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It’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell vs. Elvis Aaron Presley in a domestic box office brawl.
In one corner, you’ve got the weekend’s big new studio release, Warner Bros. and Baz Luhrmann's Elvis, a highly stylized look at an American icon starring newcomer Austin Butler shaking his hips and fat-suited Tom Hanks wetting his lips. In the other corner, the former number one film, Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick, which was dethroned for two weeks for Universal’s Jurassic World Dominion.
As of Sunday midday, according to Variety, both films were in a dead heat for domestic earnings at $30.5 million. I don’t care how many times you’ve visited Graceland, there’s a certain thrill in the idea of Tom Cruise zooming in from behind to retake the top spot after a full month of wide release. (That is, of course, if you care about these things at all.)
That there’s a race at all speaks to a healthy weekend at the movies, which surely is a good feeling for exhibitors still finding their footing in a post-Omicron environment. In addition to Maverick and Elvis, two other movies, Jurassic World and the Ethan Hawke-led horror picture The Black Phone all scored over $20 million. Lightyear, Disney’s kinda-sorta prequel to Toy Story, came near to the mark at $17 million. The animated family film is, at this point, officially an under-performer, but taken as part of the whole weekend, it adds to the healthy multiplex ecosystem.
Even if Top Gun: Maverick, which co-stars Jennifer Connelly, Val Kilmer, Jon Hamm, Monica Barbaro, Glen Powell, planes, crazy mountaintops, stretched-out faces due to ludicrous G-forces, Miles Teller, and others, were to beat out Elvis in the end, it’s still a strong showing for The King.
Luhrmann’s unorthodox (well, unorthodox for others, not for him) look at Elvis’s life got an A- from Cinemascore, which polls exiting ticket buyers, and has a decent-enough 78 percent at Rotten Tomatoes. Those who dislike it, however, really dislike it.
And while it’s a fool’s game to look to a Hollywood biopic for hard facts, the movie does play fast-and-loose on the issue of race. V.F.’s Yohana Desta investigated this in a piece published earlier this week in a manner that is fair both to Presley and the artists who inspired him.
One thing is undeniable. The more people who see Elvis, the more will be exposed to the relative deep cut “Polk Salad Annie” which Luhrmann uses quite well in a Vegas-era montage.
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