Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022)

[cantinflas]

Elvis

[DarkImbecile]

Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, featuring Tom Hanks reprising his role as Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr, Ph.D.

This movie's going to make a billion dollars

ETA: catinflas beat me, but I'm leaving my joke up for posterity

[PfR73]

This is so weird. Has anyone else ever been credited twice for the same writing credit? Not 2 different credits like "story by" and "screenplay by" or some other distinction between types of writing, but the same credit section (e.g. "screenplay by").
I understand the "and" vs "&" to denote different writing teams and drafts and whatnot, but I've never seen the same person credited as part of 2 different writing teams for the same credit block before.

[Never Cursed]

For Eternals, Chloe Zhao is credited both as a solo screenwriter and as part of a writing team

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Also Jeffrey Boam on Lethal Weapon 3, which is the oldest example I've seen. The WB marketing people assumed it was a mistake and removed one instance of his name from the posters, which had to be recalled when the WGA found out.

[domino harvey]

There are eleven names on the teaser poster and five of those are Luhrmann!

[swo17]

Well, we won't be able to say we weren't warned

[DarkImbecile]

I went into Elvis anticipating there was a high likelihood it would be a garish horror show that would make for an enjoyably acidic writeup, and a slim chance it was going to be a surprisingly vivacious and robust take on the musical biopic that would be fun to defend. What I was not anticipating was that it would feel painfully tragic how badly about two-thirds of the decisions Luhrmann makes here betray the parts of this film that really work: instead of being merely inconsistently mediocre, which might allow for enjoyment of the parts that work, this was like having a two-flavor soft serve ice cream swirl where one flavor was chocolate and the other was mayonnaise.

In this case, the chocolate is Austin Butler's remarkably vibrant central performance and Luhrmann's direction of a handful of effective performances, and the giant glob of mayonnaise ruining the whole thing is the film's wild misuse of Colonel Tom Parker — not just Tom Hanks' insane performance, or the catastrophic decision to deploy his character as both framing device and narrator, but primarily the fact that it reduces an icon's 20-year saga as the one of the most famous men on Earth to a weak, repetitive struggle with a petty con man. For every moment where Luhrmann's coked-up, faux-90s-Oliver-Stone visual style slows enough to appreciate Butler channeling some of Presley's physicality, sensuality, or vulnerability, it feels like Hanks' fat-suited face is forced into the frame or his demented accent appears in voice-over whispering insidiously about snowjobs, never content to let you enjoy a scene about the charismatic titular subject without immediately punishing you with his mirror opposite.

Obviously you can't tell Elvis' story without prominently featuring Parker, but you can easily imagine a perfectly tolerable version of this movie that reduced Parker's prominence by about half, showcased the performances (where Luhrmann's excesses seem far less intrusive), and really let Butler fully take the spotlight. Sure, there'd be nothing about the structure or plot not surgically skewered 15 years ago in Walk Hard, but it would at least be leaps and bounds better than something wholly incompetent like Bohemian Rhapsody. Instead, it is a real struggle to not let the film's fatal failures — which include being roughly 30 minutes too long (and I'm very much not a "movies should be short" zealot) and the fact that Baz throws a eight-split-screen shot in the first five minutes — entirely discolor its only occasional but very real successes.

[Walter Kurtz]

Another superb piece of rhetoric. Clarity. Concision. Not one meaningless or extraneous word. Why the fuck are content execs pay relative morons to write film reviews when they can be paying an imbecile!

[Never Cursed]

This was a reasonably enjoyable spite-watch, coming closer to the lofty heights of "okay" than any of the other Luhrmanns I've seen. It's still quite annoying and cursed with a final act that stalls the entire film's momentum

SpoilerShow

(everything from the Christmas special to Elvis' departure from the Vegas residency is consciously a retread of earlier beats screaming for a more critical rewrite)

but I can hardly be surprised that a film by this director turned out to have bloated or incoherent elements. The moment-to-moment editing is truly atrocious (and in a way that was foretold by promotionally-released clips that are almost identical to the scenes as presented in the film - in the final cut as in that video, you can be dazzled by Tom Hanks teleporting around the concert hall or Austin Butler changing his dance moves mid-step), so I can't wait to watch it win the Editing Oscar. That and the frankly disrespectful/condescending use of the licensed music tracks, where everything is turned into a modern-styled mashup as the film disingenuously talks out of one side of its mouth about the importance of marginalized Black artists, are really the worst sins present. Why Hanks decided to play his character as Dutch carny Frank Reynolds, I have no idea, but it's such a wrongheaded overcommittment that his anti-charisma became for me as compelling as Butler's disappearance into his role. Movie of the summer if you want to walk out from something knowing that, eh, you've seen a lot better from everyone involved, but you've also definitely seen worse.

[knives]

Better from Luhrmann?

[therewillbeblus]

I appreciate the cautiousness, but surely the contents of that spoilerbox is a non-spoilery vague outline of two points in Elvis' professional history that even Wikipedia would have to beef up to include in its initial one-line abstract for a career summary!

[Never Cursed]

Better from Luhrmann?

I like a couple individual sequences in Romeo + Juliet (the masked ball specifically) more than anything in this and that film is generally more technically proficient too (I never thought someone as aesthetics-conscious as Luhrmann would sink to the level of using Microsoft WordArt, but Elvis proves me wrong), but it also has lower lows that counterbalance the higher highs. I admit that I can't really say "everyone" with total accuracy, because who knows which of the seven attached screenwriters + any uncredited script doctors ultimately had the most sway over the screenplay.

I appreciate the cautiousness, but surely the contents of that spoilerbox is a non-spoilery vague outline of two points in Elvis' professional history that even Wikipedia would have to beef up to include in its initial one-line abstract for a career summary!

SpoilerShow

Yeah, I am more just trying to obfuscate how these events are misused in the film's last hour. I don't expect anyone is going to be surprised by, say Elvis' death or anything, but I don't think it's unfair for a reader to not want to know what the structure of the last hour of the film is.

[therewillbeblus]

Now I'm curious how the Auteur-of-Glamor portrays Elvis'

SpoilerShow

death

[Never Cursed]

SpoilerShow

Oh god, that's so poorly done too. First, they make him look and sound a lot better than he did at the end of his life (for a movie that makes Hanks wear a grotesque fat suit/prosthetics for its entire runtime, there's no reason why Butler looks relatively trim as archival TV newsmen bleat on about his waistline other than that the movie is tailored to meet the approval of Presley's surviving relatives), going so far as to ascribe weight and meaning to his infamous druggy rambles. He has a Sad and Meaningful Meeting with his ex-wife and kid one last time, and we hear more rambling about flying like a bird as we see the ex-wife's plane take off, and that fades into archival newspaper/newsreel/still photography coverage of Elvis' death and funeral. It's all very static and "tasteful," but who wants or needs that after the previous 140 minutes?

[therewillbeblus]

Say no more, sounds like a movie destined to bother me with its unintentional messaging around drug use or addiction issues, and I have no interest or patience for that after touching the stove so many times with recent offensive Hollywood productions trying to be sensitive to something without realizing they're demeaning a stigmatized but not protected class

[tenia]

This really looks like someone thought Walk Hard never happened.

[DarkImbecile]

I’m not sure the addiction element is so badly handled, twbb; if anything, his drug issues are probably under-addressed relative to their significance in his decline and death. It’s certainly not as prominent a plot point as in Walk the Line or Ray, to cite a couple of other music biopics Walk Hard skewered.

[therewillbeblus]

I think I'm sensitive to aspects of portrayals of addiction many might miss in their larger implications that read louder to me than to the artists or average audience member, but I recognize that as a personal 'thing' that I try to give rope to as I enter a movie. I can't stand Luhrmann at all, so not sure if I'll see this, but the point is well-taken. I like Walk the Line, for what it's worth, and don't feel like it takes a particularly problematic or charitable stance on drug use or addiction. It's pretty hands-off in not touching something it doesn't know anything about, which may be safe and avoidant but also carries a humility that films that do try to connect addiction to meaning can fuck up in really exploitative and stigma-reinforcing microaggressions when they think they're seeking to understand and validating, but are really going too far with a cocky sense of courage. It's that misunderstanding and subsequent misinformed signification that usually goes wrong.

[Never Cursed]

For what it's worth, if anything I got the sense that Luhrmann/the writers minimized the presence of drugs because they knew that incorporating them into the film's bombast would be distracting and offensive. My use of the phrase "druggy rambles" to describe Elvis' infamous onstage behavior is more my own characterization of those actions (and not a judgment of him or where he was late in life), based on what I know of the man's life story, and less how the film actually depicts them. I didn't like this movie and I think other aspects of it are varying degrees of annoying, exasperating, or offensive, but I don't think it actually says anything shallow or cruel about drug use, opting instead for an avoidant strategy that sounds very similar to how you describe Walk The Line.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah, Luhrmann is a bit too distracted in his manic aesthetics to meditate too long or hard on any deep theme, I suppose

[therewillbeblus]

This is pretty terrible, but there's an interesting failure brewing somewhere in here that's thwarted since Luhrmann et al are uncertain (torn at best, oblivious at worst) about its subject. Luhrmann is essentially making an alternative adaptation of Faust, slyly casting Hanks as the Devil who unconvincingly pretends to be a (warped) faux-'good guy' for a while as he slithers into the slot of Main Character (in a biopic not about him! That wily devil), utilizing Elvis' stardom narrative as a skeleton to tell that tale. The delusional and absurd nature of Hanks' narration has potential in a movie more committed to such a perverse high concept, but its execution is sloppy and confounding - probably because the film itself seems delusional about accepting that it's not really an Elvis biopic at all, but a vanity project for Tom Hanks fulfilling a career-long dream of playing the Wicked Witch of the West the way she was meant to be played, as a devious Dutch immigrant born at the turn of the 20th century (looking for another taste of that delicious Cloud Atlas shade and coming up empty).

I can think of several instances in the film where choices could've been made to morph embarrassing inclusions into pledges toward this wild idea. For example, if the anachronisms like hip hop music playing over Elvis' interactions in the 50s were applied as a layer under Hanks' voiceover when crafting this narrative, that might indicate some kind of unreliable narration coming from the Devil recounting a story in a space isolated from temporal signifiers, mistakenly regurgitating incongruous samples of music from different time periods in blind confusion. It would be fun to infuse some irony to eviscerate the Devil's competence by making him a music promoter disinterested in the evolution of music history, which would only amplify how his narcissistic tendencies obstruct skills, humility, and a willingness to access knowledge, while cuing the audience in objectively as removed from Hanks' solipsistic subjectivity. Luhrmann does get close to achieving this effect a few times but drops the ball at each fork in the road. So instead of filtering these irregularities through a sardonic screen, winking at Hanks' own egoist and skewed perspective, the music is implemented sincerely- absent from the Devil's meddling. Of course Luhrmann opts for vapidly artsy panache rather than weaponizing his stylistic ambitions into a reflexive asset in its storytelling (though I suppose the more interesting path would also serve as a confession from Luhrmann that his entire auteur status is as a hack, and his repression of this structural conflict in the film is emblematic of his own conceited impulses eclipsing opportunities at self-consciousness or thematic depth beyond the superficial sheen he defensively coat his films in, mimicking his own psychological defenses obfuscating a process of checking his ego and locating humility for the sake of artistic evolution). Wait, could Hanks' version of Colonel Tom Parker be Luhrmann, in terms of reflexive delusional ignorance- only neither of them know it?

Anyways, there's also a scene where a group of peers tell Elvis his career is "in the toilet," evoking a guffawing mug on Elvis, and (duh) foreshadowing his pathetic demise, which would eschew groans for the sake of cheeky creative value if sieved through Hanks' omniscient storyteller. Or, at least with his voiceover coming in and out to indicate he's 'remembering' things with morbid-emphasized hindsight (his speciality!)- but that scene happens outside of any Hanks reflection too, and is also pitched... sincerely(?!) Butler does his best in a movie that has no real interest in him, and he has no idea that he's not the star here, so that's sad- which could also be read as mirroring Elvis' ignorance to Hanks' Devil's power over him holding all the cards, but that'd be giving Luhrmann too much rope. Plus the denouement is supposed to show that Elvis 'wins' because he's an icon in posterity and the Devil dies alone- man, he really got his where it counts! Someone needs to go see The Banshees of Inisherin. What a strange moral to tack onto the end of a film this perplexed about its primary vehicle, or even what it feels about its focus at any given time. I had no idea what position was being held, where the passion or compassion was coming from or going to, and this is anything but a neutral exposition. Note to Luhrmann: Phantasmagoria is not a tone. And boy, is Hanks terrible! His is one of the most irritating performances I've had the displeasure of sitting through in my long career as a moviegoer, made all the worse because it's Tom Hanks, who should know better, but is hamming it up without cognizance for what he's doing or who he's playing. If he finally scores a Razzie nom for this, it will all have been worth it. No, it won't- Now I'm deluding myself. Thank God for Daylight Savings Time- I can feel slightly less depressed rationalizing that I only wasted two hours of my life instead of three. Shoot, did it again

[Never Cursed]

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

[Brian C]

This movie has basically one interesting idea - contextualizing Elvis's music within the Memphis blues scene of the time specifically, and black music culture more generally. There are sequences (mostly early) in the film that could have been taken more or less from an Elvis movie by Spike Lee. At any rate, they're far and away the most interesting sequences - for that matter, the most watchable in the first place - in the film.

Aside from that, the movie would have you believe that Elvis's main contribution to the culture was making women in the audience scream. Could there possibly be any women in Australia that were not used as screaming audience extras for this movie? This is Luhrmann's one and only way of demonstrating how people loved Elvis and what their music meant to his fans. Parker says early in the film that it's about "enjoying something that you're not supposed to enjoy," and there was of course an element of that, especially in his early breakthrough to megastardom, but it seems perhaps just a tad reductive when taken as a grand theory.

Anyway, the rest of this thread pretty much nails all the reasons why this movie sucks. I don't really want to pile onto Tom Hanks, but ... I will anyway, this is one of the most dreadful performances I've seen from a major actor in my life. It's all the ways that a performance can be bad, but I think the biggest problem is that Hanks is, by his most fundamental nature a comedic actor, and I'm not sure he's capable of playing a character with a strange accent and/or weird makeup without winking at the audience on some level. And along with everything else, it's just way too garish to take seriously at all.

[therewillbeblus]

I think the biggest problem is that Hanks is, by his most fundamental nature a comedic actor, and I'm not sure he's capable of playing a character with a strange accent and/or weird makeup without winking at the audience on some level. And along with everything else, it's just way too garish to take seriously at all.

This is a really interesting point, and makes me wonder how this film would play out if someone like, I don't know, Ben Mendelsohn was cast in Hanks' place. I don't think the film would suddenly become good or anything, but having an actor who inherently embodies a lived-in slimy and deceitful persona (not to mention a strong actor whose performances in this arena feel effortless) could at least alleviate that sore-thumb distraction and give Butler the necessary spotlight to make this even feel like a movie about Elvis, which I really don't think it does with any interest. Then again, Mendelsohn's naturalism would feel so alien amidst Luhrmann's bombast that it would probably be distracting in its own way, and still steal the attention. Just in a good way, probably.