By: Andrew Wing
Elvis is a 2022 biographical musical film directed by Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!, The Great Gatsby), who co-wrote the screenplay with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, and Jeremy Doner. The film follows the life of rock and roll icon, singer and actor Elvis Presley, told from the perspective of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker. It stars Austin Butler (The Dead Don’t Die, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) in the title role with Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan) as Parker, and Olivia DeJonge (The Visit, The Society), Helen Thomson (Kangaroo Jack, A Man’s Gotta Do), Richard Roxburgh (Van Helsing, Hacksaw Ridge), Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, The High Note), David Wenham (The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, 300), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Let Me In, The Power of the Dog), and Luke Bracey (Point Break, Hacksaw Ridge) in supporting roles.
It was announced in 2014 that Luhrmann would be directing an Elvis Presley biopic, though the project was not officially announced until March 2019. Butler was cast in the title role that July, beating out several high-profile actors. Filming began in Luhrmann’s native Australia in January 2020, but paused from March through September following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Filming wrapped over a year after it began, in March 2021.
Elvis premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 25, 2022, and was released theatrically by Warner Bros. Pictures in Australia on June 23, 2022, and in the United States on June 24. The film has so far grossed over $159.4 million worldwide against its $85 million budget.
THE GOOD
It seems crazy that we are just now, 45 years after his death in 1977, getting a biopic on the rock and roll icon Elvis Presley. I mean the man was a sensation and he is arguably the biggest and most popular singer right up there with Michael Jackson to be completely honest. Despite the long wait though, we finally got a biopic on Elvis and it came to us from the one and only Baz Luhrmann. Luhrmann hasn’t made as many films in his directing career as say Martin Scorsese, but the guy absolutely has his own style and he clearly has a profound love for music, so I thought he was the perfect choice to direct this film. Also, once I saw the initial trailer for Elvis and saw Austin Butler as the titular character, I was blown away and I couldn’t wait to check this baby out and see how he would portray the “King of Rock and Roll”! Despite all of my excitement, it is just the truth that there have been some bad biopics so far this century, and you throw in the fact that Luhrmann has been known to make a stinker a time or two and that Butler has never been in the lead role in a feature film before, there was definitely a chance this could be a disaster. So without further ado, was this the flop that some people were projecting, or was it the Elvis biopic we have all been waiting for? Keep reading to find out!
I won’t keep you waiting, It was definitely the one we have all been waiting for. Now I, like many others, have definitely been feeling a little bit of musical biopic fatigue after Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018, Rocketman in 2019, and last year’s Respect (see my full review here), but Elvis was the best of all of those I think. I enjoyed it a lot and it was just a good time for lack of a better phrase. Ever since seeing it, I have been singing “Suspicious Minds”, my personal favorite Elvis song, on repeat. And the reason I found it to be the best of those other musical biopics I mentioned is mainly because it had undoubtedly the best lead performance of all of them, and that belonged to Austin Butler.
Now despite his good looks, before this movie Austin Butler was definitely not a household name. He was in an episode of iCarly way back in the day and also some stuff on the Disney Channel, but he really impressed me back in 2019 as he played the serial killer member of the Manson family, Tex, in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. All that said, after his role in this, Austin Butler’s name will never be forgotten. There is no denying that Austin Butler is the best part of this movie. Absolutely none.
I really don’t think there could have been a better casting choice because he does look a lot like Elvis, but it was so much more than that. It never felt like he was just doing some lame impersonation of Elvis, but rather you could tell he did his homework and just got lost in the role. He just feels so effortless in this role and I really felt like I got a sense of Elvis’s personality thanks to Butler’s portrayal. He nailed the voice, the dance moves, and all of the stuff he needed to get right, and because of that, he damn well better get a Best Actor nomination at the 95th Academy Awards. I’d be fine if he won, but it’s way too early to predict that because for the rest of this year we still have films coming out that feature some star big name actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Hugh Jackman, Adam Driver, and Christian Bale just to name a few.
Now onto the crazy Australian that is Baz Luhrmann. Like I previously mentioned, he definitely has put out some stinkers and I have mixed feelings about him as a director, but I’d say this was one of his better products he has ever put out. What he does worked here truthfully because the movie was really energetic, colorful, and just hard not to be entertained by. Also, like I said, the man clearly has a deep passion for music and I did appreciate greatly the way the music was handled here from the touches of modern soundtrack to the way he did all of Elvis’s music to also make that sound more modern. All in all, I really liked how Luhrmann did all of that and his style worked basically perfectly here.
Continuing with the music as a whole, the musical sequences we got here are incredible. I really liked how they tried to hit on Elvis’s love for the crowd, and they did that very nicely in all of the musical sequences. They just did a brilliant job at showing the excess of all of that and really showing how much of a performer Elvis was. I mean really the best scenes of the movie were the ones where we got to watch Elvis passionately perform, thrive on stage, and just be true to who he is. Every time he took the stage he was trying to prove who he was as an artist and the musical sequences did that exceptionally.
There were so many other things I liked about Elvis that I just needed to touch on. First, the costumes were truly glorious and this movie will definitely be in the running for that at the Oscars. I also loved the production design in every scene, and I just can’t say enough about the sound in this movie from start to finish. And lastly, even though I didn’t love Hanks’ character that he plays in a fat suit that I will touch on more later in the review, the makeup in this movie was still very good. Oh, and the Doja Cat song “Vegas”, which incorporates elements from Big Mama Thorton’s “Hound Dog”, was awesome and it will likely get a Best Original Song nomination too.
THE BAD
Alright, here we go. I never thought I’d be saying this but the hands down worst part of this movie was Tom Hanks. I know, you can call me crazy. I’m not taking anything away from Hanks, because he is truly one of the greatest actors of all time, but boy oh boy this was not it. Hanks was fine I guess and I’m sure people will like his performance because he is Tom Hanks, but I really think the main problem was just that he got cast in this in the first place. Now I know you need star power to get people in the seats, but I mean they could’ve picked literally anyone else. I mean there are a bunch of overweight actors in Hollywood they could’ve picked, or they could have just picked someone who is actually Dutch. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but it was just such a distraction seeing Tom Hanks play the antagonist of Colonel Tom Parker with a Dutch accent in a fat suit, and I thought he was so so out of place.
Also, I brought up the fact that Baz Luhrmann has his own style because he definitely does, and while I think I vibed with it more than I usually do, I could still definitely see people being annoyed by it. For example, the first act of the movie truly might give you a headache or even whiplash just by the way it was edited and the way it zooms through Elvis’s life at extremely fast speeds. The editing in this movie as a whole was just insane. There is a lot of wacky shit, a lot of split screen stuff, wild transitions, and I just wasn’t a fan of all the overediting. That said, I would put money on it getting a Best Editing nomination because the Academy is stupid, so much so that Bohemian Rhapsody, a terribly edited film, actually won for Best Editing back at the 91st Academy Awards in 2019.
My last complaint I had with Elvis is that it is basically a Wikipedia page biopic if that makes sense. Don’t get me wrong, I liked the final product but it follows his entire career told through the perspective of his manager. Now I still enjoyed it, but there’s no taking away the fact that Elvis was a pretty generic musical biopic in terms of the story. We just moved way too fast, which is weird given the film’s way too long of a runtime, and it left us with a very general impression of Elvis at the end of the film rather than the personal or lasting impression we wanted it to have on us.
THE VERDICT
Despite the generic storytelling, wacky editing, and what I thought was a bad Tom Hanks role, Elvis is still one of the best musical biopics we’ve gotten in the past few years, thanks mostly to Austin Butler’s unbelievable transformative performance as the “King of Rock and Roll”! Butler just crushed every aspect of this role and he is more than deserving of a Best Actor nomination.
Aside from that, Baz Luhrmann’s style was perfect for this story, and he gave us one of the most energetic and colorfully vibrant movies in recent memory. He also gave us some great musical sequences and a banger of a soundtrack too, but more importantly, Luhrmann does achieve the film’s goal of giving the audience a deeper appreciation of Elvis.
At the end of the day, I do think that audiences already have been and will continue to dig this movie a lot, and if this continues to be a mega hit like Bohemian Rhapsody was back in 2018, it might even be able to nab one of the ten Best Picture nominations, but we will just have to wait and see.
TED TAKES RATING - 8.1/10
Elvis is now playing in theaters. Check out the latest trailer below.