Remember the Titans This movie follows the traditional elements of a plot diagram, however it isn't as simple as a normal plot diagram. Although it follows the structure of a plot diagram it also has multiple points of where it repeats some of the elements of the diagram. It starts out with the exposition where it introduces the coaches and there families, then it introduces the players on the team of both black and white kids. Now the rising action is where it starts to get tricky, there are multiple conflicts throughout this movie that build multiple rising actions into multiple climaxes. Within all of this mess we will come out with the climax or in this case multiple climaxes. After the climax we are going to head down and get everything wrapped up so the movie can reach it's resolution. Some movies are even more complicated than this, but others are much less complicated and follow the plot diagram exactly how it is designed. In the exposition we are introduced to the coaches first, coach Boon and coach Yolks. Throughout the first half of the movie they seem to have different encounters with each other where one or the other does something excluding the opposite coach which may not seem completely racist to them, but if you look at it from the opposite races standing points you can definitely point out why it could be offensive. It almost looks like they are oblivious to the fact that they are hurting each other and the team with their actions until they are confronted by each other and see that what they have done was unnecessary. We also have the families of the coaches who don't seem too bothered by the fact that they are working with other races. A good example is Cheryl, she is coach Yolks daughter and she doesn't seem the issues that people are having with race when she is watching the game. All she cares about is that her team wins. We also have coach Boons daughter, she doesn't seem to see the racism problems either but I bet her mother does. Boons family goes through a lot because of the area they live in. It seems like they live in a white dominant area so it is hard for the black people to mix in without having problems with the white people. The football team struggles from the same problem within the team and outside of the team. When the team is introduced to each other it is difficult for them to get to know each other and come to their senses that if they are going to win than they need to come together and work as a team regardless of their skin color. As we are introduced to some of the white players families towards the ending, it becomes apparent that they do not like the black players and they are not welcoming at all to them. The rising action is where all of the conflicts start to pop up and diminish the ability of the team. One of the first things that happens that tells you there will be problems is when coach Yolks has a meeting with his team. During the team meeting Yolks tells his team that he is taking the year off and he is going to take up the head coaching job at another school the following year. None of his white part of the team likes that at all and they try to fight it. Yolks ends up talking to Boon about it and decides to work under Boon as an assistant coach. Another conflict is when coach Boon is having a meeting with the black side of the team and Yolks walks in with the white side of the team completely disrupting the meeting that they were having and results in Boon yelling at Yolks about disrupting his meetings. Before the team gets on the bus to head out to their camp two of the white players try to confront coach Boon about how the teams are set up and Boon just makes fools out of them in front of their parents and other teammates. This triggers Boon to call everyone off the bus and he tells everyone to get with their teammates of the opposite race because they will be staying in the same room as them for the duration of the camp. As they ride the bus to the camp none of them speak to each other and one of the black players tells everyone to shut up. When they arrive at camp they start setting up their rooms and Brutier doesn't like how his roommate is setting up his side of the room so this turns into a fight that everybody joins in on. Once the blacks and whites get squared away and become friendly with each other they start to have conflicts within the members of their own race, that is a sign of the team becoming stronger. They are becoming stronger in this way because they are directing their aggression toward members of the same color instead of the opposite color. One of the climaxes of the movie is when the team wins their first game. I think this is one of them because they overcame one of the biggest obstacles that was hindering the team and that is racism. Just as soon as they start to come together though they start falling apart again because of the city and its hate for the black people, this was a big downfall for the team. Even though the team was strong and came together with their separate races the town could not do the same. Instead the town kept fighting and this hurt the team and their friendship because they couldn't hang out in the same areas without one of the two races being discriminated. They also could not eat in the same areas as each other so this brought more hatred for each other. The climax to this problem was a meeting that the team had arranged in which they gathered the whole team and they discussed how the city was weakening them and they warmed up for the following game by singing to build the team's morale. Coach Yolks was also bribed with the hall of fame to lose the game, but he showed respect and team spirit when he declined the bribe in the middle of the game so that his team could win. I think that is worth more than the hall of fame, but to everyone their own opinion. The next climax is when Brutier is heading out after they win one of their last games and as he is driving off a truck runs into the side of his car. It happens to run into the side of the car that he is sitting on and ends up putting him in the hospital where he is later diagnosed with paralysis. This section of the movie shows the highest point of the team coming together in my opinion because when Julius walks in to see if Brutier is alright Brutier's mom tells Julius that he is the only person that he wants to see right now. If that isn't the highest point of the movie than I don't know what is. When Brutier dies his mother finally starts to fully accept Julius as a friend just because of the friendship between the two. This leads to the falling action because everyone is finally settled and there are fewer issues with race between everyone. Most of the problems with race are finally settled with the main characters of the story, but I doubt that they would be settled this shortly within the town which it all took place. The coaches also finally came together at this point because it was apparent that Yolks didn't have a problem with Boon when he gave up the hall of fame to win the game in the end. The resolution to the story was how the story told it, the team started out as a racist group that felt like they could not live with another color on their team. It then followed with many more obstacles such as the town continuing to discriminate, but in the end the Titans became one of the toughest teams to play. They didn't become a good team just because they were forced to play together, but because they learned to play together and forget about the differences that the team had amongst them. None of the other teams had to overcome the difference that the Titans had to and in result it made the Titans a much more mature and solid team. Being able to catch a ball and run down a field or tackle someone holding a ball doesn't make you a good player on a team. Being able to use your team to an advantage and work with your teammates to help them achieve their goals is the greatest effect that a team can ask for. Anyone on a team trying to solo the whole game and take every ones responsibility will most likely result in the failure of their goal. This is the one element that I saw most with this team and I thought was the strongest element for the producer of the movie to work with. This movie was very well written because it showed examples of a jumpy plot diagram which can gather much more attention than a basic one and it was also based off of two very powerful elements which are teamwork and racism. Between the combination of both was where the movie landed.
This movie follows the traditional elements of a plot diagram, however it isn't as simple as a normal plot diagram. Although it follows the structure of a plot diagram it also has multiple points of where it repeats some of the elements of the diagram. It starts out with the exposition where it introduces the coaches and there families, then it introduces the players on the team of both black and white kids. Now the rising action is where it starts to get tricky, there are multiple conflicts throughout this movie that build multiple rising actions into multiple climaxes. Within all of this mess we will come out with the climax or in this case multiple climaxes. After the climax we are going to head down and get everything wrapped up so the movie can reach it's resolution. Some movies are even more complicated than this, but others are much less complicated and follow the plot diagram exactly how it is designed.
In the exposition we are introduced to the coaches first, coach Boon and coach Yolks. Throughout the first half of the movie they seem to have different encounters with each other where one or the other does something excluding the opposite coach which may not seem completely racist to them, but if you look at it from the opposite races standing points you can definitely point out why it could be offensive. It almost looks like they are oblivious to the fact that they are hurting each other and the team with their actions until they are confronted by each other and see that what they have done was unnecessary. We also have the families of the coaches who don't seem too bothered by the fact that they are working with other races. A good example is Cheryl, she is coach Yolks daughter and she doesn't seem the issues that people are having with race when she is watching the game. All she cares about is that her team wins. We also have coach Boons daughter, she doesn't seem to see the racism problems either but I bet her mother does. Boons family goes through a lot because of the area they live in. It seems like they live in a white dominant area so it is hard for the black people to mix in without having problems with the white people. The football team struggles from the same problem within the team and outside of the team. When the team is introduced to each other it is difficult for them to get to know each other and come to their senses that if they are going to win than they need to come together and work as a team regardless of their skin color. As we are introduced to some of the white players families towards the ending, it becomes apparent that they do not like the black players and they are not welcoming at all to them.
The rising action is where all of the conflicts start to pop up and diminish the ability of the team. One of the first things that happens that tells you there will be problems is when coach Yolks has a meeting with his team. During the team meeting Yolks tells his team that he is taking the year off and he is going to take up the head coaching job at another school the following year. None of his white part of the team likes that at all and they try to fight it. Yolks ends up talking to Boon about it and decides to work under Boon as an assistant coach. Another conflict is when coach Boon is having a meeting with the black side of the team and Yolks walks in with the white side of the team completely disrupting the meeting that they were having and results in Boon yelling at Yolks about disrupting his meetings. Before the team gets on the bus to head out to their camp two of the white players try to confront coach Boon about how the teams are set up and Boon just makes fools out of them in front of their parents and other teammates. This triggers Boon to call everyone off the bus and he tells everyone to get with their teammates of the opposite race because they will be staying in the same room as them for the duration of the camp. As they ride the bus to the camp none of them speak to each other and one of the black players tells everyone to shut up. When they arrive at camp they start setting up their rooms and Brutier doesn't like how his roommate is setting up his side of the room so this turns into a fight that everybody joins in on. Once the blacks and whites get squared away and become friendly with each other they start to have conflicts within the members of their own race, that is a sign of the team becoming stronger. They are becoming stronger in this way because they are directing their aggression toward members of the same color instead of the opposite color.
One of the climaxes of the movie is when the team wins their first game. I think this is one of them because they overcame one of the biggest obstacles that was hindering the team and that is racism. Just as soon as they start to come together though they start falling apart again because of the city and its hate for the black people, this was a big downfall for the team. Even though the team was strong and came together with their separate races the town could not do the same. Instead the town kept fighting and this hurt the team and their friendship because they couldn't hang out in the same areas without one of the two races being discriminated. They also could not eat in the same areas as each other so this brought more hatred for each other. The climax to this problem was a meeting that the team had arranged in which they gathered the whole team and they discussed how the city was weakening them and they warmed up for the following game by singing to build the team's morale. Coach Yolks was also bribed with the hall of fame to lose the game, but he showed respect and team spirit when he declined the bribe in the middle of the game so that his team could win. I think that is worth more than the hall of fame, but to everyone their own opinion. The next climax is when Brutier is heading out after they win one of their last games and as he is driving off a truck runs into the side of his car. It happens to run into the side of the car that he is sitting on and ends up putting him in the hospital where he is later diagnosed with paralysis. This section of the movie shows the highest point of the team coming together in my opinion because when Julius walks in to see if Brutier is alright Brutier's mom tells Julius that he is the only person that he wants to see right now. If that isn't the highest point of the movie than I don't know what is.
When Brutier dies his mother finally starts to fully accept Julius as a friend just because of the friendship between the two. This leads to the falling action because everyone is finally settled and there are fewer issues with race between everyone. Most of the problems with race are finally settled with the main characters of the story, but I doubt that they would be settled this shortly within the town which it all took place. The coaches also finally came together at this point because it was apparent that Yolks didn't have a problem with Boon when he gave up the hall of fame to win the game in the end.
The resolution to the story was how the story told it, the team started out as a racist group that felt like they could not live with another color on their team. It then followed with many more obstacles such as the town continuing to discriminate, but in the end the Titans became one of the toughest teams to play. They didn't become a good team just because they were forced to play together, but because they learned to play together and forget about the differences that the team had amongst them. None of the other teams had to overcome the difference that the Titans had to and in result it made the Titans a much more mature and solid team.
Being able to catch a ball and run down a field or tackle someone holding a ball doesn't make you a good player on a team. Being able to use your team to an advantage and work with your teammates to help them achieve their goals is the greatest effect that a team can ask for. Anyone on a team trying to solo the whole game and take every ones responsibility will most likely result in the failure of their goal. This is the one element that I saw most with this team and I thought was the strongest element for the producer of the movie to work with. This movie was very well written because it showed examples of a jumpy plot diagram which can gather much more attention than a basic one and it was also based off of two very powerful elements which are teamwork and racism. Between the combination of both was where the movie landed.