What Rocketman gets right that Bohemian Rhapsody got wrong
Anyone going in to Rocketman expecting a traditional biopic about Elton John will be surprised when the first song kicks in.Taking Elton right back to his childhood, ‘The B***h Is Back’ turns into a big group number, sung by both the grown-up version of Elton and his childhood self.
It sets the stall for the movie’s “musical fantasy” take on Elton’s life, preparing you for a biopic like no other.
It couldn’t be further from the straightforward approach of Bohemian Rhapsody, so the two movies can’t really be compared in that way but Rocketman‘s structure does highlight a key issue with the Oscar-winning Queen movie.
Rocketman sees Elton look back on his life from rehab and, as director Dexter Fletcher explained, we don’t always remember things how they happened.
“Elton is our storyteller in the film and it’s his memory of those times, and sometimes our memory plays tricks on us or we remember things in a particularly colourful or different way and that’s the idea we’re playing with,” said Fletcher.
20th Century Fox Elton John biopic Rocketman showcases how musical biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody should be approaching their subjects. If there’s one downside to that approach, it’s that you don’t leave Rocketman feeling like you know much more about Elton John, either as a person or how he came up with all of his classic hits.
Rocketman isn’t particularly interested in the hard facts, so can be more playful with Elton’s history.
For example, Elton’s drug overdose sees him sink to the bottom of a swimming pool, start a duet of ‘Rocketman’ with child Elton and eventually end up on stage to finish off the song.
But by never proclaiming to be 100% faithful to the truth, Rocketman avoids a common pitfall with biopics that usually have to take some creative licence with real-life events.
You can’t accuse Rocketman of not telling the truth when it doesn’t even claim to in the first place.
This is where even though the two are very different movies, Bohemian Rhapsody could have learned something from Rocketman.
Bending the truth a little is fine when it came to things like how Queen formed, but not with serious events like Freddie Mercury’s HIV diagnosis.
First, the movie creates an entirely fictional period where Queen effectively broke up as Freddie worked on his solo album.
Shortly after this, Freddie received his devastating diagnosis and it’s used as a motivation for him getting back together with Queen as well as performing at Live Aid as though it could be the last time ever.
This just didn’t happen.
We don’t know exactly when Freddie got his diagnosis, but the earliest reported estimate is 1986 (after Live Aid) and the band didn’t know until a few years later.
So there was no heartbreaking confession in the Live Aid rehearsals as Bohemian Rhapsody suggests.
Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody Yes, we know they were making a movie not a documentary but it’s still a crass reworking of events that leaves a bad taste in the mouth afterwards.
We’re not saying that every music biopic needs to take a Rocketman approach as it’s a singular style that very much fits Elton John as an artist.
However, it wouldn’t hurt other biopics if they were a bit more creative in their approach.
If you’re going to shift events around to fit your narrative, then you might as well be more open about it from the get-go.
Gallery: Here’s what the cast of ‘Rocketman’ looks like in real life (INSIDER)
brain-perks 