Friday Night Lights

Friday Night Lights

The remake of a real story should have the same setting, props and the characters that are playing the real people should have the same type of personalities right? Not so fast people. The story of the 1988 Permian Panthers was remade in a film that goes by the name of Friday Night Lights. I was very disappointed when I came out of the movie theater because this movie was not all I thought it was going to be. To give people the full effect of what really went on in the 1980's you have to use the right types of props. This movie has too much of a futuristic point of view. I am going to prove that this film is not meant to be a remake of the original happenings of the 1988 Permian Panthers, this film is used to promote clothing, shoes and accessories for the youth of America and I am also going to prove that the director could have chosen some better uses of the camera and some better actors.

The topic that bothered me the most in this film was the types of clothing and equipment that these players were wearing. They had “under armor” shirts on underneath their jerseys. In 1988 “under armor” was not even thought of. The players also had a type of helmet called the “revolution” helmet, which helps to sustain more contact and those helmets are also another type of futuristic thing that is involved in the movie. Another example are the shoes that the players are wearing. They all have the new “nike” cleats in the movie, but in the year 2000 that type of “nike” cleat had just appeared on the market so how could they have had those cleats in 1988. All of those things may not have appeared to most of the people in the theater but the next effect that I am going to mention had to stand out to everyone. The stadium that the Panthers were playing in had a turf field. The turf field did not even appear in the National Football League(NFL) until 1995, so how is it possible for a high school team to have the turf. Those were all of the problems with the movie that just did not make sense to me and I think that it took away from the effect of the movie.

I am very interested in the way the director uses the camera angles and the actors the director wants to use and I do not think that Peter Burg, the director, made good choices in these two areas. The actor that played Boobie Miles did not look like the