The great biopic brain drain

Stu­dio film­mak­ing in the mid-2020s revolves around a tox­ic addic­tion to recog­nis­able IP. Whilst com­ic books and video games are the most bla­tant exam­ples, the inescapable preva­lence of the music biopic these past few years is just as much a symp­tom of that. Trad­ing on the sub­stan­tial exist­ing fan­bas­es of the artists as well as the desire of said musi­cians to shore up their lega­cy image for a new gen­er­a­tion that’ll buy their great­est hits albums, these are just as much behold­en to rigid cor­po­rate inter­ests as those of its cape and pix­el brethren. In 2024 alone, there were sev­en wide release music biopics in cin­e­mas, and we have major films on Bruce Spring­steen, Nat King Cole and Michael Jack­son fast com­ing down the pipe.

With this flood, and the ongo­ing scarci­ty of options for film­mak­ers who would like to make mid-bud­get stu­dio-backed adult dra­mas, it’s per­haps unsur­pris­ing to see the genre hit a bit of a cross­roads. Cre­atives bristling against the con­fines of your tra­di­tion­al music biopic (or per­haps liv­ing in fear of com­par­isons to 2007 satire Walk Hard) are try­ing to liv­en up a fun­da­men­tal­ly for­mu­la­ic sub­genre. One of the big­ger news sto­ries of the year was the announce­ment that Sam Mendes would direct four Bea­t­les biopics, one for each Bea­t­le – a cool con­cept until you realise that means hav­ing to watch four Sam Mendes films – but the releas­es of 2024 already show an ongo­ing effort to take a few big swings.

Unless you’re James Man­gold. His Bob Dylan biopic, A Com­plete Unknown (focussed on the musician’s years in the Green­wich folk scene up to his con­tro­ver­sial elec­tric per­for­mance at 1965’s New­port Folk Fes­ti­val) is stub­born­ly cut from the same tra­di­tion­al­ist cloth as Mangold’s career-mak­ing 2005 John­ny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. There’s a well-respect­ed movie star offer­ing up a tech­ni­cal­ly-stud­ied but often emo­tion­al­ly-emp­ty cen­tral per­for­mance, a con­vey­or belt of recog­nis­able scene names and impor­tant future mem­bers of Dylan’s life played by a murderer’s row of char­ac­ter actors, and pre­cious lit­tle insight into the mind­set of its sub­ject or the songs which made his lega­cy in the first place.

A Com­plete Unknown is a song duti­ful­ly per­formed accord­ing to strict long-over­played spec­i­fi­ca­tions because it knows that’s what the crowd wants to hear. For Bob Dylan – an artist famous for can­tan­ker­ous­ly refus­ing to stay in one son­ic place just to make his audi­ence hap­py – it’s a reduc­tive approach anti­thet­i­cal to his artistry. Even the film’s depic­tion of his fre­quent ass­holery and phi­lan­der­ing feels sand­ed down to safe lev­els, not too removed from Walk the Line’s depic­tion of John­ny Cash. Mangold’s one sub­ver­sion, mak­ing the usu­al tri­umphant final per­for­mance be the infa­mous New­port show that almost caused an indig­nant riot, is still an act of unques­tioned myth mak­ing since the audi­ence knows this is one of the most canon­ised per­for­mances in music his­to­ry. As Man­gold and co-writer Jay Cocks nev­er man­age to dig beneath the mythol­o­gised sur­face enig­ma of Dylan, their film ends up an emp­ty nos­tal­gia parade that doesn’t say any­thing of note about its subject.

Yet stub­born tra­di­tion­al­ism appar­ent­ly works. A Com­plete Unknown is up for eight Oscars, and its cur­rent $87 mil­lion world­wide haul is behind only the even more tra­di­tion­al­ist and vapid Bob Mar­ley: One Love for the high­est-gross­ing music biopic of 2024. Per­haps the fact that nei­ther A Com­plete Unknown or One Love take any big swings, aim­ing instead for the inof­fen­sive mid­dle-of-the-road, is why they’ve been the few main­stream suc­cess­es of late. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re tunes we’ve heard before, played bet­ter else­where, with­out any of the unique char­ac­ter of their cho­sen sub­jects to make them tru­ly insightful.

That is not a charge you could lev­el at Bet­ter Man. Michael Gracey’s biopic about Rob­bie Williams is all gigan­tic swings. It’s a juke­box musi­cal, even more flam­boy­ant than Rock­et­man, and it’s will­ing to inten­tion­al­ly make Rob­bie come off as an insuf­fer­able prick just as respon­si­ble for his many set­backs in life as the indus­try which exploits him, more BoJack Horse­man than Bohemi­an Rhap­sody. There’s a car chase, a musi­cal num­ber set to Nicole Appleton’s man­ag­er-enforced abor­tion, and a depic­tion of self-loathing imposter syn­drome that feels pulled out of a hor­ror movie. Of course, it also has Rob­bie rep­re­sent­ed as a CG ape (mo-capped and voiced by Jon­no Davies) which goes uncom­ment­ed upon in-film but is meant as a metaphor for how Williams sees himself.

When you strip away the dar­ing for­mal­ism, Bet­ter Man does still fea­ture the same career high­lights rise-fall-rebirth struc­ture of stan­dard biopic fare, whilst the warts-and-all depic­tion is itself in keep­ing with Robbie’s brand. He’s been self-aggran­dis­ing/­crit­i­cal­ly singing about his men­tal health and self-destruc­tive pro­cliv­i­ties since ​‘Strong’, pre­saged Bet­ter Man with a four-part Net­flix doc­u­men­tary where he was sim­i­lar­ly an open book about his many fail­ings and mis­eries, and there are com­pi­la­tions of his wild Gra­ham Nor­ton Show sto­ries. Undoubt­ed­ly, you can­not make some­thing like Bet­ter Man with­out the sub­ject or their estate being will­ing to risk the brand and alien­at­ing the audi­ence. The film’s already-infa­mous box office per­for­mance – mak­ing head­lines in Amer­i­ca but arguably just as cat­a­stroph­ic in Robbie’s native UK – is evi­dence that not every­body wants to be even mild­ly chal­lenged by an oth­er­wise fair­ly con­ven­tion­al music biopic.

Despite those facts, Gracey’s film does an infi­nite­ly bet­ter job at cap­tur­ing the spir­it of its sub­ject than A Com­plete Unknown. The ape might be a gim­mick but it frees up Davies from hav­ing to do an over­bear­ing imper­son­ation of Rob­bie, instead giv­ing him free­dom to com­mu­ni­cate the work­ing-class Mid­lands inse­cu­ri­ty which fuels much of Robbie’s desire for fame. The musi­cal num­bers gain fresh con­text and pathos with their new arrange­ments, draw­ing clear atten­tion to the men­tal health strug­gles in ​‘Some­thing Beau­ti­ful’ and ‘“Come Undone’’s lyrics. Whilst the non-sani­tised depic­tion of Robbie’s worst impuls­es pro­vides earned dra­ma, a com­pelling psy­cho­log­i­cal exam­i­na­tion that can sus­tain a two-hour film, and is hon­est enough to mask any traces of brand main­te­nance cynicism.

One biopic which com­plete­ly avoids the whiff of cyn­i­cal brand exten­sion – despite how it sounds on paper – is Kneecap. Rich Peppiatt’s movie about the tit­u­lar Irish hip hop trio is in the vein of 8 Mile and Get Rich or Die Tryin’, movies inspired by their respec­tive rap­per stars (Eminem and 50 Cent) play­ing up to their musi­cal per­sonas, only doing away with the deni­a­bil­i­ty shield by hav­ing Kneecap out­right play them­selves to recre­ate the group’s ori­gin sto­ry. The con­cept is tied into the cul­ture of hip hop, an art­form built on self-mythol­o­gis­ing which blurs lines between lived real­i­ty and aspirational/​hypothetical fic­tion, just trans­lat­ed into a dif­fer­ent medi­um. Whilst the sto­ry revolves around the band’s ini­tial rise, Pep­pi­att con­spic­u­ous­ly ends his film before Kneecap have attained major suc­cess, focussing on each band member’s per­son­al growths rather than their professional/​artistic accomplishments.

Tak­ing a heap­ing amount of ener­gy from Trainspot­ting and 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple, Kneecap is hap­py to allow mem­bers Liam, Naoise, and JJ the space to fuck up. To be hedo­nists, louts, trolls who grow into social­ly-con­scious and artis­ti­cal­ly-dri­ven men with­out los­ing the strong per­son­al­i­ties which made them lov­able in the first place. In doing so – approach­ing Kneecap first and fore­most as a film rather than a syn­er­gis­tic exer­cise – it fur­ther illu­mi­nates the intent behind their art, edu­cat­ing the view­er on Irish repub­li­can­ism, the repres­sion on speak­ing the Irish lan­guage, and the despair­ing social sit­u­a­tion for Irish youths that makes the group’s hedo­nism its own act of rebel­lion. Pep­pi­att and Kneecap recog­nise that a music biopic doesn’t have to be an inher­ent­ly insu­lar and self-involved affair. They can speak to wider cul­tur­al move­ments and moments rather than just about themselves.

It remains to be seen if the upcom­ing slate of music biopics will take their cues more from Kneecap and Bet­ter Man than A Com­plete Unknown, but the odds sug­gest it will be the lat­ter, since the for­mer approach risks fuck­ing with the mon­ey. Main­stream audi­ences like being com­fort­ed with uncom­pli­cat­ed Great Artist sto­ries that sand down or spin any neg­a­tive edges (To wit, it’s been report­ed that the Michael Jack­son biopic’s third act intend­ed to revolve around the Evan Chan­dler abuse alle­ga­tions, paint­ing MJ as ​“a naïve vic­tim of the mon­ey-grub­bing Chan­dler.”) But Bet­ter Man and Kneecap prove that at least some cre­atives – both film­mak­ers and musi­cians who sign up with them – are try­ing to find more inter­est­ing, com­pli­cat­ed, and fresh angles on this par­tic­u­lar IP farm.