Elvis

Okay, so yesterday, I watched a film called Elvis . This is a biopic for Elvis Presley . Me and my family went to the cinema and we watched it and it was absolutely amazing . The film is about his legacy and what was going in that time . It mainly focuses on Elvis and his manager, Colonel Tom Parker . It tells the story of how it all ended up for Elvis and his life .

Austin Butler, the guy who plays the role of the legend himself was absolutely incredible . His performance was absolutely phenominal . He totally embodied Elvis, he absolutely killed it . The dance moves, the voice, his mannerisms, everything, absolutely spot on . Austin Butler is a great actor . I’ve never actually heard of him before. I kept seeing him all over You Tube, and I was like ” Who is this geezer ?”. He wasn’t very famous nor was he very well known, but I feel like he killed it with his performance and gave it his all. I wish him the very best in his career, I’d love to see him take on more roles in the future .

If I remember correctly, it took him 3 years to do this . Cause he had to do vocal training, he had to have like vocal lessons to try and get his voice right, minus him mastering all the dance moves . It’s a lot of hard work to do all that, especially if you’ve been doing it for three years . He did an amazing job, all of it seemed to have paid off in the end . Some people are pissed off that Austin Butler doesn’t look like Elvis . Of course he’s not gonna look like Elvis, no one looks like Elvis. He’s an actor, for goodness sake . The actor doesn’t have to look like him, you just need the film to tell the story . Elvis’s story is so interesting but it’s also really sad. You kind of feel sorry for the geezer .

I absolutely loved the film, it told the story so well. It was so beautifully written . It’s such a sad story . You really feel sorry for him, you really do . His manager was kind of an arsehole, he just stopped Elvis from travelling all around the world and he just kept him in America. By the end of it, Elvis was just like a cage animal and he just totally lost his spark. He just wanted to perform and do his music but Tom Parker just didn’t let him. And that led him to his death .

I think it’s a very sad story, it’s very flawed . It covered all those stories and issues that were going on in that time. When Elvis started out. There were all these issues starting out at the time, where Elvis started performing and he used to get smashed left right and centre for dancing . There were all these news stories and headlines in the newspapers, that if he ever danced like that again, then he would have to go to prison . There were a lot of people who didn’t like him because his music had a lot of black music undertones in most of his songs . He had that threat every time he danced . And this happened for a long time . But in the film, there was this bit where all that stuff started happening and he said ” Well, if it can’t move, I can’t sing ”. That was just how Elvis was, he couldn’t help it. I think Austin Butler mastered his dance moves really well, it was absolutely spot on . Everyone just went after him because he kind of made black music. He loved gospel and stuff like that, and once they found out that he was white, they just didn’t like it and that’s why they did what they did . I think it’s absolutely dreadful, but it happened, unfortunatly .

That scene where he’s at the talent show and he’s in that iconic pink outfit. And he starts singing and he starts dancing like crazy. When he started shaking his hips and dancing, I literally thought that the cinema screen was gonna crash, haha, I saw it coming . Those scenes were nuts . It ain’t no different from the real Elvis, Austin Butler nailed it there .

 

This film mainly followed Elvis and Tom Parker’s relationship . Tom Parker was a very interesting dude . He kind of made Elvis’s life hell, but then again, if Tom Parker and Elvis didn’t cross paths, then Elvis wouldn’t be the legend he is today . Like sometimes you just have to look on both sides .  Tom Parker was his manager, at the end of the day. Without him, Elvis wouldn’t be Elvis. Tom Parker basically just held Elvis hostage and kept him in America and made him do performances every day . That must have been really hard. Usually, a musician needs to do one performance a month and then take a break, settle in. I think performances every day is a bit too much . Especially because he’s also expected to be enthusiastic, spontaneous all over and over again . Elvis just wanted travel the world and entertain and make his fans and supporters happy but Tom Parker just didn’t let him and he just kept him in America . There was this thing with Tom and his debts. They also covered that in the film . Tom Parker was played by Tom Hanks . Tom Hanks looked bloody terrifying with all his prosthetics . I didn’t even realize it was him . I think he did a great job, but I feel like they should have got someone else to play the role of Colonel Tom Parker. They could have just got some random fat geezer off the street to play him. But apart from that, I think Tom Hanks did a great job .

Colonel Tom Parker was an absolute parasite . He didn’t have a citizenship, he didn’t have a passport. He took half of Elvis’s money, but also a lot of other people around him stole some of his money as well. Tom just wasted all the money on gambling . But also he just wasn’t good at saving money in general . Elvis wanted to travel the world, he wanted to go to Europe, he wanted to go to Japan, he wanted to go to all these places but Tom Parker took him out to Las Vegas and he just left him there. At that moment in time, Elvis felt like a cage animal. Tom Parker made him perform every night, he made him do all these gigs every single day and night . By the end of it, he just lost his spark. That led him to over eating and having a lot of exhaustion. He got really overweight . There were times where he was so exhausted, that he would collapse on stage because it all just got a bit too much for him . The doctor had to inject Elvis with this drug so that he would have a bit of energy to carry on with the performance . On his final gig, you could see that he was getting really sick and unwell. He had to sit on a chair cause he couldn’t stand up . That was his final gig before he died .

Elvis is an absolute legend . You only get legends once in a while . So, for an example, we had Bruce Lee, we had Michael Jackson, we had Freddie Mercury, you know, so many legends . Most of them had such an impact on so many people’s lives . We will never have another legend like Elvis, without a doubt . The mark he left on so many people’s lives, I don’t think you can ever understand . When you see the part where he’s performing on stage and all the women are going nuts and they’re screaming, they are crying, they’re laughing and smiling, and then you have all the boyfriends, they’re just sitting and standing there, thinking ” What on earth is going on, who is this man ?”, you could just see the impact he had on people . Those scenes are just really funny, I couldn’t help but laugh at them . There’s just beyond confusion from all the boyfriends as they witness their girlfriends just trying to crowd surf and turning into dracula, haha . But yeah, I guess when you see that, you can see the impression Elvis had on so many people all over the world . When he was younger, One of my dad’s friends was an Elvis fanatic, he had so many of his records and stuff like that . On the day of his death, he was absolutely in distraught . He was crying and everything, he just sat on the floor, crying whilst playing some of his music . He absolutely loved him . When he passed away, people were in distraught . And this is like a worldwide thing .

There was this bit that completely broke my heart and it was the scene where it was almost coming up to the end of the film and it was the bit where Elvis is lying down on the floor and he says ” In a few years, I’ll be forgotten, no one will remember me, no one will know who I am ”, and I think that’s when it had me thinking . He thought that was the end of it,  but little did he know that many people all over the world will still be listening to his music. Elvis just loved doing his music. If it’s taught me anything, it’s to do everything now. Just do your thing, don’t care what anyone else says, just do what makes you happy, because time won’t be here for long, so you just have to do everything now while you still can . Right near the end, I just almost cried, it was so sad and so emotional .

I think what they should have done is portray him as the real person he was . Elvis was a rough neck, he had an attitude, and they tried to make him as this pretty boy . Which he wasn’t . He didn’t play around . If you look at it, they tried to make him as this pretty boy with blue eyes next door stereotype, which didn’t even happen in real life . Elvis was a strong, fierce rough neck. Let’s not forget that Elvis moved around with the mafia as well, they don’t tell you about that, do they ?. My dad didn’t like the perception of making him all pretty boy, they tried to make him look gay a bit as well . I have nothing against the actor, Austin Butler is amazing, but I think the director glaced over a few things .

And Precilla, you know, she kinda played out this whole thing as well. She left when Elvis was going through his darkest days. When someone starts getting really bad, you leave ?. I don’t think that’s ideal . Taking a child away from a man is gonna do a lot of damage. She thought that it wouldn’t affect him. All the stuff she’s coming out with, she’s just trying to make herself not look bad . I know that she didn’t like seeing Elvis turn out the way he did, who would ?. No one would like it, it’s horrible seeing someone suffer like that, but she shouldn’t have left, she should have stuck it out .

She should have known what it’s like to be with him, and actually know what he was like . It’s really weird . If you look into it, you will realize that there are a few things that don’t quite add up . If you just see it as a two hour film, then it’s great, but if you critique it and really delve into the fine lines of the film, then you will be like ” Oh hang on here, something isn’t quite right . But, nonetheless, it’s a great film. I think they just focused on his bad days when he started going down hill, which was most of the time . They tried to white wash the character a little bit, that’s just what directors are starting to do now, you’re starting to see it play out, bit by bit . They just should have portrayed him as the real deal. It wasn’t all glitz and glam, most of it was actually kinda dark. New biopics just go down that kind of route . But I’m not the kind to critique everything . If I see something that I don’t agree with, I’m just gonna put it out there. I kinda get it from my dad, he’s very sharp, he always calls out BS, so he just educates me on this sort of thing . And I actually agree with him. I still love this film, it’s one of the best biopics I’ve seen in a very long time, right after Telstar The Joe Meek Story. Things are most likely to go wrong with biopics, It doesn’t surprise me at all . But I think everyone did really well with this film. A biopic isn’t gonna be a 100 % perfect, every film and biopic has it’s small issues . But I guess if you look at it nothing but a nice two hour film, then you really can’t go wrong . But some things do go over your head, especially if it’s a biopic about a real person’s life , you’re gonna think ” Oo, why did that happen ?, why is that there ?”, it’s gonna go over your head, biopics are most likely to do that .

Some directors try to create drama and make up stories about real life subjects . Baz tried to white wash it and make it something it really wasn’t . Austin Butler is amazing, he did a great job . Elvis was a lot darker than he was, he kind of looked a bit Indian as well. My dad had this conversation the other day and honestly, I agree with him. Some things they tried to rough patch in this film, some things didn’t add up, but apart from that, it was fantastic .

Elvis wasn’t racist . He wasn’t racist at all . With everyone who knew him, they all said that he wasn’t racist . Even Mahummad Ali said he wasn’t racist . He said that geezer didn’t have a racist bone in his body . I think Baz Lurhman tried to cover that . He tried to say that he wasn’t racist but he also added in some things and some facts that were untrue . He didn’t hang around with black people, all of that was fake as well. When he was younger, he hung around with black people because that was where he lived . That whole thing with him and BB King wasn’t true either . BB King only met Elvis once . I really don’t know what Baz was thinking, putting in all this fake shit . None of that even happened .

The film itself was amazing but it wasn’t that accurate . Some things don’t quite add up. Elvis has a really fascinating story, why couldn’t they have just focused on the story, instead of adding in some fake things that didn’t even happen ?. I’m kind of disappointed with that, to be honest with you . They made Colonel Tom Parker look bad and they made Elvis look a bit gullable . We all knew what Tom Parker did, but we don’t really know how much money he took . All of that we don’t know .

They could have done it so much better if they had just stuck with the story . There are so many lies . Even all that shit where Elvis was performing and he was shaking his hips, then the police turned up and they arrested him. That’s wasn’t true, it never happened . Baz tried to make drama out of it, tried to make it dramatic and it didn’t even happen in real life . That whole Christmas thing didn’t even happen either . He just made up all this stuff .

The scene where Elvis is in that pink outfit and he’s doing his first performance. Then he starts shaking his hips. The government were threatening him and they were like ” You dance like that again, you’ll go to jail ”. They were like that because there were a lot of black musicians who did the same thing . They reckon that he stole from black musicians . It was very conservative in those days too. It wasn’t really a segregation thing, well it was a little bit, but I guess they didn’t like seeing the women scream and go ape shit and they’d probably get slapped for doing that, and so would Elvis . But yeah, it’s just kind of like that . There was a bit in the film where Elvis was like ” Yeah man, look at those women going crazy for me, they love me ”, but then Colonel Tom Parker was like ” Yeah, I payed them to do that ”.

The film was quite sad. Baz made it quite dramatic . It is sad anyway, because Elvis died at the age of 43, it’s so young, so of course it’s sad . But I garantee you that if you watch any other stuff about his life, it’s not gonna be like that, it’s not gonna bed so dramatic like the film .

Also, another thing. If you really look into it, you will realize that all the male characters are crooks . Colonel Tom Parker was a crook, Elvis’s dad was a crook, they even made Elvis look like a crook as well. My dad spotted this and it’s so sneaky how they did it . Almost all the males were crooks or they looked bad . They tried to make Elvis seem like a rip of merchant, which he wasn’t . Most of it is so untrue . There’s really so much detail and so much to unpack in this film . You have to be quite quick and sharp to spot it .

I think the one thing that I would have liked to see them go into a little bit more was the time where Elvis realized that his stardom was slowly fading . Like, as the 50s and the 60s were slowly ending and it was the beginning of the 70s, a lot of people are listening to different music and a lot of people have a different attention span, people are moving on. He was so adored in the 50s. and people are no longer interested in you. That’s what happened to Elvis . There’s nothing worse then feeling like you’re not worth it anymore . That’s what happens to many many artists and musicians .  They are prophetable for a small amount of time and people love them and then one day, people don’t really care about them anymore and they are cast aside like lifeless rubbish . That’s what really happened to him .

The worst thing a man can experience is when they feel like they’re nothing and that they’ve had their time and they just slowly disappear . A man can’t be a bystander . Just look at it with a artist’s perspective . Elvis just felt like shit and he realized that he was no longer relevant in the world . He got cast aside like old boot. That’s what happens to a lot of famous people in the indestury . It happened to Michael Jackson. He was also self medicating. Elvis had a slow suicide. He realized that he didn’t mean anything anymore so he turned to drugs. Men start self medicating because of all that stuff . I think that’s just what they should have delved into a little bit . Because I think a lot of people will just see it as a fame thing, for most parts, it is, but it’s not entirely about fame .  It’s like what happens when fame gets to you, but it wasn’t. Elvis started self medicating because he felt like he didn’t mean anything to anyone . It was a slow suicide, that’s what it was .

When it all started, he was skinny, he didn’t really eat much, but as he got more and more famous and well known, it all started going down hill for him. Started binge eating and clogging himself up. When someone feels like shit, the first thing they’ll turn to is drugs, alchohol or food. He started binge eating . I think what was dreadful is that no one did anything to help him. He was stuck in a hotel in the middle of the bloody desert with no one looking after him, no one speaking to him. He had to do performances once or twice pretty much every night, which is hard because he had to do the exact same thing, he had to have enthusiasm, he couldn’t write any new material, he had psychotic women running after him.

It’s the same thing with Michael Jackson. When he bought the Beatles catalog, they targeted him so much, they were being so nasty, just nit picking . Then slowly slowly, all that stuff about the kids staying over at his house and all that stuff about the sexual abuse allegations .

There was nothing Elvis loved more then his music. He wasn’t interested in anything else but his music. It was his pride and joy. He loved performing . Once that opportunity was taken from him, he felt like there was nothing else to live for. So he turned to food. People do that because it’s the only thing that doesn’t talk down to them or make them feel like shit, unlike what humans do sometimes . It’s like a comfort thing . All that stuff about him being racist is absolute bullshit. Elvis is dead so he can’t defend himself. It’s absolutely disgraceful. He was partly red Indian too. He didn’t have a racist bone in his body . The whole thing about him stealing from black musicians is the same thing too .

I think the part where Elvis started realizing that his stardom was fading away, I think they should have put that in the film. It’s a very important detail in the last bits of his career. I think the bit where he goes onto the aeroplane and he says ” People won’t remember me ”, was there but I think that was it. They didn’t say too much about it. I think if Elvis was starting out nowadays, he would be overlooked . It was just the time of the 50s that people really loved him, that can never happen nowadays . Nowadays, he wouldn’t have had a look in, only ones in the mainstream media would get all the attention

My dad’s old friend was an Elvis nut. He always used to talk to my dad when they were at school. He loved Elvis. He didn’t tell anyone that he loved Elvis, because all the other kids would take the piss. They would be like ” Hoh, you love Elvis, what a load of rubbish ”, they would just take the piss. Most people just thought he was a laughing stock or like a joke, they would be like ” Hah, fat Elvis ”, like it was just so sad . They all underestimated him .

There will never be another legend like Elvis. He was one of the genuine genuine artists of the time. Real talent, class. Not these puffs you see in the indestury nowadays . Can’t write songs, can’t sing for shit . Elvis was the real deal .

 

 

This film had so much to unpack . It really delved into his personal life and his relationship with Colonel Tom Parker . The death of his mum that really affected him. When Elvis had to choose between prison or war, he chose war. His mum just worried herself to death and she drank and drank. Her death must have really effected him. I think bit by bit, you could just see his life falling apart . You know, with his mum dying, his wife leaving him. I think when Precilla left Elvis, Elvis was going through the darkest stages of his life . Things weren’t going well for him. It would have been better if she stayed, it would have helped him a bit . But I guess she couldn’t bare seeing him taking drugs and going off the rails . I think, I can’t blame her for leaving, if you saw the same thing, you would have left too . I had no idea about all this, I only knew about his music, I never actually knew about everything that happened in his personal life . It’s just absolutely heartbreaking . The actress who plays Precilla is amazing . She was evil in that film .

This film was just amazing . They really thought about it . They killed it . They really did their research, even though there’s so much that isn’t true. I’m so glad that Precilla Presley, Elvis’s ex wife, had an endorsement with this film. Even she said it was awesome, so she gave the seal of approval. That must be so amazing . If it’s coming from someone like that, you know you’re doing something right .

The scenes where they show the young Elvis when he was a child, and he just hears music and he just gets lost in it. That’s something that does happen. Something sparks in your brain and you just get lost in music . That bit kind of fascinated me, I found it really interesting . He loved musicians like BB King and stuff like that .

This film was directed by Baz Lurhman . Baz Lurhman has directed many films, such as Moulin Rouge and other films . I hope he wins an award for this, if he doesn’t, then I’m gonna be really upset . Austin Butler also deserves an award for his outstanding performance, he really killed it, he put his heart and soul into this piece .

This film was so emotional . I almost cried, it was just so beautifully done . My mum started getting really emotional during the film too. I can’t blame her, it was so emotional. It’s just a sad story, and the fact that it’s a true story, is even worse . Knowing that it all happened in real life just hurts even more . He just got overweight and he had so much exhaustion and he just got really sick . Sadly, he died in 1977. He was so young, he was like 43 . He didn’t even live his life yet. It’s such a shame, but I guess you burn bright .

I’ve always been fascinated in Elvis. Me and my family really love his music . We new so many family members and friends who were mad about him. Elvis has also starred in films . He’s been in films like Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas, Girls, Girls, Girls and many more . He’s just an absolute legend . He has such a big catalog with so many hits . He was wrong about him not having a huge legacy, he’s still the biggest solo artist . Viva Las Vegas is one of my favourite Elvis films, it’s amazing .

 

I’m in awe of everyone who was involved in the film. They all did such an amazing job . They couldn’t have done it any other way, it was absolutely perfect . When I left the cinema with my family, I felt so satisfied . I feel like Elvis deserved this biopic . Biopics are really hard to do. You need to do your research, you need to be careful what you put in there and you have to make sure you don’t make up fake stories just to cause drama . You’re on thin ice with that one .

Another thing that I really loved in the film was the bit where they started showing footage of the real Elvis, that was just the cherry on the top for me. It was just what could have been. If he still alive, what would he be up to nowadays ?, I really do wonder . He just went too early . But at least we still have his work and we can enjoy it . His legacy will shine on, he will always be a legend . I think I’ve always been fascinated in his story . Now I’m learning more about it, I just get more and more fascinated . This was a thought provoking film, it really made me think . This film will definetely stick with me forever .

Overall, I’ve got to give this film a 10 / 10, actually no, I’m gonna give this film a 100 / 100, it was absolutely amazing . So beautifully done, it completely blew me away . I’m definetely gonna listen to more of his music now . I totally recommend you to watch this film. If you love Elvis, just like me, then you’ll definetely love this film . I’m definetely gonna watch it again, it’s too good .

Thank you so much for reading my post, I hope you liked it. I hope you have a lovely day, wherever you are right now. Lots more to come on Big Blog Theory .