(SPOILERS AHEAD)

In case you who are reading this may not know, a Michael Jackson biopic just premiered a widespread release on the 24th of April. i happened to see it on the 23rd, and immediately recorded a podcast episode (plus this) with the first thoughts that came into my head.

jesse took me to see it- he had far more of an interest than myself in wanting to see it. He also wanted to record an episode of our first impressions. i reluctantly went, as (a. i do not follow much of what the MJ estate does (and everything i’ve heard of them doing sounds exploitative), and (b. i preemptively knew i was not going to like this movie, because it would not be a serious examination of MJ as a person.

i haven’t read many reviews in depth; the only one i read however, described it as a “wax museum.” The general sentiment has been split between what i estimate are the more hardcore of MJ fans and appreciators, and film critics and connoisseurs. As a person who appreciates MJ more from a philosophical/sociopolitical perspective (though i like his music as well); i am also a person who is big into cinema.

i absolutely loathe this movie.

As a person who has every J5/Jacksons/MJ album on vinyl, has a couple of MJ-related tattoos, and who has poured months and hours of research (and self-discovery) into writing a book on (and not about) MJ (which i stopped writing upon news of his passing out of respect), i can assuredly tell you that i loathe this movie.

As i mentioned above, the sentiments regarding this movie have been viewed as incredibly binary- either you are an MJ fan and are inclined to unconditionally love it, or you are a film critic inclined to hate on it. Like all of the characters in the movie, there can never be nuance.

People who pointed out issues with inconsistencies and plot holes have been met with arguments that they are more interested in seeing a movie about the downfall of a man, than in celebrating him. i would argue that an erasure of MJ’s contradictions do a disservice to him, and essentially make him into a caricature.

i loathe this movie, because i thought it absolutely did a disservice to Michael Jackson as a person.

i don’t think it was the estate’s intention to honor Michael as a person. For them, Michael Jackson is one thing: intellectual property- a product. He’s no longer alive in the physical realm, so it’s not necessary to humanize him, or address any contradictions that would dispel the myth of the idealized, eternal wunderkind. They would never dare to tarnish the brand.

One of the only reviews i’ve read in full succinctly stated, “It’s not guided by creative choices but by the incentives of its various stakeholders.”

i have not gotten far, but in my search for some semblance of balance regarding reviews, in my rare moment of comment writing on youtube, i wrote a response to someone who identified, if i’m not mistaken, as an historian of MJ (and of 90s R&B in particular). This person fascinated me, because it was refreshing to see someone who was into research (versus being an uncritical fan).

While they did have some mild critiques, they generally loved the movie. As a person who has also been called an MJ historian due to the work i’ve done on the now shelved book- though i personally don’t consider myself to be one- i wanted to give a perspective of someone who held a different viewpoint. i understood and accepted that i am most likely a minority in this perspective.

Of course, when i went to post the comment, it got rejected. My guess is that it went past the number of characters you can post, but i have a mini joke which states that my post got flagged by fans, and it automatically got rejected.

After the posting failure, i immediately decided to utilize it as a blog post:

i think i may be one of the only folks who appreciates MJ, but thought this movie was abysmal. The music aspect was great (obviously), but personally, that’s not a thing which compels me to watch a film. This biopic is the reason i don’t watch Hollywood produced movies with this type of budget. It was all flash, and no substance. The character development was little to nil. Everyone to me was presented as a caricature, with very little nuance. The majority of the movie centered around MJ and Bill Bray (the only person i felt who was convincingly cast, regarding looks. To me, Jaafar looked just like his father as opposed to his uncle, except for the ‘Bad’ segments). i kept wanting to see Jaafar play some bass for half the movie. Bray was indeed MJ’s security in real life, but was portrayed more as a guardian angel (looking after ‘man child’ MJ) in the movie.

Speaking of the siblings… save for LaToya, they felt like an afterthought. Their role in Michael’s life felt tertiary to me. The casting director obviously could not find anyone who looked AT ALL like the siblings, because chile… i don’t think you necessarily need to have a spitting image of someone, but i didn’t find anyone embodying any of these characters. The brothers felt like NPCs, as the kids today say. Angela Bassett didn’t look like Katherine Jackson, but she embodied her character enough where you ended up thinking, ‘I see it’. i did not get Katherine from Nia Long at all. She felt too timid of a character. i feel someone like Jennifer Lewis would have been powerful. And Colman Domingo (with the pancake makeup and weird prosthetic) ended up looking like Eriq LaSalle in Coming To America, or Stoney Jackson… And even if Janet or Rebbie declined for their likenesses to be in the movie, the absolute erasure of them was strange.

How on earth are you going to show a scene of them singing ‘Big Boy’, but not include mention of Steeltown records, or show any sort of regional exposure they got, before going to Motown?

With LaToya, the film could have touched upon (as a vehicle for exploring MJ coming into his own as a writer) him penning ‘Nighttime Lover’ for her. They also didn’t reference the apartment they shared together in NYC… which of course was part of the ‘Wiz’ and Studio 54 era. 

The CGI animals were too much for me to take, as were the AI audience scenes. i was looking for a misspelled sign.

The Pepsi scene was weak, because it telegraphed too hard. Also, if you look at the actual film of the incident, Michael didn’t necessarily feel the flames initially. He ran down the stairs and danced around without incident, then felt something- then had a gang of folks come at him to help, and extinguish the fire. The Dodgers Stadium scene also wasn’t great, because every video of that tour i’ve seen, MJ was pretty pissed off. There was a particular aggression in his performance. He also wasn’t focused on looking at his father that hard when he announced that it was to be his last show with his brothers. Again, that scene was ‘dramatic license’ gone bad. Sometimes, it’s okay to just let things happen, as opposed to always forcefully handing it to the audience.

Something that would have fared well as a plot point regarding the journey of MJ showing independence, is touching on the Victory lottery controversy, MJ’s antagonism toward Don King, and the brothers’ appearance at Tavern On The Green (inspired by the letter MJ received from a girl named LaDonna), where he announced the cessation of the ticket lottery.

The direction the movie decided to go was to look at MJ’s journey becoming independent of his father, and not much else. i don’t think that would be a bad direction to take- if that was the focus. They could have, again, fleshed this out with more character development. But because they sold the movie as ‘The Man, The Myth, The Legend- Michael Jackson’, this is what they were stuck with. And it was poorly done, because it was one-dimensional, mythologizing and lionizing (and honestly, infantalizing) him, as opposed to humanizing his journey. As opposed to fueling a journey of maturity, he ran behind other adults to follow up on the things that were the most challenging to him, while reiterating that he’s “no longer a child, but a man.” 

The way they softly touched on the ‘rivalry’ between Berry Gordy and Joe Jackson (a battle between two equally problematic men, as father and father figure/surrogate) could have also been expounded upon, but they never explored this again. The fact that Diana Ross was missing from MJ’s story was also strange. Again, she may not have wanted her likeness depicted, but to mention no reference to her AT ALL? This man essentially idealized her as a child, and wanted to marry her, but she just was not there. She was a MASSIVE part of his development as a performer… and she did not exist in the world of this movie. Neither did Stevie Wonder or Smokey Robinson, despite him getting a quick mention. 

The scene with Gladys Knight (and (maybe) the Pips) bothered me; never mind the fact that the woman they had playing her looked or sounded nothing like her. During the end credits, it was mentioned that Berry Gordy discovered the J5 (when they made note about their ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ incoherent time jump). This statement absolutely disrespects Gladys Knight and Bobby Taylor, who ended up telling Gordy about them. When Suzanne DePasse gives Joe her business card, i was like, ‘Huh?’ In the next scene, they’re sitting in the Motown office, with no mention of their audition tape. 

Diana Ross was also the star of The Wiz- again, a whole era this movie missed- and where MJ first began seriously working with Quincy Jones. If they snuck a peak of a John Landis, they could have snuck a peek of a Sidney Lumet. If it wasn’t enough in the budget to include all of these things, they could have easily put some easter eggs, or made quick mention of them as a plot point. But they skipped over whole eras which were crucial to not only his development as a person, but as an artist. 

‘Forever, Michael’ was the one album where you really began to see some of the inflections he became famous for; he even spoke in interviews about how that album gave him a few more opportunities for creative input. But NONE of the Motown solo works were included- not even Ben. Despite some of the music being featured, none of the Jacksons-era albums were covered, in any kind of detail. If they were serious about their mission of depicting Michael’s journey of coming into his own as an artist, they could have had a quick scene where they referenced ‘Blues Away’, the first song that was officially released, where he was the sole writer. But Gamble and Huff were nowhere to be found in this movie either. ‘Destiny’- the first album where they all wrote on their own (save one song) was also expunged from the story. 

The fact that a neighbor gave them the name ‘Jackson 5’ and not Joseph reminded me of how Ella (a crucial part of Malcolm’s life) was left out of the Malcolm X movie. The fact that Motown sued in order to keep the J5 name was left out. The fact that MJ’s first rhinoplasty was due to him (as per the official story) breaking his nose was left out of the movie. The fact that Manu Dibango and ‘Soul Makossa’ (which is where MJ got the ‘Mama Se Mama Sa Mama Ku Sa’ from) and Frankie Crocker were left out of the story confounds me. The fact that Rod Temperton (who wrote ‘Starlight’ (which turned into ‘Thriller’) got a brief mention but wasn’t shown as being present for the sessions- nor do i recall them mentioning he wrote ‘Thriller’- confounds me even more. At least they showed Bruce Swedien though.

The fact that Frank DiLeo (MJ’s Tom Parker in a way) was missing from this movie (but showed John Branca as a pretty significant character) confounds me in a triple fashion. To go from Thriller to Bad without mention of the ‘Elephant man’ and hyperbaric chamber stunts, as well as him going to Australia to purchase the ATV catalog (where the caveat was him making an appearance on some tv show), showed me that this movie/the script had no interest in showing how MJ had the capacity to manipulate the media in his own way, or that he was focused on getting what he wanted, and not necessarily being nice about it.

Given that MJ divulged in the 90s (through the infamous conversations had with Glenda and Sam Stein) that he did have an ED (saying it was the one thing he had control over in his life), the fact that they used food as a significant bonding mechanism was ALSO strange to me. During those tapes, not only did he acknowledge the lie of the Motown machine (and the press run of Diana Ross ‘discovering’ them); he also countered something which was somewhat of an overarching theme in the movie.

While Bill Bray and Joseph emphasized the importance of family- which Michael echoed; in his conversation with the Steins, he discussed the facade of the ‘2300 Jackson Street’ song, as well as the ‘American Dream’ mini-series. “You have to act like all the stuff that happened with, with Joseph and stuff.. It’s like we’re supposed to be the perfect family, you know, because they putting our name out there and stuff… it’s supposed to, you know, look good because it sells records and it attracts people.”

A few minutes later, he says: “‘The Jackson Family; they’re so wholesome.’ And we all took pictures together back in the Jackson 5 days with Motown and stuff like that. We were all so close and Joseph was, you know, ‘Papa Joe’… And then LaToya told the truth… ‘The Jackson family. They lived in a ghetto in Gary, Indiana and they made it, and they’re so tight knit.’ Tight knit, my ass…”

Regarding family, it was clear he was closest to both sister LaToya and Katherine, his mother. While this was somewhat done accurately in the movie, it again, gave these relationships little room to breathe.

Moving on; the fact that it was insinuated that the ‘Thriller’ film was released BEFORE ‘Billie Jean’ was a strange decision to make, as the Thriller VHS was released in 1984, if i’m not mistaken. i remember first seeing it back then, MJ doll in hand. i had nightmares for a while after watching it.  In the midst of all of this, there was no mention of Michael Peters or Vincent Patterson, the choreographers of ‘Beat It’ and ‘Thriller’. 

To display a bit of tension in the film, they could have shown the era where the public began to show ‘Thriller fatigue’, which would have shown how truly ubiquitous this album was.

During the ‘Motown 25’ scene, they consistently showed a close-up image of this little kid’s face; i kept wondering if that kid was supposed to be Emmanuel Lewis- again, another person who was integral to that whole era of MJ, was was not mentioned at all, nor was Brooke Shields. There was the ‘insider’ joke of MJ saying “If I don’t get it, Prince will take it” (or something like that); however, that was only one of a few ‘true’ easter eggs i could find in the movie.

Speaking of Emmanuel Lewis; while MJ’s relationships with kids did not negatively impact his image until the 90s (which of course was not covered in this movie); it would be incorrect to say that how he carried himself was not considered strange in some circles. To satiate some of the critiques of omission toward any aspect of this controversy (as well as please the fans who maintain his innocence), the movie could have utilized the script to have a ‘wink an a nod’ approach: ‘People keep telling me I’m weird because I spend time with kids, but they’re helping me to get in touch with the childhood I never had.’

Next scene.

Does this go beyond the superficial? Absolutely not. However, it does give a tiny bit of insight to what drove him to do the things he did. The movie could have even explored how he resisted notions of ‘traditional manhood’ (hence the barrage of homophobic comments toward him at the time), while (eventually) simultaneously idealizing some aspects of it, such as compulsory sexuality.

They could have touched on the ‘Billie Jean’ controversy; they could have touched on the Jo’Vonnie or the Gina Sprague controversies (since Joe was already depicted as an evil archetype, why not go farther with it?); the fact that only Michael was getting beat and not the rest of them- never mind the fact that it was because of Tito getting caught with Joe’s guitar (and getting beat) was why the J5 started- was also strange to me. Why not explore his existential crisis regarding being a JW and recording/filming ‘Thriller’? Why not explore his creative rifts with Quincy Jones during the Bad sessions? As much as the concert footage was fine (and i danced hard to all the musical sections), i would have been okay with that stuff NOT being there, if i knew there would be a more philosophical exploration of MJ’s life. i wanna see more fleshed out details around what makes him tick as a person. i wanna see some character development. i wanna see contemplative elements. i wanna see a film, not a glorified electronic press kit, propped up to clean up an image of someone who was historically very flawed, just as we all are.

There’s so much more i could say, but this was already quite lengthy. Overall, i think if one is more of a film enthusiast/connoisseur, they might not be as into this film. This is standard popcorn fare. However, if you are focused on the flashiness and the music (or love the image of MJ more than anything), you most likely will love it. In terms of critiques, i’m seeing people who aren’t into it focus more on thematic elements and inconsistencies; the people i see loving this film are focused more on either their love for MJ and his music, and not as focused on film as a medium. That said, the people who stand to benefit the most from this are the estate and Lionsgate/Universal. The film, in my view, is too mixed up chronologically and leaves out way too many crucial details to be satisfying for the hardcore appreciator; for the casual folks (or people new to the world of MJ), it doesn’t give you much to work with either. i don’t think there was anything layered at all about how Michael was depicted. He, like everyone else in this movie, fell flat, which is why i think there was such a heavy focus on the music/visuals.

Again, i am not saying you need to include every single detail of his life into a two hour movie. But this movie literally explored or touched upon nothing that was of value to his true development, as far as i am concerned.