Rocketman: Taron Egerton Dazzles In First Full-Length Trailer For Elton John Biopic

The only way to sell his story is to live his fantasy — and boy, is Taron Egerton living it to the fullest. 

Egerton stars as legendary music icon Elton John in Rocketman, the forthcoming fantasy biopic that tells "the uncensored human story" of the man behind "Your Song," "Tiny Dancer," "Bennie and the Jets," and the eponymous "Rocket Man." 

Paramount Pictures released the first full-length trailer (the second look in total) at Rocketman on Thursday, teasing a kaleidoscopic biopic bursting with color, dazzling costumes, and a ton of heart. 

First centering on Egerton's Elton John in the time before he took on his stage name, sitting at a piano and softly crooning the opening lines of "Your Song," the Rocketman trailer chronicles how the singer-songwriter became the figure fans know and adore today. Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in Middlesex, England, the naturally gifted musician craves something more than a life than that which labeled him a "fat boy from nowhere," a young man with the same name as many people's grandfathers. He wants to be "a soul man," he says in the trailer. And in order to make that dream a reality, he takes a world-altering piece of advice: "You gotta kill the person you were born to be in order to become the person you want to be."

The artist formerly known as Reggie eventually changes his name to Elton (a nod to saxophonist Elton Dean and singer Long John Baldry, though the trailer explains that he took on the title because it was one of his friend's names) and reinvents himself. Stocking his closet with gold-winged heeled boots, cherry-red glasses, and sequined get-ups, Elton builds himself higher and higher on the stage — insisting that his showiness is part of his appeal, that no one pays to "see Reg Dwight," but everyone who's anyone will shell out cash by the fistful to see Elton John. 

Of course, a life of fame and fortune comes with heartache and confusion, too. 

Elton's manager, John Reid (played by Game of Thrones actor Richard Madden), proves vicious and money-oriented, despite once being his lover. "Not really," Reid says when Elton asks if he cares about the enormous pressure he feels. "I'll still be collecting my 20 percent long after you've killed yourself." His sexuality is a tough subject to broach as well, as Elton appears at one point to fear backlash if word of his relationship with Reid got out to the public. Elton's mother, Shiela Eileen (portrayed by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's Bryce Dallas Howard), delivers a cold line in saying that her son is "choosing a life of being alone forever." People around him worry that he'll lose himself in drug and alcohol abuse, and his longtime music partner Bernie Taupin (Fantastic Four star Jamie Bell) questions whether Elton's elaborate costumes are masking the real him. 

This all leads Elton to wonder if he should have tried to be "more ordinary." But, as those who know him best can assure, he was "never ordinary." 

The Rocketman trailer ends with flashes of Elton's iconic performances — like the one he gave in 1975 at the Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles, during which he wore a bedazzled Dodgers uniform and glittery glasses — and closes on a line that sums up the icon's growth from a nobody to a somebody. 

"What a shy little boy you were," an old family friend tells him. "Look at you now."

Catch the full Rocketman trailer in the video above. 

Perhaps the most captivating thing about this new look at Rocketman is that Egerton, who looks shockingly like the real-life Elton John, is doing all the singing. This is a stark contrast to the recently released Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, in which Rami Malek lip-synced when depicting the larger-than-life Queen frontman, and adds another layer of believability to the film. 

A gripe viewers might have with this trailer, though, is that it digs more into the biopic side of its fantasy-biopic mash-up descriptor. In comparison, the Rocketman teaser Paramount rolled out a few months back hinted that the film would be a musical fantasy that subverted the biopic genre. Trailers don't always tell the full story of a film (and they shouldn't), so Paramount releasing footage that looks mostly like a standard biopic could be the studio's way of saving the best bits for the silver screen, pleasantly surprising moviegoers in the process. 

Find out what Rocketman really looks and feels like when the film opens on May 31.