It’s been revealed via several sources, including Catherine Shoard of The Guardian, that prequel to the fan-favorite film, Grease, is about to get underway. Yep, it would appear that Hollywood isn’t quite done with Danny and Sandy since the whole idea of “Summer Loving” has been looked at again as something that might spur its own movie into production, and someone has decided to take the idea and run with it. But on this I can’t help but agree with Michael Roffman of Consequence of Sound that it might be a very bad idea. If anything, Hollywood should run with it straight to the nearest trash can and dump the idea before it has a chance to fully form. If it’s too late for that then perhaps it should be shelved at the very least until the idea has some time to mature and grow a bit. Quite honestly the idea of another love story isn’t horrible, but it does seem as though showrunners are reaching a little too much at times nowadays when they’re searching for a story. If Hollywood really wants stories that badly there are uncounted tomes out there that are just waiting to be plucked off the shelves and given a chance.
The idea of creating a movie based off of Sandy and Danny’s summer fling seems like it might warrant a short movie at the very most, as it was a lead-in to something that turned out to be so spectacular that people still talk about the movie to this day. And unless folks want to forget, which they might, the sequel to Grease was a massive flop by comparison. This was a movie that seemed to live and breathe all on its own and didn’t need a whole lot of explanation aside from what was derived from the movie itself. Setting up a prequel to this film seems like a bad idea largely because analyzing and explaining too much tends to make the original movie unravel just a bit and prequels have rarely been anything that great, with some notable exceptions. At this point Sandra Gonzalez of CNN Entertainment and a few others are of the mind that the prequel might sit in development for a while and never see the light of day, but this usually seems to work along the same line of predicting that there’ll be no rain when you want to do something outside. Eventually, enough people saying it will make sure that the opposite happens. If you missed that, the prequel might very well occur and it’s also possible that it will be less than people are hoping for.
If you want to go into analyzing the reasons behind why a prequel wouldn’t be a good idea that’s all well and good, but the most obvious reasons are that John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John wouldn’t be there, obviously, since they’re both a great deal older now and couldn’t possibly pull off being younger. With that big ‘duh’ moment out of the way some folks might want to argue that this doesn’t matter, that the main characters would still be great so long as the casting was on point and the story was fully developed. There’s a good point to that but at the same time why bother taking something that people love and putting a lengthy explanation on it? The song that inspired this film seemed to say enough since it was memorable and told a pleasing story of how the two met and what happened over the summer. It’s a teen romance that has played out over and over throughout the years and is touching as well as romantic and even inspired in a way. But forming a whole movie around it seems a bit superfluous.
Grease fans seem to be a bit divided about this since some folks would love to see Danny and Sandy back on the big screen or at least on the small screen, wherever the show decides to pop up. Others however are just as happy to not see it since the idea of Grease being revealed in any other way than it has been might be enough to dim the light that’s been shining on the movie for so long. Seriously, people hear about this movie and they still want to get up and start singing and possibly dancing since it was something they enjoyed from their younger years. A lot of folks would rather see the prequel idea get scrapped, but there are those that would love to see become something. There are upsides and downsides to such a project, but it would seem that trying to weigh them against one another only causes arguments and further speculation without any real idea of whether or not the project should go ahead.
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