Elvis lives in 'EPiC' documentary, flirting from the 1970s | Jerry Davich

The film premiered at more than 300 IMAX screens across the country, including an AMC theater near my home in Indiana where I watched it with my wife, a devoted Elvis fan. I had no interest in a film about an entertainer who died in 1977, assuming it would be a glitzy compilation of dusty performances that I’ve seen too many times in the past 50 years.

I. Was. Wrong.

“Elvis still has it,” whispered a woman sitting in front of me to someone next to her as the film began.

They were with a 12-year-old girl who sat transfixed throughout the 97-minute movie while sharing a bucket of popcorn with her mother. The theater was more crowded than I expected, mostly with women of all ages, some who giggled and swooned like giddy teenage girls as Elvis flirted with them from the early 1970s.

“EPiC” features restorations of two concert films, “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is,” filmed in the summer of 1970 during Elvis’ third engagement at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, and “Elvis on Tour” in 1972, with montage sequences supervised by a young director named Martin Scorsese. It also weaves in voice-overs by Elvis himself through recordings rediscovered during the making of the 2022 film “Elvis,” which I also watched reluctantly. It wasn’t as entertaining as “EPiC,” featuring the raw magnetism and timeless sexual appeal of Elvis Aaron Presley.

The new documentary, brilliantly directed by Baz Luhrmann, is a high-energy, fast-paced and entertaining montage showcasing the enduring allure of Elvis, one of the most charismatic humans ever. Whatever “it” is, he had it and still does, long after he collapsed in the bathroom of his Graceland home on that fateful August day when I was 15.

During my childhood, Elvis was more of a myth than a man. As I aged into my 40s, 50s and 60s, he never lived past 42, becoming a legend frozen in time and imagery, from his early days as a revolutionary performer to his final bloated shows that felt painful to watch after his death.

In the documentary, during a press conference in 1972 before his sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden, a reporter asked Elvis, “Are you satisfied with the image you’ve established?”

He replied, “The image is one thing, and a human being is another. So …”

The reporter asked, “How close does the image come to the man?”

Elvis replied, “It’s very hard to live up to an image, I’ll put it that way.”

Somehow, he has lived up, or down, to his image through the decades. “EPiC” captures why, and movie theater audiences are resonating with it.

As I watched the film, I kept looking around to watch people in the theater and how they responded to Elvis the man, Elvis the artist and Elvis the sex symbol. Some women squirmed in their seat. Others openly gushed, similar to how young women reacted in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

One woman couldn’t stay still during concert footage as Elvis seduced her from the screen. That woman was my wife, but millions like her still can’t get enough of his music, moves and memories.

In another scene, moviegoers loudly and surprisingly applauded when Elvis shared his famous quote, “I’m just an entertainer,” when asked about a highly political event at the time. Our country’s current political climate is so divisive and acrimonious that we seek any distraction to applaud together.

Even after all these years, Elvis is more than “just an entertainer,” and his life and career are still making money. The film, produced on a $10 million budget, grossed nearly $8 million worldwide in its initial two-week run.

Over the past 25 years, I’ve written about countless Elvis festivals and related events, which continually attract loyal, rabid fans from every generation. Try that with, say, Bad Bunny or today’s flavor of the day musical pop tart.

“EPiC” harnesses an ageless magic about Elvis by revealing and rediscovering what made him famous in the first place. Before he “ate America and America ate him," as the film reminds us near the end.

During the closing credits, as another Elvis song played, some fans didn’t leave their seat. They wanted to enjoy every last image, scene and song before exiting.

The middle-aged woman in front of me who earlier yelled out, “Who’s here for Elvis?!” sat back in joy to take it all in. She looked at the mother and daughter next to her, asking the young girl’s age.

“Well, you raised her right,” she told the mother.

And just like that, another generation of Elvis fans begins to swoon.