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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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