Michael (2026)
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
The story of Michael Jackson, one of the most influential artists the world has ever known, and his life beyond the music. His 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.
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28 films that influenced Michael
What critics say influenced Michael
With all eyes and ears on a fluctuating sense of “superhero fatigue” amongst moviegoers, musical biopics quietly became just as oversaturated after Bohemian Rhapsody’s baffling Oscar sweep.
More often than not, we’re bombarded with mediocrity, such as Bohemian Rhapsody, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere.
Other elements of this soft-focus drama are terrible reminders of other bad musical biopics, namely “Bohemian Rhapsody” — which shares in common with this movie the same atrocious cameo actor and a nagging sense that part of the story isn’t being told for the sake of maintaining a deceased star’s still lucrative legacy.
The modern musical biopic is less biography and more hagiography, usually with a great soundtrack. Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Walk the Line have no interest in telling the real story of the people who made the songs we love.
…culminating with the near-billion dollar success of Bohemian Rhapsody…
This is a film that can be placed next to dull, plodding, beat-hitting films like the embarrassing "Bohemian Rhapsody."
Or you will find Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis sugarcoating the King’s abusive marriage to a much-younger Priscilla Presley.
There’s almost a reluctance towards visual creativity, falling to the wayside compared to maximalist efforts like Baz Luhrmann’s glitzy Elvis.
While most musical biopics adhere to clichés and rigid creative parameters, the most effective examples, like “Rocketman” and “Straight Outta Compton,” and even to a lesser degree “Elvis,” succeed because they embrace artistic license and point of view or at least attempt to reframe their subjects.
The best musician biopics—movies like Rocketman, Elvis, and Better Man—never forget their subjects are mortal.
The modern musical biopic is less biography and more hagiography, usually with a great soundtrack. Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Walk the Line have no interest in telling the real story of the people who made the songs we love.
…as, say, Baz Luhrmann did for Elvis…
We’ve seen moldbreakers in recent years like Rocketman, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and Better Man, though maybe that’s because the people who made those films are either genuinely creative or have seen Walk Hard.
While most musical biopics adhere to clichés and rigid creative parameters, the most effective examples, like “Rocketman” and “Straight Outta Compton,” and even to a lesser degree “Elvis,” succeed because they embrace artistic license and point of view or at least attempt to reframe their subjects.
You’ll get your occasional Better Man, Rocketman, and tick, tick… BOOM!: What makes these projects stand out amongst the rest is their ability and willingness to portray the artist in question from a vulnerable lens.
The best musician biopics—movies like Rocketman, Elvis, and Better Man—never forget their subjects are mortal.
…it still fails to creatively play with an overdone genre to the levels of surprisingly subversive and emotionally resonant biopics like the Elton John musical Rocketman…
Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Jeremy Allen White in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Taron Egerton in Rocketman all did their own singing, even with the risk of not measuring up to the icons they played who were all still alive when their films came out.
Other than the uncomfortably honest Robbie Williams biopic Better Man and the parodical Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, these films seldom break out of the finely carved mold of image-rehabilitating cinematic exercises.
You’ll get your occasional Better Man, Rocketman, and tick, tick… BOOM!: What makes these projects stand out amongst the rest is their ability and willingness to portray the artist in question from a vulnerable lens.
The best musician biopics—movies like Rocketman, Elvis, and Better Man—never forget their subjects are mortal.
…it still fails to creatively play with an overdone genre to the levels of surprisingly subversive and emotionally resonant biopics like the Elton John musical Rocketman or even the Robbie Williams-is-a-CGI-chimp romp Better Man.
It’s a genre that favors bold swings in the form of something like Better Man, or even the bombastic insanity of Elvis.
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It plays into almost every trope that parodies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story satirize without an iota of self-awareness, coming across as high-budget condescension geared towards playing the hits for doe-eyed fans stuck in the 80s.
Walk Hard lampooned it nearly 20 years ago (“Dewey Cox has to think about his entire life before he plays!”) but the music biopic limped on at its most formulaic…
Completely inured to Walk Hard‘s critiques, Michael indeed begins with MJ thinking about his entire life before he plays, waiting to go onstage to promote the release of 1987’s Bad and thinking back to his childhood in Gary, Indiana.
I used to believe that Walk Hard, Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow’s pitch-perfect parody of movies like Ray and Walk the Line, should have killed the conventional musical biopic.
…give him the exaggerated appearance of a Dick Tracy villain…
Bringing even less subtlety than he does playing a literal cartoon supervillain in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Domingo seems to channel Al Pacino as Big Boy Caprice in Dick Tracy, and not just because of his wig and prosthetics.
The modern musical biopic is less biography and more hagiography, usually with a great soundtrack. Bohemian Rhapsody, Elvis, and Walk the Line have no interest in telling the real story of the people who made the songs we love.
I used to believe that Walk Hard, Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow’s pitch-perfect parody of movies like Ray and Walk the Line, should have killed the conventional musical biopic.
If your mind was made up about Jackson by the tabloid feeding frenzy that began in 1993, and damning exposés like HBO’s two-part 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland, Michael probably won’t do a lot to change that.
One such documentary, Leaving Neverland, found Jackson’s most devout fans and some who are referenced in the film condemning it as false and untrue.
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While he does sometimes interject notes of style, such as giving the arrival of Bubbles the Monkey a full superhero-style reveal, or cutting from Joseph Jackson signing a promotional deal with Pepsi to Michael watching Charlie Chaplin struggle with a conveyor belt in Modern Times.
…taking in classics like Singin’ in the Rain, Modern Times, Dawn of the Dead, and several others…
Like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which shares a producer with this film, along with “Respect” and “Bob Marley: One Love,” it follows a rigid, overly familiar structure that mistakes chronology for storytelling.
It has, fairly, been compared to Bohemian Rhapsody or the more recent Bob Marley: One Love for presenting surface level depictions of complicated performers.