It’s a sequel to the movie, so let’s just use the songs that were added for the movie. What is “pseudo nostalgia”?
It’s a musical. Musicals are just about pseudo-everything. That’s a feature, not a bug. That’s why in a musical, people stuck in traffic dancing on car tops is enjoyable. Or jumping all around the room dancing on furniture. In real life that would be a disaster.
Using the words “cynical,” “contempt,” and “mediocre” in the same sentence as *Grease *= does not compute. I’d go with “magical,” “peppy,” “fun,” “great to sing along with,” etc. If a prequel has those same qualities, I’m all over it. If the reviews come in with words like “lame,” “tired,” “no-talent,” etc., then I will stay away.
I would be surprised if The Usual Gang do not appear at least at the beginning and end of the prequel.
… wait, what?
Of course “the gang” from “Grease” will be represented… regardless that we know him from another property, you have to establish Danny as a character in the movie about his summer vacation, so what better way to do this than Danny on the last day of school? This way the audience (who is already primed for this) is re-introduced to the “Grease” universe, Danny’s world, his friends, his life, (I’m sure there’s a musical number here) then we…
CUT TO SANDY
… we see Sandy on her last day of school, and maybe another musical number… (Or maybe scenes of Sandy are cut with Danny scenes during the same number. Who knows?)
Regardless, it’s not at all difficult to shoehorn Rizzo and the gang into a few scenes here and still make it about the summer D’Sandy became a thing.
I saw the national touring company of Grease in 1973, not long after the Broadway version premiered, and only a couple of years after the original version had been first performed in Chicago. The nostalgia, the subject, and the characters seemed genuine back then, especially since the story was set less than 15 years earlier.
When the movie came out in 1978, it was still less than 20 years after the story’s 1959 setting. But the characters had been scrubbed of most of their working-class grittiness, and the cameos from the actual '50s celebrities gave the whole thing an extra dose of campiness. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a fun and enjoyable movie, but it had lost a certain note of “realness.”
Now the story is set 60 years in the past. The current generation of producers have no anchor in that era, and, IMHO, will be concerned only with creating a frothy pop confection with cute retro costumes.
And that’s why I’ll miss Rizzo. She’s the only character that managed to hang on to her original grease.
I hope they cast and computer de-age John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
Bumped.
A man bought Olivia Newton-John’s Grease jacket for $243,200 at a charity auction, and then gave it back to her: Olivia Newton-John's 'Grease' jacket: A man bought it for $243,200 and gave it back to her - CNN Style