Headscratchers / High School Musical 3: Senior Year

• We should put on a play! But our lead female gives up her part and our lead male doesn't show up! Then they return after the show starts and correctly assume they can just take their parts back! Yeah. That would go over well in a real school play.
  • Darbus plays favorites like hell. Plus, everyone (with very few exceptions) are assholes.
• The kids are competing for scholarships to Juilliard. Barring the obvious points about Juilliard not working like that and the fact that none of these kids would have a chance of so much as being waitlisted at the real Juilliard—if they're competing for a scholarship, it means they were already accepted. Ryan receives the scholarship. If Sharpay wants to go there so badly, why don't her parents just use Ryan's unused tuition money to help pay for Sharpay and send them BOTH to Juilliard?
  • Already discussed. It's still free money and she wanted to prove she was better than everyone else.
    • But at the end, Sharpay knows she didn't get the scholarship and says she's going somewhere else for college. It's like you absolutely need the scholarship to get into the school, which is just wrong. As the OP said, if you're competing for a scholarship, you're already in. So why would she be in and choose to go somewhere else without the scholarship? ESPECIALLY when she's by far the richest person in an already obviously affluent community (have you SEEN the high school? Tell me you've seen any public school as rich as that). It makes zero sense, and Ryan getting the scholarship is frankly an insult to any real musician who actually can't afford the school and can't go.
    • For one, it's a movie so they took a few licenses and two, Sharpay has shown that she's a graceful loser when it comes to her brother and it wouldn't be completely out of character for her to decline Juilliard so that her brother could do his own thing and get big without her.
• "I Want It All" implies that Sharpay's main goal is New York or Hollywood fame with Juilliard as a stepping stone. So why, after not getting the Juilliard scholarship (and not going, despite the logic given in the previous Headscratcher), did she go to school in Albuquerque instead of applying somewhere like NYU or UCLA?
  • Especially NYU, since it has Tisch and it's heavily implied she wants to major in something relating to musical theatre? (Which, amusingly, Juilliard doesn't even offer.)
    • Considering what franchise this is, the writers probably know next to nothing about real musical theatre. Which means they don't know that the top programs are have very limited placements and highly competitive auditions, a very realistic reason why Sharpay wouldn't get in. (Getting into the Musical Theatre course in this troper's city requires singing three different songs, a contemporary and Shakespearean monologue, a group dance audition, and being skilled in at least one instrument, and there are only sixteen places. Just to give you a taste of how elite the programs can be.) Considering this, we can say that we know Sharpay's a good dancer and singer but has no idea how to play any instruments, while Ryan can play the Piano. He's got her upstaged.
  • Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure reveals she didn't go to school in Albuquerque after all, and instead took a year off to "find [her]self". So the real question is, why didn't she look for herself in New York before the film happened?
    • She likely returned to East High to assist in the drama department, decided not to go to school and did what most kids who just graduated high school would do if they could take a year off, relax. (Vacations with her parents, went shopping, met some new friends and began sleeping in.) She also likely tried to any local (glamorous) leading musical role she could get but none of those roles lasted very long. Her father not wanting her to move far away might have something to do with it as well, but eventually she got an opportunity in New York and decided to go for it.
• Why Ryan and Kelsi? If you must give Ryan a heterosexual love interest why not Martha (fat hiphop girl)? They had already been paired up at the end of the second movie.
  • Assuming Ryan might be gay just because of his relative flamboyance is a stereotype. They bonded because he has more in common with her than any of the other available options.
  • They tried to at least make it believable. Other than introducing a new character, Kelsi was the only viable option: Gabriella would be impossible, Sharpay is his sister, Taylor was taken by Chad and he doesn't have anything in common with Martha.
  • Except Martha was a dancer, and as his main thing was choreography he had just as much if not more in common with her than Kelsi. Plus Kelsi was already paired with Jason. Chalk it up to them not wanting to pair one of the leads with a fat chick.
    • True on that last point, but still, hip hop dancing has not much to do with the kind of choreography Ryan does, and Kelsi is a much more developed character since the first movie, while we only know Martha is loud and likes hip hop(Her being brainy only shows in "Stick to the status quo" and nowhere else.)
  • Both Ryan and Kelsi are mistreated by Sharpay, especially in the second movie, where Sharpay steals Kelsi's music and dumps Ryan as her talent show partner in the same scene. Really, the question is why Ryan got together with Martha at the end of HSM2 (when it's implied that Ryan and Kelsi planned that entire "Everyday" music number together), other than to avoid retconning Kelsi and Jason's brief Pair the Spares moment at the end of HSM1.
  • I assumed they were paired because they're a composer and a choreographer.
  • We can just assume they were put together to avoid the whole "Ryan is gay" rumour to get bigger and since Kelsi is already a secondary main, they just chose her.
    • On a related note, what if Kelsi's also gay, she and Ryan bonded over neither of them being straight, and they agreed to go to prom together as each other's "cover"?
  • For what it's worth, Ryan's actor Lucas Grabeel imagined that he would come out in college.
• Gabriella and Stanford....Just the whole situation. Is there any justification for why she wants to go there? Troy says she chose Stanford, but Gabriella says her mom's been planning it since she was a kid. (Like Troy's dad and UOA.) Albuquerque is the first place she's felt at home, and she seems to want to stay there, so why did she choose a school a thousand miles away? (Especially when Troy, who she is devastated at leaving, is going to be local). And why does she need to persuade her mom to 'stay behind' another year with her? Don't most student live on campus? Then there's zero thought to what she's studying: They throw in that she's doing Pre-Law, even though in previous films she was more interested in science. Ms Darbus wants Troy to pursue singing, while Gabriella's kind of forgotten about, even she's always been the one encouraging Troy to do it with her. It feels like they spent the whole film on Troy deciding his future, with no justification for Gabriella's choices, even though their separation drives most of the conflict. We're basically told to forget about Gabriella's perspective and take it for granted that Stanford is the ideal future for her. Why?
  • Maybe Stanford was Ms Montez's alma mater, or even the school she would have attended if she'd been able, and like Coach Bolton with Troy, has raised Gabriella to believe that Stanford is the school for her to attend. Besides, Gabriella has already been granted early acceptance to one of the best universities in the country—why would she turn that down. The reason that the movie is so focused on Troy's conflict is because Troy genuinely doesn't know what he wants to do, whereas Gabriella seems to have it mostly figured out. Why her major is Pre-Law remains a mystery, though
• Why did Sharpay want Gabriella's song? She already had her own song and, unlike the musical in #1, roles seemed to be evenly distributed. There were group numbers with everyone, (the basketball number, prom night, etc.) and solos for experienced singers: Ryan's I-Want-It-All bit, Sharpay's own song and the Troy/Gabriella duet. Darbus and Kelsi were playing to the performers' strengths: They knew Sharpay suited the upbeat, intensely-choreographed number, while Troy and Gabriella were better at romantic songs. (Hell, in #1 and 2, Sharpay always sped up those slow numbers). Plus Troy is incredibly awkward performing with her, and she doesn't seem interested in him anymore. Wasn't Sharpay experienced enough to realize her best shot at impressing Juilliard was the song she'd been given?
  • Answer #1: Because she's Sharpay, and her main song in this movie isn't called "I want it all" for nothing. Reason #2, if you watch the movie again, it's very confusing which numbers are actually rehearsals and which ones are fantasies("I want it all" is a fantasy, but somehow is Ryan's number in the musical, for example). In the rehearsals, Sharpay's flashy song was about Kelsi and Ryan arriving at prom in the rehearsals, so it stands to reason that the Darbus, Ryan and Kelsi were trying several things before having a final version. Sharpay probably didn't had a solo, but they gave her the "who's that girl" bit to appease her.
  • It was stated that Kelsi saves her best work for Troy and Gabriella; Sharpay wants their song because it's the best in the show.
• Troy decided to go to UC Berkeley for basketball, drama, and to be 32 miles away from Gabriella. However, San Jose State University also has basketball, drama, and is 22 miles away from Stanford. Why didn't he go there instead? It's more believable that Troy would go there more than him casually getting into the #1 public university in the world.