In modern culture, the cultural impact of megastars, as their name suggests, is perhaps unrivaled. Their exceptional prominence makes them an attractive topic for filmmakers, as the subject alone all but guarantees box-office success. That explains why so many biopics of megastars have been greenlit, including the 1991 film "The Doors," about Jim Morrison and the band he fronted, the 2018 "Bohemian Rhapsody," about Freddie Mercury and "Queen," the 2024 "Back to Black," about Amy Winehouse and even the 2021 eight-part series "Genius," about the diva Aretha Franklin. Moreover, this is not simply a Hollywood phenomenon. In Türkiye, there have been, for instance, the 2018 film "Müslüm" and the 2022 "Dilberay," representing the lives and works of Müslüm Gürses and Dilberay, respectively. What has been a general rule, though, is that a megastar biopic takes the story of the singer in question up to their deaths, the exceptions obviously being those whose biopics are made whilst the singer is still alive, such as the 1993 "What’s Love Got to Do with It" on Tina Turner or the 2019 "Rocketman" on Elton John.

What makes "Michael," the newly released Antoine Fuqua biopic on Michael Jackson, the greatest megastar of them all, so odd is that while Jackson has now been dead for over 15 years, the film abruptly comes to an end with his live performance in London of the single "Bad" in 1988. By ending the story of his life here, a great deal of it is left untold.

The question is why. And the answer seems not to be a fundamentally artistic issue. For its cut off time raises a disturbing suspicion that is intensified by the overall tone of the film. The film portrays Jackson heroically, yet the real story is that while he was justifiably known as "the King of Pop," he also became mired in highly credible allegations of child sexual abuse. The real-life story of Jackson seems to have been a victim of abuse who became an abusive victimizer. "Michael" though portrays Jackson solely as the former, which it is able to do by ending the film in the middle of his career. A sequel may do real justice to these abuse claims against him and if it turns out that this film is part one of a two-part biopic, which, in its second part, does so, then "Michael" is indeed a fairly good film and I will be quite willing to repudiate all of what I accuse it of in this review. Yet, I feel that such a sequel is unlikely and that is for two reasons. The first is that this film seems to have been launched with at least the possibility that it would be a standalone film. The second is that from the tone of this film and its support by the Michael Jackson Estate, which denies all allegations against the singer, even if a sequel does come to pass, it seems very unlikely that it will dare to tarnish the hero it has set up in this one.

With the understanding that this film is an attempt to rehabilitate "Jackson," I can only regard it as a disgrace. I will return to the issue of the film and the abuse allegations further on, but for now, I must evaluate the film itself for my further comments to make sense.

The film and its themes

As for the story of the film, it could be regarded as an Oedipal one, though not in the sense that the son literally slays the father at the end, but rather metaphorically so. The film, much like Jackson’s real life, concerns the gradual emancipation of a sensitive and creative child crushed beneath the oppressive weight of his father, Joseph. The film begins in the industrial city of Gary, Indiana, with Joseph, played by Colman Domingo, having formed his sons, the youngest of whom is the child Michael (Juliano Valdi), into a band, the Jackson 5, in an attempt to lift the family out of what would otherwise be a life of drudgery.

Joseph succeeds in his aim and although Michael is the youngest of the brothers, he is clearly the star of the group, not simply due to a voice that is recognized as amazingly versatile, but also to his magnetic presence on stage. Their single "ABC" becomes a No. 1 hit, which raises the finances of the family to an altogether different level. This enables them to move to a luxurious residence in Encino, California and there the money keeps rolling in.

The band itself is a product of Joseph’s iron will and his failure to brook any dissent from his children. But Michael’s individual need for self-expression is present even as a child in his need to dance. When he is brought to a recording studio in Chicago in 1968, the gyrating Michael at the microphone is told "Michael. You’re moving too much" and "I need you to keep your feet still," but it is soon clear that for Michael singing is as much a physical form of expression involving the whole body just as that of the voice and the show stealer of later fame, with his iconic moves like the moonwalk, is a development of a compulsion present even in early childhood. The same is true of the way he sings. Later, when performing "Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough," he simply cannot but interject an "oh."

The story of Michael is Michael’s slow progress to emancipate himself from the formidable presence of his father. Forward to 1978, and the now adult Michael, played by his real-life nephew Jaafar Jackson, wants to make a solo album, in order "to express" himself "creatively," but he is unable to tell this to his father and gets record agents to do it instead. He needs time and space to himself, but when the obvious solution of leaving home is put to him, he says that he is "not ready" to move out while also being aware that, as he puts it, "I just want to do my own thing" and "I have to start living my own life. On my own."

In putting Michael at the heart of the Jackson 5, Joseph effectively steals his childhood. There is a scene right at the beginning of the film from Gary in which the child Michael, at a window, is watching normal children play outside before being made to practice music with his brothers.

Joseph is also portrayed as the begetter of Michael’s perfectionism – perfectionism preventing happiness in that either what is struggled for is achieved, which simply means matching expectations, or it is not, which begets self-hatred. In Gary, Joseph drills into his sons the message that "in this life you’re either a winner or a loser." Joseph’s fate has been to work in a steel mill and this is the expected fate of other "poor black kids in Indiana" "unless you work hard, harder than anyone else."

I say "drilled into" but actually the message of Joseph is literally thrashed into Michael, for Joseph’s lessons can involve vicious lashings with a belt. Michael’s cry when suffering this abuse is heartrending. Michael’s resulting perfectionsim is expressed in notes to himself that he sticks on his mirror. He tells himself, for instance, that "you’re the greatest of all time." This perfectionism induced by his father is also shown to harm Michael by making him obsessed with his appearance. The adult Michael’s decision to have an operation to make his nose thinner is shown as a direct result of his father insulting him by calling him "big nose."

It also makes Michael want to escape his father’s shadow and determine his artistic direction himself. He exclaims, "I want the world to see me differently." Yet, the film depicts Joseph as causing such emotional damage to Michael that he is unable to properly mature as he develops into an adult, retarding him with a permanent childlike nature, which is expressed through a love of playing games and an ability to connect with children.

Like perhaps many who pass unhappy childhoods, Michael finds some solace through the escapism offered by books and the cinema. We see he has a particular affection for Peter Pan, for instance. And, not able to connect with other people, Michael connects to animals instead. Early on in Encino, he had a pet rat. Being mocked for his animals, he retorts with "they’re not my pets, they’re my friends." This is especially true of Bubbles, his chimpanzee, whom he rescues and whom he describes as being "sensitive to certain sounds or people," a reflection of Michael’s own intense sensitivity. Due to Michael, the grounds of the Encino house are turned into a private zoo.

His mother, Katherine (Nia Long), asks him whether he wants real human friends and Michael’s self-aware reply is that "I’m not like the other kids." She agrees, insisting that he has a "special light" and that he must "let your light shine to the world." The only possible hint in the film that there may prove to be a darkness in Michael is her enigmatic additional plea to him not to let it be taken away, even by him. His lawyer, John Branca (Miles Teller), supplements this apparent call of destiny by telling Michael that "I believe there is no one like you and there never will be."

Towards the end of the film, Michael is finally able to stand up to his father by announcing his independence to a packed concert of fans, which his father overhears and then pushing past his father when confronted by him. This marks the beginning of the emancipated Michael.

Attempt to mislead audience

In a normal review, there are other comments on the film I would like to have made, such as the outstanding performances, particularly by Domingo, whose very presence sucks all of the air out of the room, a deeper investigation into the relationship between Michael, his father and his brothers, the issues of racism and fandom in Jackson’s career and the film’s use of music and CGI, for instance. Yet this is no ordinary film and thus cannot be subject to an ordinary review. I feel it is necessary to return to the abuse allegations concerning Jackson, as it is impossible for me to feel that they are not a major issue in this film, even if they are not directly referred or even alluded to.

For the clearly intended effect of the storyline that I have laid out above is that Jackson will be regarded with a mixture of pity and admiration, pity for the trauma that he went through with his father and thus even greater admiration for making himself a megastar despite it. Additionally, the film wishes to portray what has to be regarded as Jackson’s "oddness," that is his fondness for children’s toys and his connection to children, as simply an innocent case of emotional retardation; that he is a real Peter Pan and this implicitly is to condition how we are to see the question of Jackson and children from the cut off point of the film onward.

While never put to us explicitly, of course, the film thus seems to be posing us a question. And the question is: even though highly disturbing allegations have been made against Jackson by numerous people who knew him as a child, can you really give credence to them, seeing the innocent, almost saint-like Jackson of the film? The expected answer is clearly a no. Thus, the film seems to be an attempt to rehabilitate Jackson by implicitly negating these allegations.

Yet, there is a problem here that the film itself creates. Most significantly, the idea that victims of abuse cannot go on to become abusers themselves is simply nonsense. Indeed, there is probably more truth to the idea that victims of abuse are more likely to abuse others, but it is certainly not the case that those who have suffered traumatic childhoods are immunized by them to ever harming others. Therefore, at best, Jackson’s traumatic childhood, while fully deserving of pity in itself, cannot void the allegations against him as an adult, and may, ironically, even provide extra substantiation for them.

Two further elements of the film undermine its whitewashing intentions. The first is that although Jackson was never convicted of anything in court, his father, Joseph Jackson, was never convicted of child abuse either. It is worth noting that the real Joseph Jackson, before his death, in addition to most of Michael Jackson’s siblings, had denied that Joseph was an abusive man. Thus, the film is asking us to believe that the father abused the son, but implicitly to disbelieve that the son abused anybody. If the lack of a criminal conviction or of a clearly avowed confession is used to dismiss the allegations made against Michael Jackson, then the same would have to be the case for Joseph as well. Yet, so as much as the film is right to depict Joseph as an abuser, it would be equally right to regard Michael as one too.

The second is an element about the character of Jackson that the film portrays. The issue of whether Jackson spent a lot of time with children is an undisputed fact. It is the nature of his relationship with them that is disputed. The film, for its part, seeks to portray Jackson as having been emotionally retarded by the abuse from his father, and as such the adult Jackson is to be regarded as a boy in a man’s body. Thus, any question of grooming or abuse by the adult Jackson becomes irrelevant for he was effectively a child himself; therefore, his relationship with children was one of equals. Yet, even in the film, outside of his penchant for childish pastimes, the adult Jackson is also depicted as steel willed and very focused when it comes to getting his way for what he wants as a performer. There is no question of Jackson being infantile here. Therefore, even the film itself suggests that rather than being a boy in a man’s body, the adult Jackson was certainly a man, albeit a man with childish tastes. Hence, even from the film’s portrayal, Jackson was an adult with an adult’s mind, a mind that certainly could be put to use to groom children by bending them to a perverse will.

My final point concerns the fact that while Jackson is now long dead and buried, the survivors of Jackson’s abuse are still alive. They are thus faced with the promotion of a cinematic celebration of a saint-like Jackson on top of the vicious vitriol they have received in daring to speak out against a man who was regarded and still is regarded as an idol. I cannot help but regard this film as an act of offence to these brave victims, and as such, I cannot recommend it to anyone.

If the whole issue of abuse could be detached from the film, I would have given it a score of 3 1/4 out of five, considering the great acting and the engaging storyline. As I cannot detach the issue, though, because I feel that the film is an attempt to beguile the audience and thus adds insult to the injury caused by its real-life subject, I feel obliged to give it a severely negative score. Not a zero, as it is still a work that deserves a modicum of credit for reasons I have given, but a lowly one.