According to industry reporting, the surviving members of the band signed off on the movie as a PG-13–rated “celebration” of the band that wouldn’t dwell on drug use or Mercury’s death. But there’s something about the finessed storytelling of Bohemian Rhapsody that feels particularly craven-perhaps because Mercury died in 1991 at the age of 45 due to AIDS-related bronchopneumonia. Other music biographies have compressed and fiddled with history to create a more triumphant narrative, of course. Read: The deeper significance of Bryan Singer’s firing from “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Mercury was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 1987, and Live Aid took place two years earlier, but in Bohemian Rhapsody the former happens before the latter, just because it’s more dramatic that way. The biopic views creative inspiration as little more than a neat plot twist, and believes personal adversity can be shuffled around within the timeline to best suit a three-act structure. In short, Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t just prone to music-biopic clichés-it’s practically a monument to them, a greatest-hits collection of every narrative shortcut one can possibly take in summarizing a legendary act’s rise to fame. At one point, the band starts fighting in the studio and it seems like everything is about to unravel-until John Deacon (Joseph Mazzello) stuns the room into silence by spontaneously writing the bass line to “Another One Bites the Dust.” There’s the ornery record-label exec (Mike Myers) yelling that their new single will never be a hit. There’s a young Freddie Mercury (Rami Malek) being tutted at by his disapproving parents for making music rather than pursuing a sensible career. The film then cuts back in time and progresses through an abbreviated history of the group. Bohemian Rhapsody starts in medias res, on the eve of one of Queen’s biggest concerts: the band’s legendary 1985 set at Live Aid.
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