You can blame Bohemian Rhapsody, the visually and spiritually ugly Queen film that won four Oscars and earned $910m worldwide, for the recent surge in soulless, estate-approved musician biopics. With Bob Marley: One Love (2024), Back to Black (2024), and Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022), the line between “cinema” and “merchandise” has come close to being obliterated.
The draw of Michael, Bohemian Rhapsody producer Graham King’s turn at the life of the King of Pop, isn’t the desire to understand Jackson as a person or as an artist, or to grapple with the weight of his legacy as one of the most pivotal cultural figures of the 20th century. It exists to be consumed as an act of allegiance, as proof of fandom. It resists story in favour of content, in making sure fans see what they expect to see, whether that be the “Thriller” video or “Bad” performed live at Wembley in 1988.
In that respect, it’s hardly unique, but there’s a particular ghoulishness in applying that mentality to a figure as profoundly complex as Jackson. Michael ends in 1988, six years before the singer reached an out-of-court settlement with Evan Chandler, who had accused him of sexually abusing his 13-year-old son Jordan, and 17 years before Jackson was acquitted of child sexual abuse in a criminal trial.
King secured the rights to produce Michael mere months after the release of Dan Reed’s documentary Leaving Neverland, in which Wade Robson and James Safechuck both accused Jackson of child sexual abuse. The Hollywood Reporter claimed that the film had originally depicted Jordan Chandler, but that it had emerged, after production had wrapped, that the settlement with Chandler included a clause stating that he could not be portrayed or referred to in any film. The Jackson estate reportedly directly funded the reshoots.
While a final card states that “his story continues” in what is for now a planned sequel, what the film does include are multiple sequences of the singer visiting sick children in hospital, alongside heavy references to the Neverland Ranch. But the ultimate question of how Michael chooses to depict Jackson in context of the allegations is surprisingly hard to answer, since that would require writer John Logan and director Antoine Fuqua to have some concept of him as a character in their own film.
Jackson is played here by his own nephew, Jaafar Jackson, whose resemblance to the late singer is uncanny at times – as is his larger impersonation, in the way he speaks, sings, dances, and smiles (Jaafar’s vocals are mixed with Jackson’s original recordings in the film). But emotion here is a rarity, and Fuqua shoots the musical performances from such a distance that it’s impossible to get a sense of what Jackson is feeling or thinking for half of the film.
There’s an uneasy tension in the origins of The Jackson 5, in which a young Jackson (Juliano Krue Valdi), at the behest of his father Joe (Colman Domingo), bounces gleefully around on stage to “I Want You Back” and “ABC”, only to slink back to a home ruled by the violent strike of his father’s belt.
But the film doesn’t acknowledge the tension so much as replicate it, turning the long-term trauma and isolation of childhood abuse into a borderline punchline. We’re invited to laugh at how Jackson asks every manager and executive at his disposal to fire his father so he can pursue a solo career, or at scenes in which he confides in his pet chimpanzee Bubbles (a nightmarish CGI vision) or his llama. Domingo, usually an actor gifted in nuance, reacts to his son’s final act of emancipation like a slack-jawed cartoon villain (the piled-up contact lenses, fake eyebrows, and prosthetics certainly don’t help).
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If Michael exists to smooth out an icon’s legacy, it does so by eradicating anything that might indicate intent or agency beyond some nebulous idea that Jackson was a dreamer destined to “spread love and heal”. Apart from the scenes in which Jackson stares wistfully down at a Peter Pan picture book, labels Captain Hook “Joseph”, and then mourns that his skin colour and nose don’t match those of The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, Logan’s script doesn’t care much about its subject’s sense of identity, or the artist’s wider relationship with Black culture.
Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson), who produced Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987), is sidelined in favour of Jackson’s manager John Branca (Miles Teller), now co-executor of Jackson’s estate and a producer on the film. Diana Ross, who was integral to The Jackson 5’s rise to fame, is nowhere to be seen. Jackson’s decision to cast members of rival LA street gangs the Crips and the Bloods in the video for “Beat It” is so shoddily depicted, it’s implied that he ended gang violence single-handed by showing them a cool jacket flick move. MTV’s bias against Black artists is solved with one quick phone call, made by a CBS executive played by Mike Myers.
All Michael does is recreate, in mechanical style, the most famous visuals of Jackson’s career. It’s certainly easier that way. Why bother to depict a human being when you can simply turn them into a product?
Dir: Antoine Fuqua. Starring: Jaafar Jackson, Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Juliano Krue Valdi, Miles Teller, Colman Domingo. Cert 12A, 127 minutes.
‘Michael’ is in cinemas from 22 April
