How do you feel about big screen biopics?

Honestly most of them feel like highlight reels with good costumes The ones that actually work are the ones that pick a specific era, not try to cram an entire life into 2 hours

I refuse to acknowledge them. WEIRD (2022) is the only biopic Ive ever seen that got all the facts right and didn't take any "artistic" liberties with the real story. Would also recommend UHF, its a doc about his early childhood.

They're just a wikipedia page with a budget. They almost always lack any sort of point of view. Sometimes the smaller movies work where they're more focused on one specific point of an artist's life, but the big glitzy biopics just don't do it for me.

Sick of them

"Walk Hard" is an astonishingly great parody of the way musician biopics tell the same story the same way over and over and over. It took ten years after it came out to get "Bohemian Rhapsody", which does all the cliches exactly the way that "Walk Hard" skewered them. And the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic is family-approved, so it's only going to be about the crowd-pleasing good parts. Hell, I think one of his nephews is playing the title role. It's going to be the official version of everything rather than the truth. Having said that, 2008's "Telstar: The Joe Meek Story" doesn't do the "end on the high point and put some text on the screen covering the last eight years of the subject's life" thing. And it's DARK, because the story it's telling was dark. It never even got a theatrical release in the US because people like bouncy happy upbeat stories instead of tragedies.

I never saw the appeal, especially with music biopics, it hurts the most when it's made by a great director or has a great cast as I think it's such a waste of their talents. I could watch one of those Channel 4 made biopics and get the same info.

Walk Hard: the Story of Dewey Cox is the best biopic ever made. No but seriously its a biopic parody that came out around the time the Johny Cash one Walk the Line came out, and it's one of my favourite comedies. Super stacked cast, John C. Reilly, Tim Meadows, Jenna Fisher, and a host of cameos from other celebs. Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Jason Shwartzman, Justin Long as the Beatles. So good. The wrong kid died!!

I don't know how ppl can follow that same dumb biopic formula. esp after Walk Hard.

I loved Ray idk I haven’t watches too many

too many of them are about incredible singers starring actors who are not singers. i don’t care that they trained to sing, it won’t measure up to how incredible the original singer was, which is the point of their fame and art. i also don’t like when they use a bunch of people’s voices and technology to approximate the voice of the artist (like in Bohemian Rhapsody). it’s not right and defeats the purpose of celebrating their voice. and the NOSES?! first of all Amy was unconventionally beautiful and they cast someone with a small nose. her beauty was undermined and not celebrated. and the fake noses for Bob Dylan, Bernstein, and Ringo are just awful i did love Walk the Line though. and the Weird Al one was great because it was a parody and Daniel Radcliffe was just lip syncing to Weird Al lol

The Doors was really great. I liked Rocketman. That’s about it

I like them when they feel like real movies first, not just highlight reels with wigs and famous songs. Too many of them flatten a messy life into a safe awards play.

I think you are right; somewhere along the way, I think they have gotten very formulaic and boring. There are a few exceptions, like "Man in the Moon" where they did not hold back on showing Andy Kaufman's faults (I think that's why Jim Carrey didn't win the Oscar - he was too accurate in showing the dark side). I wish there would be more actual documentaries instead of these pseudo ones pretending to be accurate. One of the best I think was ["Lemmy", on Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1236472/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_6_nm_2_in_0_q_lemmy). You get a great view of him as a person, good and bad, in under two hours.

I find a lot of them too formulaic, which is sad considering they're based on true stories. I really don't need to see another biopic of a rock star who had a traumatic life, a terrible relationship, often with physical abuse, followed by substance abuse.

Love them. I already have my tickets for MICHAEL

Honestly it depends. Sometimes I’m going because I’m curious how an actor will portray them ( ie DDL in Lincoln), other times I’m watching for good entertainment (ie The Dirt, Wolf on Wallstreet, etc)

I like the Hulk Hogan idea. I’m gonna be first in line to see Michael. I’m from the 80s.

I'm wondering what's the point of these biopics... It can just be a cash grab by a movie studio. There's a built in audience/fanbase to watch the movie. And with musicians/pop stars, there is a built in soundtrack assuming you get the music rights. The story is already there and just needs to be scripted and dramatized. Doesn't mean the movie is going to be good.

I like Bohemian Rhapsody and What's Love Got to Do With It is a classic. Otherwise, I like more fictionalized films like Dreamgirls, That Thing You Do, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. It's clear who and what they are talking about, but you don't have estates involved.

Would rather see documentaries, preferably ones where the artists are interviewed but not producers. I don't want much taking but I don't want a artist-contolled promo piece either. Good ones recently on: Brian Eno, and King Crimson. Perennial faves: The Kids Are Alright, The Buena Vista Social Club, Ken Burns' Jazz, and The Blues, produced by Mart

Why does somebody need to have lived 200 years ago to have movies made about them? There are extraordinary people alive right now, who are some of the most legendary people to have existed. Extraordinarily good, Extraordinarily bad, and most are a mixture of both. Johnny Appleseed was a real person. And it's fair to say, his story has been sanitized, extrapolated, and embellished beyond belief. Even with MLK. Most people don't know anything about the real MLK. Just what the main narrative wants you to know about him. MLK was a lot more aggressive IRL than his story suggests. The Civil Rights movement didn't happen by being kind and peaceful. That's just what they want you to believe. The civil rights movement has been so sanitized to make white people not look like the villain.

They are literally never good. The best possible outcome is a high-level SNL-style impression but with no jokes and a plot so loose you would never sit through it if it wasn't about a celebrity you kind of know about.

Well, Walk Hard bombed and Bohemian Rhapsody still earned 900 million, so there's that. However, I liked Rockeman and Better Man because of how they implemented their songs as well as experimenting with their subject matter

If they are about someone who died and shows all the fucked up shit they did sure.

Walk Hard the Dewey Cox Story should have ended the genre as a perfect parody.

If it's someone from within my lifetime, particularly someone very public facing, I don't bother. I don't need to see a movie about Michael Jackson or Whitney Houston's career and life. I was around for all of that.

Curious how the upcoming fab 4 movies coming out in 2028 will do as it’s 4 movies celebrating each member of the Beatles. Overall I enjoy biopics when they are about somewhat obscure figures (hacksaw ridge) or if it’s a small but significant period of time in the life (Springsteen movie).

I almost without exception dislike them. Why? Because lives are messy, which means that they don't really fit within the narrative structure that a film requires. So you either get a hagiography or this bloated mess of a movie that spends undue time diving down gopher holes. I mean, will the Michael Jackson biopic really deal with his weird dalliances with young kids? To me, it's more important to depict an event rather than the complex timeline of someone's life.

Most the ones about celebrities and actors/singers seem to fall flat. I blame 'Behind the Music' and whatever the Hulu/Netflix quasi-docuseries are called. It's not fun or engaging. Now, I would love to see a King Kamehameha I epic. Or a contemplative Marie Curie drama. And even (I'm serious now) a two-sided account of the Emu War. Hollywood loves, loves, loves to make movies about Hollywood (and entertainment, in general). Biopics seem to scratch that itch in a weird way.

They're usually awful and seem to be getting worse. Simplistic, formulaic, low-hanging fruit. Would much MUCH rather watch an documentary about the artist instead.

I find them interesting, but not "go to a theater to see them" interesting.

Big-screen biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody or Rocketman work more as emotional storytelling than strict history

i feel you on that, a lot of these biopics just gloss over the juicy details for drama or turn real-life stories into exaggerated tales. it can be frustrating when the essence of a person's life gets lost, but sometimes they do a decent job of capturing the highlights, so it's a mixed bag.

Biopics are fine, but the upcoming movie Michael is not a biopic, it's a Thriller.

Boring

>Plus I'd imagine it's difficult to summarize the life of someone with a rich and successful career in a 2 hour movie. Depends on how you look at this. Is it difficult to accurately summarize someone's career in 2 hours, in detail, in a way that respectfully tells the life story of a selected subject..? Yes, it is. Is it difficult to write a screenplay for a standard Hollywood biopic..? No, it's not. Personally I don't like biopics. Not that I don't enjoy movies about specific people, quite the contrary; but a "biopic" became a separate genre in itself, and it became very Hollywoodi-zed. It now has its own tropes, standardized plot structure, etc... Like, "Bohemian Rhapsody" isn't that much different from "Boogie Nights" in terms of structure. Rags to riches, big setback, big comeback, the end. I liked that formula when it was kinda new. "Ed Wood" is one of my favorite movies of all time. But it is basically the same as these other movies... The only thing that makes it stand out nowdays are the black-and-white visuals. That's probably why a very similar "Disaster Artist" was only "meh" imo, despite the fascinating subject matter. Worst thing is: I can't come up with a better idea for a "life story movie". I can't say "they should do this and that differently" because the formula they are using is basically perfect. I think I just got jaded.

Biopics about someone a lot of people didn't know, or a major figure that sheds light on their story and how it impacts society? Cool. Biopics about celebrities where the actor demonstrates the same talent as said celebrity, such as music, in honour of them, even if dramaticized? Also cool. Biopics about musicians where they have to mime and lipsync the songs? Meh.

They can often be formulaic and reductive.  But occasionally one will break the mold, like Oppenheimer.  In general biopics simplify and gloss over so much it's hard to take them seriously.  Still, in a film industry saturated with superhero adaptations and CGI heavy explosionfests, I'm happy with any attempts at  serious dramas aimed at grown-ups.   

Waiting for Ozzys movie 🙂

The only one worth watching is Better Man

One of the things that pisses me off about music biopics is that they almost ALWAYS title the film after the band's or artists biggest hit song. It's so overdone and uncreative.

Some are okay. I liked Rocketman, Walk Hard, and Weird. Walk the Line was pretty good.

Barbie was pretty good.

Braveheart was amazing