Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and the, uh, Revenge of the Nerds

For years I abstained from watching Revenge of the Nerds (1984) because I thought it was a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist. I simply assumed Revenge of the Nerds must be a sequel to The Nerds. Well, I learned today that I wasn’t missing much aside from lame frat hijinks, a ton of sexual assault and misconduct, typical ‘80s Asian stereotyping, and some light homophobia.

Despite my issues with the movie, I applaud it for depicting an all-inclusive fraternity consisting of nerds, losers, a Japanese guy and a gay black man. Aside from some homophobia on the part of Curtis Armstrong’s Booger, Larry B. Scott’s Lamar is fully accepted as part of the group—though his portrayal is a comic stereotype of gay men in many respects. Also, Booger is a complete creep who compulsively picks his nose, fat-shames women, and admits to cruising the high schools all day to find a date for Lambda Lambda Lambda’s inaugural party.

Fraternities and sororities were not a part of my college experience—my experience was working full time while actually taking my studies seriously—and I’ve never been one for the college humor of Animal House (1978) and Old School (2003), so it’s no surprise Revenge of the Nerds didn’t work for me. I just find it all so trivial, wrongheaded, disgusting, and not funny in the least, even when it’s lampooning the frat culture I despise so much. The only moment in the movie that elicited a genuine laugh from me was during the football practice when John Goodman’s Coach Harris gives a rousing speech to his team, sends them off to the showers, and then realizes “Shit, we forgot to practice.”

In film, frats and sororities are often representative of the upper classes and both the presidents of the Alpha Beta frat and the Pi Delta Pi sorority, Stan and Betty, are very yuppy-coded. Watching Revenge of the Nerds in 2026, I couldn’t help but think, these are the people destroying the country right now. At one point, the Lambda Lambda Lambda nerds complain of their mistreatment by Alpha Beta to the Greek Council of which Stan and Betty are at the head; the solution Stan proposes is that he and Betty lead an investigation into the grievance and the idea of the guilty investigating themselves only to find themselves innocent sounds eerily familiar.

The finale of Revenge of the Nerds sees the two nerd protagonists, Anthony Edwards’ Gilbert and Robert Carradine’s Lewis, making a plea that “No one’s going to be free until nerd persecution ends.” Well, we’re living in a world in which the nerds have won and things are worse than ever. The “coolness” of nerd culture has been frustrating enough with people of all kinds proudly yet self-deprecatingly saying, “I’m such a nerd” because they were able to identify a Star Wars character or understand basic principles of electronics while we all sink into a post-literate dark age at an alarming rate.

Worse than that, in the hellscape of 2026 nerds are running the country into the ground with their unrestricted development of A.I., rigging of financial markets, corruption of government, and subjugation of the working class like the supervillains they are. This generation of nerds has also turned traitor by allying themselves with the jocks they once detested—and yet paradoxically aspired to become. The result is their mutation into the reprehensible and completely incompetent final form of the “bro-nerd” sent to destroy us all while chugging beers in the U.S. hockey team locker room to overcompensate for previously being stuffed into lockers themselves…