When the iconic dance movie, Get up, which hit theaters in 2006, fans instantly fell in love with the onscreen duo of then-star-to-be Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan. Between the couple’s intense chemistry and the storyline involving a street dancer versus a trained ballerina, the film spanned a franchise of five films that has recently seen an international adaptation and one TV series, which is now in its third season. As reported by deadlinethe third season of the spin-off TV series, Step Up: High Tidepremiered on the streaming service in October, Starz.
Despite fan opinion that the sequels haven’t lived up to the hype of the first, the get up franchise has still seen its fair share of success. While Dewan and Tatum’s only appearances are in the first film, with the exception of a small cameo by the latter in the second, the franchise replaces the pair with other actors with similar chemistry and skills. What separates most movies is which dancer is off the street and which one is a trained dancer. The theme of “the streets” appears in all the films.
The franchise is obviously full of dancing, like most movies about dance, but what makes the Get up franchise is unique in its different emphasis on the dance styles. From ballet to crunk and even breakdance, the franchise’s choreography is one of many redeeming qualities in all of the films, critics notwithstanding. Here are all the movies in order of popularity.
5/5 Step into everything
Step into everything is the fifth film in the franchise and the one where most of the main cast from the previous films return to form a new crew and take on a new battle. Andie (Briana Evigan) and Moose (Adam Sevani) from the second film return, and Sean (Ryan Guzman) from the fourth film, along with a few other dancers over the years, reprise their roles in this 2014 film. is the main character in this movie and he finds himself taking his crew from Miami to Los Angeles, though his crew, The Mob, eventually returns to Miami after not finding much luck. Sean decides to stay in Los Angeles, where he meets Moose and Andie as they form a new crew to compete for a three-year dance contract in Las Vegas.
4/5 Enter 3D
In the third part of the franchise Enter 3D, Moose and Camille (Alyson Stoner) are the only cast members reprising their roles from previous films. New leads are cast as the main dance partners: Sharni Vinson plays Natalie and Rick Malambri plays Luke. What sets the third installment apart from the first two movies is that it’s not set in high school, but college in New York. Moose is a freshman at NYU who helps assemble a team to compete in a high-stakes showdown between the world’s top hip-hop dancers. The film received a theatrical release, though it bombed at the US box office until saved by its international release.
3/5 Step up the revolution
Step up the revolution takes the franchise to Miami, Florida when the new protagonist, Emily (played by Kathryn McCormick), moves to the new city in hopes of pursuing a dancing career. While there she meets Sean, a leader of a flash mob style dance crew there in Miami. In this film, the threat still sits between the two dancers’ budding romance, but it also deals with Emily’s father whose construction company threatens Sean’s neighborhood when they plan to tear it down to place a new development. Emily and Sean join his group, The Mob, hoping to use their dance as a way to protest the potential construction.
2/5 Step Up 2: The streets
As you can guess from the name, Step Up 2: The streets is the second film in the franchise. Unlike the first film, the street dancer is the female protagonist, while the trained dancer is the male protagonist. Robert Hoffman plays Chase, a kind of hybrid character of Dewan and Tatum from the first movie in terms of his dancing skills. His partner, Andie, played by Briana Evigan, is the cousin of Tatum’s character, Gage. Gage convinces Andie to try for a slot at the same art school where she finds herself starting her own street crew after being kicked out of her original school. The climax of the film, of course, is a dance-off on the street itself by Andie’s new crew, made up of art school outcasts, and her old crew.
1/5 Get up
No surprise here that the original Get up was the best movie in the franchise. The film kick-started the careers of both leads and took the couple’s chemistry off screen, where Dewan and Tatum were married for many years before separating. The film stars Tatum as an untrained street dancer who is caught vandalizing a prestigious art school theater. While working as a janitor at the school to pay for the damage, he finds himself filling in as a dance partner alongside Dewan’s character in her senior showcase. The unlikely pairing is turning the heads of many as what begins as a dance partnership turns into a full-fledged romance that changes both characters for the better.