Step Up is a film franchise. Based around dancing, mostly hip hop / breakdancing, each film follows the story of a dancer who uses their talent as a form of expression. From the second movie on, they also explore the infludence of the modern dance in society, be it as a way to deal with frustration, to form bonds between people, to gain popularity or as an exercise of calling out the world, be it for showing some beauty to it or even for protestation.
There are currently four Step Up films: Step Up (2006), Step Up 2: The Streets (2008), Step Up 3D (2010) and Step Up: Revolution, also known as Miami Heat (2012).


!! The films provide examples of:
* {{Adorkable}}: Moose from the second film has shades of this.
* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Nora Clark falls in love with Tyler. Well, Tyler isn't ''bad'' persay, but he is very TroubledButCute.
* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: Koda Kumi's [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGUI5Iqnuzw "But"]] is used as the theme song in the Japanese version.
* CallBack: Tyler in Step Up 2 is only there for a couple of scenes to remind us that he was in the first movie. Tyler's sister Camille is brought back as a main character for the third movie
** Jason, from the Pirates crew, appears also in Step Up 4.
** And of course Moose. Moose is the main secondary protagonist in Step Up 2. He does the same in Step Up 3 as Camille's romantic interest. [[spoiler:And then Jason calls him so he can appear at the end of Step Up 4, because no one would recognize it as a Step Up movie anymore without [[EnsembleDarkhorse the Ensemble Moose]] in it.]]
* CoolPeopleRebelAgainstAuthority: Oh so much. Specially stagnant in Step Up 2 and Revolution.
** Step Up 2: If you are an arts school alumn who insists in making your own steps whenever you are being teached some, or to breakdance in the middle of a dramatic swashbuckler scene, the big bad stablishment is guilty of not allowing you to express yourself.
** Step Up Revolution: If your father the businessman only allows you to pursue a dancing career, instead of having a more secure job that you have studied to be able to have... if you pass the very same intense test that you were already trying to pass, he is being blind to who you are and his judgement is clouded by his corporativism. Oh, and this same international businessman called on the staff of one of his hotels for a meeting. One of them arrived to the meeting twenty minutes late and untidy, didn't provide of a convincing explanation. The boss dared to fire him. [[SarcasmMode What a douche]].
* DanceOfRomance: Of course.
* DoesNotLikeShoes: Emily, from the 4th film, is barefoot in all, but two of her dance sequences, and she has ''a lot'' of dance scenes. In fact she probably is seen barefoot more often than with shoes on.
** Understandable, as Kathryn McCormick (who plays Emily) is primarily a Contemporary Ballet dancer. Many dancers in that style prefer dancing without shoes.
* EleventhHourRanger: The MSA Crew (minus Camille) in 3D
* FanService: some of the one-on-one dances are really sensual. Step Up Revolution ranked that UpToEleven.
* HeelFaceTurn: Mack after [[spoiler: Skinny's death]]. He wasn't exactly bad but he decides to completely give up a life of crime.
* LighterAndSofter: The first movie the main character is a car thief and one of his friends is killed in a Drive-By. The rest of the series is not as edgy.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: The fourth film has an instance of this when Eddy, frustrated with how things were going between him and Sean, stages a MOB outing that decidedly looks more like an act of terrorism than a traditional MOB performance, which ends in the MOB being DQ'd from the YouTube competition that they were trying to win for the community. ''[[SincerityMode Dick move, Eddy.]]''
* NoodleIncident: How Camille and Moose actually met is never explained. Perhaps if Camille had been the star of the second movie...
* PotteryBarnPoor: In Step Up Revolution, the whole crew and their families and friends live in a humble Latin neighborhood, mostly as blue-collar workers. The budget needed for every one of their flash mobs goes easily into several hundred or even thousand dollars.
** In Step Up 3, they need to win the contest that they've been after for the whole movie or they won't be able to keep their only shelter, where many of them are lucky to be able to live... a whole building that contains an amazing discotheque, a first floor only for training, a wall made of boomboxes, a collection of really expensive mint-state limited edition sneakers... the guy in charge of this all? Oh, he is a waiter with a dream. The dream made everything else possible. Somehow.
* RememberTheNewGuy: Camille in 3D in treated as having been with MSA crew all along despite not being in the second movie.
** Andie, Tyler remembers the little girl that the audience doesn't.
* SeriousBusiness: Hip-hop street dancing in the second and third movies is regarded as such.
** During the second movie, Chase and the MSA crew make a untasteful but harmless prank to their rival crew's leader, something that is mentioned as a traditional way of challenging someone. The leader and a couple of guys find Chase and beat him hard.
** Somehow deconstructed in the third movie. Moose outclassed a guy from the Samurai crew. Then a group of the Samurai ambush him, and he's pressured and intimidated... but not him nor them attack each other: all their fight is breakdancing all over the place, while still being filmed like a fight scene.
* SheCleansUpNicely: Andie looks quite good in a dress
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Tyler gives one to Nora after [[spoiler: she replaces him with her old partner Andrew]]
* ThirdIs3D
* ThirdActMisunderstanding: A common staple. Notably [[spoiler: Natalie being Julian's sister in 3D and Emily being Bill Anderson's daughter in Revolution/Miami Heat.]]
** [[spoiler:Not so much in 3D; Natalie was Julian's sister AND she came to the Pirates to spy them. The misunderstanding is not being believed when she declared that she had [[DefectingForLove defected for love]].]]
* ThoseTwoGuys: The Santiago Twins
* TomBoy: Andie West
* TroubledButCute: Tyler Gage
* UptownGirl: Nora. With Tyler as her love interest from the wrong side of town.
** This trope is basically the staple for all the main romances in the series: Natalie from the third movie and Emily from the upcoming fourth film are both wealthy girls who fall in love with guys of a lower socio-economic class, while Chase in the second film is a GenderFlipped version who falls for Andie, a girl from Tyler's neighborhood.