so: Back to the Future destroyed Homecoming, taking 78.8 percent of the total vote. Peter Parker definitely isn’t feeling so good right now.
Things will theoretically get harder for Back to the Future—the iconic 10 Things I Hate About You looms in Round 2—but after seeing this first-round result, I’m no longer betting against the movie. Marty might gun it to 88 and steal this entire competition.
The Rest of the Matchups
Teen Are Terrifying
The Story of the Round: The Boy Who Made It to Round 2
This tweet was the exact moment when I knew Election would not see the second round:
Assemble they did. Election won by a decent margin in our on-site poll, but Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire took social media by storm to the tune of 58.5 percent on Twitter and 66 percent on Instagram. And so, one of the best teen movie antiheroes has been taken down by the kid who got rejected by Cho Chang even though he was the most famous wizard in the world.
And look, these things happen. As much as we want these exercises to make objectively ideal choices—and most of the time, they do!—sometimes it boils down to popularity. And it may not shock you to hear that Harry Potter is more popular than Election. And that’s fine! Cinephiles may not approve, but Goblet of Fire is a good teen movie that deserves a place in the second round. The only question now is whether popularity can propel it to even more upsets. The Sweet 16 is definitely in reach, but things’ll get very competitive from there.
The Rest of the Matchups
Next Stop: Adulthood
The Story of the Round: I Can’t Hardly Believe It
How could this happen? How could Can’t Hardly Wait, a late-’90s classic that I thought had Final Four potential, get walloped in the first round by 21 Jump Street? They’re technically not even teens in that movie! They’re just pretending to be teens! How could you do this to Jennifer Love Hewitt, Seth Green, and Ethan Embry?!!?!
Now I know why they call it an “upset,” because that’s exactly what I am. I’ll get over it, I guess—just like William had to get over it when Mike Dexter rejected their friendship after a night of male bonding. [Starts crying all over again.]
The Rest of the Matchups
What’s Your Damage?
The Story of the Round: Huh, People Really Like Juno
Much to Shea Serrano’s chagrin, Booksmart got absolutely book-smacked by Juno, the 2007 sensation that had people ogling Michael Cera’s legs and saying things like “honest to blog” and “home skillet.” I kind of thought Juno was just a passing fad, but I was extremely wrong: Juno really crushed Booksmart, with 68.3 percent of the vote across all platforms. Not even recency bias or Shea’s pleas could help.
And now we’ll see whether Juno can really play the dark horse:
The Rest of the Matchups
Come back Wednesday morning for a breakdown of what promises to be a much tighter round of matchups.