Back in 2019, I announced this as my favourite film of that year, we look at the tale of Elton John, or at least a stylised version of it, in Rocketman.
Taron Egerton had recently been in the absolute disaster
that was the latest Robin Hood reboot, I may have to talk about that at some
point but for now, it put his status as a leading man on a knife’s edge, the
next film had to hit it out of the park. And a dramatized retelling of some of
the interesting bits of one of the biggest popstars to come out of the UK,
certainly an interesting choice but it’s not as if Taron Egerton had no
experience in the field, he had previously a sung cover of I’m Still Standing
whilst playing the Johnny in Illumination’s Sing.
The director is Dexter Fletcher, a guy who’s no stranger to
musical biopics, having taken over from Bryan Singer as the director of
Bohemian Rhapsody. Whilst that film, for all its flaws, was a smash at the box
office, Rocketman had a lot more working against it. Simply put, to do justice
to Elton John’s life, an R-rating was pretty much guaranteed, which would
place it as a much more niche product compared to the PG-13 Bohemian Rhapsody.
There’s also the issue of Elton John being gay, an issue
they couldn’t dodge because his love-life ended up quite entwined with his
music, especially in this story. This would unfortunately put it on a blacklist
for certain homophobic countries, who’s names I am going to happily drop. F*ck
Egypt, F*ck Malaysia, F*ck Samoa and naturally F*ck Russia, though ironically it’s
f*cking that got the film into trouble in the first place.
Still, the film only had a $40m budget, which was made back and then plenty, making $195m at the box office. And it went over well with both critics and audiences with 89% and 88% Rotten Tomatoes Ratings. Why did this beat out films like Endgame to be my absolute favourite film? Let’s take a look.
