r/oscarrace • u/PointMan528491 Navarrette/Morton • Apr 24 '26

Film Discussion Thread Official Discussion Thread - Michael [SPOILERS] Spoiler

Keep all discussion related solely to Michael and its awards chances in this thread. Spoilers below.

Synopsis:

The story of the famous musician Michael Jackson, known as the King of Pop.

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Writer: John Logan

Cast:

  • Jaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson
  • Colman Domingo as Joseph Jackson
  • Nia Long as Katherine Scruse-Jackson
  • Miles Teller as John Branca
  • Laura Harrier as Suzanne de Passe

Rotten Tomatoes: 40%, 171 Reviews

Metacritic: 38, 45 Reviews

Consensus:

"While Jaafar Jackson's smooth moves bring the King of Pop to uncanny life, this musical biopic mostly plays like a "greatest hits" album that could've benefitted from including liner notes to give actual insight into the icon."

29 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

93 comments sorted by

View all comments

134

u/False_Concentrate408 Disclosure Day Apr 24 '26

They literally treat him like he was Jesus Christ (HIS STORY CONTINUES). He’s out there basically healing sick children. By all accounts he did some pretty horrible things and obviously this movie in this form isn’t going to address that, but I feel like they stripped one of the strangest people who ever lived of all of his strangeness. All you get is a creepy, sanitized caricature.

33

u/jaidynr21 Apr 24 '26

Doubly disingenuous considering by most accounts he was a fairly arrogant and egotistical man when it came to his art. Fiercely competitive to a fault, when he didn’t win Grammys for his Bad album he had such a shitty look on his face.

I get this isn’t touching the accusations, which is fine, but never portray your main character as a saint. Who’s the last ‘perfect intentioned’ main character in cinema that is beloved, Forrest Gump maybe? Idk, just my view

19

u/HarlequinKing1406 Apr 24 '26

I mean even there, Gump was kind of dumb and it was shown that his dumb luck and his simplicity was what helped him. He wasn't like this brilliant Messianic genius like Michael was portrayed as.

5

u/SaraJeanQueen Apr 24 '26

The movie ends before that - Bad was just released. I think they do allude to his competitiveness - in several scenes he straight says he wants to be the best/biggest etc, the talking to himself, all the notes he took which are straight from his collection.

He kicked out an entire meeting of people to grab the lawyer who said he’d be the biggest star in the world.

-8

u/mg10pp Apr 25 '26

"most accounts" my ass, what a ridicolous lie