Musical biopics often make the mistake of fudging the facts surrounding their story and relying on name recognition to sell tickets, but Elvis avoids this issue through a clever choice involving Tom Hanks’s Colonel Tom Parker. Elvis follows a similar formula of past music biopics, featuring two-and-a-half hours of songs and events familiar to fans, but it differs by telling the story of Elvis Presley (played by Austin Butler) through the eyes of Colonel Parker rather than centering it around Presley himself. This stylistic choice adds another layer to the film that masks aspects that would have otherwise been seen as distracting mistakes.
While other music biopics follow the subject of the film in a straightforward fashion, Elvis is framed around Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager, reflecting on his involvement in Elvis’s life and career, as well as his assertion that he is not responsible for Elvis’s premature death. Though the film follows Elvis’s story, it is entirely narrated by Parker, who sometimes paints an entirely different picture than what is being laid out. This aspect of the film adds another layer to the storytelling that helps it transcend issues present in other music biopics.
For avid fans of an artist at the center of a music biopic, the artistic liberties these films take with the facts in order to adapt their story can be distracting at best and upsetting at worst. Elvis took just as many liberties with its subject matter, from its fudging of certain facts to an ahistorical placement of events. This could have proven divisive among Elvis Presley’s fervent fanbase, but Colonel Parker’s narration helps the film avoid criticism in this respect. Early on, Elvis casts Colonel Parker as an unreliable narrator, with some scenes presenting one story in his narration while the visuals onscreen tell a different story. Parker’s unreliable narrator status helps audiences rationalize historical inaccuracies, avoiding missteps of previous music biopics.
Another issue with the straightforward storytelling of past musical biopics is that it has intrinsically more value to diehard fans of the central figure of the biopic, necessitating unnatural expositional dialogue for a general moviegoer to understand and connect with the events and the character in question. Elvis is able to avoid this issue through Colonel Parker’s narration. Narrators can be useful in fictional films because they appear at the right moments to provide information on a need-to-know basis, and Colonel Parker serves the same purpose in Elvis. This adds a fictitious element to the movie that allows it to focus on the story, making it accessible to audiences across the spectrum.
By using Colonel Tom Parker as a narrative device, Elvis is able to avoid mistakes made by music biopics of the past. His narration provides a fresh twist through the added layer of his revisionist history storytelling, thus contributing to the Elvis movie's strong reviews and warm reception with audiences where previous biopics have received criticism. The success of Elvis and its unconventional approach demonstrates that taking creative risks with a familiar format can be rewarding. Hopefully, it will open the door to different, creative approaches to future music biopics.
