Elvis Presley never really left the building. Even decades after his heart gave out in a Graceland bathroom, the man remains a massive, glittering, slightly confusing pillar of American culture. But when Baz Luhrmann released his hyper-kinetic, neon-soaked Elvis movie in 2022, it did something unexpected. It didn't just retell the story; it ignited a massive argument about what we actually owe to the icons we worship.
Austin Butler didn't just play Elvis. He kind of became him.
He spent three years obsessed. He changed his voice—permanently, it seems—and studied every twitch of the King’s lip. Some people loved it. They called it a masterpiece of maximalism. Others? They felt like they’d been trapped in a blender with a bag of glitter and a soundtrack that featured Doja Cat for some reason. Honestly, the movie is a lot to take in. It’s loud, it’s fast, and it treats history like a suggestion rather than a rulebook.
The Colonel Parker Problem
Most biopics pick a hero and follow them. This Elvis movie chose a villain to tell the story. Tom Hanks, buried under enough prosthetic makeup to make him look like a melting wax figure, plays Colonel Tom Parker. This was a risky move. Parker was a former carnival barker, an illegal immigrant from the Netherlands, and a man who arguably worked Elvis to death.
By framing the film through Parker's eyes, Luhrmann turns the story into a tragedy about a soul being sold.
Critics like David Ehrlich from IndieWire pointed out that this perspective makes the movie feel "grotesque." And he’s right. It is grotesque. Parker was a parasite who took 50% of Elvis’s earnings. Most managers take 10% or 15%. Parker took half. He also kept Elvis trapped in a grueling Las Vegas residency because Parker had massive gambling debts at the International Hotel. He couldn't let Elvis tour internationally because Parker didn't have a valid passport.
Imagine being the biggest star in the world and never playing a show in London or Tokyo because your manager was scared of border agents. It’s heartbreaking.
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Did the Movie Get the Music Right?
Music is where the Elvis movie gets really weird and really interesting.
If you go into this expecting a dry, chronological documentary, you’re going to be annoyed. Luhrmann mashes up 1950s rock and roll with modern hip-hop. Why? Because he wanted modern audiences to feel what 1950s teenagers felt. Back then, Elvis was dangerous. He was punk rock before punk existed. His hips were a national scandal.
Today, Elvis music sounds like "oldies." It’s "safe." It’s what plays in the grocery store.
By mixing in Big Mama Thornton’s original "Hound Dog" with modern beats, the film reminds us that Elvis’s sound was rooted in Black culture. This is a huge point of contention. For years, people have debated whether Elvis was a "thief" or a "bridge." The film leans heavily into the "bridge" narrative. It shows a young Elvis in Beale Street, watching B.B. King and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It acknowledges that without the Black artists of Memphis, there is no Elvis Presley.
But some historians, like those who contributed to the Oxford American, argue the film oversimplifies this. It paints Elvis as a civil rights advocate in a way that’s maybe a little too neat for 1968. It’s a movie, not a thesis paper. You’ve gotta take it with a grain of salt.
The Vegas Years: Glitz vs. Sadness
The second half of the film is a fever dream.
We see the 1968 Comeback Special—which, fun fact, was supposed to be a Christmas special with sweaters and fake snow until Elvis and director Steve Binder revolted. Then we hit the Vegas years. The jumpsuits. The pills. The exhaustion.
The Elvis movie captures the claustrophobia of the International Hotel perfectly. Elvis was a prisoner in a gold-plated cage.
Austin Butler’s performance in the final scenes is haunting. He’s bloated (via prosthetics), sweating, and clearly dying, yet when he sits at the piano to sing "Unchained Melody," the power is still there. That footage at the very end of the movie? That’s the real Elvis, filmed just weeks before he died in August 1977. It’s a gut punch. It shows the toll that "The King" title took on the man named Elvis.
Why People Still Argue About It
Is it the best Elvis movie ever made? Maybe. It’s certainly the most ambitious.
The 1979 TV movie starring Kurt Russell is great for its time. the 2005 miniseries with Jonathan Rhys Meyers is fine. But Luhrmann’s version is the only one that feels as big as Elvis actually was. It’s an opera.
Fans of "Priscilla," the Sofia Coppola film that came out later, would argue that the Luhrmann movie ignores the darker side of Elvis’s relationship with his young wife. And they have a point. Luhrmann’s film is a hagiography—it’s designed to celebrate him. It brushes past the fact that Priscilla was 14 when they met. It focuses on the tragedy of the artist, not the flaws of the man.
What You Should Watch Next
If you’ve seen the movie and you want to know what was real and what was "Baz," here is how to actually dig deeper:
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- Watch the '68 Comeback Special: The real footage is on various streaming platforms. You’ll see that Butler nailed the "Tiger Man" energy, but the real Elvis had a self-deprecating humor that’s hard to replicate.
- Listen to the "From Elvis in Memphis" album: This is the peak of his vocal power. It’s soulful, gritty, and proves he was more than just a pop star.
- Visit Graceland (Virtually or In-Person): Seeing the size of the rooms—they’re smaller than you’d think—really drives home the "gilded cage" feeling the movie portrays.
- Read "Last Train to Memphis" by Peter Guralnick: This is the definitive biography. If the movie felt too fast for you, this book is the slow, deep dive that covers every single detail of his rise.
The Elvis movie didn't end the conversation about the King of Rock and Roll. It just gave us a new way to look at him. Whether you love the glitter or hate the pacing, you can't deny that Elvis still has the power to make us stop and look. He was a poor kid from Mississippi who changed the world, got lost in the lights, and never quite found his way back out. That’s a story worth telling, even if you have to use a little hip-hop and a lot of sequins to do it.
To truly understand the impact of the film, compare the soundtrack's "Vegas" by Doja Cat with the original 1952 recording of "Hound Dog" by Big Mama Thornton. It reveals the exact lineage the film tries to trace. Also, look up the real Steve Binder's interviews about the 1968 special; his accounts of standing up to Colonel Parker are even more intense than what made it onto the screen.