So Rocketman was a pretty neat movie. Taron Edgerton shines in a leading role which showcases his talents, it's probably one of the best musician biopic movies which doesn't bring up Walk Hard and it has a pretty good soundtrack and that's what I'm writing about. See Rocketman is also a jukebox musical, a musical that uses songs by one particular artist, namely Elton John. But while other jukebox musicals often use the songs as window dressing, Rocketman does something different, it adds context.
See the film of Rocketman is about the career of Elton John and tells his story as a musical using his music to tell certain parts of his life. The movie plays fast and loose on when the songs were made, but because the film is Elton John retelling his story to a AA group, it's used for creative license. The songs used in the film are often to employ context for the audience. The I Want Love scene tells the audience about the background Elton's family and what they all think of each other. Honky Cat acts as the temptation song for Elton and the villain song for Richard Madden's John Reid and The Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is the break up song between Elton and Bernie Taupin (Jaime Bell) but then turns into a realisation song. This brings me to another jukebox musical, Ralph Bakshi's American Pop.
American Pop was a 1981 Ralph Bakshi movie telling the story of a family musicians in American from World War I to the late 70's. The film had a soundtrack of various artists like Bob Dylan, Mama and Papas, Janis Joplin, Lou Reed and various others. The songs in this film are used to define the eras the film is set in. During the 20's it using swing music with people dancing but the scene transitions to WWII with the swing music to signify the transition, the 60's segment has "Somebody to Love" signifying it's the swing sixties, but towards the end of that era it then has Summertime but Janis Joplin, because the late 60's was the end of hope.
In the end Rocketman usues the songs it was inspired in interesting ways to tell a story about something and give context for the songs.
