Staying Alive stars John Travolta, reprising his Saturday Night Fever role as Tony Manero, with Cynthia Rhodes, Finola Hughes, Joyce Hyser, Julie Bovasso, Viktor Manoel and Kevyn Morrow.

Theatrically released on July 15, 1983, Staying Alive received universally negative reviews and is the oldest film to hold a score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Laura coldly justifies her treatment by saying that "Everybody uses everybody" and implies that Tony used her in order to get a dance role in her upcoming show.

Tony begins to realize how callous he has been to Jackie and walks from Manhattan to his old Bay Ridge neighborhood in Brooklyn in the middle of the night.

When he visits his mother and apologizes for the troublemaking ways of his youth, she points out that his selfish behavior as a teen helped him escape a dead-end life in Bay Ridge.

Tony decides to take a shot at replacing the male lead of Satan's Alley and requests Jackie to help him practice the number.

Aware of her manipulative ways, Tony coldly tells her that he has other commitments, and Laura snidely responds that he lacks star quality.

He then leaves the theater and struts through Times Square, beaming with his newfound success with the title song playing in the background.

Some of the cast from Saturday Night Fever were to reprise their roles but ended up removed from the final cut: Donna Pescow appeared in the audience at Tony's Broadway debut, and Val Bisoglio appeared briefly as Frank Sr.[citation needed] His scene was deleted, and the film instead vaguely implies that he has probably died.

Travolta was open to the idea of a sequel, but did not like the pessimism of the script, thinking that his character, Tony Manero, needed to see more success as a dancer.

[6] Stigwood and executives from Paramount Pictures spent the next several years trying to convince Travolta to film the script as written, but with no success.

Travolta stated that he wanted Manero to attempt a dance career on Broadway and end up in a leading role due to his talent.

[6] Under Stallone's supervision, Travolta spent five months doing rigorous training to develop a dancer's physique for the film, losing 20 pounds (9.1 kg) in the process.

Two songs featured in the film, "Waking Up" by Frank Stallone and Cynthia Rhodes and "The Winning End" by Joe Esposito, do not appear on the album.

The website's consensus reads: "This sequel to Saturday Night Fever is shockingly embarrassing and unnecessary, trading the original's dramatic depth for a series of uninspired dance sequences.

"[21] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 23 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.

[22] Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times, who had praised Saturday Night Fever, called the dance productions in Stayin' Alive "laughably gauche", especially the final number, which he mocked for including "fire, ice, smoke, flashing lights and laser beams".