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I didn't watch enough movies to give a better alternative. Not Barbie. Not Killers of the Flower Moon. I liked Asteroid City better, but it wasn't even nominated.
I want to like Nolan films, but on the whole, I don't. Oppenheimer was one of Nolan's better films, but I still disliked its overall structure. School > Communism > Manhattan Project > Security Clearance Hearing > Senate Confirmation Hearing. It felt unfocused to me.
Wes Anderson still got his Oscar.
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Oh man, I hated Asteroid City. I think I laughed once. But also Wes Anderson is really not my bag and I recognise that
Same.
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EDIT: I think J. Robert Oppenheimer is a strange choice for a three hour biographical thriller. A documentary makes more sense to me.
Also I tend to dislike biopics due to the propagandistic nature of the genre.
I tend to dislike biopics for the simple reason that they seem to lack focus. They're slow to get started because they have to focus on marginally relevant bits from their childhood or early adulthood, and the crux of their professional life is represented by a series of only semi-related vignettes. Sometimes, like in Gandhi, this ends up being okay because their entire life was really leading to one thing, in Gandhi's case Indian independence. The way to do it, though, is like in Lincoln, where you focus on one aspect of their professional life that could be a movie in and of itself.
As far as propagandistic ones go, though, Walk the Line has to be the worst example. By all accounts, Johnny Cash was a horrible human being throughout most of his life, yet the movie makes it seem like his life was a redemption story when he met June Carter and found Jesus. The movie conveniently ends before the part where he has an affair with his wife's sister while his wife is pregnant, and that whatever redemption he found came in like, 1992. But after that movie came out I had to endure people playing the same three songs on jukeboxes in bars while telling me that he knew pain and was a great man, etc., etc.
Of course, whatever you think about him as a person, Cash at least is one of the most important figures in 20th Century American music. The same can't be said for Queen (and not just because they aren't American). Bohemian Rhapsody probably has to be the worst example of this kind of propagandizing, and also one of the most effective. First while I understand that Hollywood is going to take some liberties with historical facts to make a more compelling story, I don't expect them to play copy and paste with a band's chronology. This is easily verifiable information that everyone with a certain degree of familiarity with the subject already knows. It's like making a film about the American Revolution that tells you the war began with Washington crossing the Delaware and has them signing the Declaration of Independence in 1780. They also relied to heavily on first-hand accounts from Brian May to get the inside story of the band. I know you have to get it from somewhere, but I doubt Freddie Mercury apologized to them as much in real life as he did in the movie.
But the real travesty of this film is that it created the myth that Queen were an iconic band up there with the likes of Led Zeppelin and The Who. I've listened to their entire catalog and well, they aren't. When they started out they were a pretty good hard rock band, but the only songs from this period that anyone still talks about are Killer Queen and maybe Keep Yourself Alive. Then they made what are supposed to be their best two albums, A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera and they're... good. But they aren't iconic albums. Even if my dislike of Bohemian Rhapsody the song is due merely to overexposure, most of it is just unmemorable. They'd make a series of okay albums with hits of varying quality and plenty of padding until the '80s were in full swing, at which point what would have been padding started to sound substantial in comparison to the dross that made up the majority. By the end even their hits were unlistenable. I don't hate Queen, but I don't know why some people consider them better than, say, The Doobie Brothers, who made at least three albums that are better than anything Queen ever did.
Some people will argue that those who dislike Queen simply have a distaste for the theatrical elements of their performances, particularly the strong allusions to opera and musical theater; if you don't like either of those, you won't like them integrated into your rock music. While I agree with this up to a point, and agree that they started to go downhill when they became "theatrical", it's not because of a dislike of theatrical element per se, it's that they do it badly. Their understanding of opera is surface level, not going beyond what you see in a J.G. Wentworth commercial. And while some Beatles fans will complain about what John Lennon referred to as Paul's "granny music" (Your Mother Should Know, When I'm Sixty-Four, Honey Pie, etc.), it's sincere, borne out of an appreciation for the music he grew up listening to. With Queen, on the other hand, it's pure kitsch. There's nothing wrong with kitsch, but there's a low ceiling for how great it can be. This kind of got off the rails, but I don't think any of this happens without that stupid movie.
I agree with a lot of what you said, but this just seems flatly untrue. They were a hugely commercially successful act with their classic lineup and remained so for decades afterwards, with greatest hits compilations still topping UK charts as recently as 2022. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, fifteen years before Bohemian Rhapsody came out. "Bohemian Rhapsody" was voted the UK's favourite single of all time in 2002. Their Live Aid performance in 1985 was widely considered the greatest live performance ever decades before Bohemian Rhapsody came out. They've been directly cited as an influence by everyone from Judas Priest and Megadeth to Radiohead and Katy Perry.
Bohemian Rhapsody didn't create this myth - the film exists as a direct result of it.
The thing is, though, there are a lot of bands like that. I should also emphasize the difference between Queen's stature in the UK and Europe vs. North America; they were always popular here but never had the kind of mega-popularity they enjoyed across the pond. The best analog I can think of is a group like the Eagles. They're played on the radio constantly, they had a ton of big hits in both the US and the UK but were always more popular in America, were inducted into the Hall, had a massive reunion tour in the mid-'90s, etc. Their critical stature is higher than that of Queen, but both groups were critical whipping boys in their day whose stature has improved over time. Looking at the VH1 100 Greatest bands list from 1998, Queen ranks at 33 and the Eagles at 23. Rolling Stone's 2010 list of greatest artists has Queen at 52 and the Eagles at 75. Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums had two entries from the Eagles, Hotel California at 37 and Eagles at 374. Queen's lone entry was A Night at the Opera, at 230. When Rolling Stone did the list again in 2020 it had Hotel California at 118, Eagles at 207, and A Night at the Opera at 128. To be fair, when VH1 redid their list in 2010 Queen jumped to 17 and the Eagles dropped off the list entirely, but it should be noted that this was after the point when VH1 had burned most of their credibility in the music world and emphasized more pop-oriented acts — Michael Jackson jumped from 40 to 2, Madonna jumped from 86 to 16, and George Michael (!) entered the top 100.
Now, I prefer the Eagles to Queen and they have (slightly) more critical credibility. For all intents and purposes, I'll consider it a draw. The difference is that I don't hear anyone trying to argue that the Eagles are among the top 5 greatest bands of all time, especially not 20-year-old zoomers who aren't so much as arguing it as much as stating it as though it were an accepted fact among anyone familiar with rock music. To be fair, they are very different bands representing very different tastes, but the popularity of country music (particularly pop country) in the United States suggests no reason why the Eagles shouldn't enjoy a similar reputation, especially considering that a lot of the country I hear on the radio descends more from what they did than from what e.g. Willie Nelson or Tammy Wynette did. The answer seems obvious to me: Movies. Not necessarily Bohemian Rhapsody, but earlier. The most notable movie moment for Queen prior to that biopic was the scene from Wayne's World where they were singing Bohemian Rhapsody in the car, which was incorporated into a new music video that was played on MTV and helped the song hit the charts again in the US. The best known movie moment for the Eagles is from The Big Lebowski when The Dude tells the taxi driver that he's had a long night and hates the fucking Eagles. Ever since that movie achieved cult status in the early '00s it's been cool to slag on the Eagles. Meanwhile, Queen, a group who by all means should enjoy a similar stature, gets treated as if they're up there with the true greats. Bohemian Rhapsody (the movie) only took this cool/uncool dichotomy a step further, by cementing their legacy through a largely fictional account of their history. I can't speak for Europe, but over here, there was definitely a marked change in how younger people treated this band after the film came out.
If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that Queen were considered a great band in the UK and Europe for decades before Bohemian Rhapsody came out, but owe that reputation in the US to the release of the film.
Again, this just seems flatly untrue. As previously mentioned they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, "Bohemian Rhapsody", "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions" were added to the Grammy Hall of Fame years prior to the film's release, one of their greatest hits compilations has spent more than 500 weeks in the Billboard top 200.
No, that's not what I'm saying. They were well-regarded in the US, but no one considered them at the absolute top of the pyramid, up there with The Beatles and Stones and Dylan. Not even Led Zeppelin, for that matter (I mean, there were some people, but they were mostly pop fans whose knowledge of rock music was surface-level). Yeah, they were in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but with over 300 inductees it's not exactly an exclusive club. And saying that they have three songs in the Grammy Hall of Fame is like damning with faint praise — I couldn't find anything about "We Will Rock You" or "We Are the Champions" ever being inducted, but A Night at the Opera was inducted in 2018, and even giving them that, they're still shy of Blood, Sweat & Tears, who I don't hear anyone arguing are among the all-time greats. I brought up the Eagles because they're a band whose popularity and critical standing was, by all normal metrics, similar to that of Queen, but who I don't hear anyone claiming was among the top 5 groups of all time. I only brought up the UK because I know they were more popular over there and I don't know if people there have been ranking them to 5 or whatever for longer. I would also note that this is a phenomenon that I see much more among younger people who probably saw the movie when they were at the height of their susceptibility of being influenced music-wise at the time of the film's release. I don't really see too many people my age and older reevaluating their opinions on Queen.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. How many rock musicians or groups have there been since the genre came into being? Surely significantly less than 1% (or 0.1%) have made it into the Hall of Fame.
There have been 116 Novel laureates for Literature since the prize's inauguration. Would anyone dispute that this is a very exclusive club, even if it's only one-third as exclusive as the Hall of Fame in terms of raw membership numbers?
I'm saying that in the context of the Queen argument, saying that they are a top 300 band isn't saying much; they've always been considered a top 300 band. I remember a kid on Reddit asking a while back why Bob Dylan was considered a top artist, up there with The Beatles, Queen, and Led Zeppelin. It's the inclusion of Queen into this category that seems new to me. No one in that kid's position would ask the same question with reference to The Dells and The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, who are also in the Hall of Fame. Yes, the Hall is exclusive when talking about the entire corpus of rock music. But it's not that exclusive when talking about bands that achieved a certain degree of commercial success.
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Los Alamos was the only part of Oppenheimer that really worked for me (minus the colossal cinematic cocktease of the Trinity test), because Nolan is interested in concepts and bored by people. The entire last hour of the movie was an exercise in tedium. Who gives a shit if Opp loses his security clearance?
Exactly. It's not like the prevention of nuclear proliferation hinged on whether or not he lost his security clearance. That's what didn't work for me. Why's the rest of his life important? What's the takeaway? Don't associate with communism, otherwise you'll lose your security clearance?
The movie should've focused solely on the Manhattan Project and the immediate reaction to the dropping of the bombs. Or maybe the race between the two sides, getting more of the German and/or Japanese perspective.
The takeaway is that evil meddling anti-communist politicians drove out the brave, wonderful philosopher-scientists who just wanted to give peace a chance.
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I've listened to the entire catalog of The Who and they aren't either. I liked I Can See for Miles, Behind Blue Eyes, Who Are You, You, Eminence Front and that's it. Five songs out of twelve studio albums.
Queen has 15 studio albums, and I counted seven songs that I like. Same ballpark.
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What? That's neither a new idea, nor is it a myth. Queen is considered one of the all-time greats and has been since I was a kid 30 years ago.
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