#yeah yeah yeah i just watched hsm3 im going to bed now

[variousqueerthings]

high school musical 3 is a fascinating journey to go on, because it's not coherent as such, but it hits some very interesting beats before sharpishly walking them back or does some bland needs-to-be-there stuff that it then promptly forgets about (mainly around pairing the spares), because you'd never be allowed to outright depict the highschool romance not lasting into college, or that the father is emotionally overbearing if not abusive in the ways he pressures his son (and ofc there are some queer overtones in the "don't do theatre, do sports!" thing), and you absolutely can't explain why the male best friend who's sleepwalking through a non-romance plot is obsessed with the male lead spending his entire life with him/choosing him over the girlfriend, whom he definitely never really liked

RIP sharpay and ryan are pretty sidelined in this plot (esp considering the growth in the second movie), although at least ryan continues to be an mvp in terms of performance and clothing style, and kelsi brings us more non-binary Fits so there's that

you have tensions that feel like they exist outside the film, hurriedly correcting like it's a slapstick "the show goes wrong" type of deal --

two seconds of kelsi and ryan paying lip-service to pairing the spares, before it's never relevant again, but it's been written now, don't worry, they are Straight, see they composed/sang 1min of a duet that wasn't actually for or about them in the story

another mini-arc that lasts all of 5ish minutes of chad asking out taylor, before both of them phone it in and have separate conversations with their besties about how your boyfriend/girlfriend in highschool isn't that important (and chad of course from then on is only interested in whether troy will go to college with him, like they'd always dreamed of)

gabriella going away early to college some thousands of miles away and calling troy right before prom to say she's not coming back for it, or for graduation, because she's decided not to see him again in order to move forwards with her life, which is a pretty clear boundary to set (if done in a somewhat terrible way), only for him to... get to where she is somehow? and his presence simply convinces her to not care about any of her previous decision-making

troy's dad once again being the worst character while he guilts his son over having an interest in theatre (same as in the last 2 movies), instead of following in his exact footsteps, only for the story to shrug it off at the end, because there was never going to be follow-through on something like that

and I know it's not that deep, don't get me wrong here. I'm just interested as someone who's seeing the bits where the structure it's been building (someone Chose To Write This) get dropped in favour of it not being that deep when... it could be a better, more complex movie, possibly if it weren't disney channel I'm guessing. but then, it didn't have to have these arcs to begin with, it could have been a much lighter story, it chose not to be --

and some of the corners it wrote itself into due to law of sequel character-growth stagnancy, because it's about writing the same story three times with slightly different covers, so chad has to be annoyed with troy for choosing gabriella over hi- uh, basketball? sharpay has to try to steal the show/troy, troy's dad has to guilt him before supporting him, gabriella and troy have to have a moment of Sad before working it out (quickly, the Sad cannot last for too long), etc. but because the structure simply changes when you write a different story (they are going to college after this, they won't be seeing each other every day again), these storylines feel different/get written differently

it's kind of a sad movie overall, with its whole idea of this'll never be forgotten best years of our lives type rhetoric ("Who says we have to let it go? // It's the best part we've ever known // Step into the future... but hold on to High School Musical"), and it brings that sadness into the plot -- it could have gone way harder on "we're so excited for the future and what's to come" but it didn't

I am so into movies like this. poking at them to see all the limitations that exist outside of them that work against telling a good story, but the good story is in there, somewhere. when for some reason production has decided that stagnation is more important. people don't want to see stories about people who change, they want them to stay the same forever (and ideally go back and watch the first movie again afterwards I guess)

anyway troy's "anxiety nightmare in the school" song was actually great + encapsulates 90% of the tension the movie has that it never actually manages to work out, but just brushes under the carpet, it's perfect:

"I don't know where to go // What's the right team? // I want my own thing // So bad I'm gonna scream // I can't choose, so confused // What's it all mean?"

you wrote this song hsm3: senior year team! c'mon!

#high school musical 3 #hsm3 #yeah catch me analysing this film #troy bolton is bisexual ofc #you can only write so much lyric about *not knowing what team you belong to* before it begins to sound Like The Metaphor It Is #long post #yeah yeah yeah i just watched hsm3 im going to bed now #10/10 experience enjoyed it a lot -- terrible movie