“I love beating people up,” says Claressa “T-Rex” Shields in T-Rex. The boxer, 17 years old at the time, loves to pack a punch. Sheilds’ ability to wallop an opponent thrills audiences, but the folks managing her career advise her to stop using that line with the media. Nevertheless, she persists. This T-Rex roars on her own terms.
Shields’ story is the subject of the inspiring 2015 documentary T-Rex, directed by Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper and backed through PBS’s Independent Lens. The doc chronicles Shields’ historic gold medal win when the 2012 Olympic Games in London introduced women’s boxing. Audiences who missed this small but mighty doc during its festival run may want to catch it before Shields’ tale returns to the screen. T-Rex marks something of an annual tradition for the fall festival circuit, as every year seems to bring at least one film that gives a documentary the dramatic treatment.
After The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Next Goal Wins, and The Royal Hotel—the latter based on Hotel Coolgardie while the others adapted docs of the same name—comes The Fire Inside. The drama uses T-Rex as the source for what’s destined to be one of the high profile crowd pleasers of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival when it premieres in September. (This year, TIFF also premieres Superboys of Malegaon based on the doc Supermen of Malegaon.)
A source of inspiration
T-Rex echoes a move from the Next Goal Wins playbook. It’s a prototypical inspirational sports movie. Great characters? Check. A genuinely moving tale? Check. An underdog to root for? Check. It’s an obvious example of what continually motivates Hollywood to look to documentaries for inspiration.
The reviews for T-Rex, meanwhile, handily echo the ones from Next Goal Wins cited in last year’s retrospective with its portrait of a scrappy Samoan soccer team. “You don’t have to be a boxing fan to be awed by Claressa Shields,” praised the New York Times. The film hits all the right notes as an inspiring sports doc. As Shields sets her eyes on the prize, her dream poses no small feat for a young woman from Flint, Michigan. T-Rex tells how Shields endured an abusive childhood and raised her siblings on her own. An Olympic medal represents a golden ticket to a new life.
Her coach, Jason Crutchfield, tells the camera that he sees a unique fire inside T-Rex that distinguishes her from other protégés. The coach, who works as a cable electrician by day, says he figured that he’d have a champion in his roster. “I never thought it’d be a girl,” he admits.
The film tells how Crutchfield took Shields under his wing when fell hard for boxing at age 11. Recognizing her potential and her need for mentorship, he established a regimen that included lots of training. That includes a strict “no boys” rule.
The fighter
T-Rex finds a mean hook in its portrait of boxing’s ability to provide Shields a path forward. The film deftly observes her humble origins. Vérité footage captures the story of a girl who grew up in poverty and had to learn to be a fighter. Claressa’s dad, Clarence, is starting fresh after spending much of his daughter’s childhood in prison. Her mother, Michelle, is an alcoholic and struggles to provide stability for herself and her daughters.
Michelle’s boyfriend, meanwhile, first appears during an interview with Shields’ sister, Brianna. The sister interrupts her take to sass him, call him a pervert, and tell him to get lost. She quickly regains her composure and carries on. That’s what these girls do.
Canepari and Cooper, who shot the doc themselves, observe the aspiring middleweight champion’s dedication and love for the game. But their eyes are less on the ring and more on the fight that gives Shields her magic spark. The no-frills aesthetic captures life as it is for Shields.
The directors firmly root the story in Roger & Me territory as T-Rex evokes Michael Moore’s portrait of a town that’s been left behind. Poverty permeates the Flint scenes as T-Rex finds great power in observing Claressa’s hunger to surpass the limited expectations that society has for her. That circles back to her coach’s “no boys” rule, especially when she takes a shine to boxer Ardeal at the gym. Crutchfield advises her not to throw everything away for a pregnancy, which leads to an explosive fight and a falling out.
But the headstrong fighter is as strong of mind as she is in body. Crutchfield’s guidance keeps her on the path she needs and a win in China qualifies Shields for the Olympics. At 17, her dream is within reach.
Living the dream
T-Rex finds an unexpected rhythm in the Olympic bouts as Shields gets off to a rocky start. She barely wins the first set of her initial match—which proves suspenseful even if one knows the outcome since she needs to win every match to score Olympic gold. But the subsequent rounds—quarter finals and semis—fly by. It’s easy to see how Shields’ undefeated streak made her the inaugural Olympic gold medal winner. Although much of T-Rex’s footage draws from the IOC’s material, its cut with thrilling verve and intensity as the best boxing flicks are.
This underdog triumph inevitably fuels the chorus of rightfully enthusiastic endorsements for T-Rex. “The kids cheer her victory onscreen and laugh at her snappy comebacks, a teen rock star with laser focus and a whip-like right jab,” says Linda Barnard in the Toronto Star.
“Zackary Canepari and Drea Cooper make sure the story is all Shields’s, keeping her charisma at the center,” agrees Abbey Bender at The Village Voice, noting and forgiving the film’s relatively conventional approach.
Always an underdog
Shields’ endearing and indomitable spirit carries T-Rex through its most surprising dramatic turn after she wins Olympic gold about two-third through the documentary. Canepari and Cooper show audiences what it’s like for a girl like Shields to achieve her dream at 17 after fighting with her whole heart. They provocatively ask what comes after. T-Rex is an underdog story about someone who continually proves herself yet remains an underdog.
What Shields doesn’t get, however, are the endorsements that she, Brianna, and others anticipated. People in her entourage recognize that a poor young Black woman isn’t the icon that sponsors chase even though she’s the pride of Flint. Kids look up to her as she gets a hero’s homecoming. Instead of observing Shields posing for magazine covers and commercials, the camera follows her to a collection agency where she pays her mom’s light bill. The clerk who processes her payment recognizes her as the gold medal girl.
“The film does an excellent job of showing that achieving your dreams does not always alter life the way one expects it would,” notes Courtney Small at Cinema Axis. “If anything, Shields seems to have more burdens on her back now – sponsorship issues and those who assume fame equals wealth – then she did prior.”
From doc to drama
Drawing from over 400 hours of footage shot with Shields during her bouts, T-Rex ends not long after the 2012 Olympic run. The burden of responsibility with which the film concludes makes clear that Shields’ fight isn’t over. In the years since T-Rex, Shields has kept her streak going, including successfully defending her title and scoring Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
The interest in Shields’ victory prompted Universal Pictures to buy her life rights that year and harness T-Rex’s modest success to bring the inspiring tale to a wider audience as a drama. (T-Rex’s accolades include the Docs for Schools Award at Hot Docs 2015, voted upon by students.) It probably helps, too, that enthusiastic notices in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both likened Shields’ fire to Hillary Swank’s boxer in Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winner Million Dollar Baby—extra catnip for a studio hungry for a prestige project.
However, Hollywood’s treatment of Shields’ tale echoes the boxer’s hard knocks. The film, then titled Flint Strong, seemed like a dream project with Barry Jenkins tapped to adapt the doc just as his film Moonlight was the toast of 2016’s festival circuit before scoring one of the biggest Best Picture upsets in Oscar history.
Momentum built steadily with a 2019 announcement that cinematographer Rachel Morrison would make her feature directorial debut working with Jenkins’ script.
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Morrison’s move
Morrison had recently made history as the first woman to score a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination for her work on Dee Rees’ Mudbound. Her lensing on the period drama built upon strong notices for work in documentaries like What Happened, Miss Simone? and dramas like Fruitvale Station. The announcement was the toast of the trades: here’s a woman who honed her chops and had proven herself, bringing an underdog spirit to the project as well as a fine eye for realism, but also a sensibility for shooting big budget studio work lensing blockbusters like Black Panther and directing episodes of the series Quantico and American Crime.
A few strong jabs continued with the announcement that production had found its Claressa Shields in Detroit native Ryan Destiny, followed by the news that rapper/actor Ice Cube would play Crutchfield. Buzz couldn’t have been hotter.
When execs at Universal wanted to shoot in Winnipeg on the cheap, Morrison fought hard to get the shoot as close to Flint as possible in order to preserve authenticity and ensure a robust network of Black actors and extras who could reflect Shields’ experience. Filming began in Toronto’s Cinespace Studios on March 11, 2020. Two days later, productions across the world halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
One punch after another
As productions gradually resumed while Hollywood learned how to manage safe shoots, Flint Strong was tapped to get back in the ring in September 2020. Then it was January 2021 as Morrison acknowledged that the intimacy of boxing scenes and the amount of extras needed for Olympic crowds were “impossible undertakings” for an industry getting back on its feet amid new COVID production protocols. Things then looked ready for a June 2021. That didn’t happen.
Studios like Universal were navigating a new normal as the theatrical life for movies changed. Flint Strong went into development limbo while Universal rolled cameras on a hopeful blockbuster like Jurassic World: Dominion and the R-rated rom-com Bros, which bombed at the box office but broke ground as a mainstream gay comedy. Universal decided that Shields’ story was no longer a priority with production costs rising and audiences staying home.
From Flint Strong to The Fire Inside
T-Rex’s new life faced additional challenges as production delays meant compromised schedules for stars and career changes for producers. However, with Flint Strong producer Michael De Luca moving to MGM amid all the moves, at least one person with power recognized a million dollar baby worth saving, as did Barry Jenkins and MGM exec Eisha Holmes as producers. (De Luca’s since moved to the Warner Bros. Motion Picture group where he’s served as chairperson since 2022.)
Despite all the moving parts, Morrison’s production harnessed the underdog spirit of the boxer who inspired it. Filming finally resumed in July 2022 in Hamilton with the FirstOntario Centre doubling for London’s Olympic boxing ring. Other key roles confirmed included Bryan Tyree Henry (If Beale Street Could Talk) replacing Ice Cube to bring the film’s heart as Coach Crutchfield and Canadian actress Oluniké Adeliyi (Backspot) scoring the juicy part of Claressa’s mother Michelle.
Two years later, T-Rex is making a comeback after a summer of Olympic fever. Now with Amazon/MGM behind it in the States and Warner Bros. handling it in Canada, the drama steps into the ring as The Fire Inside to emphasise the light that Crutchfield saw in Shields. The Fire Inside was originally tapped for an August 9 release—not really a prime slot—but it had the rare case of getting a date change to make room for a festival berth when the Toronto International Film Festival announced a world premiere for September.
Presumably someone in Toronto recognized that same fire, which seems appropriate for Shields’ story. Expect Shields to continue her knack for beating people up—this time with a punch aimed for the heart.
