- 6 weeks ago
Film Brain reviews the long-delayed biopic of Michael Jackson, a blatant hagiography which has to moonwalk through controversies, and tries to avoid looking at man in the mirror too deeply in general.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, Michael Jackson moonwalks onto the
00:04big screen at Antoine Fuqua's biopic.
00:23In 1968, 10-year-old Michael Jackson, played as a child by Giuliano Valdi, became the breakout
00:28star of the Jackson 5, under the management of his domineering and abusive father Joe,
00:33played by Coleman Domingo. As Michael grows into adulthood, now played by Jafar Jackson,
00:38he yearns to start a solo career, but even as he becomes the biggest pop before of all time,
00:43Joe refuses to relinquish his control over him. When Bohemian Rhapsody released in 2018,
00:48it was an enormous success, led by Rami Malek's performance as Freddie Mercury, and led to a
00:53huge resurgence in interest in Mercury and Queen, but it also codified the format of the modern music
00:59biopic. These kind of movies are notoriously formulaic, and were absolutely mercilessly
01:04sent up in 2008's sadly under-seen spoof, Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story, a film which has only
01:11got better and more accurate with each passing year, and the more of these films we get. In the years
01:18since Bohemian Rhapsody, we've had movies about Elton John, Elvis, Whitney Houston, Bob Dylan,
01:23David Bowie, and many others. And now, some of those movies are good, but there's also no denying
01:30that these films, most of which were made with the involvement of the artists featured or their
01:35estate, are visualised versions of official biography. They may touch upon their tumultuous
01:40private lives, especially if it's already well known, but there's usually a little deeper insight
01:45further than what's already in the public domain. And this new wave of music biopics has coincided
01:50with a number of concert films and streaming documentaries that function very similarly as a
01:55form of reputation control, and in some cases, rehabilitation. In an era where cinema increasingly
02:01has to feel like an event, these movies feel like concerts for fans who are unable to afford the
02:06extortionate ticket prices. If films are empathy machines, as Roger Ebert once famously put it,
02:12then these biopics and docs put that machine in service of the record label's industrial complex.
02:18They offer the appearance of intimacy and behind the scenes for adoring fans, but they're just as
02:24stage-managed as any performance, smoothing and glossing over any of the uncomfortable stuff
02:29that they don't want them to see.
02:31It's inevitable that Michael Jackson's life would be turned into a film, given he's one of the most
02:35iconic acts of all time. But just as inevitably, like everything else in Jackson's later life
02:41and posthumously, it would be fraught with controversy. Now Michael Jackson isn't the only musician
02:46who leaves behind a deeply divisive legacy, I'm looking at you Elvis, but he is by far the biggest
02:53example. And even years after a sudden death on the eve of a potential comeback, his reputation
02:58continues to be damaged. The estate might have managed to pull leaving Neverland from HBO,
03:04effectively making it unable to be seen legally in the US, but the impact of that and the numerous
03:10trials and accusations casts up very long shadow. And regardless of whether you're one of those people
03:15who adamantly defends Jackson, even without them, as a child of the 90s, the Michael that I knew was
03:20more defined by his tabloid notoriety and baby dangling incidents than by his music at that point.
03:26But clearly there is still an appetite for Michael Jackson, at least by some,
03:31as the 2022 Broadway jukebox musical MJ was a big success. Now that play ends just before the
03:37allegations in the early 90s and was apparently a major reason why the estate decided to go ahead
03:42with making a film about him now. So it's not a surprise then that this film would exist as a
03:47vehicle to launder the reputation of its subject, because that's the entire point for the estate.
03:52It's more just how brazen and obvious it is about that. And the funny thing is it wasn't originally
03:58like that. The script is written by John Logan, who pens Skyfall and Star Trek Nemesis. And as
04:04reported on by Variety, the movie was originally going to confront Michael's accusations directly.
04:09The movie was going to open with Michael looking at the man in the mirror as police approached to
04:14raid the Neverland Ranch. And a significant portion of it was going to cover the 1993 trial with
04:20Jordan Chandler. Presumably it would side with Jackson and depict it as an extortion attempt.
04:25It turns out there was a clause in the assessment with Chandler that meant that he
04:28could not be depicted or mentioned in any film whatsoever to prevent him from being mischaracterised.
04:34And in a delicious bit of irony, given how litigious we've established Michael's estate is,
04:39they didn't realise this until after principal photography. Oops. Needless to say, this necessitated
04:46huge changes to the film, pushing back the release date an entire year while he did extensive and
04:51expensive reshoots that the estate had to foot the bill for. And the amusing part is that this is a
04:58total tactical error. Because if you or I were in the position of making a movie about Michael
05:03Jackson in a positive light, why would you even directly reference this stuff? If you were trying
05:09to be on the defensive, you've still got the spectre of allegations of one of the worst things a human
05:15being can do to one another. You want the audience to not be thinking of that, ideally.
05:20So now the legally approved version of Michael that has finally arrived in cinemas is pretty much
05:25what it should have been all along. Sure, it's clearly a patchwork to make up for the fact that it
05:30lost the entire last act, and boy is that obvious watching it, but it doesn't even mention that stuff
05:36because it doesn't even get to that point. Arguably the best option in a no-win scenario.
05:42If you're going to make a hagiography, at least commit to it. And that's what they did when they
05:48were forced to. It's basically the music biopic equivalent of the Babe Ruth story.
05:54And if I seem to be talking a lot about what's not in the movie, then that's mostly because it's
05:59a
05:59film that's almost entirely defined by the stuff that is missing from it in various ways. Not just
06:04the massive portion of the film that they junked, but other stuff too. A lot of that is more interesting
06:09than what they did include for the most part. So the narrative that has been thrust upon the film
06:14is that it's the story of finding his independence away from his cruel father and refusing to be
06:19defined by him. It's a conventional story, but it works. You can make a compelling film about that,
06:25but they don't. Partly because it wasn't made with that intent. It was only meant to be a piece,
06:31not the whole. Joe is clearly the villain of the story, and in one of the few shocking moments in
06:36an
06:36otherwise innocuous film, is that we see him beating Michael with a belt. He is a cruel man
06:42who derives his power from threatening everyone around him, and violent when challenged. His
06:48behaviour is directly responsible for the insecurities that would beset Michael in his later life,
06:53as seen when he calls Michael Big Nose in a moment which is, ironically, a bit on the nose.
06:59And Cohen Domingo does his best with what he can under some very strange looking makeup,
07:04and he gets a few scenes where he gets into Michael's head and under our skin,
07:08like when he challenges Michael about whether he wants to be surrounded by Yes Men. And we know
07:13that there's a bit of truth in that. But for the most part, he's an obvious one-note caricature who
07:19always has the worst response to any given situation. And he's not much of an antagonist after a certain
07:25point because Michael unceremoniously gets rid of him midway through, and then he tries to control him
07:31later through the victory tour. But we always know that Michael is the one that really has the power
07:37by then. One of the weirdest things about the film, though, is how little the other Jacksons are
07:42featured in it. I know Michael eclipsed them all in popularity, but none of them are characters in
07:46this movie in a real sense. They're basically glorified extras who might not have more than a
07:51handful of lines all together, who mostly exist as backing singers. And that's peculiar given that
07:58several of them are executive producers on the film. There's a massive missed opportunity here
08:02to explore the relationships that he had with his brothers or his sister Latoya, or how they responded
08:07to the abuse directed towards him, or the loyalty that Michael felt towards them. That could easily
08:13flesh out the whole film, but it is totally, completely absent in a movie which has significant
08:19focus on his family dynamics. Something else which is absent, though, is Janet Jackson, who became a
08:24megastar in her own right, but she simply does not exist at all in the world of this film because
08:30she
08:30did not want to be featured in it. So the only other significant Jackson aside from Joe and Michael
08:35is his mother Catherine, played by Nia Long, who is supportive and caring towards him. There's lots of
08:40scenes of them watching old movies together like Singing in the Rain that are clearly not to what
08:45Michael would later use in his performances. Long arguably gets something resembling a subplot where she
08:51gradually stands up to her husband and feels some guilt for not protecting Michael enough, but
08:57most of the time she's largely called upon to watch her son with pride. And that is primarily the role
09:02of much of the supporting cast, be it K.E. Darrell Jones' bodyguard and cofidant Bill Bray, to Miles
09:08Teller as his lawyer and manager John Branca, they're there to look at Michael and just sagely nod in
09:14approval. Branca, incidentally, is one of the producers and the co-exector of his estate to this very day.
09:20By far the strongest thing about the movie is Jafar Jackson playing his own uncle, which is a truly
09:25inspired bit of casting, because really the only other person who could truly emulate Michael is
09:30another Jackson. And Jafar is often downright uncanny in his performance. He gets all the mannerisms and
09:36the voice down perfectly. Giuliano Valdi is also suitably adorable as younger Michael in his Jackson 5 days.
09:43But Jafar is very rarely asked by the script to actually get into his uncle's psyche, largely because
09:49there's very little real conflict after Michael earns his independence. Every choice Michael makes
09:54is the right one, and everything turns out brilliantly. The one major setback Michael suffers is the
10:00infamous 1984 incident where his scout was severely burned after an accident filming a Pepsi commercial.
10:06That would cause him to extensively use painkillers, something which the movie does gesture towards,
10:11but again doesn't commit to. There could be a narrative about Michael dealing with his pain
10:16privately as he tries to continue his professional career, but the movie avoids it once more. We get
10:22a few scenes of him recuperating in hospital, and then it just cuts to him on the victory tour later
10:27in the year. It's almost like the film isn't just avoiding controversy, it's completely conflict-averse.
10:32Michael is depicted as practically a saint. In fact, it goes to great lengths to try and sanitise his
10:37image that it comes back around to being a bit creepy and strange. He accumulates a growing menagerie
10:43of animals, almost all of which are CGI, including Bubbles the Chimp, who gets a big dramatic entrance
10:50here. If I learnt anything from watching Michael, it's that it's almost impossible to take any scene
10:55with Bubbles the Chimp seriously, especially when they play like the scenes from Gordy's home in NOPE.
11:00One of these Bubbles moments is one of several instances where Michael reads from a Peter Pan
11:05storybook to him, and the illustrations in this book appear to have been specifically designed to
11:10have Peter resemble Michael from the 2000s. So he's looking at that, and then he's looking at himself
11:15on the cover of Off the Wall, and he's going, eh, eh, eh, and that's how he gets the idea
11:20for his first
11:21nose job. I'm not making this up! And that storybook keeps popping up as he keeps talking about his plans
11:27for, you guessed it, Neverland. And again, the ghost of who Michael Jackson would become in his
11:33later years looms large, as much as the movie wants to avoid it. There's also the fact that a
11:38not inconsiderable amount of the running time is Michael personally visiting sick children on hospital
11:43wards, which makes for decidedly uncomfortable viewing if you even have a passing familiarity with
11:47the axioms towards him, or the several occasions we see Mickey Mouse memorabilia in clothing, or that
11:53scene where he goes on a spending spree in a toy store. These scenes are so tone deaf that they're
11:58practically inviting someone to cut them together into a horror movie trailer with sinister music.
12:04Maybe that's why the film increasingly focuses on his music. Certainly the strongest stretch is where
12:08it focuses on Michael creating the album Thriller, and the creative process behind it, not least of which
12:13because it allows them to do recreations of the videos and dance moves, which Jafar replicates
12:17perfectly. And yes, that does include the title track's iconic video, which you might recall was
12:23directed by controversial Twilight Zone the movie helmer John Landis, who they've gone to the effort
12:28of hiring an excellent look-alike for, despite being mostly obscured and having hardly any dialogue.
12:34I mean, if you didn't want to depict him, why didn't you just make him a generic director?
12:39The concert scenes are also spectacular and flashily photographed,
12:42but that's the only real time you get a sense that this was directed by Antoine Fuqua,
12:46best known for Training Day in the Equalizer franchise, who otherwise seems to be working
12:51for hire. If there is an authorial All-10, then that would be the Jackson estate and especially
12:56Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King, as it is clear the mandate was just to replicate that film,
13:02but with Michael Jackson. How else to explain why Mike Myers once again pops up in a cameo as a
13:08record executive, this time playing CBS Records president Walter Yetnikov. At least in Bohemian,
13:13it was a reference to Wayne's world. Here it just seems like he's here to reference the earlier
13:18biopic. And once again, Myers' presence is distractingly out of place, as he plays it like a
13:23comedy sketch, as he personally calls up MTV to strong-arm them into playing Michael's videos,
13:29a time when the station notoriously didn't play black artists. Oh look, another potential dramatic
13:35conflict the movie could have focused on. Luckily, Walter and Michael managed to solve racism in just
13:39one single scene. And as the movie increasingly goes on, the more it devolves into long montages
13:45and performances. I'm sure the target audience won't complain because this is the stuff they
13:49really want to see. And maybe deep down, what they actually want is a pseudo-concert film,
13:55rather than anything with the pretense of narrative. But it also gives the impression
13:59of a movie which is trying to ride out the clock with the footage that they can still use. Especially
14:05because for all that time they spent reworking the film with four created actors trying to do triage,
14:11it doesn't have an ending. It just crashes to an abrupt halt. The last scene of the movie is Michael
14:18at Wembley performing bad on stage, which is already jarring because the movie has just done a massive
14:23time jump from the Victory Tour in 84 to this. So they skipped over four years at the height of
14:29his
14:29career just for the sake of one song and then cut to black. The movie concludes with a title card
14:35that
14:35says, his story continues. Roll credits. It's the most hilariously abrupt ending since The Devil Inside.
14:44Obviously this is meant to be a tease for a sequel and the filmmakers have said they plan to use
14:47some
14:48of the discarded footage in that. But apparently they never came up with a better ending than just
14:52three words which simultaneously A make him sound like the messiah, B weirdly implies that Michael
14:58Jackson is still alive, and C sounds more like a threat. And what kind of sequel bait is that anyway?
15:05Yeah, comeback for part two, where his career and reputation is derailed by personal scandal and
15:10heinous accusations, puts himself in debt and then dies on the eve of a comeback. That might be the least
15:16enticing prospect of all time. Maybe they should have taken a page out of Walk Hard and just ended
15:21it with a caption, Michael Jackson died three minutes after this performance. Michael the film
15:26arrives as a misshapen mess that clearly shows its numerous post-production difficulties as you would
15:32expect of a film that had to jersen its entire framing device after the fact. I do think it could
15:36make
15:37a great film about Michael Jackson because on the one hand he was an exceptional and hugely influential
15:42musician that was once the most famous celebrity in the world. On the other hand, he was a victim
15:48of abuse who lost his childhood to fame and was clearly a very damaged person privately and has
15:53repeatedly been accused of continuing that cycle of abuse. But this was never going to be that movie,
16:01not with the estate involved. I doubt that movie would ever get made in all honesty. But Michael isn't
16:07even the best version of what it is, paling in comparison to numerous documentaries on the subject.
16:13Michael's own daughter Paris was not involved with the film and called the script sugar-coated.
16:18I'd go one step further. It's all sugar. It's cinematic candy floss and just as fluffy and insubstantial.
16:25It's not a movie that's going to change your opinion of the divisive pop star, but even his fans might
16:30notice the absences and major dramatic liberties the film makes. I do find it very ironic that attached to the
16:36film is a special trailer for the upcoming scary movie, which is making innuendos about how Michael
16:42Jackson touched his fans. So even on a movie deliberately designed to avoid it, that's still
16:48inescapable. That trailer's arguably more subversive than the terrible looking spoof itself will likely be.
16:54But even overlooking the elephant in the room, and even with the music in Jafar Jackson's
16:59Khmer performance, it's a drama that's only slightly less fantastical than Moonwalker. Who's bad?
17:05This movie. That's what. If you liked this review and you want to support my work,
17:09you can give me a tip on my Ko-fi page or where YouTube's Super Thanks feature which is right
17:13below
17:14the video. Or you can moonwalk over to my Patreon where you can see my videos early among other perks,
17:19including access to my Discord server, and you can also join YouTube memberships for similar perks.
17:24Or you can just simply like, share and hype the video. It really does help.
17:29Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.
17:35I'll see you next time.
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