Sydney Sweeney Delivers a Raw, Unflinching Trailer in Biopic Christy That Honors Both Triumph and Trauma

11 September 2025

Sydney Sweeney in 'Christy'. Credit: Black Bear Pictures

The first full trailer for Christy drops hard, pulling back the curtain not only on Christy Martin’s rise to boxing greatness but also on the painful personal battles she survived outside the ring. Sydney Sweeney, crafted into the boxing legend through months of rigorous training, stands at the center of everything the trailer promises: grit, grace, and brutal honesty. The voice of Christy Martin here is not just that of an athlete, but that of a woman reclaiming herself.

The film opens on Christy’s early days in small-town West Virginia where dreams feel larger than the world she knew. Sweeney emerges in the trailer as a brunette Christy, raw and unpolished, performing the hard early work of a fighter sweat, strain, and determination. Scenes of beach training, sewing gloves, sparring in makeshift rings build up a portrait of beginnings forged in discipline. Then the tone shifts. Ben Foster’s Jim Martin, first supportive, begins to look darker; cracks in intimacy widen into danger. Emotional abuse, possessiveness, control. This is where Christy becomes more than a sports biopic.

The personal stakes rise quickly: Christy is more than her wins. The trailer shows her coming home battered, confronting confusion and betrayal, trying to juggle fame, identity, and her desire to break free. There is no glorification of violence for its own sake. Rather the brutality she faces outside the ring matches the ferocity inside it. It makes the victories more meaningful because we understand what she has fought through.

By the midpoint scenes the audience is pulled into the fracture point of her marriage. Jim Martin’s transformation from coach to abuser feels all too familiar. After a heated confrontation about a drink with a friend, the trailer captures Christy freezing in shock. Her mother Merritt Wever watches helpless as Christy’s confession brings her face to face with a man who claims she exists only through him. Jim screams that without him there would be no Christy. It is corrosive control at its worst.

Then the visuals intensify. The notorious 2010 attack that nearly ended her life looms: a gun, a knife, blood spilled, and hope hanging by threads. Christy Martin survived that day. James Martin was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 25 years. The trailer does not shy away from that truth. It strikes a balance: respect for her achievements, empathy for her scars. It shows the raw cost of survival.

What makes the trailer especially potent is Sweeney’s physical and emotional transformation. She doesn’t play Christy from afar. She steps into her body. Every punch. Every bruised lip. Every quiet moment of fear. Sweeney gained more than 30 pounds of muscle, trained relentlessly in boxing, kickboxing, weight training. The bruises she bears in the film are not props they reflect what it takes to walk through those fires. The ring becomes metaphor and reality in equal measure.

Yet Christy is not just about trauma. The trailer gives us triumphs, laughter, love, aspiration. Christy Martin in the ring, celebrated, praised, victorious. Martin’s induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2020 is a milestone grounded in decades of sweat and sacrifice. The early victories, the support team, the ring lights, the roar of victory all of it sits in contrast with the darkest hours. This duality is what gives the story power.

The cast around Sweeney heightens that weight. Foster is convincingly dangerous. Merritt Wever as Martin’s mother brings a grounded, worried tenderness. The film appears to leave space for identity exploration, sexuality, the costs of fame, the role of the people you trust. These are not just side notes. They are the bones of the film’s emotional core.

Christy premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 5. Audiences rose to their feet. Critics have noted that the film’s direction from David Michôd and its screenplay by Michôd and Mirrah Foulkes do justice to the complexity of this story. It is not a portrait of victimhood, but one of survival and reclamation. Christy opens in theaters on November 7.

There remains risk in telling this story. danger in glorifying violence or simplifying suffering. But from this trailer, those fears feel attended to. This film looks ready to do more than recount a boxing legend. It wants to remind us what it costs to fight for one’s self. To stay standing when so much tries to knock you down.