I went into this movie really liking Queen's music. I had mainly just heard the songs that were really popular, but I knew next to nothing about the band itself and how they came to be.
This film made me an even bigger Queen fan, and it made me wish that I was alive in the 70's and 80's so I could see the magic that was Queen concerts, but the Live Aid concert especially.
The Live Aid concert was one of my favorite parts of the whole movie. Although the rest of Freddie and Queen's story was interesting and amazing, this scene is the one I remember most from the film.
The crowd was easily the biggest crowd at a concert that I've ever seen, and I was even more amazed to figure out that film accurately depicted the number of people crammed into Wembley Stadium in 1985 at the actual concert.
Speaking of Live Aid, this movie made me firmly believe that Queen invented crowd involvement. The way that the crowd sings the songs with them and gets so involved with songs like "We Will Rock You," "Radio Ga Ga," and "Love of My Life" will always be moving to me. That's one of my favorite things at concerts.
It's so sentimental and emotional when the crowd sings back to the singer, and the look on their face when they realize the impact that they've made. Seeing that translated into this film made me love it even more.
The casting was also something that astounded me in this film. I didn't really know what most of the band members looked like before the film, but when they showed actual photos of Queen at the end, I had to do a double take, thinking it was a cast picture. The actors they chose for Freddie, Brian, Roger, and John looked so similar to the real people that they just made the atmosphere and the telling of the story so much more real.
The only thing that I think was missing in this film was more background on the writing and developing of the songs. The movie shows the beginning of some of their more popular songs, but then it just skips ahead to when the songs are completed and being performed.
I understand the time constriction and the fact that the film is meant to focus on Freddie and Queen's journey, not the songs themselves, but as someone who went in interested in that aspect of their band, I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get to see more of the song and lyric development. However, this didn't stop me from loving the film at all.
The main thing that made this film amazing was the fact that Queen's music is still pretty popular and Freddie's story is still relevant and can make an impact today, decades later. That's when you know just how impactful music can be, and how it can make the artists seemingly live on forever.