The trailer for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis kicks off with a voiceover by an old cartoon wizard. No, no, it’s the “Pepperidge Farm remembers†guy. “There are some who make me out to be the villain of this here story,†he says, and we wonder if the people at the trailer factory didn’t accidentally use the wrong audio track. This is supposed to be an Elvis Presley biopic, but we’re pretty sure that’s Geppetto from the new Pinocchio teaser. Yet no, we’re somehow in the right place. At the one-minute mark of this very long trailer, we see the owner of that voice staring up at a stage where Austin Butler is thrusting his crotch at Baz Luhrmann’s camera. It’s Tom Hanks, wearing Jared Leto’s sweaty hand-me-down Gucci prosthetics. He plays Colonel Tom Parker, who was Elvis’s manager and a colonel in the way Colonel Sanders was a colonel. In an accent that is meant to be Dutch, he asks young Elvis if he can be his promoter, and Elvis says he’s “ready to fly.†On the voice-work front, Butler doesn’t lean too heavy into “Thank you very much†territory, only breaking out that Elvis impression at the least opportune moment: reacting to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. This may be the most Luhrmann-y three minutes in existence. Elvis will enter the building (your local movie theater) on June 24, 2022.
Elvis Trailer: Tom Hanks Got COVID-19 for This?
