There is perhaps no film genre more tired than the music biopic.
Even if you haven’t seen one recently, you’ll know the formula: an unlikely hero transcends barriers to climb the charts, has a few complicated relationships, probably gets involved with drugs along the way, and has an expected fall before the eventual recovery and reprise.
While there are more experimental exceptions—2019’s surreal Rocketman bucked the trend, and 2022’s Elvis was a hallucinatory fever dream—audiences are weary of endless examples of Hollywood’s most cliched genre. However, one upcoming film is doing something radically different with the help of cutting-edge technology.
Could it be magic for the genre
With The Greatest Showman, director Michael Gracey helped reignite the popularity of movie musicals. For a short while, at least. Now he’s at the helm of the upcoming Robbie Williams biopic Better Man.
Well aware of audiences’ over-familiarity with the genre, Gracey previously spoke about doing something different with this film. Talking to Deadline when the project was announced, he said: “As for how we represent Robbie in the film, that bit is top secret. I want to do this in a really original way. I just want the audience to… think, ‘I’ve never seen this before’.” After screening at the Telluride Film Festival, it seems that he’s achieved his aim.
Better Man tells the story of Robbie Williams, the British pop music mainstay and headline-grabbing bad boy. It covers his life from a starry-eyed kid in Stoke-on-Trent to his massive success with Take That and triumphant solo career, interspersed with his battles with depression and drug addiction. Williams’ honesty about his struggles notwithstanding, this is pretty typical fare for a music biopic.
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By GlobalDataHow Better Man distinguishes itself, to the surprise of critics, is that Robbie Williams is played by a CGI monkey throughout. Think Rise of the Planet of the Apes meets ‘Rock DJ’.
You know me
Williams is a household name in the UK but less so in the US. So a cynic might argue the monkey is a marketing ploy to draw in unfamiliar audiences. But it serves a narrative purpose, too.
Gracey has explained that the ape avatar represents Williams’ view of himself through much of his career as a performing monkey. Reportedly, the film offers little explanation and the other characters in the film do not acknowledge it, so it perhaps serves to illustrate Williams’ internal view of himself as uncanny or not good enough, never fitting in with those around him.
Like Rocketman’s examination of Elton John, it’s a surreal take on a larger-than-life figure.
But whatever the artistic explanation, or however you interpret the purpose of the primate, it demonstrates how technology can serve to innovate even the most hackneyed stories. Using the same motion capture technology employed by Weta in the successful Planet of the Apes franchise, the film tells a familiar story in a madly unusual way.
Mixed signals
The bananas decision to replace Robbie Williams with a monkey has already generated headlines, bringing the film to the attention of those who may previously have ignored it.
Williams is a big name and has, by all accounts, led an extremely interesting life, but it’s doubtful how much demand there would be for a by-the-numbers retelling of his story.
Hopefully, the gambit will prove to be a success, and instead of using technology to cut corners, Hollywood will start using the latest innovations to make the familiar unfamiliar.
It would undoubtedly make for more interesting stories and could even help to bring people back to the cinema. Attendance is growing, but the industry could certainly use a boost.
