The music biopic, while having long grown stale and corporatized (such is the fate of all American art), can still potentially be fertile ground for the higher echelon of screen acting. Some of the greatest screen performances of all time have been as real-life musicians, like Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles or Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf. Even in the past few years, we’ve seen biopic performances that have boosted the profiles of the stars of today, like Timothée Chalamet impressing everyone as Bob Dylan or Austin Butler becoming an overnight star as Elvis Presley. All those performances garnered some level of Oscar recognition, and there’s one work that’s sorely missing from that prestigious class, and that’s the late great Val Kilmeras Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone‘s The Doors. Despite being a gold-standard example of bringing a famous figure back to life, it barely received any recognition upon initial release, and that’s a crime.
