Elvis on Netflix: What to expect in new Presley documentary 'Return of the King'

Netflix this week debuted a new documentary film, "Return of the King: The Fall and Rise of Elvis Presley."

Publicity material from the streaming service promoted the 91-minute movie with this come-on: "Discover the story behind Elvis Presley's triumphant '68 comeback special."

The synopsis on the platform's website, meanwhile, teases a story rife with high-stakes drama: "To reclaim his throne as the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Elvis Presley had to conquer his nerves, return to his roots — and give the performance of a lifetime."

In fact, "Return of the King" is not quite the definitive "'68 Comeback Special" deep dive that viewers might have expected — and perhaps that's a good thing.

After all, that story has been told many times before, including in another feature documentary, "Reinventing Elvis: The '68 Comeback," which debuted just last year and is now streaming on Paramount+.

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Here are some observations about "Return of the King" (which premiered Wednesday, Nov. 13):

More career, less comeback

Director Jason Hehir's previous documentaries, such as 2020's 10-episode "The Last Dance," about Michael Jordan's NBA championship season of 1997-98, and "Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning," about a 1989 murder case, use specific notable events as the foundations for broader looks at history and culture.

Similarly, "Return of the King" is less about the so-called "'68 Comeback Special" and more about Elvis, in general — his origins, his impact, his talent and the career crisis that inspired him to insist that his first network television special — a ratings blockbuster when it debuted on Dec. 3, 1968, on NBC — would present his art in a respectful, meaningful context, after a decade of phony Hollywood musicals and five years without a Top Ten hit.

In fact, the first hour of the 91-minute "Return of the King" is essentially Elvis 101. It's an energetic re-telling of the famous Tupelo-and-Memphis-rags-to-RCA-and-Hollywood-riches story, and it touches most of the familiar bases: Elvis' embrace of Black music; his love for his mother, Gladys; his controversial pelvis-shaking TV appearances; his wooing of the future Priscilla Presley; the canny "carny" instincts of his manager, "Colonel" Tom Parker; and so on. Important events are absent (no mention of Sam Phillips, no discussion of the purchase of Graceland), but as a fast-moving Presley primer, "Return of the King" may be definitive. (The onscreen text at the end of the film that states that Elvis was 42 when he died is presented like a shock "reveal," as if the moviemakers assume that the average person in 2024 is unaware of Presley's tragically early demise.)

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Awed testimony

Close to a dozen Elvis acquaintances, colleagues, celebrity fans and cultural critics appear in the film, in on-camera interviews that provide moments of calm amid a plethora of photo montages and clips from concerts, interviews, movies and newsreels.

One of those who appears is musician Robbie Robertson of The Band, whose presence testifies to the movie's lengthy gestation: Robertson, 80, died on Aug. 9, 2023. "The way he looked in the early days, it was as cool as it possibly gets," Robertson says of Elvis.

Remembering watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956, Bruce Springsteen states: “I knew I was seeing something that possibly hadn’t been seen before, which was a new type of human being — a 20th century man.” He says Elvis “gave you an allowance to be who you actually are.” 

Journalist Wright Thompson, who usually writes about the culture of sports and apparently is a Hehir crony, is a frequent and useful onscreen commentator. "America was deeply scared of Black culture infecting white children," Thompson states, explaining the sometimes panicked reaction to Elvis' rhythm-and-blues inspired music.

Baz Luhrmann, director of the recent "Elvis" biopic, is one of several commentators who address Elvis' uncertain nature, a legacy of his impoverished upbringing. "He was deeply sensitive and deeply insecure," Luhrmann says, theorizing that the people-pleasing instincts "that made him so charismatic onstage... also gave him an Achilles' heel" that could be exploited by "Colonel" Tom and others more interested in Elvis the star than in Elvis the artist.

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At one point, Hehir presents a clip of Elvis singing "Old MacDonald" from the 1967 movie "Double Trouble," to illustrate how pitiful the song selection in Elvis' films had become ("That, to me, is a crime," says Priscilla, watching the clip). We never hear "Home on the Range," but that folk song would not have been inappropriate, considering that "Return of the King" presents a landscape in which seldom is heard a discouraging word, at least when the topic is Elvis Presley or the comeback special. Criticisms are in fact defenses of the authentic Elvis, as when comedian Conan O'Brien observes that Elvis' hair in his movies became "like cotton candy that they spray-painted black and then they varnished it... nothing's real."

Everyone is on board, in terms of pushing the agenda of Elvis' awesomeness and the comeback special's significance. Not that these are particularly debatable subjects. The first voice we hear belongs to Jerry Schilling, who asserts: "Everything for his future depended on this special." Late in the documentary, Thompson says the comeback special, which presented audiences with a proud, laughing Elvis, “might be the first time that anyone had ever actually seen the actual human being, Elvis Aaron Presley, child of Tupelo and Memphis.”

Elvis himself

As always, the person who ultimately makes the case for the importance of Elvis and his comeback special is Elvis himself. The documentary demonstrates out that while the iconic black leather suit that Elvis wore during a key concert segment has come to symbolize the special's reestablishment of Presley's rebel bona fides, it was the opening and closing sequences that really made the case for Elvis' relevance.

The "'68 Comeback Special" (officially titled "Singer Presents... Elvis") opens with Presley looking into the camera and growling: "If you're looking for trouble/ You came to the right place"; it closes with Elvis' performance of a new song, "If I Can Dream," a paean to brotherhood inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Elvis wears a black suit in the opening number, and a white suit at the finish, as if to symbolize a rebel/angel dichotomy; in both cases, he is framed against a massive sign that spells out "ELVIS" in red light bulbs.

Early in the documentary, Hehir presents some interesting Elvis audio. Commenting his hip-shaking "Elvis the Pelvis" style, a thoughtful Presley suggests he is aware that his brand of rock 'n' roll offers a mysterious, liberating catharsis. "I watch my audience and listen to 'em and I know that we’re all getting something out of our system and none of us knows what it is," he says. "The important thing is that we’re getting rid of it and nobody's getting hurt."