“Michael,” a Michael Jackson movie directed by Antoine Fuqua, is the next installment in a long line of music star biopics, a genre that has become thoroughly saturated over the last few years. We have seen films about Whitney Houston, Elvis, Elton John and Queen each with its own quirks and stylistic differences, but increasingly difficult to stand apart in a crowded field.
The movie traces Michael Jackson’s journey from the discovery of his extraordinary talent as the lead of the Jackson Five to the visionary artist whose creative ambition fueled a relentless pursuit to become the biggest entertainer in the world. Highlighting both his life off-stage and some of the most iconic performances from his early solo career, the film gives audiences a front-row seat to Michael Jackson as never before.
The central problem with “Michael” is the character himself. I’ll admit, I am a little biased as a lifelong fan, but no one can deny two things: he was probably the biggest music phenomenon of the modern era, and he had an extraordinarily complicated past, to put it nicely. Years of allegations, abuse, court cases and other serious matters plagued his career. Before getting into the film itself, some context is necessary.
The movie was originally going to have its third act with the 1993 civil case and had already filmed that material. But after a clause was discovered in a legal settlement, references to the allegations were removed, the third act was revised, and reshoots took place in June 2025. On top of that, with Jackson’s family closely involved in the production, Fuqua’s original vision was inevitably going to be softened. There are even rumors that he departed towards the end of production.
That said, the film does touch on two points of controversy. The first is Joe Jackson, played by Colman Domingo, portrayed as abusive and menacing, though the film frames his intensity almost sympathetically: as a man who didn’t want his kids ending up in a steel mill like him. That framing leaves out a lot. Joe was famously ruthless and treated his children more as a business operation than as kids with emotional needs.
A stark example is the 1984 Pepsi commercial incident. During the filming of a Pepsi commercial at the Shrine Auditorium on Jan.27, 1984, a pyrotechnic malfunction set Jackson’s heavily gelled hair on fire, resulting in second-degree burns to his scalp. The film does depict this moment, and it is one of the movie’s more viscerally effective sequences. However, what it intentionally left out is the full weight of Joe’s response. The story that Joe pushed Michael to return to touring while he was still hospitalized has circulated for years but remains unverified in any sourced account, so take it as persistent fan lore rather than a documented fact. What is confirmed is that rather than suing Pepsi, Michael directed the company to donate $1.5 million to the Brotman Medical Center burn unit, which was subsequently renamed the Michael Jackson Burn Center in his honor, a detail the film also includes.
The second point of controversy the film engages with is Michael’s changing appearance. It is well established that he had vitiligo, a skin condition affecting pigmentation, and that he also struggled with severe body dysmorphia, largely rooted in the psychological damage from his father’s abuse. The film shows him getting a nose job, but never really explained why. Shortly after the Pepsi commercial accident, he underwent his third rhinoplasty, so the nose jobs were not simply vanity; they were deeply tied to the trauma of his childhood and the physical consequences of that commercial shoot.
You may argue that all of this gets more complicated after the film’s ending point, and the movie does cut off abruptly around 1988. But the film feels hollow in other ways, too. It rarely lets us see what made Michael so eccentric, and even where it tries to humanize him, it holds back. There is one standout scene where he wakes up in the middle of the night to write a song, and we get a glimpse of his creative process.I wish there had been far more of that. Instead, large stretches of the film are essentially side-by-side recreations of famous performances, the Motown anniversary performance being the most memorable, which I thoroughly enjoyed, largely because of Jaafar Jackson’s astonishing work in the role.
The performances, the music and the cinematography are the movie’s biggest strengths. The film does try to show Michael’s generosity, whether visiting kids in hospitals, donating to charity, or rescuing animals, and those moments are rooted in real, documented behavior. Colman Domingo, in particular, brings antagonistic menace to a film that might otherwise have no real villain; his performance as Joe meshes well with Nia Long’s tender portrayal of Katherine.
The critics’ score of 39% on Rotten Tomatoes makes sense from a storytelling perspective. This is one of the weaker musical biopics, a sanitized view of Jackson appealing to fans who do not want to wrestle with the allegations their hero faced. But if you are a Michael Jackson fan, this plays like a live concert that hits every nostalgia point. You will thoroughly enjoy it, even if part of you wishes it had the courage to go further.
