I couldn't find a thread on this, if there was/is one. I saw this movie twice already! Something about it really moved me. One of my biggest regrets in life was not attending one of Queen's concerts back in the early 1980's. I had a chance and decided not to go.
Enjoyed the music, learning more about the band, his girlfriend/boyfriend.
It was definitely cheesy, but I enjoyed it. Crazy how different their songs are! The acting was top notch and the musical parts of the movie were great! I’ve been watching a lot of queen performances and Freddie interviews on YouTube since.
A lot of the movie was historically inaccurate though!
I enjoyed the film and especially loved listening to their music with the magnificent surround sound in the theatre. I know everyone wants absolute factual reproductions but I kind of get that they have only two hours to tell about a lifetime and so some of the chronology works better if it is changed. My BIL was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986 and died in 1989. Those were different times and Freddie did not seem to want to talk much about his diagnoses and they didn't publicly disclose it until the day before his death. I would have liked to hear more about how he faced it (there was no hope in those days - it was a death sentence) as we cared for my BIL and saw how totally devastating it was for him and our family. I do respect that the film is more about the band and their music that is the legacy he wanted to be remembered for.
Da hubby and I and another couple went to see it and by the final credits we all 4 were in tears...Da hubby NEVER cries, or even tears up, so this public emotion was a very new experience for him. Also interesting that the entire theatre audience never moved a muscle, till the final credit rolled and the screen went white. I think we were all simply quite gobsmacked by the recreation of the very emotional live aid performance and culmination of the storyline all of us busy trying to stem the tears before we walked out into the common areas of the multiplex theatre. 80% of the ladies darted to the washroom to fix their mascara and face make up - I and my gal pal had the foresight to wear waterproof mascara, but we still had to repair the tear tracks down our cheeks, LOL. The majority of the men simply gathered by the exit and looked sheepishly at each other while rubbing their eyes with napkins pilfered from concession stands while waiting for their women to return. Those of us of a certain age who had watched the original live aid on television were busy reliving the memory of that time too, so the intensity of the emotion was perhaps higher for us and the discussion afterwards more lively than that of the younger members of the audience who only had the movie experience itself as reference. I do think the movie is a great introduction to the music of classic Queen, and perhaps it will bring more fans to the Group as it is now, with Idols' Adam Lambert fronting it. Freddy was certainly one of the best rock voices ever and today's youth need to hear his timeless brilliance and how Queen led the way by breaking new ground or making being different seem cool, for how bands of that era delivered music to fans. I think I would see it again in IMAX the next time if possible, before it leaves the theatre as I probably missed a lot of the visuals due to my tears.
I went to see it on my own as my husband was working and then convinced him to come with me the next night. I have been somewhat obsessed with their music ever since.
I can't believe Freddie Mercury has been gone for so long! So sad, I feel like I knew him. I should stop reading the critics' reviews of this movie. Supposedly, the facts weren't accurate as they were portrayed in the movie. I also wonder what it would have been like with Sasha Cohen Baron in the role of Freddie. He looks like he would have been a better fit?
So during the viewing I attended, when Mary told Freddie that she’s pregnant, and he stares at her and just says “how could you??”, some guy burst out laughing, and suddenly the whole theater exploded in laughter we clearly needed to break the tension
Oh my god I just got back from seeing it and I floved it. Sure, it's probably not entirely historically accurate, but who cares, really? Brian May and Roger Taylor were part of the actual production team so I'm sure all of the changes were approved by them (adding to that: I was gleefully grinning from the moment I heard the unmistakable sound of the Red Special firing up to play the 20th Century Fox theme).
I loved the bracketing of the open on Live Aid day with Somebody to Love but slowed down. And all the music. All the music.
But it was the little details that killed me. So much has been said about how Rami Malek practically is Freddie and moves around on stage and he was absolutely amazing, right down to the way Freddie would flick his foot up, if he doesn't win an Oscar for this it will be criminal. But the others as well: Roger Taylor with his open-mouthed drumming and the way he held his wrists. Brian May with the way the guitar was held, the way he'd throw his body into the solos. John Deacon with the distinctive way he held his bass, the way he'd move while playing. It was all there, all the little details. The love and care in this movie is so obvious.
I cracked up entirely at the infamous Galileo scene, and of course when John just decides to break up the argument by playing the opening bass line of Another One Bites The Dust and you can see the other three just torn between "but we're mad at each other!...but music!...but we're still mad!...but music shiny!"
And then...when Freddie kicked Paul out of his life with Under Pressure in the background...and then...oh god the scene where he goes to the doctor and finds out he has AIDS and Who Wants to Live Forever I just started crying. Of course, then Freddie scolds the other three when he tells them saying he doesn't want them to cry, which just made me cry more.
The Live Aid scene. Oh my god. Honest to god chills. The replication of the famous scenes of the crowd clapping in Radio Gaga. The cutaway shots to the people at the pub getting entirely suckered in. Hammer to Fall. And then We Are The Champions.
'scuse me, I'm off to go watch more Youtube videos.
EDIT: Just remembered one criticism I did have of the movie: the time skips.
I 100% get why there were necessary and why there so many of them. The problem was that the only character development that kept up with them was Freddie's. Brian and John were mostly okay, because nothing was established that made them having wives and families a surprise, for example. But we literally went from Roger walking in with a girl on each arm and calling girls by the wrong names because he's had so many girlfriends to Roger having a wife and kids in the span of literally five minutes (well it felt like five minutes) and I was just "wait, what? what? what just happened?". If you're gonna spend the first third of a movie setting up Roger as a ladies man, you have to give us something to show how he got from playboy to family man. Not helping was the fact that Roger's wife appears maybe twice, is only really obviously indicated as such once, and the jokes about Roger's many girlfriends continue. The shift for Brian and John felt much more natural and less surprising. Overall sometimes I thought they weren't quite sure what to do with Roger, which is odd because the actual Roger was involved. Maybe the extended edition (if it ever gets one) will give us a little more. (Also, I'm just eternally sad at how often Roger's own incredible voice gets glossed over. I get this was the Freddie movie so probably the wrong venue, though.)
Thank you Sylvia for the link to my post. It seems I was the first one to report on this. I saw it again after posting this. I think I understood it better the second time, but I enjoyed it more the first time because my emotions were more intense the first time, I had no knowledge of what happened in what year, until I looked it up after seeing it the first time. I don't really care about the historical accuracy in this case. This is not a documentary.
The focus is on the band and the relationships, plus the performances. The performances were incredible . I wanted to sing along. The acting was topnotch. I give them A.
I don't understand why the critics are calling it a bad movie.
I think some people are very hung up on the way the timelines were screwed with (like We Will Rock You being shown as being made in 1980 when actually it was written three years prior and was already a staple of their shows, Fat Bottomed Girls being shown on their American tour when the song hadn't been written yet, Freddie telling the others he has AIDS during the rehearsal for Live Aid, when actually he didn't get diagnosed until two years later) and then of course one or two outright wrong/fabricated things, most notably the whole
thing where the band split up over Freddie wanting to go solo and having "not played together for years" prior to the Live Aid concert, when in reality both Roger and Brian had solo albums out - and Roger even had another band - years before Freddie's solo career while they were still with Queen, and they'd just finished a tour about ten months before the Live Aid concert. I see why they did it - for the DRAMAZ - but it was a bit unnecessary.
I think it's one of those things. You have to go in remembering it's a biopic, not a documentary, it's not going to be factually correct. The other thing is that it mostly focuses on Freddie so it does feel like there are a few different plots that aren't quite elaborated on. But for some people, I suppose it's kind of inescapable. I wasn't much a fan of the aforementioned fiction while I was watching the movie, but it did really make the moment where he tells them all the more powerful, because you can see their hearts break and even though they're apparently mad at him still at this point they still love him.
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we clearly needed to break the tension 
