Elvis 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Review
Brad Sturdivant
September 18th, 2022
If my life was ever going to be turned into a film, I’d want Baz Luhrmann to do it since he can make anything seem majestic and beautiful. Of course, making Elvis’s life seem fantastical is a lot easier than making a movie critic’s life seem even halfway interesting, but Luhrmann once again adds pizzaz where others just see drama and sadness. For better or worse, ELVIS is one of the better music biopics we’ve seen, but almost all of the credit goes to Luhrmann’s style, which makes up for a lot of the film’s shortcomings.
Maybe the biggest impact ELVIS will make on people is it’s destruction of the “idea” of Elvis. For those that haven’t researched Elvis’s life, you may be left with the idea that he was the “king” of rock ‘n roll and was a larger than life presence that did what he wanted. I’m sure everyone has heard stories of how he negotiated or took songs and made them his own and those stories paint the picture of someone that didn’t take any crap and did what he wanted. But ELVIS paints a much different picture and fans will leave the film feeling like Elvis was never really king of anything and was more of a puppet to his manager Colonel Tom Parker.
I’m guessing that the relationship between Parker and Elvis is one of the reasons we haven’t seen an Elvis biopic to this point. And even still, I’m sure some will be confused as to why Baz Luhrmann spent so much time on Parker when all people wanted was more Elvis. But that relationship seemingly defined Elvis as a person and despite all of the flair and style, Luhrmann told a very genuine and sad story about a young, uneducated, extremely talented boy that was taken advantage of by a scheming, conniving older man. In that respect, ELVIS is a bit of a surprise to audiences that might have just been expecting a bunch of tassels and flamboyant musical numbers.
The hardest part of any music biopic is casting the lead actor correctly and thankfully, Austin Butler delivers a great performance as Elvis. But again, the weirdness of the film is the fact that no matter how good Butler did, he always seemed secondary or even small compared to Tom Hanks as Colonel Parker. I assume that was what Luhrmann intended and it was an interesting dynamic as Butler would shine and appear larger than life performing as Elvis on stage, but then would come down and shrink in the presence of Parker. But the casting was perfect and both Butler and Hanks excelled with the movie Luhrmann made.
It’s no fault of the film, but the saddest part of Elvis’s story is that he never got his redemption moment. Every music biopic follows a familiar beat, where the musician struggles, shoots to fame, takes a hard tumble and then gets their redemption. But Elvis never got that redemption, which made it even harder to put his life story to film.
4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: You should never watch a Baz Luhrmann film in anything other than 4K. Luhrmann relies on the color contrast so heavily in his films and they demand being viewed in 4K. This release looks fantastic with colors popping at every turn, the format is fully utilized and when you add in the HDR, it looks even better.
Audio: The Dolby Atmos audio is equally impressive, giving life to every concert moment and attention to the dialog heavy moments.
Featurettes: Four different featurettes feature Luhrmann, Butler, Hanks and a hodgepodge of others talking about Elvis’s life, music, style and the iconic locations he performed in. These are broken up, but it should have been one long featurette.
Lyric Video and Musical Moments (so you can watch the music numbers without watching the film)
