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.