Elvis may have left the building, but Austin Butler is just arriving. Here’s how the ‘Elvis’ star found the rebel, the soul, and the rock & roll heart of The King.
I just saw “Elvis” (2022, dir. Baz Luhrmann) and I’m not joking when I say that people in our cinema were crying and clapping - this NEVER happens in the UK. We don’t do that here. Sometimes if a film is amazing, people will clap when the credits roll but people were literally applauding, and full on crying and cheering, during the final scene. The only other time I’ve witnessed an audience reaction DURING the film like this is during NWH on opening night (today is also the opening day of Elvis)
My mum has been a lifelong Elvis Presley fan - she’s the same age as Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie, and she was seven when he died. My mum is the biggest Elvis fan I know: she cried when he died and used to kiss her Elvis posters goodnight; once she gave me a locket once that she’d had when she was younger, and when I opened it she’d put a tiny cut out picture of Elvis’ face inside of it - and she’s going to Graceland this year, which has been a lifelong dream of hers. So yeah, to say my mum is an Elvis fan is a BIT of an understatement. Obviously, by the time I was born, Elvis had been dead for two decades - but I definitely grew up with his music because my mum had all her Elvis CDs, DVDs of his concerts, and so my sister and I obviously grew up hearing a lot of Elvis.
I was nervous about seeing it with my mum, because the last Baz Luhrmann film she saw was Great Gatsby and she despised it - she really doesn’t like his films (for the record, my sister and I both LOVE his films). However, she was full on crying at the end and she’s praising the FUCK out of the film as well as Austin Butler’s performance, which screams volumes to me about how amazing this film is. Obviously Tom Hanks is great as always but Austin Butler is undoubtedly the closest to Elvis there ever has been and ever will be, and I’m telling you that if he doesn’t even get nominated for an Oscar at LEAST, it will be a fucking fix.
Even if you’re not an Elvis fan, I’m telling you all that you need to see this film. Like if you’re not an Elvis fan already, you will be by the end of the film.
We’ve actually got tickets for tomorrow night as well (we booked those last week but then my mum and sister had the whim to see it tonight and so we decided to do it on about 5 hours notice), but for now I’m going to go and listen to some more Elvis ✌️
“Elvis based his look off Shazam” is such a wild thing to hear because (1) that means Elvis was a fucking nerd and (2) Elvis and Shazam are not two things I think of as occupying the same temporal region but here we are.
i learned that in 1975 Elvis went to see a movie with his gf. He was spotted by fans and they went crazy. His gf walks up and pranks the fans saying to Elvis, "Charlie, you're not using that Elvis bit again are you? Come on, you're not telling these people that you're Elvis again are you? The fans left (x)