The Marketing Department: Bohemian Rhapsody Trailer

So, I’m a die-hard Queen fan and a screeching Rami Malek fangirl to boot. And the latest trailer for the Freddie Mercury biopic, starring the esteemed weird-faced star of my dreams has just dropped! So, let’s take a look and get every Queen song ever made stuck in our heads at once, shall we?

0:03: Right off the bat, let’s just say this: there’s no doubt that Bohemian Rhapsody is going to have one of THE killer (queen) soundtracks of this year. Queen’s music was a delivery system for theatre via pop music to the Top 40, and it’s so well-suited to the cinematic enormity of a movie like this one.

0:10: I’m very glad the film’s going to lean into the “Freddie Mercury loved his fucking cats” angle. Because Freddie Mercury loved his fucking cats.

0:24: Every time I see Rami Malek in this role, I’m kind of taken aback by how uncanny he looks as Mercury. It’s a testament to his talent that he can pull off both one of the most notoriously deadpan characters on TV and also arguably the biggest stage presence British pop has ever seen.

0:42: The way Lucy Boynton looks at Rami Malek on stage is the way I look at him….whenever. He’s just such a damn compelling performer.

0:53: If director Dexter Fletcher can capture the sheer cinematic bombast of Queen’s music on film, he’ll have succeeded here, and these shots – all deep hues and dramatic outlines – are working for me so far.

1:04: Alight, the “there’s only room in this band for one hysterical queen” line made me laugh. And I’m hoping there’s plenty more like that in the movie, since any biopic with a built-in tragic ending can so swiftly descend into mawkish grief-gawping.

1:13: Tom Hollander is in this so it’s automatically the film of the year, sorry I don’t make the rules.

1:30: How many people have tried to do the Freddie Mercury thing on stage and just wound up looking like daft parodies of their own egos? It’s impossible to tell in these short snippets if Malek will pull it off, but I have high hopes. I mean, this is going to be released deep into Oscar season – they’re pulling for a nod for their leading man, at the very least.

1:50: MONTAGE! That shot of Mercury sitting alone on the stage is just lush. The whole thing looks as though it’s shot as a theatrical performance, with the lighting and the framing and the cinematography, and I think that would meld so well with the subject matter.

2:05: A homosexual hand touch? In MY Freddie Mercury movie?!!?!?!?!?! Nah, but I am interested to see how they depict Mercury’s sexuality, given his place as an icon for the LGBT community and his complex and often publicly ambiguous relationships with both men and women.

2:18: It might be obvious, but I love the way this trailer mashes up songs to layer their meanings and significance to the band’s history into the snippets we see. I doubt it’ll make it over to the movie proper, but I’m into it.

2:30: And that’s us! Overall, I give it a prebook for opening weekend on a scale of opening night to boycott. This is a solid, intriguing trailer, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they take this.

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By Louise MacGregor

(header image courtesy of Wikipedia)