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“Elvis” brings all of the glitz, rhinestones, and jumpsuits you’d expect in an Elvis film, but without the necessary complexity for a movie from 2022 about the “King.”

Maximalist filmmaker Baz Luhrmann , who abhors visual restraint and instead opts for grand theatricality, should be the perfect creator for a Presley biopic, but isn't. Luhrmann tells us this icon’s story from the perspective of the singer’s longtime, crooked manager Colonel Tom Parker ( Tom Hanks ). After collapsing in his tacky, memorabilia-filled office, a near-death Parker awakens alone in a Las Vegas hospital room. The papers have labeled him a crook, a cheat who took advantage of Elvis ( Austin Butler ), so he must set the record straight. 

From the jump, Luhrmann’s aesthetic language takes hold: An IV-drip turns into the Las Vegas skyline; in a hospital nightgown, Parker walks through a casino until he arrives at a roulette wheel. Carrying a heap of affectations, Hanks plays Parker like the Mouse King in “ The Nutcracker .” For precisely the film’s first half hour, "Elvis" moves like a Christmas fairytale turned nightmare; one fueled not by jealousy but the pernicious clutches of capitalism and racism, and the potent mixture they create. 

It’s difficult to wholly explain why “Elvis” doesn’t work, especially because for long stretches it offers rushes of enthralling entertainment. In the early goings-on, Luhrmann and co-writers Sam Bromell , Craig Pearce , and Jeremy Doner meticulously build around Presley’s influences. They explain how Gospel and Blues equally enraptured him—a well-edited, both visually and sonically, sequence mixes the two genres through a sweaty performance of “That’s Alright Mama”—and they also show how much his time visiting on Beale Street informed his style and sound. A performance of “Hound Dog” by Big Mama Thornton ( Shonka Dukureh ), and the emergence of a flashy B.B. King ( Kelvin Harrison Jr.) furthers the point. Presley loves the superhero Shazam, and dreams about reaching the Rock of Eternity, a stand-in for stardom in this case. He’s also a momma’s boy (thankfully Luhrmann doesn’t belabor the death of Elvis’ brother, a biographical fact lampooned by “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story”).  

Though a biopic veteran, Hanks has rarely been a transformative actor. In this case, you can hear his accent slipping back toward Hanks. And the heavy prosthetics do him few favors, robbing him of his facial range—an underrated tool in his repertoire. And Hanks already struggles to play outright villains; shaping the story from his perspective takes the edge off of his potential menace. It’s a tough line for Hanks to walk, to be unsuspecting yet vicious. Hanks creates a friction that doesn’t altogether work, but feels at home in Luhrmann’s heavy reliance on artifice. 

The most fascinating linkage in “Elvis” is the extrapolation of commerce and race. Parker is enamored by Presley because he plays Black music but is white. Elvis turns off the white Christian old, like the moribund country singer Hank Snow ( David Wenham ), and the homophobic men who consider him a “fairy.” Yet he excites the young, like Jimmie Rogers ( Kodi Smit-McPhee , both actors provide fantastic comic relief), and he has sex appeal. A wiggle, if you please. Luhrmann takes that wiggle seriously, showing sexually possessed, screaming women. Butler’s crotch, in precisely fitted pink pants and shot in close-up, vibrates. Harsh zooms, quick whip pans, and a taste for horniness (by both men and women) help make the early moments of this biopic so special. As does its anti-capitalist bent, which depicts how often labor, art, and ownership can be spit out and garbled in the destructive system.    

Unfortunately, “Elvis” soon slips into staid biopic territory. We see the meteoric rise of Presley, the mistakes—whether by greed or naïveté—he makes along the way, and his ultimate descent toward self-parody. His mother ( Helen Thomson ) dies on the most hackneyed of beats. His father ( Richard Roxburgh ) quivers in the shallowest of ways. Priscilla ( Olivia DeJonge ) appears and is handed standard tragic wife material. The pacing slows, and the story just doesn’t offer enough playfulness or interiority to keep up. 

But even so, the latter portions of Luhrmann’s film aren’t without its pleasures: The performance of “Trouble,” whereby Presley defies the Southern racists who fear his Black-infused music (and sensuality) will infiltrate white America, is arresting. Cinematographer Mandy Walker ’s freeze frames imitate black and white photography, like wrapping history in the morning dew. The performance of Elvis’ comeback special, specifically his rendition of “If I Can Dream” soars. During the Vegas sequences, the costumes become ever more elaborate, the make-up ever more garish, acutely demonstrating Presley’s physical decline. And Butler, an unlikely Elvis, tightly grips the reins by providing one show-stopping note after another. There isn’t a hint of fakery in anything Butler does. That sincerity uplifts “Elvis” even as it tumbles.    

But all too often the film slips into a great white hope syndrome, whereby Presley is the sincere white hero unearthing the exotic and sensual Black artists of his era. B.B. King, Big Momma Thornton, and Little Richard (real-life supporters of Presley) exist solely as either bulletin board cheerleaders or alluring beings from a far-off land. While these Black artists are championed—an awareness by Luhrmann of their importance and the long and winding history of Black art moving through white spaces—they barely speak or retain any depth, even while a paternalistic Presley advances their cause. 

The approach neither illuminates nor dignifies these figures. Instead, Luhrmann tries to smooth over the complicated feelings many Black folks of varied generations have toward the purported King. In that smoothing, Presley loses enough danger, enough fascinating complications to render the whole enterprise predictable. Because it’s not enough to merely have awareness, a filmmaker also has a responsibility to question whether they’re the right person to tell a story. Luhrmann isn’t. And that’s a failing that will be difficult for many viewers to ignore.

Luhrmann side-steps other parts of the Elvis mythology, including the age gap between Priscilla and Presley (the pair met in Germany when the former was 14 years old), and when Elvis became a stooge for Richard Nixon . Excluding the latter makes little sense in a movie concerning the commodification of Presley by capitalism and conservatism. Luhrmann wants to show the downfall of a doe-eyed icon by nefarious systems, but never pushes the envelope enough for him to become unlikable, or better yet, intricate and human. 

That flattening easily arises from telling this story from Colonel Parker’s perspective. He doesn’t care about Black people, therefore, they exist as cardboard cutouts. He cares little for Priscilla, therefore, she has little personhood. And Parker certainly isn’t going to tarnish the image or brand of Elvis because it corrodes himself. These undesirable outcomes, facile and pointless, make logical sense considering the framing of the narrative. But what good is making a sanitized Elvis biopic in 2022? And truly, who really needs a further fortification of Presley’s cultural importance when it’s been the dominant strain for over 60 years? It’s another noxious draft in history clumsily written by white hands.

“Elvis” certainly works as a jukebox, and it does deliver exactly what you’d expect from a Luhrmann movie. But it never gets close to Presley; it never deals with the knotty man inside the jumpsuit; it never grapples with the complications in his legacy. It’s overstuffed, bloated, and succumbs to trite biopic decisions. Luhrmann always puts Butler in the best position to succeed until the credits, whereby he cuts to archival footage of Presley singing “Unchained Melody.” In that moment Luhrmann reminds you of the myth-making at play. Which is maybe a good thing, given Luhrmann's misleading, plasticine approach. 

Now playing in theaters.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Film credits.

Elvis (2022)

Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking.

159 minutes

Austin Butler as Elvis Presley

Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker

Olivia DeJonge as Priscilla Presley

Dacre Montgomery as Steve Binder

Kelvin Harrison Jr. as B.B. King

Richard Roxburgh as Vernon Presley

Helen Thomson as Gladys Presley

Yola as Sister Rosetta Tharpe

David Wenham as Hank Snow

Luke Bracey as Jerry Schilling

Alex Radu as George Klein

Alton Mason as Little Richard

Xavier Samuel as Scotty Moore

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Jimmie Rodgers Snow

Natasha Bassett as Dixie Locke

Leon Ford as Tom Diskin

• Baz Luhrmann

Writer (story by)

• Jeremy Doner
• Sam Bromell
• Craig Pearce

Cinematographer

• Mandy Walker
• Jonathan Redmond
• Elliott Wheeler

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Austin butler and tom hanks in baz luhrmann’s ‘elvis’: film review | cannes 2022.

The King of Rock and Roll gets suitably electrified biopic treatment in this kinetic vision of his life and career through the eyes of the financial abuser who controlled him.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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How you feel about Baz Luhrmann ’s Elvis will depend largely on how you feel about Baz Luhrmann’s signature brash, glitter-bomb maximalism. Just the hyper-caffeinated establishing section alone — even before Austin Butler ’s locomotive hips start doing their herky-jerky thing when Elvis Presley takes to the stage to perform “Heartbreak Hotel” in a rockabilly-chic pink suit — leaves you dizzy with its frenetic blast of scorching color, split screen, retro graphics and more edits per scene than a human eye can count. Add in the stratified, ear-bursting sound design and this is Baz times a bazillion.

If the writing too seldom measures up to the astonishing visual impact, the affinity the director feels for his showman subject is both contagious and exhausting. Luhrmann’s taste for poperatic spectacle is evident all the way, resulting in a movie that exults in moments of high melodrama as much as in theatrical artifice and vigorously entertaining performance.

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Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition) Release date: Friday, June 24 Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Olivia DeJonge, Luke Bracey, Natasha Bassett, David Wenham, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Xavier Samuel, Kodi Smit-McPhee Screenwriters: Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, Jeremy Doner; story by Luhrmann and Doner Director: Baz Luhrmann

As for the big question of whether Butler could pull off impersonating one of the most indelible icons in American pop-culture history, the answer is an unqualified yes. His stage moves are sexy and hypnotic, his melancholy mama’s-boy lost quality is swoon-worthy and he captures the tragic paradox of a phenomenal success story who clings tenaciously to the American Dream even as it keeps crumbling in his hands.

But the heart of this biopic is tainted, thanks to a screenplay whose choppy patchwork feel perhaps directly correlates to its complicated billing — by Baz Luhrmann & Sam Bromell and Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner; story by Baz Luhrmann and Jeremy Doner. That mouthful suggests an amalgam of various versions, though the big hurdle is the off-putting character piloting the narrative, who creates a hole at its center.

That would be “Colonel” Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks in arguably the least appealing performance of his career — a creepy, beady-eyed leer from under a mountain of latex, with a grating, unidentifiable accent that becomes no less perplexing even after the character’s murky Dutch origins have been revealed. It’s a big risk to tell your story through the prism of a morally repugnant egotist, a financial abuser who used his manipulative carnival-barker skills to control and exploit his vulnerable star attraction, driving him to exhaustion and draining him of an outsize proportion of his earnings.

Every time the action cuts back to Hanks’ Parker near the end of his life — refuting his designated role as the villain of the story from a Las Vegas casino floor where he ran up gambling debts that necessitated keeping Elvis under a lucrative International Hotel residency contract — the movie falters. As portrayed here and elsewhere, Parker was a self-serving con man who monopolized the star’s artistic and personal freedom and now gets to monopolize the retelling of his life. Elvis the movie works better when Elvis the man is a creation of ringmaster Luhrmann’s feverish imagination than when Parker keeps popping up to remind us, “I made Elvis Presley.”

The subject’s musical formation is illustrated in enjoyably florid Southern Gothic style as the young Elvis (Chaydon Jay) is seen growing up in Tupelo, Mississippi, moving to a poor Black neighborhood after his father, Vernon (Richard Roxburgh), is briefly jailed for passing a bad check.

Watching through the cracks in the walls of juke joints or from under the tent flaps of holy-roller revival meetings, Elvis absorbs influences that would allow him to fuse bluegrass with R&B, gospel and country, and create a sound unprecedented from a white vocalist. In one amusingly wild flourish, the roots of the “lewd gyrations” that would inflame screaming fans and conservative watchdogs in their respective ways are traced to the boy being physically possessed by the spirit during a religious service.

As they did in The Great Gatsby and elsewhere, Luhrmann and longtime music supervisor Anton Monsted freely mash up period and contemporary tunes once the teenage Elvis, his family by now relocated to Memphis, starts hanging out on Beale Street, where he befriends the young B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and thrills to the gospel sounds of Sister Rosetta Tharpe (English musician Yola). Given that Elvis’ vocal style drew from multiple inspirations, it makes sense for swaggering hip-hop and Elvis covers by a range of artists to weave their way into the soundtrack.

Initially enlisted by the Colonel to join a bill led by country crooner Hank Snow (David Wenham) and his son Jimmie Rodgers Snow (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Elvis soon becomes the headliner, with Hank stepping away due to concerns that his Christian family audience might blanch at Presley’s heathen hip-swinging. But Elvis’ doting mother Gladys (Helen Thomson), who calms his nerves like no one else, reassures her son, “The way you sing is God-given, so there can’t be nothin’ wrong with it.”

The rapid-fire cutting of editors Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond allows Luhrmann to whip through the meteoric rise in popularity, the landing of an RCA recording contract and the encroaching threat of political morality police at the same time. Parker keeps the Presley family onside by making Vernon his son’s business manager, albeit without much clout or responsibility. Meanwhile, one of Elvis’ bandmates slips him a pill while on the road “to put the pep back in your step,” setting in motion a dependency that would famously spiral in later years.

Segregation rallies with alarmist warnings about “Africanized culture” and “crimes of lust and perversion” target Presley, and television appearances start coming with the stipulation of “no wiggling.” But Elvis’ fans don’t go for the cleaned-up, powered-down version; they want the excitement and danger that has female fans hurling their underwear at the stage. When Elvis gives them what they want, the Colonel fears he’s losing control of his meal ticket so he maneuvers to have him shipped off to serve in the U.S. Army in 1958 for an image makeover. Elvis blames his absence for his mother’s increased drinking and subsequent death, and yet Parker’s hold over him is too strong to shake.

By this point it’s clear that while the Colonel aggressively pushes himself forward as Elvis’ protector, he exhibits little to no genuine affection for his star client, regarding him merely as a revenue source. With Gladys gone, that leaves an emotional void around the title character, which may be true to life, but robs the film of immediacy. Even his marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge) doesn’t do enough to counter that, which keeps Elvis remote just as Luhrmann should be drawing us in closer.

Too often, Luhrmann builds sequences like isolated vignettes rather than part of a consistently fluid narrative, for instance a romantic montage of Elvis and Priscilla in Germany during his military service, set to a pretty, wispy cover by Kasey Musgraves of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” The sequence is sweet and dreamy, but it’s no substitute for getting to know Priscilla, a thinly drawn role beneath the hairdos and knockout fashions.

The action sprints forward through the rise and fall of Elvis’ movie career without lingering long (no Ann-Margret representation, sadly), but finds juicy detail in NBC’s 1968 comeback special. It’s conceived by Parker as a Christmas family special and a fresh merchandising opportunity for nerdy sweaters. But Elvis’ frustration with his career downturn causes him to take the advice of his old friend Jerry Schilling (Luke Bracey) and rework it on his own terms, angering Parker and the show’s sponsors at Singer.

Director Steve Binder (Dacre Montgomery) reshapes the special, putting Elvis on a small stage surrounded by a TV audience. The raw rock ‘n’ roll set reaffirms Elvis’ influential place in American popular music just as he’s risking obsolescence. The recreated production numbers are a blast, with a gospel choir, “whorehouse” dancers and kung fu fighters. Elvis also shrugs off the Colonel’s insistence on closing with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” instead performing the original protest song, “If I Can Dream,” which resonates powerfully just two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

The attention given in Elvis to the ’68 special suggests how much brighter Presley’s star might have burned had he gotten out from under Parker’s control more often. But when he tries to extricate himself, the Colonel convinces him to commit to five years at $5 million a year in Vegas, blocking the international touring plan of management team members who actually do appear to consider his wellbeing. Parker’s puppet-mastery is revealed to be about not just his gambling debts but also about his undocumented status in the U.S., which would have been exposed had he left the country.

Of course, this is ultimately a tragedy, and a different filmmaker less consumed by the bigness and brassiness of his enterprise might have dug deeper into the pathos. But there are moving moments, especially in Butler’s performance as he transforms into the puffy, sweaty Elvis of his final years (thankfully, his prosthetics are less of an eyesore than Hanks’), his marriage to Priscilla dissolving and causing sorrow for both of them.

One might wish for a biopic with more access to the subject’s bruised, bleeding heart, but in terms of capturing the essence of what made Presley such a super nova, Elvis gets many things right.

The live performance sequences are electrifying, shot by cinematographer Mandy Walker with swooping moves to match Presley’s dynamic physicality and with intimacy to capture the molten feeling he poured into his songs. The bold use of color and lighting is eye-popping. The same goes for the production design by Luhrmann’s wife and career-long collaborator Catherine Martin and Karen Murphy; likewise, Martin’s utterly fabulous costumes.

Luhrmann is often criticized for molding material to serve his style rather than finessing his style to fit the material. Many will dismiss this film’s unrelenting flamboyance as bombastic Baz in ADHD overdrive, a work of shimmering surfaces that refuses to stop long enough to get under its subject’s skin. But as a tribute from one champion of outrageous showmanship to another, it dazzles.

Full credits

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition) Distribution: Warner Bros. Production companies: Bazmark, Jackal Group Cast: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Olivia DeJonge, Luke Bracey, Natasha Bassett, David Wenham, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Xavier Samuel, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Dacre Montgomery, Leon Ford, Kate Mulvany, Gareth Davies, Charles Grounds, Josh McConville, Adam Dunn, Yola, Alton Mason, Gary Clark Jr., Shonka Dukureh, Chaydon Jay Director: Baz Luhrmann Screenwriters: Baz Luhrmann, Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce, Jeremy Doner; story by Luhrmann and Doner Producers: Baz Luhrmann, Catherine Martin, Gail Berman, Patrick McCormick, Schuyler Weiss Executive producers: Toby Emmerich, Courtenay Valenti, Kevin McCormack Director of photography: Mandy Walker Production designers: Catherine Martin, Karen Murphy Costume designer: Catherine Martin Music: Elliott Wheeler Music supervisor: Anton Monsted Editors: Matt Villa, Jonathan Redmond Visual effects supervisor: Thomas Wood Casting: Nikki Barrett

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Elvis review – blistering, turbocharged chronicle of the King

With electrifying performances from Austin Butler as Elvis and Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker, Baz Luhrmann’s whirlwind biopic is cinematic dynamite

F rom an opening that cheekily evokes the dropped snow globe of Citizen Kane to an Unchained Melody finale that had me crying in the chapel, Baz Luhrmann ’s Elvis is a turned-up-to-11 treat. This blistering pop biopic combines the kinetic musical madness of Moulin Rouge! with the turbo-charged irreverence of The Great Gatsby , the Shakespearian tragedy of Romeo+Juliet (with an added touch of Falstaff and Prince Hal) and the “what- all -of-it!?” ambition of Australia . It’s a riotously audacious work, a kaleidoscopic portrait of the king of rock’n’roll and his puppet-master promoter, the latter of whom narrates the story (like Salieri in Amadeus ) and who tells his money-spinning client: “We are the same, you and I – two odd, lonely children, reaching for eternity.”

“Without me there would be no Elvis Presley ,” drawls Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker (aka Dutchman Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk), a “snowman” or carnival huckster who does his deals on a Ferris wheel and who sounds genuinely amazed that “there are some who make me out to be the villain of this story!” Most will share that view as the curtain comes down on this whirlwind chronicle of a career from which Parker took 50% of the profits and 100% of the control. Yet for all his monstrousness, Hanks’s prosthetically enhanced antihero has just enough wheedling pathos to make us understand how he wormed his way into Elvis’s confidence. With a sing-song voice that is part Elmer Fudd, part Lugosi’s Dracula, we watch him usurp first Elvis’s much-mourned mother, Gladys, and then his idolised wife, Priscilla, in the inner circle of trust, casting himself as Presley’s closest confidant and making him a star even while strangling his artistic ambition.

Of the actors who have previously tried to bottle Elvis’s lightning-like magic – from Kurt Russell in John Carpenter’s Elvis and Rob Youngblood in Elvis and the Colonel (both made-for-TV productions) to a spectral Val Kilmer in Tony Scott’s True Romance , Bruce Campbell in the bonkers Bubba Ho-Tep and, more recently, Michael Shannon in the goofy Elvis & Nixon – none has come close to the physical, emotional, electrical energy that throbs through Austin Butler’s titular performance here. An early scene of his pink-pegged Presley performing Baby, Let’s Play House on the Louisiana Hayride is pure cinematic dynamite, with the orgasmic reactions of girls in the crowd as elegantly choreographed as Elvis’s gyrations (part religious ecstasy, part blushing burlesque) by movement maestro Polly Bennett.

No sooner has Presley made headlines than Parker has slipped his “wiggling boy” into the army, Luhrmann’s film falling in line with the increasingly popular notion that the colonel used Presley’s national service as a tool to give himself breathing space – room to control and neuter his creation. When Elvis gets out of the army, his rebellious zest is tamed by a string of anaemic Hollywood movies – money-spinning but moribund. Later, we’ll hear of Barbra Streisand’s offer for Presley to share her screen in A Star Is Born (a project Parker reportedly nixed because it wasn’t his project), prompting Elvis’s heartbreaking admission that “I never made that classic film that I can be proud of”.

Cheeky but effective dramatic liberties are taken with the clashing plans for what became known as the ’ 68 Comeback Special (Parker is comically pictured still wondering when the snow and Santa Claus songs are coming, even as Elvis rocks out in black leather). It’s a nice touch to have a picture of Nichelle Nichols’s pioneering Lt Uhura from Star Trek looking down from the TV studio walls as everyone but the colonel wises up to the fact that the times they are a-changing.

There’s nothing subtle about Parker banking on his prize dancing chicken clearing his gambling debts while Elvis belts out Suspicious Minds on stage, a lucrative residency at the Vegas International (weeks that turn into years) imprisoning him as clearly as Michael Corleone in The Godfather . Taking a lead from the 1972 film Elvis on Tour , the third act of Elvis’s life is presented in a split-screen haze, with Dr Nichopoulos pumping him full of drugs as Parker insists that “the only thing that matters is that that man gets up on that stage tonight ”.

Parker aside, Luhrmann’s co-writers Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner are clear on the true roots of Presley’s success, from scenes of the young Elvis feeling the gospel spirit move him in church to Big Mama Thornton rocking Hound Dog upstairs at Club Handy, Little Richard offering flamboyant inspiration and Mahalia Jackson making “the music that makes me happy”. A poignant drop of Elvis’s spoken-word Men with Broken Hearts amid the end credits vocals of In the Ghetto is the cherry on the cake of a film that knows its subject, but isn’t afraid to play fast and loose with a familiar tune.

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Elvis review: Baz Luhrmann’s sweaty, seductive biopic makes the King cool again

In luhrmann’s fairytale vision, elvis’ manager (tom hanks) is the evil stepmother, while austin butler’s king is the princess locked in a tower, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Baz Luhrmann. Starring: Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Helen Thomson, Richard Roxburgh, Olivia DeJonge, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Shonka Dukureh . 12A, 160 minutes.

If we were to pull back the curtain on Elvis Presley, what would we even want to see? A soul stripped of its performance? Something cold and real behind the kitsch? I’m not convinced. America’s pop icons aren’t merely shiny distractions. They’re a culture talking back to itself, constantly interrogating its own ideals and its desires. I don’t think who Elvis was is necessarily more important than what Elvis represents. And, while you won’t find all that much truth in Baz Luhrmann ’s cradle-to-grave dramatisation of his life, the Australian filmmaker has delivered something far more compelling: an American fairytale.

“I am the man who gave the world Elvis Presley,” utters Tom Hanks ’s Colonel Tom Parker, his manager, as the curtain rises (literally) on Luhrmann’s expansive, rhinestone-encrusted epic. “And yet there are some who would make me out to be the villain of this story,” he adds.

Parker, who saw early promise in Elvis’s politically radical blend of country and R’n’B, slyly positioned himself as the sole overseer of the star’s creative enterprise – the man who won him a recording contract with RCA Records, who secured his merchandising deals and TV appearances, and who navigated him through a fairly brief but bountiful acting career. But Parker took far more in return. In 1980, a judge ruled that he had defrauded the Presley estate by millions. Some even blame him for pushing an overworked Elvis to the brink and ultimately contributing to his death.

For Luhrmann, the fairytale parallels couldn’t be more obvious. Parker is the evil stepmother, Elvis (here played by former child star Austin Butler ) is the princess locked in her tower – if that tower is, in fact, the vast and gilded stage of his Las Vegas residency. When Parker, a former carnival worker, first seduces Elvis to become his client, it’s in a literal hall of mirrors. That may sound a little absurd, but Luhrmann’s roots in the Australian opera scene have granted him a winning (though, to some, divisive) ability to deliver baroque stylings with a sincere, romantic sensibility.

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I’ve always believed strongly in the purpose and necessity of Luhrmann’s outlandish visions – that it’s not enough simply to capture the grotesque consumption of The Great Gatsby ’s Jazz Age, but to prove that we, the audience, would be as weak to its charms as Fitzgerald’s protagonist, Nick Carraway. The same is true here, in the ways his subject is both seduced and betrayed by his own fame. And, anyway, Luhrmann’s always shot his films a little like Elvis performs – sweaty and kinetic, as the camera sweeps through the corridors of Graceland and through decades of his life with the fury of a thousand karate kicks.

​​Elvis will, and should, invite serious discussions about the musician’s outstanding legacy, and the film’s weakest spots speak mostly to how unsettled the debate around him still is. There’s certainly a lot to be said for how nervously the film tiptoes around his relationship with Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), who was 14 when they first met. Can a film speak on behalf of a woman who’s still alive and able to share her own story? And where do we settle on the great debate of Elvis’s wider role in music history? Was his success really another chapter in white America’s long history of cultural appropriation, or did that early, rebellious appeal in fact prove to be a surprisingly powerful tool in the fight against segregation?

Luhrmann’s film arguably offers the most plausible, romantic ideal of Elvis, even if it turns him into something of a naïf trapped under Parker’s spell. He is always, in Parker’s narration, referred to as “the boy” and never “the man”. He is the sweet-souled, blue-eyed momma’s boy who just wants to buy his family a Cadillac and play the music of his childhood, which was spent in the Black-majority communities of Mississippi. Even at the height of Elvis’s fame, the film is careful to constantly bring us back to the Black artists who inspired him, either through the musician’s own words (and he was always deferential to his origins, to the very end) or through Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond’s frenetic editing work. When singer-songwriter Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh) launches into her rendition of “Hound Dog”, a voice on the radio commands us to listen – this is the voice of Black America speaking.

By framing Elvis’s story through Parker’s, Luhrmann’s film is cannily able to take a step back from the intimate details of the musician’s life. Instead it views him as a nuclear warhead of sensuality and cool, someone stood at the very crossroads of a fierce culture war. Parker thinks he can turn him into a clean-cut, all-American boy for the white middle classes, compelling him to accept the draft, cut his locks, and go to war. Elvis resists, and his gyrating pelvis (captured in many, glorious, zooms to the crotch) helps fuel the burgeoning sexual independence of young women across the country. “She’s having feelings she wasn’t sure she should enjoy,” Parker notes, as the camera surveys one wide-eyed, lip-biting fan. Costume designer Catherine Martin – Luhrmann’s spouse, credited also as co-production designer and producer – dresses Elvis in an array of soft, dreamy pinks to sublime effect.

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To say that Elvis isn’t really so much about the real Elvis might sound like it’s taking the pressure off of Butler’s performance. But that’d be an entirely unfair judgement of what’s being achieved here – an impersonation of one of the most impersonated people on the planet, that’s at times uncanny without ever coming across as parody. Sure, Butler has the looks, the voice, the stance and the wiggle nailed down, but what’s truly impressive is that indescribable, undistillable essence of Elvis-ness – magnetic and gentle and fierce, all at the same time.

It’s almost odd to watch a performance so all-consuming that Hanks – the Tom Hanks – feels like an accessory. He’s all but buried underneath layers of prosthetics and a pantomime Dutch accent, seemingly cast only so that the warm smirk of America’s dad can trip a few people into questioning whether he’s really the villain of all this. Butler makes a compelling argument for the power of Elvis, at a time when the musician’s arguably lost a little of his cultural cachet. So does Luhrmann. So does the soundtrack, which is packed with contemporary artists (Doja Cat’s “Vegas” has sound of the summer written all over it). And while not everyone will be convinced by their efforts – I know that I’m ready for Elvis to be cool again.

‘Elvis’ is released in cinemas on 24 June

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‘Elvis’ Review: Shocking the King Back to Life

Austin Butler plays the singer, with Tom Hanks as his devilish manager, in Baz Luhrmann’s operatic, chaotic anti-biopic.

By A.O. Scott

My first and strongest memory of Elvis Presley is of his death. He was only 42 but he already seemed, in 1977, to belong to a much older world. In the 45 years since, his celebrity has become almost entirely necrological. Graceland is a pilgrimage spot and a mausoleum.

Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” — a biopic in the sense that “Heartbreak Hotel” is a Yelp review — works mightily to dispel this funerary gloom. Luhrmann, whose relationship to the past has always been irreverent and anti-nostalgic, wants to shock Elvis back to life, to imagine who he was in his own time and what he might mean in ours.

The soundtrack shakes up the expected playlist with jolts of hip-hop (extended into a suite over the final credits), slivers of techno and slatherings of synthetic film-score schmaltz. (The composer and executive music producer is Elliott Wheeler.) The sonic message — and the film’s strongest argument for its subject’s relevance — is that Presley’s blend of blues, gospel, pop and country continues to mutate and pollinate in the musical present. There’s still a whole lot of shaking going on.

As a movie, though, “Elvis” lurches and wobbles, caught in a trap only partly of its own devising. Its rendering of a quintessentially American tale of race, sex, religion and money teeters between glib revisionism and zombie mythology, unsure if it wants to be a lavish pop fable or a tragic melodrama.

The ghoulish, garish production design, by Catherine Martin (Luhrmann’s wife and longtime creative partner) and Karen Murphy, is full of carnival sleaze and Vegas vulgarity. All that satin and rhinestone, filtered through Mandy Walker’s pulpy, red-dominated cinematography, conjures an atmosphere of lurid, frenzied eroticism. You might mistake this for a vampire movie.

It wouldn’t entirely be a mistake. The central plot casts Elvis (Austin Butler) as the victim of a powerful and devious bloodsucking fiend. That would be Col. Tom Parker, who supplies voice-over narration and is played by Tom Hanks with a mountain of prosthetic goo, a bizarre accent and a yes-it’s-really-me twinkle in his eyes. Parker was Presley’s manager for most of his career, and Hanks portrays him as part small-time grifter, part full-blown Mephistopheles.

“I didn’t kill Elvis,” Parker says, though the movie implies otherwise. “I made Elvis.” In the Colonel’s mind, they were “the showman and the snowman,” equal partners in a supremely lucrative long con.

Luhrmann’s last feature was an exuberant, candy-colored — and, I thought, generally underrated — adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” and the Colonel is in some ways a Gatsbyesque character. He’s a self-invented man, an arriviste on the American scene, a “mister nobody from nowhere” trading in the unstable currencies of wishing and seeming. He isn’t a colonel (Elvis likes to call him “admiral”) and his real name isn’t Tom Parker. The mystery of his origins is invoked to sinister effect but not fully resolved. If we paid too much attention to him, he might take over the movie, something that almost happens anyway.

Luhrmann seems more interested in the huckster than in the artist. But he himself is the kind of huckster who understands the power of art, and is enough of an artist to make use of that power.

As a Presley biography, “Elvis” is not especially illuminating. The basic stuff is all there, as it would be on Wikipedia. Elvis is haunted by the death of his twin brother, Jesse, and devoted to his mother, Gladys (Helen Thomson). Relations with his father, Vernon (Richard Roxburgh), are more complicated. The boy grows up poor in Tupelo, Miss., and Memphis, finds his way into the Sun Records recording studio at the age of 19, and proceeds to set the world on fire. Then there’s the Army, marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), Hollywood, a comeback broadcast in 1968, a long residency in Las Vegas, divorce from Priscilla and the sad, bloated spectacle of his last years.

Butler is fine in the few moments of offstage drama that the script allows, but most of the emotional action is telegraphed in Luhrmann’s usual emphatic, breathless style. The actor seems most fully Elvis — as Elvis, the film suggests, was most truly himself — in front of an audience. Those hips don’t lie, and Butler captures the smoldering physicality of Elvis the performer, as well as the playfulness and vulnerability that drove the crowds wild. The voice can’t be imitated, and the movie wisely doesn’t try, remixing actual Elvis recordings rather than trying to replicate them.

At his first big performance, in a dance hall in Texarkana, Ark., where he shares a bill with Hank Snow (David Wenham), Snow’s son, Jimmie (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and other country acts, Elvis steps out in a bright pink suit, heavy eye makeup and glistening pompadour. A guy in the audience shouts a homophobic slur, but after a few bars that guy’s date and every other woman in the room is screaming her lungs out, “having feelings she’s not sure she should enjoy,” as the Colonel puts it. Gladys is terrified, and the scene carries a heavy charge of sexualized danger. Elvis is a modern Orpheus, and these maenads are about to tear him to pieces. In another scene, back in Memphis, Elvis watches Little Richard (Alton Mason) tearing up “Tutti Frutti” (a song he would later cover) and sees a kindred spirit.

The sexual anarchy and gender nonconformity of early rock ’n’ roll is very much in Luhrmann’s aesthetic wheelhouse. Its racial complications less so. “Elvis” puts its hero in the presence of Black musicians including Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola), Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh) and B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who offers career advice. An early montage — repeated so often that it becomes a motif — finds the boy Elvis (Chaydon Jay) simultaneously peeking into a juke joint where Arthur Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) plays “That’s All Right Mama” and catching the spirit at a tent revival.

There’s no doubt that Elvis, like many white Southerners of his class and generation, loved blues and gospel. (He loved country and western, too, a genre the film mostly dismisses.) He also profited from the work of Black musicians and from industry apartheid, and a movie that won’t grapple with the dialectic of love and theft that lies at the heart of American popular music can’t hope to tell the whole story.

In the early days, Elvis’s nemesis is the segregationist Mississippi senator James Eastland (Nicholas Bell), whose fulminations against sex, race-mixing and rock ’n’ roll are intercut with a galvanic performance of “Trouble.” Later, Elvis is devastated by the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who was killed “just three miles from Graceland”) and Robert F. Kennedy. These moments, which try to connect Elvis with the politics of his era, are really episodes in his relationship with Colonel Parker, who wants to keep his cash cow away from controversy.

When Elvis defies the Colonel — breaking out in full hip-shaking gyrations when he’s been told “not to wiggle so much as a finger”; turning a network Christmas special into a sweaty, intimate, raucous return to form — the movie wants us to see his conscience at work, as well as his desire for creative independence. But Luhrmann’s sense of history is too muddled and sentimental to give the gestures that kind of weight.

And Elvis himself remains a cipher, a symbol, more myth than flesh and blood. His relationships with Vernon, Priscilla and the entourage known as “the Memphis mafia” receive cursory treatment. His appetites for food, sex and drugs barely get that much.

Who was he? The movie doesn’t provide much of an answer. But younger viewers, whose firsthand experience of the King is even thinner than mine, might come away from “Elvis” with at least an inkling of why they should care. In the end, this isn’t a biopic or a horror movie or a cautionary parable: It’s a musical, and the music is great. Remixed, yes, and full of sounds that purists might find anachronistic. But there was never anything pure about Elvis Presley, except maybe his voice, and hearing it in all its aching, swaggering glory, you understand how it set off an earthquake.

Like a lot of people who write about American popular culture — or who just grew up in the second half of the 20th century — I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Elvis. “Elvis,” for all its flaws and compromises, made me want to listen to him, as if for the first time.

Elvis Rated PG-13. Rock ’n’ roll, sex, drugs. Running time: 2 hours 39 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Review: Austin Butler, Baz Luhrmann deliver a grand ‘Elvis’

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Austin Butler in a scene from “Elvis.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Austin Butler and Tom Hanks in a scene from “Elvis.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

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The brief life of Elvis Presley is not something that fits neatly into a conventional biopic formula, though many have tried. It was, perhaps, always going to take a director as wild and visionary as Baz Luhrmann to do something that evokes the essence of the King’s 42 years. Luhrmann knows better than to adapt a Wikipedia page when it comes to a such a singular, larger-than-life star whose legend has only intensified and obscured almost a half a century after his death. Plus, he found a perfect star in Austin Butler, who fearlessly embodies the icon without ever slipping into impersonation.

With “ Elvis ,” which arrives in theaters Friday, Luhrmann and Butler have created something gloriously messy — a maximalist opera of contradictions, styles, truths, myths, memories and headlines. It doesn’t explain, apologize or concern itself with logic. Dates and locations, when they’re conveyed at all, often fly by with little fanfare in montages of newspaper headlines or broadcasts. No one who doesn’t already know the facts of Elvis Presley’s life is going to ace any trivia round about him after this film. It sidesteps or completely disregards some seemingly significant things like the fact that he met Priscilla (given depth by Olivia DeJong) when he was 24 and she was 14. His entire Hollywood career is summed up in a quick montage that ends with Tom Hanks’ Colonel Tom Parker saying in voiceover that “we had a lot of fun.”

Perhaps it’s because there are other moments that Luhrmann and his team of screenwriters deem more important — Elvis’ early acts of rebellion in defiance of local politicians, the death of his mother, the assassinations of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and John and Robert Kennedy, the 1968 leather-clad comeback special and the gilded cage of his Las Vegas residency, among them.

And still, this almost three hour extravaganza that takes you from cradle to grave (and beyond) goes by in a fizzy, glittery, sweaty flash that does not leave you unsatisfied. It is propelled by Butler’s transcendent portrayal of Elvis from age 17 on, capturing his almost overnight ascent from a scrawny truck driver and occasional singer to being the most famous man in the world. Parker, Elvis’ controversial manager and promoter, may not have known much about music, but he saw what Elvis did to an audience with his proto-punk stylings, gyrating hips and blend of country and R&B and knew there was money to be made off this kid.

The story is actually first framed as the morphine memory of Parker, who is dying in an austere hospital room overlooking the gaudy Las Vegas strip two decades after Elvis had passed. Parker tells the audience that he is not the villain. This is surely his prerogative and probably something he believed to be true despite all the evidence to the contrary that this carnival huckster ultimately broke his fragile star (or at least set him on a path to inevitable ruin). And yet the fact that even under mountains of prosthetics and a strange accent that it is still Tom Hanks with his endlessly empathetic eyes may have you second guessing yourself, or understanding why Elvis might have second-guessed himself. The artifice of his performance fits in the context of Luhrmann’s theatrical storytelling.

Though the film is flimsy with biographical facts, it does make sure to put Elvis’s Mississippi and Beale Street influences front and center. We see him soak up everything from the sensuality of the juke joints and the rapture in the Pentecostal revival tents he saw as a child to the work of Black artists like B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Big Mama Thornton (Shonka Dukureh), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Yola), Little Richard (Alton Mason) and Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup (Gary Clark Jr.) he’d see later.

It’s all presented without commentary, judgment or much introspection. Is it a cop out? A choice? Is it daring the audience to make their own conclusions? Whatever it is, it’s at least consistent with a movie where “Dr. Nick” and his pills seem to just appear out of the blue. And, again, “Elvis” seems to be more about getting you on a gut, emotional level than inundating you with facts and complexities around race and business in mid-century America.

Luhrmann never does anything by half measures, but perhaps one of the most striking thinks about “Elvis” is how ultimately restrained it is in the end. This could have been a wall-to-wall Can-Can fever dream, full of rhinestones and dizzying camera movements. There is some of that, certainly. But Luhrmann and his collaborators reserve most of that chaotic energy for the stage, and more specifically Elvis’s person. It is as though the wildness of all of Luhrmann’s films is bursting out of Butler’s Elvis, through his hip thrusts and sweat and that booming, beautiful voice.

“Elvis,” a Warner Bros. release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking.” Running time: 159 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr

clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Watching ‘Elvis’ feels like being in a washing machine for 2 ½ hours

Baz luhrmann’s jumbled biopic of the king is audacious, frenetic, occasionally astonishing and ultimately confounding.

The best way to appreciate “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s audacious, frenetic, occasionally astonishing and ultimately confounding movie about Elvis Presley, is simply to surrender to it. Luhrmann, best known for such kaleidoscopic fantasias as “ Romeo and Juliet ” and “ Moulin Rouge! ,” possesses just enough hubris to believe himself capable of re-creating the lightning that Elvis Presley embodied, and that continued to make him a pop culture icon decades after his 1977 death. With “Elvis,” Luhrmann matches Presley’s drive and instinctive charisma and raises him for sheer nerve, simultaneously hewing to the hoariest conventions of Hollywood rise-and-fall biopics and seeking to gleefully subvert them at every turn.

Should Elvis’s legacy live on?

The result is a dizzying, almost hallucinatory experience — akin to being thrown into a washing machine and mercilessly churned for 2 ½ hours. That isn’t to say that “Elvis” doesn’t provide moments of insight, or even genuine inspiration; it’s just that they occur fitfully, when the viewer is briefly pasted up against the window before being plunged into the barrel of Luhrmann’s lurid sensibility once again.

The most interesting conceit of “Elvis,” which Luhrmann co-wrote with Sam Bromell, Craig Pearce and Jeremy Doner, also happens to be its biggest weakness: The story of Presley’s life is narrated by his manager, Col. Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks behind layers of prosthetics and a heavy Dutch accent. (Born in the Netherlands, Andreas van Kuijk took the name “Tom Parker” upon enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1929. The honorary “colonel” came later, in return for his help with the campaign of Louisiana Gov. Jimmie Davis.) Jovial, conniving and defiantly amoral, Parker makes for a sulfurous and, frankly, tiresome guide through Presley’s life story, which Luhrmann illustrates with a bricolage of musical numbers, set pieces and melodramatic encounters, at one point throwing in an animated sequence taken from the comic books Elvis read as a child. During his formative years, young Elvis (Chaydon Jay) watches transfixed as African American patrons of a Tupelo juke joint writhe deliriously to Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, then runs to a nearby Pentecostal revival tent where he’s just as mesmerized by the preaching of the word. Luhrmann intercuts the scenes with jacked-up intensity, framing Presley’s love for Black music and culture as seduction and spiritual conversion. (Crudup is played by Gary Clark Jr. Presley’s friends and influences B.B. King, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton and Little Richard are played by Kelvin Harrison Jr., Yola, Shonka Dukureh and Alton Mason, respectively, in picture postcard-tinted scenes of Beale Street club life.)

It’s a blunt, unsubtle but also thrilling scene whose momentum is oddly stopped cold by a cut to Presley — now portrayed by Austin Butler — performing at the Louisiana Hayride in 1954. As the Colonel explains in his ever-present, self-justifying narration, the Black voice in a White body, combined with Presley’s distinctive stage presence — the nervously wiggling leg; the fey, almost feminine beauty; the otherworldly embodiment of the carnal and the sanctified — made Presley “the greatest carnival act I’d ever seen.”

The narrative arc of “Elvis” often feels like it’s been lifted of a piece from Guillermo del Toro’s recent adaptation of “Nightmare Alley.” Parker, a carnival worker whose showmanship and talent for the short con earned him the nickname “The Snowman,” is portrayed as an Iago-like schemer who sees Presley as the ultimate geek, ripe for exploitation. “Elvis” is aware that the audience knows exactly where this is all going: In rapid succession, using dramatized and real-life news clips, Luhrmann revisits the highs, lows and most dismal depths of Presley’s life, including his sudden stardom, the ensuing furor over his sexuality and “race mixing,” his stint in the Army, his marriage to Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), his movie career, his decline during the British Invasion, his 1968 comeback special, his residency in Las Vegas, and his descent into drug addiction and exhaustion. Luhrmann reenacts it all with fealty overlaid with funhouse overstatement, an approach that starts to feel as stifling as Parker’s merchandising gimmicks.

Just as Parker took 50 percent of Presley’s earnings, he commandeers at least half the movie, butting into the story with glint-eyed asides and oppressive voice-overs. Luhrmann takes some admirable risks in “Elvis,” including the use of present-day covers of Presley hits by the likes of Doja Cat, Kacey Musgraves and Jack White, but nearly every choice he makes has the effect of disorienting and distancing audiences rather than immersing them.

To paraphrase the title of Todd Haynes’s Bob Dylan movie, which used similar techniques to more intriguing and meaningful effect: The problem with “Elvis” is that he’s not there. Luhrmann is moving so fast, with such mannered, overbearing self-consciousness, that Butler can barely get a hip swivel in edgewise, let alone a fully realized characterization. He does his own singing during Presley’s formative years, and he does an admirable job of capturing the intoxication and terror of his nascent stardom. But he’s being put through the paces by a filmmaker who turns out to be just as controlling as Parker himself.

It’s tempting to theorize that Luhrmann is temperamentally more attracted to Parker as a protagonist because he sees a fellow martinet, but the Colonel is really the lens through which the filmmaker is examining a broader theme: the freak show of fandom. Continually thwarted from giving his character anything resembling an inner life, Butler’s Presley threatens to get lost in an engulfing spectacle of bloat, sweat and adoring girls’ tears. But something uncanny happens once Parker installs him at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. By now, Butler is lip-syncing to Presley’s actual vocals. But his embodiment of the character has reached another level, where every secret smile and bit of swagger feels like it’s being channeled rather than performed. Karate-chopping and chomp-chomping his way through “Suspicious Minds” and “Polk Salad Annie,” Butler turns what could have been yet another impression of the most imitated musician of all time into something authentic and unexpectedly powerful.

Then it’s back into Luhrmann’s tumbling barrel. Vegas, of course, marks the beginning of the end in “Elvis,” which concludes with Presley himself singing “Unchained Melody” soon before his death. It’s a haunting coda: sad and soaring, tragic and eerily timeless. And it inadvertently suggests that the preceding movie was a sideshow all along. There was always going to be only one Elvis, and he’s long since left the building.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains substance abuse, strong language, suggestive material and smoking. 159 minutes.

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The standard rock biopic formula gets all shook up in Elvis , with Baz Luhrmann's dazzling energy and style perfectly complemented by Austin Butler's outstanding lead performance. Read critic reviews

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Like the man himself, Elvis delivers dazzling, crowd-pleasing entertainment that provokes a wide range of emotions. Read audience reviews

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The film explores the life and music of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler), seen through the prism of his complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). The story delves into the complex dynamic between Presley and Parker spanning over 20 years, from Presley's rise to fame to his unprecedented stardom, against the backdrop of the evolving cultural landscape and loss of innocence in America. Central to that journey is one of the most significant and influential people in Elvis's life, Priscilla Presley (Olivia DeJonge).

Rating: PG-13 (Strong Language|Smoking|Substance Abuse|Suggestive Material)

Genre: Biography, Drama, Music

Original Language: English

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Producer: Gail Berman , Baz Luhrmann , Catherine Martin , Patrick McCormick , Schuyler Weiss , Andrew Mittman

Writer: Baz Luhrmann , Sam Bromell , Craig Pearce , Jeremy Doner

Release Date (Theaters): Jun 24, 2022  wide

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 9, 2022

Box Office (Gross USA): $151.0M

Runtime: 2h 39m

Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

Production Co: Bazmark Films, The Jackal Group

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)

Cast & Crew

Austin Butler

Elvis Presley

Colonel Tom Parker

Helen Thomson

Richard Roxburgh

Vernon Presley

Olivia DeJonge

Priscilla Presley

Luke Bracey

Jerry Schilling

Natasha Bassett

Dixie Locke

David Wenham

Kelvin Harrison Jr.

Xavier Samuel

Scotty Moore

Kodi Smit-McPhee

Jimmie Rodgers Snow

Dacre Montgomery

Steve Binder

Kate Mulvany

Marion Keisker

Gareth Davies

Charles Grounds

Billy Smith

Josh McConville

Sam Phillips

Sister Rosetta Tharpe

Alton Mason

Little Richard

Baz Luhrmann

Screenwriter

Sam Bromell

Craig Pearce

Jeremy Doner

Gail Berman

Catherine Martin

Patrick McCormick

Schuyler Weiss

Courtenay Valenti

Executive Producer

Andrew Mittman

Kevin McCormick

Mandy Walker

Cinematographer

Film Editor

Jonathan Redmond

Elliott Wheeler

Original Music

Production Design

Karen Murphy

Damien Drew

Art Director

News & Interviews for Elvis

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Critic Reviews for Elvis

Audience reviews for elvis.

Enjoyment of this movie partially depends on one's interest in Elvis. The movie is well made, and it mostly tells the truth about the man, his music, his career, and his failings. The performances are excellent. Had Parker and Presley had a less dysfunctional relationship (i.e., had Parker realized that letting Elvis tour overseas would simply make him more money), it might have turned out differently. Some great music shows up in this film, and not all of it is Elvis' music. Black music is given its due. Elvis' story is inspiring and sad at the same time.

Elvis the movie is exactly what I would have hoped for from a Baz Luhrmann film, which is an experience that no one else can provide, a messy, chaotic, crazy, sometimes tin-eared yet audacious and immersive kaleidoscope of sight and sound that feels like a theme park ride. As with all Luhrmann films, the first 20 minutes is a rush of tones, characters, and near constant frenetic movement; it's so much to process before the movie eventually settles down, at least marginally, or the viewer becomes better acclimated to the madcap storytelling style of this mad Aussie. I feel completely certain that people will call Elvis brilliant, and people will deem Elvis to be ridiculous and campy, and I would say it defiantly manages to be all of these identities at once. It is ridiculous, it is campy, it is emotional and sincere, it is, at points, even brilliant, and in a way, this shambolic style perfectly symbolizes Elvis himself, a performer that seems to be anything that the viewer projects onto him, a trailblazer who suffered for his art before becoming an irreplaceable industry and edifice of pop-culture obsession unto himself. We chart the rise of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) from a young crooner in the 1950s to the best-selling solo artist in recording history. Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) discovers Presley, granted after he's been a chart-topping local hit in the South, and sees a grand opportunity. With Elvis, there is no limit to where they both can go, and so Parker becomes Elvis' manager for over twenty years for better and worse, engineering Elvis' tour of duty in the military to take him away from negative headlines, only for him to meet and marry Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge), to locking him into a Vegas headlining gig to erase the mystery man's heavy debts to the mob. Under Luhrmann's guidance, you'll experience it all and then some in the frenzied 160 minutes. Elvis was many things for many people. He was a smooth crooner, he was an electric live performer, he was the benefactor of being a white vessel for music that was built upon the less heralded work of black performers, he was a victim, he was selfish, he was devoted to his fans and the stage, he was… America. In 2022, I would have asked if contemporary culture even cared about Elvis anymore, a man who died over 40 years ago, and whether we even have a lens to appreciate the man. Was he simply coasting off the hard work of other black performers? Did he groom his eventual bride considering her age upon their meeting? Was Elvis too old fashioned to even be anything other than a musical touchstone that other artists have surpassed? Is he just a joke? Luhrmann does a fine job of re-contextualizing Elvis, what made him unique for his era, and what made him still captivating to watch to this day. Even the archival footage the closes the movie is a reminder of the unmitigated power the man put into his singing. It wouldn't be a Luhrmann movie without a narrator, and this time we get the story's main antagonist as our prism to view Elvis, marking him chiefly as victim. Tom Parker is a cartoon of a character especially as portrayed by Hanks. I love me some Tom Hanks, the man is an American treasure, and I appreciate that the man is definitely going for broke, but I don't know at all what he was going for with this performance (the makeup does him no favors also). Hanks is fascinating because he is playing a villainous character that is constantly trying to re-frame their villainy, telling his side of the story but being careful, though not that careful, to always have an answer for an accusation. It feels like Hanks has stepped off the wacky Moulin Rouge! stage and everyone else in the movie is playing things completely straight. The entire acting troupe is all playing under one direction, and then there's Hanks in his fat suit, who is breaking through the fourth wall, compulsively narrating our story, and acting like a loquacious Loony Tunes figure any second away from his own song and dance. His repeated use of the term "snow job" and "snowman," which he dubbed himself as a showman, is overused to the point of being a verbal crutch, reminiscent of how often Jay Gatsby had to say some variation of "ole sport" in the 2013 movie or else he might irrevocably burst into glitter (or so I assume). It's such a bizarre performance of wild choices that I can subjectively say it might be Hanks' worst and yet it also feels like Hanks is giving Luhrmann exactly what he wants. It's such a bold move to essentially cede your famous biopic to the most ridiculous character to tell from their ridiculous perspective. Imagine I, Tonya being told from Paul Walter Hauser's character or House of Gucci being told from Jared Leto's character, and that's what we have here. I almost kind of love it, and in doing so, we see from the manipulator how he worked his magic to keep financial control over Elvis. Even Elvis' later years are provided with a perspective that re-frames the man as a victim of a moneymaking machine that wouldn't stop until it had drained every last drop of blood from this hard-working man. I think this is smart because, on the surface, Elvis might not be the most complicated person to devote two hours to unpacking his character dimensions. He liked to sing, as it touched something deep inside him, and he wanted to be true to himself, but this framework isn't any different from any number of famous musician biopics we've become more than accustomed to. He dealt with drug addiction and erratic behavior but, again, even this is musical biopic basics. Even his doomed relationship with Priscilla is familiar stuff, as she could rarely compete with the demands and the allure of the stage. I think Luhrmann and his co-writers wisely saw that the best storytelling avenue with Elvis is through the lesser-known Colonel, a bizarre and calculating figure cackling in the shadows. There are significant questions over who this proud huckster really is and what he did to bully and cajole Elvis into his favor. There's inherent conflict there as well as an angle that I would argue most are unfamiliar with. I didn't know much about the history of Elvis the man but I knew even less about this would-be Colonel. The most Luhrmann of sequences is Elvis' breakthrough live performance where it feels like every woman in attendance is catching a fever of combustible hormonal fury. The way the man shook his hips, moved his body, his gyrations that so many adults felt were dangerously subversive, were part and parcel of the younger Elvis. He really was a born performer, and even says he can't sing if he isn't allowed to move how he feels he must with the music. During this crazy sequence, Luhrmann's camera is trained on the emotional response of the audience experiencing a sensation that cannot be contained, bubbling to the surface into tears, shrieks, and convulsions, and it moves through the crowd like waves. It's such an enthusiastic experience that plays right into the stylistic and tonal wheelhouse of Luhrmann. It's also an unsubtle reminder, not that much is subtle in a Luhrmann movie, that part of the man's appeal was his raw sexual magnetism. In a modern era, the condemnation of Elvis as a corrupting influence on the youth feels comically quaint, until you remember that all of this was also filtered through a very racist paranoia. Elvis was deemed a danger because he was an accessible introduction to music and culture that was associated with black people. The accusations of Elvis corrupting the youth are all tinged with racial implications about his source of inspiration, never mind that Elvis was also influenced by a religious revivalism. The movie doesn't say that Elvis was a sham, only succeeding off the work of other esteemed yet unfairly unheralded black artists. With the many onscreen performances, he is clearly talented, and offers his own versions of others' songs, but he's also deferential to the people he grew up with and the music he clearly loves and wants to be a part of to the detriment of whatever Tom Parker and his handlers believe is commercially viable. B. B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) even remarks about Elvis' own privilege when he thinks about bucking politicians demanding that he perform safe songs without his signature dancing ("They'll arrest me for just crossing the street. You are a famous white boy who makes them too much money."). I've purposely delayed from discussing the best reason to go see all 160 ungainly minutes, and that is Butler's glorious performance. The young man simply dissolves into the role and makes you forget you're watching an actor. The way he captures the cadence, the drawl, the presence of Elvis, and not just his jerky movements, is phenomenal, and then you remember that it's Butler doing all his own singing as well, and the spell is near complete. He is Elvis. It's a performance guaranteed to win as many plaudits as awards season has to offer. Through Butler's performance, a younger generation can understand what all the hubbub was about. The man brings the character to life but he especially brings Elvis the performer to startling life. Even if you hate Luhrmann's other movies, and he is definitely divisive, and even if you couldn't care less about Elvis in the year 2022, this movie is well worth watching for the sheer brilliance of Butler alone. In some ways, Elvis the movie feels like a perfect assignment for director Baz Luhrmann. His unconventional stylistic approach livens up an otherwise conventional rise-and-fall tale, broadening the appeal of Elvis for an audience that might have otherwise shrugged at a movie chronicling the man's exploits. The subject matter is also the squarest for Luhrmann, which makes it also the safest movie of his career, which is truly saying something considering some of the imaginative highs of this movie. There will be just as many people put off by the excessive, in-your-face style of the movie as drawn in by that Luhrmann razzle dazzle. Watching Elvis feels like you're watching two movies simultaneously atop one another. Luhrmann can be exhausting even at his best but he's also one of the few filmmakers that makes watching a movie such a textual experience, where sight and sound are layered in such meaningful and granular details to better immerse the viewer. The way even the sound designs ebbs and flows, braids musical notes and themes and older selections of influential resources as it all composes a wonderful soundscape. Few put this kind of thought into every nanosecond that Luhrmann does, himself a natural showman who cannot help himself. While plenty will wish for restraint, I say, much as others asked for restraint from Elvis' gyrations, to let Baz be Baz, and he lets Elvis be Elvis to the giddy entertainment of the audience. Nate's Grade: B

Luhrmann takes a fairy typical music biopic script and interjects it with enough odd style and energy to make something that is not only watchable but even interesting on occasion. That said the weird and wonderful performances of Butler and Hanks are ultimately the reason to watch this.

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10 unpopular opinions about the elvis movie, according to reddit.

Baz Luhrmann's Elvis has been a huge hit with most audiences, but some fans have taken to Reddit to voice their unpopular opinion about the biopic.

With Elvis now streaming on HBO Max, fans can relive the excitement of The King's meteoric rise to stardom against the fantastical backdrop of Baz Luhrmann's signature film making style. Audiences have praised the musical biopic for its depiction of Elvis Presley's fame, from his early Memphis days on Beale Street to his troubled residency in Las Vegas, anchored by an intense and authentic performance by Austin Butler and a hypnotic attention to detail.

For all the praise that the film has received over the last several months, there are fans who have taken to Reddit to voice their unpopular opinions about its execution. From the acting and creative choices, to the omission of certain aspects of Elvis's life, their perspectives are as wild as Elvis himself.

It Doesn't Deserve Such A High Rating On IMDb

Elvis currently sits with a 7.6/10 rating on IMDb, a respectable score for a biopic about a controversial figure in music history and directed by an equally controversial director. Due to their distinctly exaggerated artistic styles, it's difficult to have lukewarm opinion about either Elvis Presley or Baz Luhrmann. Some fans believe the rating is too high given the way the subject matter was portrayed.

One Redditor was "expecting a biopic about Elvis Presley… Not an over dramatised, minimal dialogue, mediocre movie with no character development." Luhrmann's vision might be sensational, but so was Elvis's career and public persona. Also, it should be noted that many details of Elvis's life were well-researched, and even if the movie's aesthetic wasn't universally liked, Austin Butler's powerful central performance across three decades can also be attributed for the movie's overall higher score.

It's Not Accurate

Some fans hoping for a more accurate depiction of Elvis's life may find the biopic lacking in that area, but Luhrmann has never gone on record as setting out to make the most accurate musical biopic about The King's illustrious — and ultimately tragic — career. Luhrmann had to be judicious with what he set out to include, and what information to omit from his focus.

Typical_Ranger_1684 thinks that aside from being "inaccurate it tries to present Elvis as someone that did stuff about social issues like civil rights when he never did which is just disrespectful." Elvis may not have been as outspoken as other musicians during the Civil Rights Era, but performing "If I Could Dream" during the '68 Comeback Special was his contribution to the movement and an homage to Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy.

The Movie Was Like A Fever Dream

Given the fact that Luhrmann's movies are well-known for their kaleidoscopic aesthetic, it's not surprising that the same style would be applied to a musical biopic, especially one including one of the most popular entertainers of all time. Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby already conveyed that even when dealing with period pieces, Luhrmann often employs a dazzlingly frenetic style of filmmaking.

For some fans like JeanEBH the film just reminds them of "a fever dream" that comes too fast, with a lot of "back and forth, close ups, and having Col Parker creeping around in the background with the snowman topped carnival cane." The majority of fans appreciated the spectacle of the movie, even if they didn't always understand it.

It Was Too Cheesy

Biopics as a genre can sometimes feel manipulative when they explore their central figure through rose-colored glasses, or even feel a bit glib. Elvis had a lot of emotional scenes with depth to them, none of which were intentionally funny, but some fans still found them to be oddly cheesy.

All4monty thought it "reached unintentional comedy status" because it was "extremely cheesy and...Hanks character and acting was goofy af." While Hanks as Colonel Parker has some hammy moments, they're necessary to juxtapose against Butler's intensity.

It Left A Lot Of Things Out

No biopic will be able to explore every aspect of a figure's life, and therefore must jump quickly across eras in a "Greatest Hits" fashion or focus on one period in particular. Many things about Elvis's life the movie didn't show , such as his meeting with President Nixon, would have pulled attention away from more important aspects that serviced the plot.

Darkobscurities thought the movie "took inaccuracy and creative liberties to an extreme. It was absolutely soulless." Given that the movie was made with the blessings and assistance of the Presley estate, it's not surprising that certain aspects of Elvis's life would be downplayed, particularly anything that didn't paint him in a sterling light. Nevertheless, his drug use is not glorified in any way or pushed under the rug.

Its Live Performances Didn't Reflect Real Life

Live performances abound in Elvis , each intending the capture the sheer pandemonium that erupted during an Elvis concert. The screaming crowds might seem inconceivable, but they accurately reflect what happened when the hip-shaking hunk took the stage.

Huntday4 was made very "uncomfortable" by the behavior of the young women from the very first performance scene. "Just feels like another attempt at making an old story 'modern' and 'different'." Actual Elvis footage shows just how frantic the fans could get, some even sobbing uncontrollably in his presence, so if anything, the film isn't trying to compare Elvis to the behavior seen at modern concerts, but show perhaps where that sort of behavior originated.

It Had A Bad Soundtrack

Since Elvis is about one of the most venerated singers of the 20th century, it's soundtrack features a lot of Elvis songs , but it also showcases new talent with original songs as well as remixes and collaborations with The King's material. Some fans didn't think that the soundtrack did justice to Elvis, his music, or the time period.

Paultheschmoop "could’ve done without the 2 or 3 random Elvis remixes with rap verses that completely took me out of the movie." Most fans realize that Luhrmann's choice to include anachronistic songs, particularly for the Beale Street sequences, was to evoke the vibe and energy of the new music coming out at that time that was rebellious and shocking.

Tom Hanks Was Good As Colonel Parker

Most fans feel that with his heavy makeup and prosthetics, as well as his accent of dubious Eastern European origin, Tom Hanks was the weakest part of Elvis. Since the movie was told from his perspective, he was an omniscient presence, but some fans thought he excelled in the role.

To Redditor SweetTeaHasPerks "Tom Hanks was really good." While there can be no doubt Hanks prepared for his role with all the diligence of previous performances, he didn't completely disappear into the role and was seen as more of a distraction than anything else.

It Glossed Over Elvis's Demons

Elvis was as fallible as any one of his fans, and by no means a perfect person. He made mistakes, and the movie shows how his disassociation with his wife Priscilla, constant substance abuse in his later years, and misguided faith in Colonel Parker destroyed many close relationships, a promising career, and his spirit.

And yet, MindfulDisobedience felt that "this biopic lacks Elvis having serious demons. The way they handle the eventuality of him being an overweight alcoholic drug addict is so light to the touch." Considering the latter half of the movie is devoted to his slow, depressing descent into a tragic death after losing everything (and everyone) around him, most fans feel it focused very specifically on his demons.

It Was Too Long And Poorly Edited

Luhrmann movies tend to run long, and at almost two and a half hours in running time, Elvis carries the torch. It also has the signature rapid Luhrmann editing style which, given the length of the movie, actually makes it seem like it flies by.

More_Acanthisitta_73 thinks it was too long and "poorly orchestrated. Too much visual spinning and turning and loud bumping and reminded me of a batman meets circus clown." It's first half is decidedly fast-paced, but it also reflects the excitement of Elvis's rise to stardom, versus the second half that grinds to a laconic crawl, revealing the quagmire Elvis's career has become.

NEXT: 10 Things Fabricated For Baz Luhrmann's Elvis

Elvis Review: A Solid Spectacle

By Jonathan Sim

The King of Rock and Roll has arrived on the big screen. The past few years have given us fictionalized looks at the lives of Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and Aretha Franklin. Now, it’s time for the biggest name in rock and roll to receive his Hollywood treatment in  Elvis , a musical drama capturing the life of Elvis Presley from the perspective of his manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). A two-hour-39-minute epic about a legendary musician is brought to the screen with fascinating results in a grand, well-performed film that can sometimes get too ambitious for its own good.

Baz Luhrmann co-writes and directs this film in a way only he could. Having previously directed films like  Moulin Rouge!  and  The Great Gatsby , Luhrmann brings every bit of those films’ style into Elvis . His overbearing visuals and insane camera movements are what make this film special, with the crash zooms and unique transitions serving as the ultimate mixed bag. Parts of the film are pretty impressive, but others feel like a bewildering attack on the senses, with some overblown moments designed to unnecessarily emphasize dramatic moments.

His directing style elevates what would otherwise be a standard biopic. But does the movie deliver everything that an Elvis biopic should? In some ways, it absolutely does. Portraying a rock star of his caliber is no easy task, and who should the film cast but the guy from  Aliens in the Attic ,  Sharpay’s Fabulous Adventure , and season four of  Zoey 101 ? Austin Butler is far from a household name, and he was going up against more established actors such as Miles Teller, Harry Styles, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. For Hollywood to cast a less bankable actor like him was a risk, and one that paid off in volumes.

Butler is electric. He gives a show-stopping performance as Presley, nailing every single part of the famed musician. His speaking voice, his singing voice, and his dancing all feel like the King of Rock and Roll reincarnated in a star turn for the actor, who channels his role perfectly. His rock-star presence and phenomenal energy make Butler a revelation, and if he wasn’t a household name before, everyone should know his name now. He deserves every bit of praise for all of the preparation that went into taking on this role, and it’s easy to forgive his lack of physical resemblance to Presley with a jaw-dropping performance like this.

Tom Hanks is also impressive in this film. Having spent decades generally playing nice guys and heroes, Hanks takes a more antagonistic turn as Parker, Presley’s manager who had a significant impact on his career. His prosthetics and accent can make this feel like a hammy, over-the-top role, but you truly forget that Hanks is considered one of the nicest men in Hollywood as he sinks his teeth into this character. The casting is excellent across the board, with Olivia DeJonge and Helen Thomson nailing their supporting roles, and a well-cast Chaydon Jay, who plays Elvis as a child and looks the part to a tee.

The movie does an excellent job of illustrating the relationship between Presley and Parker. Where the movie suffers is telling the rest of Presley’s story, with many elements, such as his romantic relationship with Priscilla and his relationship with his mother, getting briefly touched upon and not much more. This rings true when Kacey Musgraves’s cover of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” plays over a romantic scene rather than a scene where Presley could have performed it for his wife. Luhrmann’s style can be the film’s greatest asset and liability, a point that is illustrated perfectly by the strange choice to combine “Hound Dog” with a modern Doja Cat song and play it over a scene set decades in the past.

Elvis  works best when Luhrmann taps into his ability to craft an uplifting musical experience. He and Butler perfectly capture the spirit of a Presley concert with the leg dancing and the screaming fans. It’s wild that a 159-minute movie still makes you feel like parts of Presley’s life were rushed through, but it’s a movie that sucks you into a visual style unlike any other. There are many well-edited sequences contrasted by other parts where the directing is distracting. But with an energetic performance from Butler and a distinct filmmaking voice,  Elvis  will have you humming “Suspicious Minds,” “Trouble,” and “Unchained Melody” long after you’ve left the building.

SCORE : 7/10

As ComingSoon’s  review policy  explains, a score of 7 equates to “Good.” A successful piece of entertainment that is worth checking out, but it may not appeal to everyone.

Jonathan Sim is a film critic and filmmaker born and raised in New York City. He has met/interviewed some of the leading figures in Hollywood, including Christopher Nolan, Zendaya, Liam Neeson, and Denis Villeneueve. He also works as a screenwriter, director, and producer on independent short films.

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Elvis (2022)

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Review: Full-Speed ‘Elvis’ Dazzles on The Big Screen, But Still Fails to Dig Deep

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It’s hard to believe, but Baz Luhrmann ’s new film, Elvis , on superstar Elvis Presley is the first theatrically released biopic on “The King of Rock & Roll.”

There have been a handful of TV features — most notably John Carpenter’s Elvis (1979) starring Kurt Russell and CBS’ two-part mini-series Elvis (2005) with Jonathan Rhys Meyers — but never one actually experienced on the big screen until now.

Luhrmann’s interpretation of the world’s greatest rock star comes at us like James Mangold’s Walk the Line (2005) on acid and steroids, with rapid, erratic editing transitions that feel reminiscent of Bryan Singer’s Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). We get all the usual takes in movies on music legends, such as the childhood tragedies, the rise to stardom out of nowhere, the excess, pressure and manipulation that comes with fame, and the self-destruction.

We’re given Elvis Presley portrayed by Austin Butler, and his career-long Svengali manager “Colonel” Tom Parker is played by Tom Hanks. Olivia DeJonge is Elvis’ wife Priscilla, and Helen Thomson and Richard Roxburgh appear as the star’s parents.

The highs of Elvis are mostly the man’s music itself and Butler’s performance. It takes a lot of courage to play someone as iconic as Elvis Presley, especially following an actor like Russell. But Butler takes the task seriously and doesn’t come off too campy or goofy. His interpretation feels natural and not distracting.

We’re also reminded, even with cinematic reenactments, that Elvis’ music is best enjoyed in a big, vibrant theater.

What is campy are Luhrmann’s direction and Hanks’ acting. Luhrmann is the filmmaker who gave us extravagant hits like Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo+Juliet (1996) and Moulin Rouge! (2001), so making an Elvis Presley biopic doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary for him. While his flashy, flamboyant style works for Elvis’ aesthetic, it’s also a borderline eyesore at times, with a script that doesn’t go beyond the surface.

Like a lot of biopics, Presley’s life is pretty sugarcoated regarding his love life, substance abuse and association with black musicians. Priscilla is portrayed as the love of his life, yet they separate and divorce because of infidelity. We see Elvis inspired by gospel and R&B music, yet no proper development on how he went from fan to crafting his own image and sound.

Elvis mentions more than once how he would love to be in a classic film, yet we quickly pass by his movie career and don’t even get acknowledgement of Richard Thorpe’s Jailhouse Rock (1957) or George Sidney’s Viva Las Vegas (1964).

Hanks chose to give Parker a thick Dutch accent in Elvis , despite the fact the real man actually disguised his voice with a softened American-like dialect in public. This was so the actor could completely escape into character as an attempt for the audience to not just see ‘Tom Hanks’ on screen.

Unfortunately, this tactic works against him, as do the make-up and prosthetics to give him Parker’s heavier build. The choice of having Parker as the narrator of Elvis could have been interesting, but instead is inconsistent with focusing too much on him at times, especially as he’s being portrayed as a cartoony villain.

At 160 minutes, Elvis is both too long in pacing and too short for the full tale. In a way, watching Luhrmann’s new film suggests TV is the best medium for The King’s life, since there are just so many periods and moments to cover.

I’ve seen biopics that are a lot worse. But Elvis still feels like a missed opportunity to really dig into the rock star’s legacy.

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The Frenetic Editing of ‘Elvis’ Is a Matter of Perspective

Jim hemphill.

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Many critical responses to “ Elvis ,” both positive and negative, have been based on the assumption that the movie is told from the perspective of Tom Hanks’ manipulative and self-serving Colonel Parker. To say that Parker tells the story just because he narrates it is to ignore every aspect of cinematic storytelling aside from the screenplay, a fundamental mistake with any filmmaker — but especially with one as holistic in his sensibility as “Elvis” director Baz Luhrmann .

Luhrmann’s approach to point of view is more sophisticated than either his partisans or his detractors acknowledge: While Parker is unquestionably a voice in the story (a voice which is already complicated by the fact that he’s a liar and thus a completely unreliable narrator), the movie really belongs to its title character, whose unfulfilled longing for emotional and artistic serenity finds its visual corollary in Luhrmann’s frenetic yet intimate camerawork. Parker tells the tale, but it’s Elvis’ visceral experience that we’re invited to share.

Even the soundtrack doesn’t really belong to Parker, as his narrator’s voice takes a back seat to a cacophony of crowd noise, music, media reports and memories that plunge the audience further into Elvis’ head as well as into the psyche of the culture at large — even more than Elvis or Parker, the film is told from the point of view of the America that made them both legends.

“Elvis” is a movie that goes both deep and broad, capturing what it’s like to be a celebrity at the center of a maelstrom from the vantage point of both the celebrity and the maelstrom; it’s immediate and reflective at the same time, one of the few historical films that seems to exist in the present tense.

The task of preserving and clarifying the wide range of Luhrmann’s visual, aural, and thematic preoccupations — while still giving “Elvis” a coherent shape and rhythm — fell upon editors Jonathan Redmond and Matt Villa, who built on their previous collaboration with Luhrmann, “The Great Gatsby,” in their attempt to tell a classic story in modern terms.

“Baz was very clear even the early phases of development and pre-production that he wanted it to feel contemporary,” Redmond told IndieWire. “In ‘Gatsby,’ we often used hip-hop alongside of or in the place of jazz, so that the audience could decode just how radical and exciting jazz was in the 1920s. Baz wanted to do the same thing here.”

By integrating original Elvis recordings with covers performed by Austin Butler and modern tracks by artists including Doja Cat, Eminem, and Måneskin, the movie creates a bridge between the period in which it takes place and the present day, clearly and concisely conveying how sexy, dangerous, and thrilling Presley was in his moment. The integration of different musical styles works in other ways too; at times the movie reaches further back into the past to splice gospel music with country and rhythm and blues to give the viewer a direct line into the musical influences taking up residence inside Elvis’ brain.

For Villa, it was all in service of one goal. “We always intended to turn the biopic on its head whenever possible,” he told IndieWire. “‘Biopic’ was a dirty word in Baz’s mind.”

Avoiding the usual beats of the biographical film in favor of an impressionistic structure that gives about 30 times the emphasis to one event in Elvis’ life (his 1968 “Comeback Special”) than another (his entire decade-plus movie career, which is introduced and discarded in about a minute), Redmond and Villa were able to drill into the moments that synthesized Elvis’ personal crises with the crises of a nation in turmoil. The “Comeback Special” comes at a time when Elvis’s career is at a low point, but also at a moment of political assassinations and war; the personal and the global inform each other in productive ways as the editors juxtapose archival audio and news footage with a meticulous recreation of the television performance that serves as Elvis’ response to the times.

“We elongated that sequence because there was so much happening both from a world-historical point of view and in terms of Elvis’ development and his relationship with the Colonel,” Villa said. “It really presented an opportunity to pinpoint their decline, as Elvis came back to the music he loved, which is not what the Colonel wanted him to do at the time.”

That tumultuous relationship between Elvis and Colonel Parker provided the editors not only with an anchor for the comeback special, but also the unifying principle they needed to get the movie down from its initial running time of over four hours. “The longer assembly really did play, but obviously it had to come down,” Villa said. “As we finessed the cuts the most important moments started to reveal themselves, and many of those had to do with Elvis and the Colonel.” Because the film started so much longer than they knew would be acceptable for a wide theatrical release, the editors were able to keep their objectivity during the year-long post-production schedule: “There was so much that had to come out that it became like a new film each time,” Villa recalled. “It was quite easy to look at each new cut with fresh eyes.”

The whittling meant the editors had to lose a lot of favorite material, from delicate personal moments like an early scene between Elvis and his first girlfriend to portions of the electrifying musical numbers. “Every song that you see in the film was shot in its entirety, and we edited them in their entirety,” Villa said. “There was a lot that came out there that I was sad to see go, and there were lovely scenes between Elvis and his first band.”

The major cuts led to some sensitive moments at early screenings. “We attended a couple of screenings with actors who didn’t know how little they were in the film. You’d gladly walk into the cinema with them, but try to avoid them when you’re walking out.”

Aside from the relationship between Elvis and Parker, the musical numbers were another structural guide, as Redmond and Villa used them as signposts to articulate specific stages in Elvis’ development . “We were spoiled with choices in all the concert scenes,” Villa said. “They were shot very conventionally, from beginning to end with multiple cameras, and our challenge was that each of them served a different purpose. The Louisiana Hayride was there to show Elvis being unleashed on the world, so there was a great freneticism to that sequence to show that this was a force of nature no one had ever seen before. Then the baseball field scene was all about defiance, so we started slowly to lull everyone into a false sense of security.

And there are the Vegas years, which have a different purpose and a different style. Our challenge was to figure out what style served each purpose best while keeping all the narrative streams going.”

That challenge was made slightly more manageable by the integrated approach Luhrmann takes to his films, in which all of the departments are in constant communication from pre-production to release. “Often as an editor your job is just to sit at a desk and someone hands you a hard drive and you cut it,” Redmond said. “On a Baz Luhrmann movie it’s never like that. Matt and I were involved in the initial script development and all the way through — I was on this project so long that now I’ve got two babies that I didn’t have when we started.”

Villa added, “Usually you cut the movie and you hand it off to the music department or the sound department, but with Baz every department is happening at the same time and there’s a beautiful alchemy that comes out of that. Jon and I literally worked next door to music editorial and the composer, and that’s not only a delightful way to work but an essential one given that in Baz’s films everything informs everything else.”

“Working on a Baz Luhrmann movie isn’t a job, it’s a vocation,” Redmond concluded. “It’s a labor of love. I’ve edited some of his stuff on boats, and I’ve been hanging out of helicopters with him timing shots. You never really know what’s going to happen next, and from an artist’s point of view that’s fun and exciting and different. It’s a constant creative adventure, and that’s what I love about working on his projects.”

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Fact checking the new 'Elvis' movie: Did he really fire Colonel Tom Parker onstage in Las Vegas?

Spoiler alert! The following discusses plot points from the new "Elvis" movie and the real life of Elvis Presley . Stop reading if you haven't seen it yet and don't want to know.

The epic biopic “Elvis” covers a lot of ground  – 42 years, to be precise – from the iconic singer’s birth until his death in 1977.

Given the inevitable event compression required of any movie looking to cover decades in hours, one wonders just how much of “Elvis” really happened to Elvis Presley ?

From director Baz Luhrmann’s research in Memphis and Elvis’ birthplace of Tupelo, Mississippi, to scores of well-researched biographies, there is laudable accuracy to the film, which is streaming and on demand now ( HBO Max ,  Amazon Prime , Apple TV , Vudu , Google Play and other platforms). Also credit star Austin Butler's studious depiction of the King of Rock 'n' Roll.

But we identified six moments in “Elvis” that made us scratch our heads. Just how true are they? For answers, we enlisted expert Alanna Nash, the author of several Elvis books (including “The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley” and “Baby, Let’s Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him”).

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Did B.B. King and Elvis Presley really hang out together on Beale Street?

King, who worked as a DJ in Memphis at the time, would certainly have been aware of Elvis, and vice versa, but they would not have been hanging out and catching acts such as Little Richard as the movie portrays, says Nash.

“Elvis and B.B. were acquaintances, but not close friends," she says. "They probably first crossed paths at Sun Studio, but only briefly."

There was an encounter in December 1956, when King was the headliner on the all-black WDIA Goodwill Revue. Elvis was asked to perform, but his contract wouldn’t allow it, Nash says.

But toward the end of the evening, DJ Rufus Thomas brought Elvis out for a “leg gyration and the crowd went wild.” Backstage, King and Presley posed together for a picture. 

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Was Robert F. Kennedy killed while Elvis was taping the ’68 Comeback Special?

The senator was shot elsewhere in Los Angeles, andnot during the taping of that iconic Elvis TV special but during rehearsals, Nash says.

“Elvis arrived for the start of two weeks of rehearsals on June 3, 1968, and Kennedy was shot on June 5, dying the next morning, June 6,” she says. “The assassination put Elvis into an emotional spiral.”

The tailspin created by RFK’s death led directly to the special’s powerful finale. Show director/producer Steve Binder turned to songwriter Earl Brown to write an emotional ballad , "If I Can Dream," that reflected Elvis’ hopes that the nation could get through such a crisis and heal.  

“Interestingly, Elvis didn’t immediately jump on it,” Nash says. “He thought it might be a little too Broadway. He said, ‘Let me hear it again,’ and it was only after he heard it seven or eight times that he said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’ "

Review:  Austin Butler rules as the King, but Baz Luhrmann's 'Elvis' is an unchained mess of a movie

Did Colonel Tom Parker convince Elvis to play Las Vegas to settle Parker's gambling debts? 

The connection isn't nearly as direct as the film implies, which presents Elvis’ residency at the International Hotel as a way for Elvis' manager to settle his sizable gambling debts at the hotel's casino.

Nash notes that Parker ( played in the film by Tom Hanks ) was an inveterate gambler dating back to his early years in the carnival business, often decamping for Hot Springs, Arkansas, or Palm Springs, California, to satisfy his needs. Once he experienced Las Vegas, that became a frequent stop for the promoter.

That isn’t to say that Parker’s gambling and Elvis’ Vegas shows aren't linked, she says. The colonel was said to be worth $1 million a year to the International because of his gambling, according to onetime International executive Alex Shoofey, Nash says.

“The rumor floated around town that Milton Prell, Shoofey’s old boss at the Sahara, had brokered the (Elvis) deal for the colonel, getting money from the mob to put the deal together," Nash says. "Mob involvement is suggested in the film."

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Did Elvis go into the Army to avoid being jailed for indecency?

Not true, Nash says.

“The colonel was delighted that Elvis was causing riots and grabbing headlines for being overly suggestive,” she says. “It’s part of why he wanted him in the first place. Parker, ever the carny, knew what brought people in the big tent.”

After Elvis was drafted, Parker – whom Nash notes was an Army deserter – worked with the Pentagon to ensure he'd be a regular soldier and not in the entertainment corps.

“He negotiated it as a PR move to make him appear to be the all-American boy,” she says.

Interestingly, when Elvis was stationed in Germany, he met future General Colin Powell, a lieutenant at the time.

Nash says Powell told her that he and Presley were out “in a field in the woods in Germany, and he just looked like every other pimple-faced (soldier), doing what other soldiers were doing and trying to get along. He properly saluted and sir’d me left and right, and I always admired that in him.”

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Did Elvis actually fire the colonel from the stage in Las Vegas?

“No, he never would have done that,” Nash says. Nor did he ever suggest onstage that he knew of the colonel’s immigration issues.

“He fully believed the colonel’s story that Parker hailed from Huntington, West Virginia; Elvis died not knowing the truth," she says. "That didn’t come out in this country until 1981."

However, she adds, there was an incident a few years before his death when Elvis exploded at Hilton owner Barron Hilton. Elvis had gone to the home of an employee he liked, whose wife was dying from cancer, and Hilton terminated the employee because of a rule banning any contact between employees and hotel talent.

That night from the stage, Elvis delivered a furious attack on Hilton, saying he “wasn’t worth a damn,” she says. Parker was livid. The two argued into the night until Elvis, in his 30th-floor suite, fired Parker, who immediately replied that he quit and, as the movie depicts, “retired to his offices to draw up a bill” for what he claimed Elvis owed him.

The sum varies from $2 million to $10 million, she says, and as the movie shows, Elvis ultimately decided he couldn’t afford to pay and went back to work for the colonel.

Did Priscilla Presley really arrange for Elvis to go into rehab?

No, Nash says.

“She says in her book ‘Elvis and Me’ that she would occasionally hear that he had checked into the hospital, and that she would then call to see if he was all right,” Nash says.

In another one book, “Elvis by the Presleys,” Priscilla Presley says many asked her why she didn’t initiate an intervention.

Her response: “People who ask that don’t know Elvis. Elvis would no more have responded to an intervention than a demand to give up singing. … He would have undoubtedly laughed away any attempt at an intervention. There’s no one, including his father, who could have pulled that off.”

By the time Elvis was trying to get help for his addictions, his ex-wife was no longer in his life on a daily basis. Adds Nash: “Priscilla was not as involved with Elvis after their divorce as she would now have people believe.”

Is On The Line Worth Watching? Breaking Down The Mel Gibson Movie's Reviews & Rotten Tomatoes Scores

• On The Line found new life on Netflix, but its predictable plot and poor acting make it a skip for many viewers.
• Mel Gibson shines in this thriller, but the movie's unrealistic twists and lack of tension disappoint audiences and critics alike.
• Despite its absurdity, On The Line caters to fans of twisty thrillers and Mel Gibson's nostalgic performances.

Spoiler Warning: This article contains spoilers for On The Line.

Although not as popular as some of Mel Gibson 's more notable work, 2022's On The Line has found new life on Netflix, which brings into question whether the movie is truly worth a watch . On the Line sees Gibson as Elvis, a popular radio host who, after receiving a threatening call from an unknown caller, has to race against the clock to save his wife and daughter. Although some of Gibson's action movies have found renewed success on Netflix , it's to be expected given his status as one of the industry's most beloved action stars.

Despite Gibson's age, he's still starring in action thrillers, as demonstrated by movies like, On The Line and the upcoming Lethal Weapon 5 . Although On The Line is decidedly different from the actor's usual work, it features Gibson in what is easily one of the more fun, albeit inconsistent, performances of his career. Additionally, On The Line sees Gibson starring alongside many fresh faces, which effectively speaks volumes to his star power in the modern filmmaking climate. Nevertheless, from plot twists to Rotten Tomatoes scores, On The Line 's recent popularity has been brought into question .

The 10 Best Mel Gibson Movies Of All Time, According To IMDb

Discussions of self harm are included in this article.

On The Line Has A 21% Score From Critics On Rotten Tomatoes

The movie's rotten tomatoes audience score is 32%..

On The Line 's reception among audiences and critics boils down to a predictable thriller marred by an unrealistic plot and poor acting performances from the majority of its cast. Save for Gibson, the consensus regarding On The Line is that the movie doesn't really offer anything worthy of viewers' time . While Gibson delivers a performance that is entertaining, it's overshadowed by a plot that feels dated in addition to lacking any genuine thrills beyond its initial moments. On The Line 's first act is arguably its best, as the tension is palpable and engaging at that point.

The confusing plot twists and underwhelming ending are also among some of On The Line 's most contentious elements.

However, once the supporting characters have more screen time, the movie quickly devolves into a not-so-subtle commentary on social media and its negative impact on the personal lives of respected celebrities and otherwise influential personalities. From puns and one-liners to Gibson's over-the-top delivery of some of Elvis's jokes, On The Line shifts from an enthralling thriller to a B-movie horror movie without any of the self-awareness necessary to make it work . The confusing plot twists and underwhelming ending are also among some of On The Line 's most contentious elements.

On The Line's Reviews Criticize Its Lack Of Tension, Plot Twists & Ending

The final plot twist didn't stick the landing with critics & audiences..

Elvis falls deeper into a cat and mouse game of death with a deranged caller named Gary, but it loses its tension by juxtaposing the thrills with one too many plot twists and bad jokes that, despite their prevalence, never really land. As seen earlier on, Elvis enjoys pranking his employees, and after a particularly harsh prank was played on Lauren, his former switchboard operator, she commits suicide. Unbeknownst to Elvis, Lauren was friends with Gary, and despite never being properly established beforehand, her death causes him to break into Elvis's house, where he threatens to kill his family.

After Gary forces Elvis to jump off a building to ensure his family's safety, Elvis fakes his death, but Gary reveals he knows Elvis faked it as he secretly had a drone circling the building. After then being forced to put an explosive vest on one of his interns, Dylan, for his trickery, Elvis and viewers witness Gary drop the detonator, but Dylan doesn't explode. As it turns out, the entire tense situation was one big prank that Elvis's crew orchestrated to get revenge for the years he pranked them. Despite its absurdity, On The Line still has an audience .

On The Line Is Worth Watching For Fans Of Mel Gibson Movies & Twisty Thrillers

The mel gibson thriller has plenty of plot twists in store..

Audiences familiar with Gibson's body of work will likely appreciate On The Line more than anyone else since , despite the movie's ridiculous plot, On The Line still features an inspired performance from Gibson that hearkens back to his '80s and '90s careers, respectively. Additionally, the movie's various plots could work well for people who enjoy them in other movies despite their lack of credibility or plausibility. Unfortunately, the majority of people who've seen it aren't too crazy about its twists, as demonstrated by its overwhelmingly negative feedback.

While Elvis's firing of Dylan is a prank that makes sense, Dylan's true identity as a stuntman named Max who orchestrated what is essentially an act of domestic terrorism and not facing any severe repercussions doesn't. Additionally, the police allowing such a prank to be broadcast live makes even less sense. While there is a moral about not taking people for granted, On The Line features too many twists for it to really work. Mel Gibson's movies are usually realistic , and while On The Line isn't, Gibson's performance and even the more absurd twists might be worth it for some .

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Will Tennessee’s New AI Voice Law Have Unintended Consequences?

Lawmakers across the country are scrambling to ban voice cloning. Some legal experts want them to slow down and think about it.

A new law in Tennessee aimed at protecting artists from AI-powered voice mimicry has won widespread acclaim from the music industry, but some legal experts are worried such laws might be an “overreaction” that could have unintended consequences.  

Less than a year after a fake Drake song created using new artificial intelligence tools took the music world by storm, Tennessee lawmakers enacted first-in-the-nation legislation last month aimed at preventing exactly that scenario — the use of a person’s voice without their permission. The ELVIS Act (Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security) does that by expanding the state’s protections against the unauthorized use of a person’s likeness, known as publicity rights.  

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But legal experts are more divided. Jennifer Rothman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the country’s top experts on publicity rights, rang alarm bells last week at a panel discussion in Nashville, warning that Tennessee’s new statute had not been necessary and had been “rushed” into law.  

“We don’t want a momentary overreaction to lead to the passage of laws that would make things worse, which is currently what is happening,” Rothman told her fellow panel members and the audience. “The ELVIS Act has a number of significant concerns that are raised, particularly with the broad sweep of liability and restrictions on speech.”  

In an effort to combat AI voice cloning, the ELVIS Act makes a number of key changes to the law. Most directly, it expands the state’s existing publicity rights protections to explicitly include someone’s voice as part of their likeness. But the new law also expands the law in ways that have received less attention, including adding a broader definition of who can be sued and for what.  

According to Joseph Fishman, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who has been closely tracking the legislation, that broader wording “sweeps in innocuous behavior that no one seriously thinks is a problem that needs solving” — potentially including tribute bands, interpolations, or even just sharing a photo that a celebrity didn’t authorize. 

“The range of acts that trigger liability is vast,” Fishman tells Billboard . “All the press around this law is focused on deepfakes and digital replicas — and those would indeed be covered — but the law as written goes so much further.”  

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Here’s why: Historically, publicity rights in the U.S. have been mostly limited to commercial contexts — like advertisements that use a celebrity’s likeness to make it appear they’re endorsing a product. The singer Bette Midler once famously sued the Ford Motor Co. over a series of commercials featuring vocals by a Midler impersonator.

The new law effectively gets rid of that commercial limitation; under the ELVIS Act, anyone who knowingly “makes available” someone’s likeness without authorization can face a lawsuit. It also broadly defines protected voices as any sound that’s “readily identifiable and attributable to a particular individual.”

Those are great changes if you’re a musical artist trying to sue over a song that’s using a fake version of your voice, since the old conception of publicity rights likely wouldn’t apply to that scenario. But Fishman says they have serious potential for collateral damage beyond their intended target.  

“There’s nothing that would limit it to AI outputs, nothing that would limit it to deceptive uses,” Fishman said. “The lead singer in an Elvis tribute band who sings convincingly like The King certainly seems to fall under the definition. So do Elvis impersonators.”  

In an “even more extreme” hypothetical, Fishman imagined an “unflattering” photo of Elvis that he knew the Presley estate didn’t like. “The law seems to say I’d be liable if I sent that photo to a friend. After all, I’m transmitting his likeness, knowing that the rightsholder hasn’t authorized the use. Stop and think about that for a moment.”

The ELVIS Act does contain exemptions aimed at protecting free speech, including those that allow for the legal use of someone’s likeness in news coverage, criticism, scholarship, parody and other “fair use” contexts. It also expressly allows for “audiovisual works” that contain “a representation of the individual as the individual’s self” — a provision likely aimed at allowing Hollywood to keep making biopics and other films about real people without getting sued in Tennessee.

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But confusingly, the law says those exemptions only apply “to the extent such use is protected by the First Amendment.” That wording, according to Rothman, means those exemptions essentially “don’t exist” unless and until a court rules that a specific alleged activity is a form of protected free speech, a costly extra step that will mostly benefit those who want to be in court. “This specific law creates great work for lawyers,” Rothman said. “So much work for lawyers.”  

Those lawyers are going to be filing real lawsuits against real people — some of whom are the scary, voice-cloning bad actors that the music industry wants to crack down on, but also some of whom are likely just regular people doing things that used to be legal.

“The law could absolutely lead to lots of lawsuits,” Fishman says. “There’s plenty of room here for people to test how far the statute can go, whether because they object to how they’re being depicted or because they see an opportunity for an extra licensing stream.”  

Though it only applies to Tennessee, the importance of the ELVIS Act is magnified because it is the first of likely many such legislative efforts aimed at addressing AI mimicry. At least five other states are currently considering amending their publicity rights laws to address the growing problem, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are also weighing federal legislation that would create a national likeness statute for the first time.  

At last week’s roundtable, Rothman said those efforts were misguided. She said that laws already on the books — including federal trademark law, existing publicity rights laws, and numerous other statutes and torts — already provide avenues to stop voice cloning and deepfakes. And she warned that the proposed federal bills posed even more serious problems, like allowing someone to sign away their likeness rights in perpetuity .

For other legal experts critical of the ELVIS Act, including Harvard University law professor Rebecca Tushnet, the hope is that any subsequent legislation, whether at the state or federal level, can be more directly tailored to the actual AI-fueled deceptions they’re supposed to address. 

“Any new laws need to be far more targeted at specific harms,” says Tushnet, who has written extensively about the intersection of intellectual property and free speech. “Right now, this statute and other proposals are dramatically overbroad, and threaten legitimate creative conduct.” 

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