by Megan Bailey, Staff Writer

Since this February’s Winter Olympics, I’ve been thinking a lot about figure skating. I’ve watched a lot of figure skating content in my day, including my favorite teen flick growing up, Ice Princess, and more recently, the Blind Landing podcast season, “Out on the Ice.” I also love ice skating in the winter months, though you won’t see me landing any jumps. The sport as a whole is currently facing some major issues: scoring controversies, representation issues, and quads, oh my! But I’d like to focus on how it’s been portrayed in film, specifically in The Cutting Edge (1992), Blades of Glory (2007), and I, Tonya (2017). The Cutting Edge is a tropey rom-com between a spoiled figure skater who pairs with a disgraced hockey player to compete at the 1992 Olympics. Blades of Glory is your typical mid-2000s Will Ferrell parody movie. And I, Tonya is a gritty biopic about Tonya Harding. They all show a little something about the politics of the figure skating community and exemplify trends in filmmaking as a whole. Let’s talk about it!

As a primer on figure skating, competitors perform two different programs: the short and the free skates. For each program, skaters receive two different sets of scores that combine for your total points. Since all three of these films depict the old scoring system, I’ll explain that first.

It was a 6.0 system with the short program, the free skate, and “presentation,” which was judged in both skates. The highest points a skater could receive from each judge for each program was a 6.0. 

After a massive scoring scandal at the 2004 Olympics, the International Skating Union changed to a new judging system, which became mandatory at all competitions starting in 2006. This new system is based on a “code of points,” where each element is graded individually, compiled together for a final score. And as far as jumps, you’ll see how important the triple axel is in I, Tonya. The movie goes to great lengths to describe how crazy that jump is, and indeed, the jump is still pretty rare in women’s skating. In male figure skating, the highest-earning jumps are quads, where you rotate four times in the air before landing. It’s basically impossible to win, or even medal, at an international competition without landing at least one quad jump.

In terms of the figure skating in these movies, The Cutting Edge doesn’t really show a lot about the community as a whole. Kate Moseley (Moira Kelly) is a spoiled pairs skater who can’t seem to find a male partner who can keep up with her. After competing in the 1988 Olympics and falling out of a lift, she’s desperate to find a qualified partner and compete at the 1992 games. While this film shows the 6.0 scoring system and a few competitors, it’s more interested in developing the main Kate’s developing relationship with Doug (D. B. Sweeney).

I can’t really fault it for that, seeing as it’s a rom-com. The team does work on an impossible move (a spin into a throw, unheard of!) so that the pair can have a chance at the Olympic gold medal. And there is some discussion about how stuffy the program choices for skating could be back then. Lots of classical music and ruffles, which Doug is very unhappy about. They end up compromising and skating in less-frilly costumes and with more contemporary music. It’s also interesting to note that this film shows Kate’s previous partner explicitly hitting on Doug, with Kate telling him to get used to it. While there’s been a very common perception that all men in figure skating are queer, there actually were no out male figure skaters competing for the U.S. at the Olympics until Adam Rippon in 2018. Unbelievable, right? But true!

Strangely, I think Blades of Glory might be the closest of the three in depicting today’s figure skating community. There is a big conversation going on in the skating world about artistry versus jumps. Even at this year’s Olympics, Jason Brown—attempting no quad jumps in either program, placing sixth—among the more artistic skaters, competed against Nathan Chen—who landed multiple quad jumps and won the gold medal. In Blades, you see Jimmy MacElroy (Jon Heder) competing with more artistic, effeminate programs and in a very silly peacock outfit. Comparatively, there’s Chazz Michael Michaels (Will Ferrell), who is a power skater and shows sex appeal (if you’re into that sort of thing?). 

Now, despite Blades showing programs with only a single jump and judged with the outdated scoring system, I think it’s safe to say that it’s otherwise depicting a similar competition environment in men’s skating. There’s power skating with jumps, and then there’s artistic skating. In the film, Michaels and MacElroy tie in competition, which leads to them brawling on the podium and getting kicked out of single’s skating. They decide to compete together in pairs, and off we go into the somewhat-thin plot of the movie. It also displays some common tropes in pairs skating, including the common gripe about sibling teams being creepy. As the siblings skaters, Amy Poehler and Will Arnett are hysterical, especially their long program based on JFK and Marilyn Monroe with pill bottle props, yikes! (Side note: check out the Shibutani team at the 2018 Olympics if you want an example of an incredible sibling team with no creepy vibes.)

As for I, Tonya, it depicts the politics in women’s figure skating of the 1990s. It shows the 1992 Olympics, also shown in Cutting Edge but instead focusing on the women’s event, followed by the 1994 Olympics. As depicted in the film, Tonya (Margot Robbie) faced a lot of criticism because she wasn’t America’s typical sweetheart. She was a redneck and financially struggling to keep up with the trends in the sport. After a judge specifically mentions her unwholesome image, she gets back together with her abusive husband and tries to make amends with her abusive mother, in order to show that she has a loving family. In real life, she was often underscored for presentation based on her music and costume choices, which the movie shows. Likewise, there’s a reckoning of sorts coming in women’s skating. A lot of skaters, like Amber Glenn, have talked about the pressure to perform as a super feminine skater. Hell, they just changed the “ladies” event to officially be called the “women’s” event and allowed the women to wear pants in their programs at this year’s Olympics. Tonya’s attempt at the triple axel, the movie posits, was her trying to get a fair shake at scoring against just this kind of prejudice. 

It’s mentioned several times that no one else “had the balls” to try the triple axel, but that’s a very America-centric version of events. The movie fails to mention that Midori Ito did land the triple axel at the 1992 Olympics, where Tonya did not. Ito previously landed the triple axel in competition in 1988, making her the first woman to do so. Toward the end, this movie is much more focused on Tonya and the fallout from the Nancy Kerrigan incident than figure skating, which makes sense, seeing as it’s a biopic following our antihero.

In terms of filmmaking, there are some clear trends between the films as well. In the ‘90s, rom-coms were way more popular, and The Cutting Edge was one of many. It’s a familiar movie with a meet-ugly followed by the two leads getting to know each other, then a dramatic “I love you” scene at the end. At the Olympics no less! Blades of Glory is a very typical Will Ferrell movie, right in his sports parody heyday. This one comes right between Talladega Nights (2006) and Semi-Pro (2008). Plus, Jon Heder dates this movie in a very specific way. And then there’s I, Tonya, the perfect embodiment of the gritty biopic trend we’re currently in. We love an antihero right now, especially one with some daddy and mommy issues. Interview-style clips are used throughout, in a style that’s become more popular now. Likewise, the film’s ending statement is an incredible depiction of the 2017 ideological landscape in America: “The haters always say, ‘Tonya, just tell the truth.’ But there's no such thing as truth. It's bullshit. Everyone has their own truth. And life just does whatever the fuck it wants. That's the story of my life... . And that's the fucking truth!” 

Along the same lines, the filming of the skating in each is pretty emblematic of their time. The Cutting Edge is very much the standard of early ‘90s films. The skating itself is done by stunt doubles, with the camera panning up from the skates to cut to the actor’s faces as they come to the easier moves. But the figure skating competition scenes are low-lit with a spotlight following the skaters, which, though not how competitions are in real life, I’m assuming was done to cover up some of the editing between the stunt doubles and main actors. In Blades, there’s a rudimentary attempt at some face-replacement CGI in the jumps and tricks, but this movie is definitely not interested in looking accurate. It does, however, have fully lit competition scenes, which are true to life. The I, Tonya creators at the time talked a big talk about the face-replacement CGI, but it kind of always looked terrible, in my opinion. And the kicker is that there weren’t any skating doubles in America who could even do the triple axel, so that element was created using CGI. This movie hangs its hat on that scene (showing it three times), but it never really pulls it off.

The perfect figure skating movie still eludes me, but I’m always keeping an eye out for more media about the sport. Maybe nothing will capture me the way that Ice Princess did in my teen years! Likewise, I’m not sure what the next trends in filmmaking will be, but it’s possible another figure skating movie will come along and embody that upcoming era as well. I’ll definitely be watching!