A Case Against Biopics

Another year, another generic musical biopic. 

James Mangold’s Bob Dylan feature, A Complete Unknown, hit theaters in December after what felt like years of film promo. And ultimately, it was just okay.

Much of A Complete Unknown’s five-year production focused on the live music aspects of the shoot as Timothée Chalamet and his co-stars learned to sing live and play their respective instruments. This was by far the most impressive part of the film, as the dialogue and narrative resembled just about every other musical biopic out there. 

The genre is deeply formulaic. Typically, the artist comes from humble beginnings or a difficult childhood, experiences a sudden explosion in popularity, falls into a dark period often marked by drugs, alcohol, or infidelity, struggles with artistic freedom and authenticity, and ultimately finds newfound inspiration and maturity, plays a final emotional song, and we roll credits. Inspiring, right?

In 2018, Bohemian Rhapsody, a Freddie Mercury biopic, won four Oscars and grossed nearly $1 billion at the box office. The following year, the Elton John feature Rocketman also performed quite well. And since then, we’ve been absolutely bombarded. First Stardust (2020), a David Bowie film, then Respect (2021), I Wanna Dance With Somebody (2022), Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022), Elvis (2022), and finally Bob Marley: One Love (2024), Back to Black (2024), and of course, A Complete Unknown. 

Despite the diversity in artist backgrounds and musical styles, all of the musical biopics released recently have ranged from bad to mediocre. So why is the biopic genre inherently prone to awfulness?

Part of this is, of course, the sameness of it all. Besides feeling like a filmed Wikipedia entry, the genre seems magnetically drawn to certain clichés, such as the dramatic montage of a musician’s rise to fame, complete with concert clips and newspaper headlines. And you have to roll your eyes when a guy in a suit watches the band play in a dive bar. 

Aside from clichė, much of the mediocrity of biopics comes down to performance. While Chalamet’s acting was strong, recreating the performance of a Billboard top-10 musician is a nearly impossible feat. Movie stars are often not great rock stars, and this leads to huge believability issues. 

However, when biopics move beyond musicians, they can have their moments. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) comes to mind for its focus on a story over its subject’s entire life, as does Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), which leans more into aesthetic and vibe than a rigid structure.

In September 2023, Oppenheimer surpassed Bohemian Rhapsody as the highest-grossing biopic of all time. But at a recent City University of New York event, Nolan denied that Oppenheimer is a biopic at all, rejecting the genre altogether.

“Biopic is something that applies to a film that is not quite registering in a dramatic fashion,” Nolan said. “You don’t talk about Lawrence of Arabia as a biopic. You don’t talk about Citizen Kane as a biopic. It’s an adventure film. It’s a film about somebody’s life. It’s not a useful genre the same way drama is not a useful genre. It doesn’t give you anything to hold onto.”

While refusing to classify Oppenheimer as a biopic is debatable, he’s right in one regard: retelling someone’s life without applying a distinct genre or vision to it is dull and pointless. However, if directors aim to avoid the most painful clichés and separate their films from the most derivative birth-to-death biopic formula, the concept is not completely doomed. 

Unfortunately, A Complete Unknown is far from the last of its kind. A Michael Jackson biopic is slated for release in 2025, as well as a Bruce Springsteen feature starring Jeremy Allen White. Other interesting developments include four interconnected Beatles biopics planned for release in 2027, and a (music-less?) Billy Joel film–one to which Joel has refused to grant rights to his music, name, likeness, and life story.