Ladies and Gentlemen, proof that hipsters aren’t a new thing!
I kid, I kid!
I took a different path - born in '67 - and went all in on both Queen and Rush diving deep into both catalogs and really enjoying it. I appreciated the punk and new wave movements without thinking they were radically changing the world.
How did the hipster burn his mouth?
He ate pizza before it was cool! 
Bohemian Rhapsody’s length is a key part of the film: DJs wouldn’t play anything over 3 minutes.
Or an extra on the set of the Police Academy film featuring the Blue Oyster Bar.
I was there. I speak 70s.
Queen was liked. Maybe there weren’t many who would say they were their favorite band, but you didn’t listen to only your favorite band. If it was good, it got played.
Killer Queen was very well liked. Bohemian Rhapsody was mega. Maybe by the time of Under Pressure we started to think they’d sold out.
No one made fun of their name, or drew any conclusions from it.
As a Chicago kid in the 60s-70s, who - sad to say - knew, heard, and used just about every insulting term around for any group that could be insulted, I can’t recall calling homosexuals queens. I imagine the term might have been more common elsewhere.
Sure Freddie pranced about in some amazing costumes, but he wasn’t the only one at the time who did so.
I never thought anything about the name. Queen, Rush, Kansas, Styx, Chicago… They were just names.
When I was in high school, Queen was one of my two favorite bands (along with Electric Light Orchestra). There was a store in the local mall that sold t-shirts, and they had a bunch of different hot transfers that they could put on the shirts – band logos, and other designs. I wanted an ELO shirt, but they didn’t have an ELO logo – but they did have the Queen logo (the coat-of-arms one that Freddie had designed), so I got that, instead.
I was 15 or so, and while I was interested in girls, I really didn’t date yet, and I had always been a bit of what was, at the time, known as a “sensitive child” (I didn’t like sports, and I was more emotional). I’m pretty darned sure that my father thought I was gay. I came home with that t-shirt, and he gave me some long looks. (For the record, I didn’t, at that time, know that “queen” could be slang for “gay,” and I was pretty clueless about homosexuality, in general, at that point.)
I was into Queen pretty early - Sheer Heart Attack time -and I remember my brother-in-law hearing a Queen song on the radio, liking it, and asking me who it was.
When I replied, “Queen”, he laughed and said something implying gayness in the band. I reassured him, no, they’re not “that way”.
As if 1) I knew and 2) it mattered.
mmm
Bohemian Rhapsody succeeds despite hitting every music biopic trope - sex, drugs, excess, family issues, and band infighting. Rami Malek is fantastic as Freddie Mercury.
I had to apologize to the people around me for any singing and/or air guitaring throughout the movie.
Sent from my HTC U11 using Tapatalk
I saw it last night. I had fun and enjoyed myself but I can fully understand where it’s not doing well critically. If you like Queen and are predisposed to enjoy yourself, you’ll like it. If you’re looking for a “good film”, I don’t think this was it. Shallow character/plot arcs, uneven pacing and I didn’t feel like it gave any more understanding about Mercury or Queen that you couldn’t get from a one and a half page magazine article. The other band members were underused which is too bad since the best scenes involved them.
Liked it while I was watching it, got good audience reception but I can’t say I’d recommend it to anyone who wasn’t already a fan of the music. It’s not like, say, Walk The Line where I felt that there was a better story even without the music holding it up.
I agree with this assessment. I had a great time with it, but, yes, the characterizations (especially of Brian, Roger, and John) were pretty thin. It’s not about Queen; it’s about Freddie, and the band is secondary to that story.
It plays very loosely with a number of historical facts related to Freddie and the band, some of which have already been mentioned here in this thread. Their use of the band’s songs in the plot, including the development of “Another One Bites the Dust” and “We Will Rock You” was fun to see, but the use of those songs was often completely out of chronological order (e.g., “Fat Bottomed Girls” was written a year after “We Will Rock You,” but the movie makes it look like the former predates the latter by several years).
All of that said, Rami Malek does a fabulous job as Freddie, Gwilym Lee looks like Brian May’s doppelganger, and all of the music performance pieces are great.
I saw it today and enjoyed it.
Did you notice the little inside joke there? The record company exec who said, “No one is going to be head-banging in the car to Bohemian Rhapsody” was played by Mike Myers, who had a scene of Wayne, Garth and friends head-banging in a car to Bohemian Rhapsody in the movie Wayne’s World.
OK, let me precede with that fact that I loved Queen as a kid. I loved them so much I haunted record stores and conventions to get press kits, studio handout promo pieces and such. I had a complete collection of everything they’d released including Smile’s record which was released in Japan way the hell back when. I even had people calling me ‘Freddie’ in high school.
It was a good movie with a lot of - to quote Bart Simpson - many glaring omissions. Nothing about the Trident fight, nor the Frankie Goes to Hollywood nor Michael Jackson stuff.
Still, while it may not have broken new ground as a music biopic, I thoroughly enjoyed it. While they fought, the band came across well and there was no effort to make them the ‘villains’ as so many do. It was well done.
Well, he’s certainly one of very few rock guitarists with an astrophysics PhD.
As a band, they had a great pedigree but they happened to be pre 80’s. With nothing to propel them into the airwaves of people listening to dire straits, flock of seagulls and the oncoming new wave bands, hair bands, and every other band that came out sometime after 81, they lost their edge.
Just saw it tonight, with my wife and kids. I’m a passive Queen fan, meaning I know most of songs featured in the movie and like them. But I knew almost nothing about the band itself besides the basics.
I found the movie quite enjoyable, but also found it to be quite shallow, lots of style and not much substance. Here’s a little bit of melodrama and a song you like, repeatedly. And I’m most disappointed that I still don’t feel like I know much more about than I could have by reading an abridged Wikipedia entry.
The performances were great and the Live Aid recreation was worth the price of admission itself. I was watching in one of those XD premium theaters and I almost felt like I was there. Or as one of my kids said, it was “lit.”
Led Zep never got on my radar. Flock of Seagulls was a half-a-hit band. The lyrics to Queen’s “The Works” taught me that in English if you change the spelling of a word to match its pronunciation, you don’t mark it the way you would in Spanish. Flash was a pretty crappy movie, but every teenager in my hometown, from every tribe*, went to see it because - QUEEN!
Like so many things, whether you thought Queen was the bee’s knees or not changed a lot by location.
I loved it. I imagine that people who know Queen better than I do probably will grate at all the inconsistencies and I appreciate that but it had great music and great performances. I really really enjoyed it.
Yes, it really REALLY bugged me that Freddie’s look didn’t jibe with the period of music several times. Urgh.
I really liked Queen for “I’m in love with my car” “We will rock you” But May’s guitar drew me in, mostly. Such a unique playing style. Who doesn’t like great guitar?
Haven’t listened much lately. Probably will skip the movie.