Grease 2s Original Plan Ruined The First Movies Magical Ending

Grease 2’s Original Plan Ruined The First Movie’s Magical Ending

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Grease 2’s original plan included a cameo by original stars Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, but it would have ruined the first movie’s ending.

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Grease 2s Original Plan Ruined The First Movies Magical Ending

Grease 2’s original plan would have ruined the first Grease movie’s magical, Greased Lightnin’ ending. The sequel, which was released in 1982 and starred Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield as a second pair of star-crossed lovers divided by their social groups. Pfeiffer’s Stephanie is a Pink Lady, destined to be with a T-Bird, while Caulfield’s Michael is a preppy English exchange student who wants to break into the group. If it sounds like a redo of Grease, that’s likely because it was, but original plans would have drawn it even closer to its predecessor.

Released in 1978, the original 1950s-set Grease has grown the kind of cult appeal that only true musical cinematic phenomena – like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Sound of Music – can ever manage. Starring newcomer (at least to films) Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta off the back of his first steps into a musical career, the adaptation of the raunchy Broadway musical was an instant hit and has only grown in popularity since. Soon, a prequel movie titled Summer Lovin’ and an HBO spin-off series, Rydell High will expand the franchise, but there’s already one sequel out there (and there could have been four). Unfortunately, Grease 2 – though a cult classic – was a critical bomb and killed the franchise’s future plans for a couple of decades.

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Grease 2’s production story is a tale of woe that makes its comparative lack of success seem inevitable, in hindsight. Such was the enthusiasm to capitalize on the original movie’s popularity that the script wasn’t finished at the time of shooting and plans changed midway through the shoot. Important scenes were left on the cutting room floor and at about the mid-point of the movie, key supporting character Frenchy simply disappears. It could have been a lot different, however, and one of the film’s initial plans – a cameo by Sandy and Danny – would have undone the magic of the original’s ending.

Grease’s Ending Is About A Hopeful Future

Grease 2s Original Plan Ruined The First Movies Magical Ending

There has been some debate over what Grease’s ending really means, but in the simplest terms, it’s about finding yourself and claiming your own identity, against the nostalgic backdrop of the halcyon days of high-school. The strange magic realist final scene that sees Danny and Sandy fly off in the former’s suped-up car isn’t just nonsense either, it’s representative of the young couple flying off into an unknown future of dreams and potential. It’s supposed to be symbolic and magical and optimistic of those last days of school leading into a world where Sandy and Danny can be whatever they wanted to be. After all, they were young and in love and the sky, quite literally, was the limit.

How The Cameo Would Have Ruined Grease’s Ending

Then when Grease 2 was being planned, director Patricia Birch was keen on bringing back the cast of the first movie. Characters like Frenchy, Principal McGee, Coach Calhoun, and Eugene were all among the returning cast, but Birch had bigger targets at first: she wanted Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta to cameo. Her plan was to have Travolta and Newton-John reprising Danny and Sandy with the now-married couple running a gas station. Hardly the glamorous, optimistic future promised by the flight sequence at the end of Grease.

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And therein lies the problem. Grease’s final message goes out of its way to change the tone of the movie for a magical, hopeful ending that sets the audience up to think of Danny and Sandy wrapped up in an unseen, globe-trotting romantic fantasy having found one another. But then Grease 2 almost had them crashing back to the mundanity and mediocrity of the real world, running a gas station together. That could hardly be Danny’s dream, considering he was a dancer and a gifted racer and mechanic, nor Sandy’s given her implied scholastic aptitude. And most importantly, Grease ends with a message from Principal McGee setting up the dream of a future in which there could be future Eleanor Roosevelts, Rosemary Clooneys, Joe DiMaggios, President Eisenhowers, and Vice-President Nixons. It’s tongue in cheek, but showing in the sequel that the two leads ended up only going as far as the local gas station killed that optimism dead. So it’s only right that Grease 2 didn’t pull the intended cameo off.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/grease-2s-original-plan-ruined-the-first-movies-magical-ending/

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