With talk ramping up about a second Michael Jackson biopic, the star’s fans continue to push back against some professional critics over the way that the current Lionsgate movie makes them feel.
Director Antoine Fuqua’s Michael was an immediate smash upon opening theatrically April 24, with its $97 million domestic total marking the biggest weekend launch for a biopic en route to a current global sum surpassing $423 million. The late pop star’s nephew Jaafar Jackson plays the lead role, with Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Miles Teller, Laura Harrier and Larenz Tate rounding out the cast.
Michael holds a 97 percent fan approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but its critical score stands at just 38 percent. Among the many social posts on the topic was one viral tweet chiding reviewers who had “legit lost the plot” and declaring that “there needs to be a major shift in criticism.” (Needless to say, memes ensued.) Social media users have attributed the disparity to critics taking into account that Michael was intended as a lengthy film spanning the star’s complete life, including child abuse allegations and other scandals, but that the third act was retooled due to legal issues. Instead, the movie ends its story in 1988, with a follow-up feature in active development from Lionsgate.
“I do think the critical response seems a bit disingenuous, just compared to the other string of biopics that we’ve seen,” Joe Vogel, author of the 2011 biography Man in the Music, tells The Hollywood Reporter about higher Rotten Tomatoes critic scores for music films like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman and Elvis, all of which spurred discussion over whether they seemed overly sanitized. “They all follow a pretty similar blueprint, so it seems to me that the Michael film is being singled out, in some ways, because of what’s not in the film, as opposed to what was actually in it. In essence, Michael is about introducing him to new audiences. It’s disingenuous for critics to expect this two-hour biopic that goes to the late ’80s to do everything.”
THR gave the movie a generally positive review, calling it “surprisingly affecting” while adding, “The film leaves itself open to accusations of making Michael a saint, which will not sit well with the cancel crowd.” Michael centers on Jackson’s early years as part of his family’s band, the Jackson 5, and the release of his first solo albums.
Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson in Michael.
Glen Wilson/Lionsgate
“Filmmakers have the right to make the films that they choose to make and with the subjects that they choose to make. It’s the reason why critics are important,” says Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke University professor who teaches a course on Jackson. “The last thing we want are critics who basically co-sign what an artist is doing, whether or not we’re talking about a music artist, filmmaker or author. That’s not the job of a critic. That’s the job of a publicist, and we cannot turn critics and journalists into publicists for art. That’s not their job.”
Inherent in the debate surrounding the disparity of reactions to the film is the awareness that the Jackson estate has been involved in the making of Michael and has a substantial vested interest in portraying the artist in a favorable light. Analysts see biopics as a key way for those overseeing an artists’ music catalog to increase song sales and streaming numbers.
“Expecting a sanctioned biopic to deliver unvarnished truth misunderstands the dynamics: The estate is the gatekeeper, and the film is a catalog activation strategy — a two-hour advertisement engineered to send audiences straight to streaming platforms to rediscover the back catalog,” says attorney James Sammataro. His law firm, Pryor Cashman, represents Sony Music, which owns a stake in Jackson’s catalog.
Vogel, whose book credits also include biographies on Prince and James Baldwin, notes that there “are always some tensions” when dealing with a public figure’s estate. “There was some back and forth, I would say, because they’re very protective,” Vogel recalls of working on his Jackson book. He points out that his book had a generally smooth path due to his decision to not focus much on the controversies: “In my case, since really, the whole point of my book was to put the emphasis on the artist, there weren’t too many issues.”
Certainly, Michael is hardly the first music biopic to see critics and audiences challenging whether the full story is hitting the big screen. And given that the unsavory headlines surrounding Jackson generally came after the events depicted in the first film, it’s possible that the debate over a second movie could get louder, depending on how the scandals are addressed.
“The controversy surrounding Michael is not new: Bohemian Rhapsody was an estate-endorsed, score-settling session that made $900 million despite critical reception,” Sammataro says of the Oscar-winning film about Queen’s Freddie Mercury. “A slew of musical biopics followed in its path. Bob Marley: One Love, produced and endorsed by the Marley estate, depicted Marley as a beatific figure who frictionlessly moves through a world teeming with conflict — the same glossy template, a different icon. The pattern is structural, not incidental.”
Despite their propensity to fuel debate — not to mention the lukewarm critical and commercial response to last year’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere — plenty of Hollywood music biopics remain in the works, most notably Sony’s four-film project about the Beatles that has sign-off from the band and its label. While some observers hope for an ideal world in which independent movies can tell grittier narratives about key music figures while also including the hit songs, there is still an argument to be made that an estate’s involvement does not necessarily preclude a studio biopic from holding value for audiences.
“That a biopic serves the catalog doesn’t mean it fails the audience,” notes Sammataro. “Even imperfect biopics do something streaming algorithms cannot: They restore context. They remind audiences that songs were written by real people, at particular moments in time, often under extraordinary circumstances. For a younger viewer encountering Jackson’s catalog through a playlist, a film — even a flawed, protective one — can be the thing that turns a familiar hook into an artist worth understanding. That’s a real cultural function, even when it’s also a commercial one.”
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