by Nathaniel R
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Thoughts as they came without self-censorship:
Since he's wearing winged shoes we expect him to float up into the sky during a musical sequence, like a queer Mercules auditoning for the Griffiths Observatory number in La La Land...
There better be gayness in this movie. Enough with these straightwashed bios. Especially since the movie is billing itself as a "musical fantasy" about the singer's breakthrough years.
Love how he kind of matches the couch here but doesn't blend in. Elton John is incapable of blending in.
Elton John and his husband David Furnish are producing so you know they had casting approval. Taran Egerton is hotter than Elton ever was, even in Elton drag. Didn't Elton also have Justin Timberlake play him in a music video once? These are what we call 'esteemable acts.'
Elton John's storied rise to fame is before my pop culture time so no spoilers please (hee). The first Elton John song I remember listening to as it was on the charts -- as opposed to in the air since he already had several "standards" I absorbed through cultural osmosis -- was "Sad Songs" and "I'm Still Standing" in 1983 and they made me crazy since the radio played them incessantly. Since this musical is about his rise to fame I assume we're only taking place from the early 1960s through the early 70s so maybe ending with his giant "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" album from 1973?
Bios produced by the people they're about are often hagiographies so we can't trust this one until it proves itself.
Elton John and Bernie Taupin in 1970 photos.
That said, very excited to see Jamie Bell portray Bernie Taupin, the other half of Elton's iconic music. Largely because Bernie Taupin is the invisible half of that duo but Jamie Bell is never invisible to us as one of the finest actors of his generation. (The film also stars Richard Madden, Gemma Jones, Steven Mackintosh, and Bryce Dallas Howard.... but JAMIE BELL!)
Will they give Jamie Bell a unibrow? Nooooooooooo
I only know Egerton through Eddie the Eagle which is a weird place to only know of him since he's starred in a successful franchise The Kingsman. I am not seeing Robin Hood which looks a-tro-cious.
Dexter Flesher (Eddie the Eagle) is behind the camera but he started as a child actor (and still acts here and there). If you've ever seen the Scott Baio/Jodie Foster musical comedy Bugsy Malone (1976) he played "Baby Face" in that one.
This earlier photo on the set of Rocketman had the Daily Mirror calling Egerton the "spitting image of Elton John" but I think he looks more like "spitting image of a younger Matthew Rhys in Elton John drag"
Rocketman hits theaters on May 31st, 2019, so it's up against Godzilla: King of the Monsters for summer box office gold. Not that either of them will take the box office crown that weekend since that's the second weekend of Disney's Aladdin which will surely earn ungodly sums in next summer's box office derby.