The Magic Mike franchise is one that has befuddled and delighted audiences since its inception back in 2012. The film brought Channing Tatum back into the dancing world as Mike, a handyman and carpenter who by day makes ends meet where he can. At night, he’s a dancer at an all-male strip club, which highlights the joy that (mainly) bachelorette parties have in the club and thus the franchise was born.
In 2015’s Magic Mike: XXL, the team had to go to a stripper convention and brought Mike back into the game after he stepped away. It also gave us Joe Manganiello dancing to the Nine Inch Nails song “Closer” so it was, to me, a perfect movie. Now, we’re heading into the final installment to the franchise with Magic Mike’s Last Dance, and it seems like it is going to be bigger than ever.
In an interview with Empire Magazine, director Steven Soderbergh talked about the movie and revealed that there is a 30-minute dance sequence in the last outing for Tatum.“We wanted to blow the dancing up in a big way,” Soderbergh said. “We have this dance number with Channing and Salma [Hayek] right up front. And then the last 30-plus minutes of the movie are just this giant dance sequence.” He went on to talk about how he made each of his Magic Mike movies unique. “My job is, how do I make each one of these distinct? I can’t shoot them all the same way, I have to come up with a different approach for each dance. And that was really the challenge.” And it boiled down to the staging. “We’re staging all the sequences in this lovely old theatre, the Clapham Grand,” Soderbergh explains. “That was fun, there’s not a bad angle to be had in that place…”
What this means is that it is going to somehow be even bigger than what Magic Mike XXL gave to fans. Which is a lot. The sequel was, in this rare case, better than the first and so Magic Mike’s Last Dance has a hard uphill battle going into its release because how can you top what we got in the sequel?
The third movie also adds Salma Hayek to the cast, and it seems as if Mike is at a different part of his life again. How he gets pulled back into dancing remails a mystery, but at least we’ll have a 30-minute dance sequence though to try and rival the iconic moments from the first two films. Soderbergh, whatever you have in store for us? We’re ready.