2022, the year of the biopic. There is a lot of hype surrounding the release of the Marilyn Monroe biopic “Blonde” coming out later this year and rightfully so, but I think people need to take a step back and recognize the fantastic Elvis Presley biopic we got this summer. Elvis is quite frankly one of the most deep diving biopics I have ever seen. The 2 hour and 40 minute runtime follows Elvis (Austin Butler) throughout his entire life, from his roots as a child learning and growing within black culture to his rise as the most popular man in the world until his death at just forty-two years old.
Elvis explores so much of the great Elvis Presley’s life and goes so much deeper into the ins and outs of everything that happened than any school has taught me or any book I have read has delved into. I can gladly say that leaving this movie I had learned something about such an amazing human, and that too is something that I learned, that he was just human. So much of Elvis’s story is made to seem like he was this god and that he single handedly brought about the change to music and the new wave of rock and roll, and that other than his later drug abuse he didn’t struggle with anything, which is just false. Before this movie I had no idea that most of Elvis’ songs and his dance moves were inspired by black culture. I am so glad that they brought that into this movie because that was clearly such an important part of his story and to see it so prominently in this movie was just a perfect representation of his elevation into stardom.
Austin Butler honestly put in an Oscar worthy performance and I would be surprised if this movie doesn’t at least get a couple of nominations. To see Austin Butler grow from an actor that I watched make a couple of appearances on Disney Channel shows like Wizards of Waverly Place to being on screen for the majority of a 3 hour movie and killing it every time he was on screen. I am of the belief that it is harder to play someone who is real than it is to play a fictional character because you can’t add yourself to a real person, they are/were who they are/were. Heading into this movie I didn’t know a lot about Elvis, just the general stuff that most people knew, but talking about it with my parents who watched Elvis in the midst of his prime, I have to say that Austin Butler nailed his likeness. I really don’t know if anyone else could’ve pulled off what Austin Butler did. I believe he was a perfect casting because he is lesser known than a Leonardo DiCaprio or a Robert Downey Jr. and he is able to play different characters unlike actors like Ryan Reynolds or Samuel L. Jackson, who are some of the best actors ever, but they also always add a bit of themselves to the role they are playing. So having an actor that can act like no ones business and not bring himself too much into a role would be the perfect casting for a character like Elvis and that is exactly what they did with Austin Butler and it worked out to perfection.
Along with the award-winning performance from Austin Butler, he had an amazing supporting cast. I think that Olivia DeJonge stole the show every time she was on screen. Her first scene didn’t come until about halfway through the movie, but that scene is also up there as one of the best scenes in the movie. The scene in reference, is when Elvis was drafted and in the room with Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) and they are just talking to one another, or more so Priscilla is talking and Elvis is listening. It really is the first scene that Elvis didn’t have to carry, it’s the first scene where we see someone else take the front of the stage and be the main character for a little bit. I really think that’s where Elvis fell in love with Priscilla, because it is the first time in such a long time that the attention wasn’t on him and he didn’t have to perform for anyone, he could just relax and listen. Helen Thomson (Gladys), Richard Roxburgh (Vernon), and Kelvin Harrison Jr. (B.B. King) also poured in fantastic performances that really elevated the rest of the film.
A movie is only as good as its villain. Obviously, being a biopic, real life doesn’t have big villains like Thanos or Darth Vader, but Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) is the depicted villain in this movie. Other than Austin Butler, Tom Hanks probably had the most screen time and lines, which obviously with the actor being Tom Hanks is deserved, but it just works so well with this movie. The opening scene of Colonel Parker on his death and the only thing he can think about is the fact that he may have pushed Elvis to his death is such a jarring entrance into this movie and into the Colonel’s mind. Colonel Parker was Elvis’s manager and throughout Elvis’s career had been stealing money from Elvis and using Elvis to boost himself up, no matter what it did to Elvis or what Elvis wanted. He was so cunning and conniving that everything he did seemed to be reasonable too. He forbade Elvis from doing an international tour because he didn’t have a citizenship for any country, so he couldn’t leave the USA, but he gave the excuse about security and it appeared that he faked death threats at Elvis, so that Elvis would get scared and not want to leave the country. Tom Hanks played an amazing cunning villain, who appeared to always have Elvis’s back, but in reality only cared about himself.
Regarding the more technical movie stuff, every song was amazing, I loved the rap inspired by Elvis that was added into different scenes. I thought it did an amazing job relating back to today where Elvis’s legacy still lives on. The visuals were super cool with the collages they did on the screen and the kind of cartoony style of visual narration was such an interesting way to introduce the audience to this movie, especially with the introduction to Elvis saying that he loved comic books and heroes. I wish they would have continued using that throughout the movie. I understand throughout the movie the tone gets a little darker and deals with heavier topics such as life usually does, but I wish they would have then changed the visual narration to a darker style as the movie went along instead of just dropping it entirely.
8.9/10✰
7.6/10😁
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It made me laugh, it made me mad, it made me sad, it plays on your heartstrings so well. I think this is a movie that will be rewatchable every few years, but not the next day or the next month, and I think that just goes along with it being a biopic, like we’ve seen it and now we know the facts, just like we knew the start and end of the movie, which brings down the rewatchability a bit. And the other thing that brings down the watchability is the 2 hour and 40 minute runtime. I think that is a perfect runtime for this movie, but that is still almost 3 hours and even though more and more movies are raising their runtimes towards that, that is still a very long movie.
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