. I wanted to know your opinion on Tom doing the Fred Astaire biopic? Personally, I don't care about that man's life, but as long as I see Tom dance again, I'm in.
When I look at it in a biopic standpoint, yeah I don’t care about his life very much either, and when I look at it in a story standpoint, is it something that would actually make for a good plot in a movie? Fred’s work in entertainment and dance is something great that I can see wanting it to be recreated so it can be re-appreciated in a way, but is that enough for a whole movie? There has to be ups and down, so are we just gonna see his struggle with making it in the industry? Again, does that make for a great movie? Especially when you have the family seemingly pushing for it not to be made, which also makes me not super excited about it. It’s not a good look and the discourse on that could overshadow anything else.
Maybe they got the family to agree to it by guaranteeing it would be something that honors him and celebrates his work, (Paul King is known for very light-hearted and whimsical work, so then maybe that’s the whole vibe they are going for) so that would make me think they would avoid showing him in a negative light, which could make for a very flat “character” for tom to play. But maybe there are certain aspects that they would be okay with? Who knows. We don’t know how the whole process is going or if they even got the family to agree to it. I don’t actually know anything about Fred outside of seeing performances, I did get “The Astaires” book years ago when this project was first announced, so I’ll have to read it and come up with a better idea of what they might do. We have very little information about it right now, but based on what we do have, I’m very hesitant about it and wouldn’t have minded if it was scrapped.
The part of me that searches for a positive aspect can find excitement in the idea of watching Tom dance again (he can show his skill in a movie finally!!) and I have liked Paul King’s work as a director before, he has very feel-good vibes to his movies that I’ve seen. the Paddington movies are so cute and I liked how Wonka was shot even though I had other criticisms of it, and all of those were well received by critics, so you’d think this would be another hit that tom needs after all the rotten scores (though if there’s negative press over the family, who knows how that might effect how critics think). It just feels like they’d be limited with what they can do in a biopic, which could bring down the story a lot, it could lack depth if they have to tread lightly. So why not make a feel-good movie centered on dancing and performing as an original story that might’ve just been inspired by Fred’s life? So overall my attitude right now is not super hyped based on what we have, but gotta just wait and see what else comes out about it because I could change my mind.
