While the film is entertaining and well acted, it does not do Queen or Freddie Mercury justice. The one good thing about this film is that it had brought a whole new generation of Queen fans, which I'm happy about, but if you want the real story of Freddie Mercury and Queen, then the film is not a good source for it. The real story of Queen is a fascinating and brilliant and certainly deserves better treatment.
But what makes the inaccuracies so unforgiving is that both Brian May and Roger Taylor were involved, you'd have thought that they would have pointed it out and corrected them, but no they didn't. I really like Brian May and Roger Taylor, both as musicians and as people, but I think having both of them being executive producers was a mistake, they should have just been technical advisors and nothing more. At least John Deacon wisely chose to stay out of it (but that's because he's now retired and doesn't want to do anything in public).
Brian May and Roger Taylor made themselves appear more like saints. Roger Taylor himself was a well known party animal, womanizer and coke user. Ironically, despite some of their partying, Queen was definitely not the worst when it came to these things. The only Queen member who really developed problems was John Deacon with his drinking.note John had his roadie make cocktails for him while he was on stage. Not surprising as John is a real introvert, so being on stage in front of all those people must have been draining for him. It's partly why he gave up the business - that and he never recovered from Freddie dying, as he looked up to Freddie as a father figure. And from what I've read, most of the fighting and arguments within Queen was actually started by Brian, mainly because he was a bit of a perfectionist, and he often targeted his frustration at either Roger or Freddie (mostly Roger). Freddie did get involved in his fair share of arguments and fighting, but more often he and John were the peacemakers.
Freddie Mercury was a very dedicated musician. According to their sound engineers and producers, he spent the the most time in the studio out of everyone. In the movie it appears as if he is always late, and as if he never spends time in the studio.
You can understand how a movie might not always be accurate, but the worst part of the movie by far was how they pretended as if Freddie broke up the band to do a solo album. Queen never broke up. Freddie Mercury's first priority was always Queen, he took two years to record his solo album because he did the Queen album - "The Works" - in-between, and Queen did a whole world wide "The Works" tour. The highlight of the tour was the Rock In Rio Festival, where they played for a massive audience of almost 400,000 people. Queen did well at Live Aid, because the band was in good form, and "The Works" tour had ended 5 weeks before Live Aid. It is ridiculous to think that band who has not played together for years, are suddenly going to steal the show at such a big event. Which did happen at Live Aid...with Led Zeppelin. They had not played together for years, and it was pretty bad.
Freddie did not even promote his solo albums. Roger did more promotion for his solo albums. Freddie's solo albums were not as unsuccessful as Brian May and Roger Taylor like to pretend. After Freddie's death, they took some of his solo material and rerecorded it with their own instrumentation. So they obviously didn't think it was that bad, if they still used the material. The way in which Freddie was represented as selfish jerk during this section especially was incredibly unfair and grating to watch.
There's a reason why originally the other members wanted the movie's halfway point to be Freddie's death, and the rest of the film to be the years that followed. They were talked out of it because while Queen may have stayed a good band after his death, nobody cared about them as people. And there's a reason they kicked out Sacha Baron Cohen: he wanted an actual movie, not propaganda for the rest of the Queen members.
While the film is entertaining and well acted, it does not do Queen or Freddie Mercury justice. The one good thing about this film is that it had brought a whole new generation of Queen fans, which I'm happy about, but if you want the real story of Freddie Mercury and Queen, then the film is not a good source for it. The real story of Queen is a fascinating and brilliant and certainly deserves better treatment.
But what makes the inaccuracies so unforgiving is that both Brian May and Roger Taylor were involved, you'd have thought that they would have pointed it out and corrected them, but no they didn't. I really like Brian May and Roger Taylor, both as musicians and as people, but I think having both of them being executive producers was a mistake, they should have just been technical advisors and nothing more. At least John Deacon wisely chose to stay out of it (but that's because he's now retired and doesn't want to do anything in public).
Brian May and Roger Taylor made themselves appear more like saints. Roger Taylor himself was a well known party animal, womanizer and coke user. Ironically, despite some of their partying, Queen was definitely not the worst when it came to these things. The only Queen member who really developed problems was John Deacon with his drinking.note And from what I've read, most of the fighting and arguments within Queen was actually started by Brian, mainly because he was a bit of a perfectionist, and he often targeted his frustration at either Roger or Freddie (mostly Roger). Freddie did get involved in his fair share of arguments and fighting, but more often he and John were the peacemakers.
Freddie Mercury was a very dedicated musician. According to their sound engineers and producers, he spent the the most time in the studio out of everyone. In the movie it appears as if he is always late, and as if he never spends time in the studio.
You can understand how a movie might not always be accurate, but the worst part of the movie by far was how they pretended as if Freddie broke up the band to do a solo album. Queen never broke up. Freddie Mercury's first priority was always Queen, he took two years to record his solo album because he did the Queen album - "The Works" - in-between, and Queen did a whole world wide "The Works" tour. The highlight of the tour was the Rock In Rio Festival, where they played for a massive audience of almost 400,000 people. Queen did well at Live Aid, because the band was in good form, and "The Works" tour had ended 5 weeks before Live Aid. It is ridiculous to think that band who has not played together for years, are suddenly going to steal the show at such a big event. Which did happen at Live Aid...with Led Zeppelin. They had not played together for years, and it was pretty bad.
Freddie did not even promote his solo albums. Roger did more promotion for his solo albums. Freddie's solo albums were not as unsuccessful as Brian May and Roger Taylor like to pretend. After Freddie's death, they took some of his solo material and rerecorded it with their own instrumentation. So they obviously didn't think it was that bad, if they still used the material. The way in which Freddie was represented as selfish jerk during this section especially was incredibly unfair and grating to watch.
There's a reason why originally the other members wanted the movie's halfway point to be Freddie's death, and the rest of the film to be the years that followed. They were talked out of it because while Queen may have stayed a good band after his death, nobody cared about them as people. And there's a reason they kicked out Sacha Baron Cohen: he wanted an actual movie, not propaganda for the rest of the Queen members.
The cold never bothered me anyway