Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis and Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla were two Elvis Presley biopics that came out in the 2020s, and one was fit for The King. Elvis is a musical biopic that tracks the true story of Elvis Presley (Austin Butler) from his early days in impoverished Mississippi and Memphis through his glamorous final decade in Las Vegas. Plagued by grief over the death of his mother, he seeks comfort in his marriage to Priscilla, but at the center of his mythos is the controversy around Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), who turns his talent into a commodity and sends The King spiraling into an existential crisis.
While Priscilla changes Priscilla Presley’s book Elvis & Me, it nevertheless honors its source material by following a young Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny) as she enters a complex and complicated romantic relationship with Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), who is depicted as both a tender husband and a monstrous abuser in equal measure. Where Luhrmann’s bombastic tribute to Elvis honors the icon, Priscilla vouches for the fallibility of the man behind the legend. While both films paint a holistic picture of Elvis Presley, only one will be remembered as a definitive encapsulation of his essence.
Visuals & Cinematography – Winner: Elvis
There’s no doubt that the kaleidoscopic scale of Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is an impressive feat of visual storytelling. Luhrmann uses the language of film to tell his tale with an array of dazzling components that fit his subject, a superstar whose glamorous life and larger-than-life persona would have suffered with a more understated auteur. Present are Luhrmann’s typical hallmarks, including dizzying editing, scene transitions, and punchy color palette, but at least in regards to Elvis Presley and his meteoric rise to stardom, they cannot overshadow his narrative, but only amplify it.
Beyond telltale tropes of excess that he’s used in Moulin Rouge or The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann carefully crafts visuals that indicate an understanding of what mattered to Elvis. From the beginning, when he stages the opening credits like a comic book because of young Elvis’s fondness for Captain Marvel, he’s adapting his style to serve his subject. With Luhrmann’s vision and Mandy Walker’s eye for detail fans feel like they’re attending real Elvis Presley concerts in all their dynamic, frenetic and sensational glory.
Characters – Winner: Priscilla
As adapted from Elvis & Me which was written by someone with firsthand knowledge of marriage to Elvis Presley, Priscilla in essence, is a character-driven film that can examine the internal components of a famous relationship with nuance. The characters in Priscilla both seem like real people and also abstractions; Priscilla herself is both a strong woman and symbolically a bird in a gilded cage, while Elvis is both a beloved performer and a dragon guarding his treasure.
It’s helpful that, in Sofia Coppola’s hands, the characters don’t feel like caricatures. By being able to incorporate anecdotal evidence from Priscilla’s book, Coppola is able to form scenes that make the audience feel like they’re flies on the wall, privy to the most private and delicate moments between two individuals with an incredibly complicated history. This approach is essential to understand the drives and motivations of two people whose lives were always in the public eye.
Direction – Winner: Elvis
Baz Luhrmann is a polarizing director, with ardent fans and vocal detractors, but there’s no denying the amount of effort he put into Elvis. While there have been other movies made about different periods in The King’s life, none have been so comprehensive and effective at capturing what it must have been like to be in his orbit. While the film might not have delved as deeply into Elvis’s flaws, it’s not simply a highlight reel of his greatest hits; Elvis seeks to immortalize its subject in a definitive way befitting his status as an icon.
The choice to use Colonel Parker as an unreliable narrator is unconventional, and does not always stand up to scrutiny, but it succeeds in allowing access to Elvis from a different perspective. Elvis the person became Elvis the brand after fame, and the commodification of the individual at the expense of their humanity is a recurring theme throughout the movie. The world will never know what would have happened if Elvis had been allowed to sing the songs he loved and star in the movies he wanted to make in under a different mentor than the Colonel, but Luhrmann weaves it into a Greek tragedy to contemplate for years to come.
Performances – Winner: Elvis
Two performances at the center of Elvis create the foundation of the biopic; Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker, both played with unwavering dedication from completely different schools of acting. A lot of archival footage, interviews, and performances exist for Austin Butler to capture The King’s essence, but the same can’t be said of his manager, Colonel Parker, allowing Tom Hanks a little more creative freedom in his interpretation. As their relationship vacillates between being symbiotic and parasitic, empathetic and co-dependent, it’s with a deep understanding that both men’s histories are indelibly intertwined.
Even the most technically perfect performances (Christian Bale as Dick Cheney in Vice or Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro) can make their subjects come across as ciphers if there doesn’t feel like a depth of emotion behind them. Butler’s soulful turn as Elvis through the decades is raw and aching, and Hanks’ manipulative Parker is menacing because the actor can be so avuncular. The supporting cast of strong Australian actors in the roles of Gladys and Vernon Presley, as well as Priscilla Presley, make the two main leads feel like part of an ensemble instead of two showboating stars.
Story – Winner: Priscilla
When it comes to the story that Sofia Coppola is telling with Priscilla, she is giving shape and clairvoyance to the words of a woman whose opinion was not often divorced from her husband’s. Elvis Presley’s story has been told in numerous ways because of how famous he continues to be, but Priscilla’s story is often relegated to the sidelines. She is a supporting character in other features where she becomes the main character here, and full of the complexity usually reserved for The King.
From getting glimpses into Priscilla’s childhood before meeting Elvis, to the whirlwind romance they shared, and into the depths of their tumultuous marriage, in which he carried on relationships with women like Ann Margaret and Linda Thompson, Priscilla finds sensationalism in real human moments. Even though sometimes Elvis is painted in an unflattering light, the film does showcase The King through Priscilla’s eyes; he’s a means of escapism, an ally in her loneliness, and a sensitive best friend.
Costumes – Winner: Elvis
Sometimes, costumes simply capture, with every attention to detail, the time period in which the narrative of a film takes place, while other times, they express something about the psychology of the characters in it. The costumes in Elvis not only accomplish both of these things but are almost characters themselves. From the Beale Street-style suits that young Elvis wore as he started on his journey with Sun Records in Memphis, to the elaborate jumpsuits he wore as part of his stage shows in Las Vegas, the costumes in Elvis are indispensable to telling Elvis’s story.
Baz Luhrmann teamed up with longtime collaborator Catherine Martin to bring Elvis’s wardrobe to life, as well as Colonel Parker’s, Priscilla Presley’s, the Memphis Mafia’s, and more. Not only did she do extensive research with access to the Graceland Archives, but she painstakingly recreated the clothing worn in crowd scenes for Elvis’s concerts. From the saddle shoes to the sunglasses, Martin expertly created the costumes for big scenes like Elvis’s ’68 Comeback Special, bringing the global phenomenon to riveting, hip-wiggling life.
Music – Winner: Elvis
The soundtrack to any film is just as important as the art direction, costumes, and performances in creating the mood and setting the tone. There’s no denying that the music in Elvis is nothing short of incredible, both as a tribute to The King and his influence on the music and entertainment industry, and as an homage to the distinct Elvis Presley sound that combined the soulfulness of gospel, the energy of pop, and the vigor of rock and roll. Austin Butler spent years training his vocal cords to sound like Elvis, which helped him capture the authenticity of his subject and made him feel like a real person.
Luhrmann incorporated modern hip-hop, rap, and R&B with classic Elvis songs in order to approximate the rebellious impact of Elvis’s music on the time period. Following the success of crooners like Frank Sinatra, Elvis’s music would have electrified the nation by sounding like nothing it had heard before, and Luhrmann’s method of applying anachronism to the songs in the Elvis soundtrack is purposeful and intentional. Elvis’s music galvanized young people in a way that felt fresh, innovative, and exciting.
Why Elvis Was Better Than Priscilla
Ultimately, the best Elvis biopic needs to be about Elvis Presley, and even considering the visuals, storyline, performances, and everything else that went into making both Elvis and Priscilla, only one film concentrated on The King. Priscilla contains a version of Elvis, but none of his music, and he is supplemental and ancillary to the introspective narrative of the titular character. Beyond that, questions of subjectivity plague Priscilla, particularly when considering the fact that only Elvis was given access to Graceland’s Archives and the Elvis Presley Estate.
Elvis is an operatic blockbuster and Priscilla is an arthouse character study, but putting aside cinematic preferences for the types of films they are and understanding that one is a biopic and one is a biographical drama, Elvis is the clear victor. Not only is it eminently rewatchable because of its electrifying performances, visuals, and music, but it offers the best representation of Elvis Presley, both as a man and as an icon. Effectively, it’s the closest to experiencing Elvis any new fans will ever have.
