The Movie Musical Project is a roughly bi-weekly essay series exploring the best and worst of movie musical filmmaking, with an eye to deriving principles from them that can be applied to a new wave of movie musicals. Join us. We brought wine.
I should preface all of this by saying that in my opinion, Rocketman is one of the flat-out best musicals of the 2010s, as well as a deceptively brilliant execution of the movie musical as a format.
Which is odd, because at first glance it feels like it shouldn’t be. After all, this is yet another rock musician biopic that hits effectively all the story beats of the musician biopic formula, and was not just consulted on but in fact produced by its subject through his personal studio, Rocket Pictures. What this initial impression largely fails to account for, however, is that Elton John has always had an uncanny eye for collaborators.
The Discerning Lyricist 