Musical Biopics Are Not Good Now And There's One Reason Why

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is not a good movie. It’s not a trainwreck or inept disaster, but it’s a boring true story about a musical icon that has nothing new or revealing to say about him. One would imagine that a film about The Boss, one of the most charismatic and beloved musicians of the past 50 years, would be propulsive and gritty, driven by the same energy that makes Springsteen’s music so iconic. Alas, what we get instead is just another biopic that hits all the expected beats and rejects any opportunity to challenge or examine its idolatry. Yeah, Jeremy Allen White did a good job recreating those concerts, but mimicry does not make for a satisfying narrative.

The reviews have been middling for the movie, which was held up as an Oscar favourite from the moment the project was announced. This is the cycle of the biopic, particularly for those centred on musicians. It’s seen as an awards guarantee for an actor to do their homework, copy a beloved musician’s act beat for beat, and project it onto a conventional rags-to-riches story that has been told dozens of times before. The musician biopic is now so codified in cliché that any movie that sticks to the status quo risks becoming a parody of itself, or leads to reviewers suggesting that viewings of Walk Hard should be mandatory for all directors. The cycle has only gotten more tedious, and the reasons for it are more evident than ever.

Music biopics have been around for decades. Jimmy Stewart played the legendary big band leader in The Glenn Miller Story, which was a big hit but not particularly historically accurate. As the decades passed, such works became more popular, from Coal Miner’s Daughter to The Buddy Holly Story to What’s Love Got to Do with It. The current glut of the subgenre has its origins in the early 2000s with films like Ray and Walk the Line, conventional biopics that nonetheless won over audiences and featured tons of the artists’ music at their hearts.

Now, we have *deep breath* Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, Elvis, Back to Black, Bob Marley: One Love, Respect, A Complete Unknown, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Better Man, and more. Soon, we’ll be getting FOUR Beatles biopics, and films based on the lives of Debbie Harry, Michael Jackson, Linda Rondstadt, Frank Sinatra, Carole King, Madonna, Ronnie Spector, Janis Joplin, and Britney Spears. Not all of these films are bad (although Bohemian Rhapsody is a genuine crime), but most of them are startling in their mediocrity. They’re safe to the point of pointless, stylistically samey, and often patronising to their audiences, including those who are die-hard fans of the artists.

Getting a biopic made requires a lot of work. If you wanted to, say, make a film about Bono, you wouldn’t necessarily need permission from him to do so. His life story is public domain, and you can do what you want with it. But the chances are you don’t want your movie to be mired in negative publicity from your subject s**t-talking you in the press, so you meet with Bono and negotiate his involvement. You’ll also want to include all of those amazing U2 songs, so you need to make a deal with his record company. They’ll all have demands. Maybe Bono doesn’t want you to include certain details of his story, even if they were extensively documented in the media. Perhaps the record company is worried that a raw portrait of their profitable artist could negatively impact album sales. Will the movie be able to play in certain territories if you keep in, say, the band’s famous concert in Sarajevo? So, you cut out a plotline, remove some politics, and sand down all the rough edges. Everyone’s happy now, because you have a big advertising platform for U2 and the chance to find a new, younger audience who weren’t there for Achtung Baby.

We’ve seen this in practice so many times. Bohemian Rhapsody is repugnant in its historical whitewashing, which Queen band members Brian May and Roger Taylor were eager to push. It omitted or downplayed much of Freddie Mercury’s life, often positioning it as something to be scolded by the audience, and perpetuated many cruelly homophobic tropes. The narrative the film and surviving band members wanted to push was one where their late lead singer was a hindrance to their success, and that his sexuality was part of that problem. The hilariously bad editing seemed to have been dictated by May and Taylor so that they were given equal screentime to Mercury, even if it made certain scenes unwatchable. The end result is truly one of the worst films I have ever seen. But it grossed over $900 million, won four Oscars, and sold a hell of a lot of Queen albums. By all measures that matter to the band, it was an unmitigated success.

Bohemian Rhapsody didn’t create the new standard of music biopics, but it did help to codify a modern set of rules that the film and music industries are eager to follow. Nobody wants to step outside of this stifling status quo because, when it works, it’s a money-printing machine. Yet many of the most recent examples that stridently obey these guidelines haven’t won over critics or audiences. One Love reduced Bob Marley’s tangled political and personal legacy to a bunch of buzz phrases and dorm room poster iconography. Amy Winehouse’s brief and tragic life was diluted into a timid rehash that conveniently treated her oft-criticized father as a saint. A Complete Unknown made money and received Oscar nominations (for some reason) but paled in comparison to I’m Not There as an examination of the work and importance of Bob Dylan.

These films feel like talent-endorsed and dictated documentaries with more indulgent recreations of the big moments in their lives. So, why not just make a documentary? Because they play to far smaller audiences than traditional films, and they garner far less industry clout. As much as the money matters here, so does the attention. Who doesn’t want their life and work to be seen as so important and culturally impactful that it wins actors Oscars? Legacy is the name of the game here, as much as profit, and the two usually go hand in hand. Bruce Springsteen’s legacy did not need a mediocre biopic to bolster it, but it does add to his overall image to be important enough to warrant one. It’s a silly logic, of course. We all know that Born to Run is important without a movie offering an anodyne retread of its recording process.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Elvis may, unfortunately, skimp over some of Presley’s darker and more uncomfortable moments, but Baz Luhrmann’s kinetic vibrancy acutely captures the mania that surrounded him, as well as his passion for music. Better Man threw caution to the wind by turning Robbie Williams into a CGI monkey, but captured the melancholy cheek of its subject. Rocketman was a full-on musical extravaganza, bringing Elton John’s theatricality to life appropriately. Many of these films still show the evident meddling of cautious subjects and executives, but they justify their own existence, which can’t be said of many of their contemporaries.

When I think of music biopics that most nervily embody the unfiltered truth of their subjects, my mind wanders to Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. Todd Haynes’s strange, surreal, and enthralling short film is both a pastiche of the biopic and an earnest exploration of the late singer’s life. It bleeds pre-existing archival footage with Barbie dolls acting out the story, and it’s truly brilliant. The end result is a loving but ferocious deconstruction of celebrity and fandom, one that understands Karen Carpenter better than any conventional retread ever could. But the film used Carpenters’ songs without permission, and Richard Carpenter was reportedly furious at some of the ideas Haynes posited, so the only way you can see the film now is through muddy bootlegs. Doesn’t that say it all, really?

There’s certainly an interesting argument to be made that the only way to be truthful and challenging with a music biopic is to make it without the subject’s involvement. Todd Haynes seems like great proof of that but there are many examples showing the downsides. Jimi: All Is By My Side was denied use of Hendrix’s music by his estate, but, despite some good acting, couldn’t tap into the mystique or sheer primal energy of the legendary artist. Stardust didn’t have any involvement from the David Bowie estate but avoided a deeper examination of his pre-Ziggy Stardust career in favour of bland biopic tropes (and making Bowie a cover artist with serious ‘anyway, here’s Wonderwall’ vibes.) If you’re going to bore us to death with bad psychology, then at least give us some banging tunes.

I’m eager for the day when a singer just lays it all on the table and allows a nervy filmmaker the opportunity to do as they please. There are so many musicians I’d love to see it happen with. Imagine if the Madonna biopic is as kaleidoscopic and provocative as her music. Such ideas feel destined to remain pipedreams for as long as the biopic genre is viewed exclusively as a brand expansion exercise. At least the truth lies in the music.