Elvis - Cheap Thoughts

Musical biopics have risen in popularity over the past few years. With the baffling success of Bohemian Rhapsody it seems it opened a floodgate for more (and better) films of the genre. 2019’s Rocketman framed the narrative as a traditional musical, and this year’s Elvis approached it with Baz Luhrmann’s trademarked maximalist style of fast editing, loud visuals and an awful lot of passion. Everything you could want from a Luhrmann picture is found here, his rapid pacing, sweaty emotional outbursts from characters and a bricolage of styles and aesthetics coming together to somehow make a cohesive vision.

Luhrmann’s style is definitely a welcome approach to the subject matter, it is the films beating heart to prevent it from becoming stale, as on a script level this is still as standard a musical biopic as you can get. Show their childhood, their influence, their rise to fame, their inevitable downfall and end it with one final great performance to show their comeback. The film tries to add something new of a framing device formed from the perspective of Elvis’ (Austin Butler) manager Colonel Parker (Tom Hanks), traditionally viewed to be the bad guy of the King’s story that we’re told through a Salieri style narration. The man who destroyed Elvis presents his side of the story…except not really. It is very clear from minute one that Parker is the villain, that all of his actions are manipulative, selfish and damaging to Presley and his family. There is no debate or discussion, no presentation of an unreliable narrator, just a man claiming he is not the bad guy, only to spin you a yarn in which he makes no attempt to present himself as anything other than the irredeemable monster of the narrative.

Hanks’ performance is somewhat of a divisive nature, there is a level of goofiness to it, after all its Tom Hanks in a fat suit putting on a cartoonish Dutch accent, in itself fine and fitting for a Luhrmann film, but when contrasted with Butler who is putting in a career defining performance is where the issue lies. Delivering nuance and depth to a performance that could easily fall into a cheap impression, after all people have made entire careers out of being Elvis impersonators and in comes Butler to dance on that line, only to act across the cartoon character Hanks has developed.

If Biopics are here to stay then it’s nice to see developments in the styles these films approach the tales, but if there are truly going to stick around then it is imperative they all find new ways to approach the narrative structure on a script level. If any screenwriters out there are writing their big biopic on a classic musician, ask yourself if your script shares any similarities with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, then maybe rethink your plot.

-Danny