LOS ANGELES — Baz Luhrmann’s startling new movie about Elvis Presley began, the director says, with an accident.

As he was making 2022’s “Elvis” — his Oscar-nominated biopic starring Austin Butler as the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and an outlandishly accented Tom Hanks as Presley’s domineering manager, Colonel Tom Parker — Luhrmann’s researchers happened upon dozens of half-century-old film reels stored in an underground salt mine in Kansas. The footage, which MGM shot for a pair of Elvis concert movies in the early ’70s, showed Presley onstage and in rehearsal for the residency at Las Vegas’ International Hotel that marked his return to live performance after years of working in Hollywood.

Luhrmann didn’t end up using the archived material in “Elvis.” But the discovery left him with a choice, he says: “I had the power and the muscle to either put it back into the vault and let it rot or do something with it.”

What he did with it is “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” which opened last week in IMAX theaters and will expand to wide release Friday.

Part concert film and part documentary, “EPiC” traces Presley’s journey to the International’s gilded showroom — a gig Luhrmann says only happened because Parker was “a super-addicted gambler” — and on to his first tour since the late ’50s. Like all of Lurhmann’s movies — among them 2013’s “The Great Gatsby” and 2001’s “Moulin Rouge!” — it’s an ornate visual spectacle, with wild colors and frenzied editing (the latter by Luhrmann’s longtime collaborator Jonathan Redmond).

But the real attraction is Elvis himself: the perfect hair, the bedazzled jumpsuit, the dark eyes beaming pure sex. Given the increasingly crummy movies on which he’d been squandering his talent, it’s a revelation to see how electric he could still be when he got in front of an audience, the force of his charisma razing everything in his blast radius. “EPiC” wisely forgoes talking heads in favor of keeping the camera’s gaze on Elvis, though the film is narrated with excerpts from a previously unheard interview in which Presley discusses his life and career.

As an intimate and immersive cinematic experience, the result is up there with Brett Morgen’s trippy 2022 David Bowie doc “Moonage Daydream” and “Get Back,” the Emmy-winning 2021 Beatles docuseries by Peter Jackson (who lent Luhrmann a hand in restoring MGM’s footage from “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is” and “Elvis on Tour”).

“It’s a bit like a dreamscape,” Luhrmann, 63, says of the movie as he sits in a suite at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills near the end of a recent press junket. Wearing aviator shades and an Elvis T-shirt under a velvety jacket, the director has been answering questions about “EPiC” all day; after our chat, he’ll head to the TCL Chinese Theatre to answer still more at the film’s Los Angeles premiere. Yet he seems genuinely psyched to be talking — talking yet again — about the King, whom he reckons was in something of a bubble by the time he got to Vegas in 1969.

“He was the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and he felt he reigned supreme,” Luhrmann says. “He didn’t realize the world was passing him by.” While Presley was filming “Tickle Me” and “Clambake,” the Beatles and Bob Dylan had happened; now one of rock ‘n’ roll’s architects was at risk of looking passé compared to the countless younger acts he’d inspired.

The performances in “EPiC” challenge that idea: Accompanied by the TCB Band and the background singers of the Sweet Inspirations, Presley’s voice soars through a richly melodramatic “You’ve Lost That Feeling Loving” then burns with attitude in a mash-up of “Little Sister” and the Beatles’ “Get Back”; “Suspicious Minds” drives toward an ecstatic climax, Presley and drummer Ronnie Tutt egging each other on as the song’s groove keeps picking up steam.

As thrilling as “EPiC” is, this is more or less the same period of Presley’s career covered by last year’s “Sunset Boulevard” box set, which included hours of rehearsal tape from the singer’s preparation for the Vegas residency. “Sunset Boulevard” itself followed two recent docs on his so-called ’68 comeback special, Sofia Coppola’s movie about Presley’s ex-wife Priscilla and the latest book by Elvis biographer Peter Guralnick (not to mention Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” which raked in more than $280 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo).

Does is it ever feel — nearly 49 years after Presley’s death at age 42 — as though there’s simply too much Elvis content out there?

“Not to the fans,” Luhrmann says. What about to him? The director says he wouldn’t want to comment on that. “There’s good stuff and there’s quick knock-off stuff,” he says. “I think it’s about the quality of the stuff, isn’t it?”

In Lurhmann’s view, what distinguishes “EPiC” is that it centers the singer in his own voice. “Elvis stuff is always somebody telling you about him,” he says. “The colonel was always trying to restrain him from speaking.” Here, in contrast, “Elvis comes to you and he tells you his story,” he says. “He sings you his story.”

Luhrmann took some creative liberties to achieve a kind of emotional truth. In a funky rendition of “Oh Happy Day,” for instance, the director augments the Sweet Inspirations’ original backing vocals with the newly recorded voices of a gospel choir from Nashville.

“When Elvis was a kid, he used to sneak into East Trigg [Baptist Church in Memphis] and watch Mahalia Jackson with a Black gospel choir,” Luhrmann says. “So that was a bit of fantasy. We’re fulfilling Elvis’ dream.”

That said, the director points out that “there’s not a frame of AI in this film.” He’s not afraid of the technology. “AI has its function. But what AI does is perfection, and human beings are imperfect,” he says. “When you see Elvis in this film — the way he moves, the vibrations of him, the fact that no one knew what he was gonna do onstage — it’s his imperfection that makes him so compelling.”

Part of what’s empowered Luhrmann to make important decisions about Presley’s legacy is his close relationship with the singer’s family, including Priscilla; her and Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie (who tragically died just two days after attending the 2023 Golden Globes in support of Lurhmann’s biopic); and Lisa Marie’s daughter, Riley Keough.

Still, he denies feeling territorial in any way about the singer. He’s heard people joke that “I’m the Colonel Tom Parker that Elvis should’ve had,” he says with a laugh. “I’m not sure about that. I feel like I’m a curator of the material, but I can’t wait to train up someone younger and say, ‘You go and take this.’”

The thing about icons, he adds, is that their lives and work are endlessly interpretable by any number of inheritors. “The point is that you’ll never get rid of it,” he says. “Average artists sort of get forgotten but iconic artists transcend time and place.”

Who’s the closest thing we have to Elvis right now?

Luhrmann smiles. “I’m not gonna say who’s the closest, but if Taylor [Swift] puts on a show, she really puts on a show,” he says. “Harry [Styles] is about to go out again, and Harry really puts on a show.”

Having spent years thinking about Elvis, Luhrmann has mostly moved on to another larger-than-life figure in Joan of Arc, about whom he’s making a movie for which he’s “building medieval France,” as he told Variety this week. (“It’s gonna take time,” he added.)

Yet even now he’s not quite finished with the King. Luhrmann says he’d like to put “EPiC” in Las Vegas’ Sphere, just a mile or so from where Elvis triumphed at the International. He’s even started to ponder how the movie could be expanded to fit the venue’s enormous wraparound screen à la Sphere’s theme-park-like take on “The Wizard of Oz.”

Says the director: “I don’t think there’s a screen too big for Elvis.”

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St. Thomas Academy left no doubt in its repeat bid at the Class A state swim and dive meet Saturday on the University of Minnesota campus.

The Cadets dominated across the board en route to another championship, finishing with 347 points – 137 clear of the second-place Breck/Blake co-op.

The Cadets won all three relays comfortably. They won the 200-yard medley relay by more than five seconds, the 200-yard freestyle relay by nearly two seconds and the 400-yard freestyle relay by nearly four seconds.

In total, the Cadets won seven of the 11 swimming events.

Senior Luke Mechtel starred, swimming on two of the relays, while also winning individual titles in the 50-yard freestyle and the 100-yard breaststroke.

Kayden Greeley finished second in the 50-yard freestyle behind Mechtel, one of numerous events controlled by the Cadets. They had four of the eight finalists in the 200-yard freestyle, with Paidon McGuire placing second and Sam Quinn taking third in a race won by Northfield’s Will Redetzke.

McGuire was third in the 100-yard butterfly, while Greeley also nabbed a second place finish in the 100-yard freestyle.

Parker Miller finished third behind Mechtel in the breaststroke and also won the 200 yard individual medley.

Cadets sophomore Pascal Zeruhn swam away with the 500-yard freestyle, winning the title by five and a half seconds.

The 100-yard backstroke was the only swimming event in which the Cadets did not have a top-three finisher.

St. Thomas Academy state champions

200-yard medley relay: Parker Miller, Luke Mechtel, Paidon McGuire and Kayden Greeley

200-yard individual medley: Parker Miller

50-yard freestyle: Luke Mechtel

500-yard freestyle: Pascal Zeruhn

200-yard freestyle relay: Luke Mechtel, Kayden Greeley, Leo Ritzenthaler and Pascal Zeruhn

100-yard breaststroke: Luke Mechtel

400-yard freestyle relay: Pascal Zeruhn, Leo Ritzenthaler, Sam Quinn and Paidon McGuire.

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The first hour of “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert” convinces you that the King is the greatest entertainer who ever lived. By the end of it, he’s a god. Director Baz Luhrmann claims he made this Imax documentary so that any poor souls who never got to see the King live can worship him in action. Really, I think Luhrmann is praying that in a thousand years, some alien civilization will discover this footage and build a whole religion around the thrall Elvis’ hip thrusts had over a crowd.

If that future comes to pass, then Luhrmann himself will be elevated as a key disciple. He’s so devoted to Elvis that this is his second tribute in four years, the other being, of course, his 2022 biopic “Elvis,” starring Austin Butler, who was good in the role if not quite iconic. That more traditional film hewed to the genre’s standard rise-and-fall narrative and was dinged mostly because the King’s life represents so many things to so many people — race, class, controlling relationships — that it’s impossible to please everyone or for any actor to fill his blue suede shoes.

“EPiC” sticks to the surer footing of documentary footage: the man himself performing over two dozen tunes — including “That’s All Right,” “Burning Love” and “In the Ghetto” — plus twice that number on the background soundtrack. (I’m not into his gospel hits, but they suit the mood.) A dream concert that’s longer and larger than what fans could have seen in reality, the movie is stitched together primarily from Elvis’ Las Vegas appearances in 1970 and 1972. You can tell which year it is by the amount of rhinestones on his costumes, which become increasingly maximalist.

When Elvis retook the stage in 1969, he hadn’t performed before a live audience in nine years and he’d gotten a little uncool. Beatlemania had dinged his appeal so perilously that editor Jonathan Redmond splices its arrival with images of car crashes and missile attacks. Reporters at that comeback show noted that most of his fans were now — horrors! — over 30, with the exception of a 25-year-old who said he attended out of nostalgia.

Luhrmann quickly sets up the essential framework, then Luhrmann picks up a year after Elvis proved he was still a smash. No longer constrained by moral panic, the Army draft or the decade he spent trapped within the Hollywood industrial complex, this is the King at arguably the high point of his career, right in that sweet spot before his 1973 divorce from Priscilla Presley, after which his mood and health started to flag.

This Elvis comes across confident, breezy, comfortable and funny. In one scene, he jokes about the difficulty of lunging to the ground in a tight jumpsuit (an outfit he adopted because he was nervous of ripping his pants). Later, he switches up the lyrics to “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” to croon, “Do you gaze at your forehead and wish you had hair?”

The camera often seems to be right under his chin, gazing as the sweat on his cheeks and lashes shimmers under the Vegas lights like diamonds. His spell over the crowd feels at once intimate and volcanic. You get the best look at his charisma when Elvis targets his energy at an unsuspecting back-up singer in the middle of “Suspicious Minds.” Slowly striding toward the girl, he hypnotizes her as skillfully as a snake charmer and then, as a punchline, lunges in her direction. She jumps and giggles.

While we become familiar with the faces of his band members, the film doesn’t bother to mention any of their names, not even in the credits. They deserve better, but the film is about how the concert felt, not how it came to fruition. Still, once you get over the contact high of Elvis’ psychedelic neon pink paisley shirt in the rehearsal studio, it’s delightful to see that he gives as much of himself when performing in a small setting as he does in a massive one. He loses himself in thrall to the beat, gyrating his pelvis so fast it resembles a machine gun.

Naturally, there’s a montage of the women in the audience overwhelmed by joy, from a sobbing little girl who won’t let go of his arm to a glamazon in a dangerously low-cut minidress who scoots under the curtain before it closes. The ladies tug on his scarves and toss bras at him, one of which he wears on his head. Surprisingly to modern eyes, when his female fans grab and kiss him, Elvis smooches them back, even after he wades into a sea of his admirers and emerges with the chains on his jumpsuit torn off. If you happen to spot your mother or grandmother in the crowd, well, good for her.

In lieu of mentioning Elvis’ off-stage reality, Luhrmann deepens a song’s effect by cutting to personal photographs that are a little out of context. As Elvis wails the line, “And I miss her,” from his cover ballad about a bad husband, we see a shot of Elvis’ dead mother, Gladys. “Always on My Mind” becomes a brisk yet moving acknowledgment of Priscilla and his infant daughter Lisa Marie. Otherwise, Lurhmann only wants to celebrate the good stuff. There’s no tragedy here. It’s ecstasy minus the agony.

If Elvis was ever cranky, that’s been stripped out. Though we hear him get hound-dogged by nosy questions from the press, the closest Elvis comes to snark is when he sits on a stool to play “Little Sister.” He sings the chorus, then cranks up the tempo a notch and suddenly starts belting the Beatles’ “Get Back,” before smoothly transitioning once more into his own song. Point made: Don’t give those Brits too much credit for revolutionizing rock ‘n’ roll.

Lurhmann’s got his own score to settle. In the Butler version of “Elvis,” he made the case that, as big an artist as Elvis was, he should have been bigger. Colonel Parker, Elvis’s manager, kept his cash cow on a leash, tethering him first to middling B-pictures, then to casinos. The Beatles invaded his country; he never played a single gig in theirs. We never got to find out who Elvis, with his magpie love for all music, might have become if he’d traveled the world and gotten to pick up an ashram sitar.

And while that argument got a little drowned out in the biopic by Tom Hanks’ double-phony put-on accent as Parker, this rapturous salute to the King’s majesty wants to make sure we don’t miss it now. Lurhmann even scores his footage of the Colonel to “The Devil in Disguise.” Hey, every religion needs a heel.

‘EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert’

MPA rating: PG-13 (for smoking and some language)

Running time: 1:37

How to watch: Now in limited theatrical release, expands nationwide Feb. 27

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By CLAUDIA CIOBANU, SAM McNEIL and SAMUEL METZ

BRUSSELS (AP) — How long will it last? Will it grow? What will it mean to us — and to global security overall? Those questions echoed across the Middle East and the planet Saturday as world leaders reacted warily to U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that sowed concerns of a broader conflict. The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting.

Perhaps cautious about upsetting already strained relations with U.S. President Donald Trump, many nations abstained from commenting directly or pointedly on the joint strikes but condemned Tehran’s retaliation. Similarly to Europeans, governments across the Middle East condemned Iran’s strikes on Arab neighbors while staying silent on the U.S. military action.

Other countries were more explicit: Australia and Canada expressed open support for the U.S. strikes, while Russia and China responded with direct criticism.

The U.S. and Israel launched a major attack on Iran on Saturday, and U.S. President Donald Trump called on the Iranian public to “seize control of your destiny” by rising up against the Islamic theocracy that has ruled the nation since 1979. Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones toward Israel and U.S. military bases in the Middle East.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks before media members as he visits facilities of Siemens Energy during his official visit, in Hangzhou, China, Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. (Andres Martinez Casares/Pool Photo via AP)

Some leaders urge resumption of talks

In a statement, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called on the U.S. and Iran to resume talks and said they favored a negotiated settlement. They said their countries didn’t take part in the strikes on Iran but are in close contact with the U.S., Israel and partners in the region.

The three countries have led efforts to reach a negotiated solution over Iran’s nuclear program.

“We condemn Iranian attacks on countries in the region in the strongest terms. Iran must refrain from indiscriminate military strikes. We call for a resumption of negotiations and urge the Iranian leadership to seek a negotiated solution. Ultimately, the Iranian people must be allowed to determine their future,” they said.

Later, at an emergency security meeting, Macron said France was “neither warned nor involved” in the strikes. He called for intensified efforts for a negotiated solution, saying “no one can think that the questions of Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic activity, regional destabilization will be settled by strikes alone.”

The 22-nation Arab League called the Iranian attacks “a blatant violation of the sovereignty of countries that advocate for peace and strive for stability.” That coalition of nations has historically condemned both Israel and Iran for actions it says risk destabilizing the region.

Countries that maintain diplomatic ties with Israel — including Morocco, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates — denounced Iranian strikes targeting U.S. military bases in the region including in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and the Emirates.

Saudi Arabia said it “condemns and denounces in the strongest terms the treacherous Iranian aggression and the blatant violation of sovereignty.” Oman, which has been mediating the talks between Iran and the U.S., said in a statement that the U.S. action “constitutes a violation of the rules of international law and the principle of settling disputes through peaceful means, rather than through hostility and the shedding of blood.”

Careful wording is (mostly) the order of the day

Countries in Europe and the Middle East used careful wording, avoiding perceptions that they either support unilateral American action or are directly condemning the United States.

Others were more blunt. Russia’s Foreign Ministry called the strikes “a pre-planned and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent U.N. member state.” The ministry accused Washington and Tel Aviv of “hiding behind” concerns about Iran’s nuclear program while actually pursuing regime change.

Similarly, China’s government said it was “highly concerned” about the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran and called for an immediate halt to the military action and a return to negotiations. “Iran’s sovereignty, security and territorial integrity should be respected,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said.

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Meanwhile, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his country supports the United States in its effort to stop Iran from obtaining an atomic bomb. He described Iran’s current leadership as a destabilizing force and noted two attacks on Australian soil that were blamed on Tehran. Last August, Australia cut off diplomatic relations with Iran and expelled its ambassador after accusing it of orchestrating two antisemitic attacks in the country.

Despite recent tensions with the U.S., Canada too expressed its support for the military action. “The Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said.

And the U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting on the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran, at the request of Bahrain and France.

Concerns expressed of ‘new, extensive’ war

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank said they were largely unfazed as war erupted Saturday, barely pausing as booms echoed across the sky from Israel’s Iron Dome intercepting missiles overhead.

Unlike Israel, Palestinian cities have no warning sirens or bomb shelters, despite the risk of falling debris or errant missiles. As people sheltered less than 10 miles away in Jerusalem, streets in Ramallah swarmed with shoppers browsing meat counters, vegetable stalls and Ramadan sweets, some stopping to record the sounds of distant sirens and missile interceptions.

But as Israel closed checkpoints to the movement of people and goods on Saturday, gas stations saw longer-than-usual lines as residents filled spare canisters in case of supply disruptions.

Nervousness is perceptible across multiple countries as people fear a full-scale war engulfing the region. Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he was concerned the failure of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran meant a “new, extensive war in the Middle East.”

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons condemned the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in harsher words. “These attacks are totally irresponsible and risk provoking further escalation as well as increasing the danger of nuclear proliferation and the use of nuclear weapons,” said its executive director, Melissa Parke.

EU leaders issued a joint statement Saturday calling for restraint and engaging in regional diplomacy in hopes of “ensuring nuclear safety.”

“We call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint, to protect civilians, and to fully respect international law,” the statement from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa said.

The Arab League, too, appealed to all international parties “to work towards de-escalation as soon as possible, to spare the region the scourge of instability and violence, and to return to dialogue.”

Ciobanu reported from Warsaw and Metz from Ramallah. Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Paris, Paolo Santalucia in Rome, Suman Naishadham in Madrid, Elise Morton and Krutika Pathi in London, Jamey Keaton in Geneva, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Fatma Khaled and Sam Magdy in Cairo, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing and Adam Schreck in Bangkok contributed to this report.