Everything I loved about GOAT (the 2026 movie)
Everyone's already said this, but Will looks up to a female player!!! And nobody dismisses that admiration!!! Nobody says it's silly for a young boy to look up to a woman athlete!!!
Jett is the. greatest. player. Ever. The greatest player to ever play roarball. Not the greatest female player, not great because she's female, but the greatest player ever and also female. The two are not related. I don't think I've ever seen that in a movie.
Co-ed, full contact, violently dangerous sport?? The lady players are treated like every other player and hit just as hard? Mocked just as hard? Cheered just as hard? As someone who despises the softball/baseball gender split and had to use flags instead of tackles for my high school's powderpuff game, this movie might've healed something inside me.
Jett and Olivia are the most focused on the game and their careers. That's not to say the guys on the Thorns weren't focused on those things (we're excluding Will in this sample group), but our two lovely ladies were the ones whose character arcs honed in on their insecurities around the game. Jett's concerned about her career and the optics of her age and accumulating injuries only add to her stress and pride, making her a bad teammate. Olivia is hyper-aware of how people view her gameplay, especially their mockery, and it distracts her and makes her second guess herself. In comparison, Archie wants to inspire and support his daughters but hasn't found a team able to utilize his strengths. He's also exhausted from being (what's implied to be) a single dad. Lenny has been treated so poorly by his former teams that he has almost given up on the sport entirely, starting a rapping career on the side. And Modo... well, he's Modo. I think it would be hard for most coaches to use all that... Modo-ness. Besides, his character arc seems to revolve less around the game and more around his investment in the team (literally).
Building off of #4, the "greatest" players of the Thorns were the two chicks and the smallest player. The team's strength ultimately comes from their cohesivity and teamwork; none of them would have gotten far without that. But the players with the most canonical potential were Olivia, Will, and Jett. Will's disadvantage in the game was obvious, and it's not something he overcomes throughout the movie but rather has to work around. It's an immutable fact of his biology. But I loved the subtle subversions of the audiences expectations around Jett and Olivia. Especially right now, there's been a huge push to "remind women of their place" in many social circles, and I loved that Jett and Olivia flipped that idea on its head. Both character designs are based on very dangerous, very lethal species. But to take it even further, it is blatantly stated in the movie that both ladies have the most recognized in-universe potential. Lenny's tall, Archie's strong, Modo scares the other players away from the ball. But Olivia is a #1 draft pick (I don't know sports and even I know that's good) and Jett is a cemented roarball legend. It was refreshing to see the ladies as fully-fleshed athlete characters who weren't sidekicks to the male leaders of the team. Very reminiscent of Tigress from Kung-Fu Panda.
Jett and Olivia's personal styles were never brought into question, mocked, or seen as character flaws. Under another director, Olivia's girliness could have easily been blamed as the reason behind her slip in skill and focus. Under another director, Jett's tomboy-ish appearance (when she's not dressed up) could have been included in her character arc; she'd get more girly as she progressed as a character and opened up. But instead, these characters were given depth and relatable insecurities and frustrations, and their clothing was left out of the equation.
Mane, arguably one of the most outwardly masculine characters of the film, spends the entirety of his first major scene in a fishnet crop top and I need more of that energy going forward.
Dennis is the one who brought the team together and helped them play to their strengths. If the protagonist of a sports movie is a player, rather than a coach, it's the protagonist who delivers the pep-talk and opens their teammates eyes to their strengths and how they can better play together. Sometimes that can make sense, but I'm glad they didn't go this route in GOAT because it wouldn't have worked with the plot. Will was new to the team, he didn't know any of these players personally. He might've followed the team closely, but he couldn't see what was going on behind the scenes. He was the catalyst for Jett's character arc, part of which involved handing over full leadership to Dennis, who in turn was the perfect character to bring the team together. He knew key details of Archie's home life and how he interacted with his kids. He was intimately familiar with Olivia's obsession with others' opinions of her. As a big leagues coach, he was probably following Lenny's career for almost all 10 years. He knew Modo well enough to telepathically communicate the lizard's personalized advice. Anyone probably could have called out Jett's inability to share the spotlight or the ball, but only Dennis would be brave enough and acquainted enough with Jett to know he would survive hosing her down repeatedly when she didn't follow his advice. I loved that the movie team gave him such an appropriate time to shine.
This entire movie was Zootopia but more believeable in terms of worldbuilding and visual details. None of these drastically different biomes are right next to each other, and Vineland feels lived in like a real city would. There's trash and grime and broken shit everywhere, but not really in a "this is the slum area" way and more in a "there are a lot of people living right here and communal areas get used a lot and there's not quite enough funding to fix all the problems" way. Zootopia's geography works with the plot, but this just felt more real.
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