On August 31, 2022 I went to watch the new movie. The Elvis movie,  directed by Baz Luhrmann, is rated at 78% on rottentomatoes.com .  Some critics say the movie is “fast paced” and “flashy” which perfectly describes Elvis’s life. The movie takes place in many cities, Memphis, Tupelo, and Las Vegas but it was actually filmed in Queensland, Australia.

The Elvis movie is packed with talent including Austin Butler as Elvis, Shonka Dukureh as Mama Thornton and Tom Hanks as Tom Parker. According to imdb.com , “For his audition tape, Austin Butler originally recorded himself singing ‘Love Me Tender.’ When he watched it, he felt like it was an Elvis impersonation, and refused to submit it.” Many think that Elvis was a very good role for Austin Butler to play and I couldn’t agree more. He was very energetic and it just felt that he enjoyed and wanted to play that role. Tom Hanks, as per usual, brought the emotion and the best acting, and it felt like he and Austin really synergized well with each other and made the movie just that much better.

‘The King of Rock and Roll’ grew up in Tupelo but moved to Memphis in his teen years to start his singing career. After his school teacher was impressed she encouraged him to go and audition for a singing contest. The movie begins with a present day message from Tom Hanks character Tom Parker, while he is sitting in a hospital bed imagining going to gamble at his local casino. After Tom Hanks opens the movie we get a look at Elvis’s past life, before he blew up. Growing up in a mostly black community he was made fun of for being friends and socializing with them (him being a white man). But it ended up being the main inspiration for his success, taking after a church singer at his local hometown church with the sporadic movements and loud voice. I ended up getting an interview with  Ms.Fowler, a teacher at Agua Fria High School and  a fellow movie watcher and asked her a few questions about what she thought about the movie.

The first question I got to ask her was, do you think the movie accurately represented Elvis’s life? Ms.Fowler said , “In my opinion, yes, because his family spoke out about how Austin Butler spent time with them in Graceland and when they saw the movie after spending time with him they thought that he portrayed his life very well.” Another question I got to ask her was, what did you learn about Elvis in the movie? Ms.Fowler responded with, “I already knew a lot about Elvis but what I was surprised about was how controversial his music and dancing was and how half the country hated him but the other half loved him. Everyone was telling him about how he had to do this and that, like having to wear a suit and he had to do all these things but he was just different from everyone else.” After that, I asked her, how do you feel about the movie as a whole? Ms.Fowler said,”I thought it was a good movie, it was probably one of the better, more creative movies I’ve seen in a very long time. It gave all the info and details and it was accurately done, so I would give it a 9/10 mainly for Austin Butler’s performance.” The last question I got to ask Ms.Fowler was, do you think some other actor could have portrayed Elvis in a better way? Ms.Fowler thinks, “No, I do not because the story is that Austin Butler went into audition for Elvis and he really wanted it so he trained for it, and I just think the fact that he wanted it more means he deserved it and I think after he got it he got the whole method down and put himself in Elvis’s Shoes. So I think nobody could have done that better because he fully involved himself in who that was.” The final question was, would you watch it again? Ms. Fowler stated, “Yeah I would watch it again, it was a long movie but I do like time period pieces, I love biography movies, I did enjoy it. I like the director, I love Austin Butler so I would for sure watch it again.”

In summary, the Elvis movie was released June 24th, 2022. I think the movie is great for anybody that is wanting to learn more about Elvis’s crazy life. It perfectly portrays how great of an influence Elvis had on the 1950’s rock genre and just rock as a whole. To this day people still refer to Elvis as the “King of Rock and Roll” and is considered one of the greatest Rockstars of all time.