Why a 2024 musical biopic chose to portray Robbie Williams as a chimpanzee
In short: In a bold departure from traditional musical biopics, Better Man depicts English singer Robbie Williams as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee. Directed by Michael Gracey, the film uses motion capture to explore Williams' life through the lens of his own self-perception as a performing monkey, creating a satirical, visually inventive, and polarizing cinematic experience.
The decision to cast Williams as a CGI primate was rooted in his own long-standing description of himself as a performing monkey. Director Michael Gracey embraced this concept to avoid the common pitfalls of biographical films, where audiences often focus on the actor's resemblance to the subject rather than the story itself. By using motion capture—performed by Jonno Davies, with Williams providing voice work—the filmmakers aimed to desensitize and sensitize viewers simultaneously, leveraging the deep empathy humans often feel for animals to navigate the singer's well-documented struggles with addiction, fame, and insecurity.
The production was a massive, independent undertaking with a budget of roughly $110 million (198 million NZD). Filming spanned multiple locations, including Melbourne’s Docklands Studios and iconic London sites like Regent Street and the Royal Albert Hall. The visual effects, handled by Wētā FX, utilized techniques developed for the Planet of the Apes reboot series to ensure the chimpanzee was expressively rendered. In one notable sequence on Regent Street, the crew coordinated 500 dancers and digitally inserted period-appropriate lighting, despite the film's deliberate anachronisms.
Despite critical acclaim—holding an 89% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and winning nine AACTA Awards—the film struggled commercially. It grossed only $22.5 million worldwide, earning the status of a box-office bomb. Analysts attributed this failure partly to Williams' relative obscurity in the North American market, where the film debuted outside the top 10. While some critics praised the film as a daring, anarchic gamble, others found the narrative repetitive or self-indulgent, highlighting the tension between the film's experimental form and its traditional biographical subject matter.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Better Man (film)
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