What's The Point Of Biopics?

I think the best biopics focus on a moment or event in someone’s life. When they try to cover the entire life of the celebrity, the plot becomes too thinly drawn. That’s why Lincoln is one of the better biopics. If a celebrity died young, it’s more dramatic to focus on their final days than their early years.

I will stand by the fact that “Love and Mercy”, the biopic on Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys is one of the best biopics I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t just show the greatest hits, it shows things about his life that wasn’t widely known, not to mention the incredible performances from Paul Dano, John Cusack, and Paul Giamatti

The Aviator was so good that for like 15 years it convinced me that I like biopics. I now realize that I just like the Aviator.

Sacha Baron Cohen was asked to play Freddie Mercury; he wanted to portray him as honestly as possible. Since the band members were producers, they dropped him immediately because they wanted to keep Freddie's "perfect" image.

The best biopics tell a story about a subject with sincerity, authenticity, and care, whereas a lot of biopics today seem more focused on being unfocused films full of filler.

My favorite biopic will always be "I'm Not There," about Bob Dylan. It tells a non-linear story, portraying him and his life events in 6 different characters, and as a huge Dylan fan, I found it fascinating

Many biopics are cinematic Wikipedia pages that cram an entire person’s life into one movie. I hope more movies do what Martin Scorsese did in ‘The Aviator.’ He focused on how obsession affected Howard Hughes’s life and career. Finding a universal human characteristic is key.

Rocketman movie was miles ahead of Bohemian Rhapsody. Like visually, and Taron singing, the music integrated with whats showing on screen - liberty with Fantastical sequences... etc etc

Honestly, Orson Wells nailed it with Citizen Kane. He was after the core of a fictional character loosely based on real person (who wasn’t a total POS) in a heavily-stylized but not distracting way. It wasn’t about trying to recreate certain historical milestones. It was a character study showing us things we’re not overly-familiar with.

The problem with a lot of biopics is that they're afraid of scrutinising their subjects; which prevents them from understanding their subjects and saying something meaningful about them. A person's life can't be told in terms of cause and effect; life is too long and chaotic to be reduced to this structure. Raging Bull, Mishima: a life in four chapters, and Lawrence of Arabia remain the pinnacle of this genre.