One thing that has circulated the internet about this movie is that it's being frequently compared to the massive Oscar success Bohemian Rhapsody. Granted, you can tell why. From a distance, it seems like Rocketman is jumping on, or sort of helping create, the bandwagon of putting music rockstars of the past to film. If this does become a trend, then I'm not against it. So far, in my opinion, we're two for two. However, is Rocketman better? Does it surpass the Mercury crowd favorite or does it fall short of achieving any biographical value? In my opinion, both have very different executions and focuses that one really can't be better than the other. Allow me to elaborate.
One thing that audiences loved about Bohemian Rhapsody is that it attempted, throughout the film, to recreate the live concert experience. Whether or not the actual narrative part of the film is any good is up to the viewer. This is where the two films start to differentiate. While Bohemian Rhapsody focuses on remaking live performances, Rocketman takes John's hits and intertwines them into the narrative. The music takes part in the role of a storyteller and provides a medium for narrative progression and character development. Very little screen time is devoted to historical stage performance. This is one of the film's strongest attributes.
The actual musical aspect of this film is great, although I can see some people being turned off by it. None of the original recordings are used, but rather, they took each song they picked and modernized it. This is where another thing that differentiates Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman comes up: the singing. In the Mercury film, Rami Malek is lip-syncing for the most part while editors dub Mercury's voice over it. In Rocketman, there is no dubbing to be found. Edgerton is singing all the songs himself in their modernized state. While some people might be turned off by the fact that they re-vamped the songs, I don't think dubbing the original recordings would've worked with how the film was executed. Besides, Egerton has a great voice anyway and carries the film very well on his own.
Speaking of Egerton, his eccentric portrayal is amazing. David Sexton from the London Evening Standard put it perfectly, "Taron Egerton, in a fantastic performance, doesn't impersonate Elton John, he becomes him..." Egerton really doesn't hold back on the flamboyancy. I cared about his character in a different way than I did Malek's character. Mercury's movie doesn't really involve itself in how things were before Mercury joined the band since a lot of the conflict comes from during the career. Also, since Mercury has been dead for a while, it's hard not to feel some sort of emotion for the character. Rocketman takes high priority in developing John from childhood since many of the problems that John faces in his career stem from the fact that he had very apathetic parents. His dad was a d-bag and his mother never really paid attention until he got famous. I'm not sure how much is factual and where the producers decided to take liberties, but they did spend a hot minute in that part of his life and the whole movie is affected by it. I cared about John since I was shown that part of his life so that the whole film would make sense. I think it works.
To answer my main question, no, I don't think either movie is better than the other. Both are different in focus and execution and they both serve different yet same purposes. Despite its cliche storytelling, Rocketman still has an overwhelming amount of emotion and energy. It's charming and, at times, spine-tingling. I may be overhyping this one a bit, but I guess you'll just have to see it for yourself and form your own opinion. It comes out in two weeks on May 31st. I highly recommend it. 9/10
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