In the ranking of the most-watched movies in the first days of the year both in Italy and in the United States is M3GAN, a horror film that tells the story of a robot doll animated by an artificial intelligence willing to do anything for the little girl to protect to whom it was given. One of the reasons for its success in cinemas is the fact that a scene from the trailer – and then from the movie – was hugely successful on TikTok, inspiring a whole slew of videos that increased the chatter surrounding the film and made many users plausible about it prompted the platform to see it.
In the said scene, the film’s protagonist puppet performs a kind of disturbing ballet, which at the same time has something mischievous and mesmerizing about it: in the following days, many users, especially among the younger ones, imitated it on TikTok. But that of M3GAN is not unique: inserting short and impactful ballets in movies and TV series is proving to be an increasingly effective way to get free advertising on TikTok, which was born as a platform for sharing music scores and rewards for a lot of this type of content .
M3GAN director Gerard Johnstone told NBC News that he uses very little social media and that the film’s choreography “wasn’t created with the intention of making it the next TikTok phenomenon.” However, actress Allison Williams, who plays one of the main characters in the cast, said in an interview that before the trailer was released, there were discussions about whether to leave or remove the ballet scene in order to create a surprise effect in the film. And he added: «The marketing power of Universal [Picture, la società di distribuzione del film, ndr] They were right to keep it in the trailer because, frankly, it was just fine». The film’s marketing campaign focused heavily on M3GAN’s ballet, having it perform at many promotional events for a corps de ballet.
Nobody will hurt you as long as there is M3GAN.#M3ganIlMoviesince Wednesday #SoloAlCinema: https://t.co/iA6qUUKEkR. pic.twitter.com/Un9tWRE16E
– Universal Pictures (@UniversalPicsIt) January 2, 2023
M3GAN’s dance scene is very reminiscent of a scene from the Netflix TV series Wednesday, which released in late November and has become a huge viral phenomenon on TikTok (with over 40 billion views) and the internet in general. The scene is that of the school dance in which the protagonist of the series, Wednesday Addams, performs with a series of bizarre and a little rowdy steps and moves to the notes of “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps while keeping her spirited gaze and all to convey the strangeness that characterizes his character.
@Netflix
WEDNESDAY’S DANCE SCENE!! The dance of the legendary raven to the song Goo Goo Muck. #WednesdayNetflix
♬ Original sound – Netflix – Netflix
The ballet – which actress Jenna Ortega says she choreographed herself – remained among the top TikTok trends for weeks and was somewhat reinvented by platform users: in one of its most popular versions, it was adapted from Lady Gaga’s song “Bloody Mary” in 2011 Also thanks to its virality on TikTok, Wednesday has quickly become one of the most successful series in Netflix history.
– Also read: The ingredients for the success of Wednesday’s series are Addams
Even before it released on Netflix on Christmas Day, the musical inspired by Roald Dahl’s children’s novel Matilde had already become a phenomenon on TikTok thanks to the ballet of the character of Hortensia, who leads some sort of children’s riot in the aisles at the school. In an interview with Variety, the film’s choreographer Ellen Kane said, “I know the dance is popular on TikTok, but I didn’t really know how popular it was.”
A similarly successful ballet from 2022 is the thriller Fresh, in which the two protagonists, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, move to the rhythm of Richard Marx’s “Endless Summer Nights”. On TikTok, the ballet — much less elaborate than Wednesday’s and M3GAN — had gone viral, but with a different backdrop: an accelerated version of Demi Lovato’s 2015 song “Cool for the Summer.”
@sushaldisthan
This song with this scene is renting in my head for free 😩 my new obsession scene. #sebastianstan #daisyedgarjones #fresh #freshmovie #fypシ #trend #forupage #steve #buckybarnes
♬ Cool for Summer – Speeded Up (Nightcore) – Demi Lovato & Speed Radio
However, such attention and overhaul by TikTok users can actually happen to shorter and seemingly insignificant dance scenes: for example, although to a lesser extent even a simple move by Miles Teller has become a meme in the beach football game scene from Top Gun: Maverick, the 2022 sequel to Top Gun.
It’s no news that dance scenes are popular with movie and TV series viewers, and in the history of cinema (and not just musicals) there are many examples of films that are remembered for the moments when the protagonists dance: from Dirty dancing to pulp fiction, to name just two. What is new is that today many of these scenes are standardized to adapt to the most effective formats on TikTok, short, extravagant and easily reproducible (as well as easily adaptable to a vertical cut) and to the young audience that uses them more often.
– Also read: The dance “Dirty Dancing” is a dream of many
For example, one dance scene that hasn’t hit social media is the finale of the film White Noise, directed by Noah Baumbach, which opened in Italy at the end of December and is actually intended for a different audience than the one who frequents TikTok the most and which, unlike the examples given so far, was probably not written with this in mind.