They came with their sequined gloves and their shiny loafers, their black fedoras and their red leather jackets. They were dancing in the aisles and singing the hits at the top of their lungs. They were moonwalking, kicking and bending over like gentle criminals. They have left the past behind them.
Critics have widely panned “Michael,” the Michael Jackson biopic released Friday in theaters around the world. One called it a “bland, barely competent daytime TV movie”; another as not a film at all but a “playlist filmed in search of a story”. Yet for Jackson’s legions of fans, the glossy film was just cause to celebrate the greatest pop star of all time.
In recent days, Jackson fans have turned their local theaters into makeshift concert halls. Fans danced during a performance in London. Others lurched and spun in the alleys of Atlanta.
Countless fans dressed up as Jackson, including Grace Acosta, 35, who couldn’t contain her excitement as she rushed into a movie theater in Manhattan’s Union Square neighborhood on Sunday, sporting a red “Thriller” jacket and matching pants.
“No one will ever compare to Michael Jackson,” she said, rejecting the allegations that had dogged the singer for years. “I don’t think Michael Jackson ever did anything like that.”
Indeed, much of the criticism of the film, which Jackson’s estate has endorsed, stems from the fact that its story ends in 1988, which for many people too easily sidesteps accusations of child sexual abuse that emerged later (including as recently as this year). Yet as Adam Fogelson, president of Lionsgate, the studio that made the film, recently said, “if you give the audience what they want, they will come.”
The audience was more than present during the film’s opening weekend. The film was on track to gross over $217 million worldwide in its first three days. In the United States and Canada, it grossed about $97 million, breaking the record of $82.4 million for a biopic set by “Oppenheimer” in 2023, even after adjusting for inflation.
“Michael,” directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by John Logan, chronicles roughly the first three decades of Jackson’s life, including his childhood in Gary, Indiana, and his time performing with his brothers as part of the Jackson 5. His nephew Jaafar Jackson, Jermaine Jackson’s son, portrays him in the film, and most of Michael Jackson’s siblings are executive producers.
But a few, including Janet Jackson, who isn’t even a character in the film, aren’t. Clearly, some family members disagree that a more palatable version of the singer’s story (the film also omits Jackson’s struggles with scalp surgery after suffering third-degree burns while filming a Pepsi commercial in 1984 and his subsequent addiction to painkillers) was the right decision.
Jackson’s daughter Paris said in an Instagram story last year that “Michael” contained not only inaccuracies but also “outright lies.” The film, she said, “is aimed at a very specific section of my father’s fandom that still lives in a fantasy.”
The filmmakers had actually planned to feature accusations of sexual assault against a 13-year-old boy, allegations made in a lawsuit that Jackson settled for more than $20 million in 1994 (while denying any wrongdoing). But then lawyers for Jackson’s estate realized that the terms of the settlement prohibited publicity of these events. A significant portion of the film was scrapped and reworked.
Fans seemed thrilled, or at least uninterested, by the final version. One wrote on social media that “Michael” was “a little love letter” to the singer. Critics are seething, she says, because they “wanted this film to be tragic and sad.”
In the lobby of the Union Square Theater, where Jackson’s music resonated, Necia Blanc said she, too, didn’t mind that the film avoided the allegations against Jackson.
“I think they should save this type of subject matter, this subject matter, for a documentary,” said Blanc, who declined to give his age. “Documentaries are based on facts and a film is for entertainment.”
The 1994 rule mistake could end up giving fans more entertainment for Jackson. A Lionsgate spokesperson said the need to revise the film meant an opportunity to tell more of Jackson’s life in a later film or films. A closing title card in “Michael” reads: “His story continues.”
Either way, the crowds of fans who saw “Michael” last weekend definitely seemed there.
Jennifer Guillaume, 44, saw the film in Manhattan’s Flatiron district, where, she said, audiences were eager to sing along to the many songs featured. These people included her children and her mother, to whom she had to repeatedly say, “Mom, this isn’t a concert.”
Guillaume admired the sympathetic portrait of the king of pop that the film paints. “He was a superstar, but he was just like us,” she said. “He was a human being. He loved.”
Her voice full of impatience, she added: “I’m going to see him again on Tuesday!”
