Austin Butler turns into Elvis Presley in a way that feels less like impersonation and more like possession. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is a sprawling, operatic biopic that treats the King’s rise as a collision between a young man’s charisma and the carnival conman who rode it. The result is a film that is visually dazzling, emotionally exhausting, and ultimately more interested in spectacle than truth.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Butler’s Physical Transformation
Butler is the reason this movie works. He doesn’t just sing and dance; he becomes the man. His physicality is so exact that watching him move onstage during the Love Me Tender number is genuinely uncanny. The film opens with Elvis as a child in Tupelo, Mississippi, finding solace in music and comic books. He moves to Memphis, where his peers ridicule him for his love of African-American music from Beale Street. That ridicule is the seed of his rebellion, and Butler plays it with a quiet intensity that carries the film through its early stretches.
Parker’s Carnival Hustle
Tom Hanks plays Colonel Tom Parker as a man who smells opportunity in a boy’s talent. Parker is a carnival huckster managing country singer Hank Snow when he hears “That’s All Right” and assumes the artist is black. When he witnesses Elvis’s sex appeal at a Louisiana Hayride performance, he invites him to join a tour and takes control of his career. Parker sees Elvis as a product, and the film is honest enough to show the ugly bargain at the heart of their partnership.
The relationship between Butler and Hanks is the engine of the picture. Their scenes together crackle with tension and mutual need. Parker believes he’s saving Elvis from himself, but he’s also the one who pushes him toward excess and isolation. The film tracks Elvis’s climb from Sun Records to RCA, his father Vernon becoming business manager of Elvis Presley Enterprises, and the family being lifted out of poverty. It’s a meteoric ascent, and Luhrmann captures it with grand, theatrical flair.
The Polarized Public
The regional public is divided on Elvis. Some adore him; others see his music as corrupting white children and stoking racial hostility. Mississippi Senator James Eastland, a segregationist Southern Democrat, calls Parker to an informal hearing and probes his mysterious past. The film doesn’t shy away from the uglier side of Elvis’s fame. When Elvis flouts authorities’ warnings and performs suggestive dance moves at a concert, he faces legal trouble. Parker persuades the government to draft Elvis into the Army instead of punishing him.
Mother’s Death
The film’s emotional core is Elvis’s devastation after his mother, Gladys, dies from drinking. The scene is raw and unflinching. It’s a moment where the film stops being a biopic and becomes a tragedy. The relationship between Elvis and his mother is central to the film’s emotional architecture, and Butler sells the loss with a vulnerability that cuts through the gloss.
The German Years
During his military service in West Germany, Elvis meets 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, the daughter of an Air Force pilot. The romance is tender, but the film keeps the focus on Elvis’s loneliness and the distance between him and Parker. The relationship with Priscilla is presented as a refuge, but it’s also overshadowed by the larger forces pulling at Elvis. The film shows how the popular culture of the 1960s passed him by, and how the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 shook him.
The Sound of Music
Luhrmann knows how to stage a musical number. The Love Me Tender sequence is a masterclass in framing and movement. Butler sings with a raw, passionate intensity that matches the film’s energy. The music is a character in its own right, and the film understands that Elvis’s power came from his voice and his presence on stage.
The Weight of the Script
Where Elvis stumbles is in its script. The story is fragmented, jumping between periods without always landing with clarity. The film tries to cover decades of Elvis’s life, from his childhood to his death, and it can’t always sustain the weight of that compression. Characters appear and disappear without much context, and some plot threads feel underdeveloped.
The film also leans heavily on its star power. Butler and Hanks are both excellent, but the supporting cast is a parade of familiar faces rather than fully realized individuals. Richard Roxburgh, Helen Thomson, and the rest of the ensemble are competent, but they don’t get the room to breathe that Butler and Hanks do.
The Running Order
| Event | Year |
|---|---|
| Elvis born in Tupelo, Mississippi | 1935 |
| Family moves to Memphis, Tennessee | 1940 |
| Parker hears “That’s All Right” | 1954 |
| Louisiana Hayride performance | 1954 |
| Elvis joins RCA Records | 1955 |
| Drafted into the Army | 1958 |
| Mother’s death from drinking | 1958 |
| Meets Priscilla Beaulieu | 1959 |
| Marries Priscilla | 1967 |
| Assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy | 1968 |
The film is at its best when it slows down and lets the human story breathe. The scenes between Elvis and his mother, and the ones between Elvis and Parker, have a gravity that the broader narrative sometimes lacks. When the film commits to character, it lands. When it commits to spectacle, it can feel hollow.
A Mixed Legacy
Elvis is a flawed but ambitious film. It wants to capture the myth of a cultural icon while grounding him in the reality of a broken man. It succeeds at the former more often than the latter, but even its failures are interesting. Luhrmann’s direction is confident, and Butler’s performance is unforgettable.
The film is a reminder of why Elvis mattered. He was a performer who could fill arenas and break barriers, and the film captures that magic. But it also shows the cost of that magic, the toll that fame took on a man who never quite understood what he had become.
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