RIOTUS

Michael Jackson is the best musical pop artist of all time. I won’t debate this with anyone. Off The Wall, Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous is a run that’s hard to top. He has the best-selling album of all time. He’s from a time when he got to a level of fame globally that’s pretty much unachievable anymore. He met and was admired by world leaders; they had ambulances at his concerts globally for people fainting. His releases and music videos were literally national events. Many things happened in the nineties that complicated his standing and fame in the world to the point where he had a touch of infamy. (I know this is a huge understatement, but I ain’t getting into all of that just like the film isn’t.) His death in June of 2009 shocked the world, which led to many people going back to his catalog and honestly brought up new things conflicting with his legacy.

A lot of that informs the story of the new musical biopic Michael, a film that has had some struggles, which led to this film coming out now in 2026. Beyond all that, how does this biopic stack up to previous biopics for other artists and for me, The Jackson: An American Dream, the ABC TV miniseries from 1992? Here, as the film is titled Michael, it is completely about Michael Jackson for the entire two hours. With young Jackson 5 Michael being played by new actor Juliano Krue Valdi, we see his struggles with his desire to be a child. Still, his torment to perform by an amazing Coleman Domingo in fantastic makeup as Joe Jackson, the infamous Jackson Patriarch, as he’s a terrible taskmaster, as he sees his sons as property to get them out of poverty in Gary, Indiana.

As the film speeds through the early years of Michael and the Jackson 5 through to them getting into Motown and becoming stars, we then get to Michael at age 20, now played by his nephew Jaafar Jackson. The film then focuses on Michael’s drive to get away from his family and pursue his dreams as a solo artist and become the greatest of all time. Again, much of this struggle is shown with his only antagonistic force being Joe. The film uses a lot of its runtime with recreations of MJ’s performances and music videos to its benefit. Antoine Fuqua is the director of this film, and he excels at using the scale of the big screen to make Michael look larger than life, almost mythic on the movie screen. I got to see the film in IMAX, and it looked amazing on that screen.

Outside of completely recreating parts of Thriller or Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough, the stuff that stood out to me the most is his and Cinematographer Dion Beebe‘s use of extreme close-up. The film takes great care to use close-up shots, in many different angles, to get the perspective of Michael and to show the character dynamics between Michael, Joe, and Katherine, played by Nia Long. The colors are so bright and saturated, every scene pops in a way like a hyperreality of the past. A brighter world as we see Michael ascend to be the King of Pop.

The Hair and Makeup and the Costume department for this film are, for me, the biggest stars of this film. The way they captured the looks for each scene and all of Michael’s classic outfits we’ve seen in so many pictures, news clips, and music videos astounded me at just how close and perfect it all looked. In regard to the makeup, these amazing craft people made Coleman Domingo look closely like Joe Jackson, from the brow to the way he wore his hair. It very much helped me, as a viewer, fall more into the film. The makeup they did for Jaafar to look like Michael and how Michael changes over the years, particularly from his use of plastic surgery, also really works. There are times, especially when he’s in costume, that he does look a lot like his uncle, and his performance really sells it.

Now, these are all the things I liked, but I have some big issues with the movie. I feel that as such a public figure that’s still talked about to this day about matters of his life and career, and even his albums in immense detail, we as a public know a bit too much for how this movie speeds through his life and the larger points of his rise as a solo artist. At the same time, the movie tries to show some of this by skipping most of the ’70s Jacksons era after they left Motown, which could’ve had some great performing sequences like Dancing Machine on Soul Train, doing the robot. If your goal is to focus on performances, then show as many as possible throughout his life. Larenz Tate as Barry Gordy and Laura Harrier as Suzanne de Passe look great. While Tate gets a tiny bit to shine as Gordy, Harrier doesn’t get to do much other than be beautiful, which significantly underplays how important that woman was to the beginning.

That point might be a nitpick and a small one, but I really feel the drive for Michael to be on his own and perform his own music, and meeting Quincy Jones led to Off the Wall. Not getting the recognition and driving to create Thriller and then selling the most records and winning all those Grammys should’ve been the core dramatic arc of the film. While seeing all the recreations is nice, it all ends feeling a bit too light. I think maybe his main antagonist he fights against should be the music industry and the barriers he broke in his strive for greatness. This film doesn’t have enough Kendrick Sampson as Quincy, who does very well with the little time he’s on screen. That’s a detriment because we know how important they are as a duo to each other, the story, and culture.

I don’t care for how his brothers are utterly empty background characters that almost feel like extras for scenes most of the time. Michael’s story comes with its own set of supporting characters, and the fact that they are so backgrounded, I feel, hurts the film. They say Michael loves his brothers, but we really don’t see it much. LaToya gets to be a character, and as we know, Janet isn’t in this, but no Rebbie, even as a background character like their brothers, was a bit jarring. The film looks big and plays at times like a glorified Karaoke video, or maybe what if Michael had a Rock Band-like video game with a story mode. We just get to see all the cinema scenes strung together.

To go back to the beginning of this review, did this live up to other music biopics? Well, maybe it’s not good like Walk the Line or Ray, but is it close to Bohemian Rhapsody or Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, yeah, it’s around the same level. Now, is it fair to compare this film to a TV miniseries from thirty-four years ago? Probably not, but I still think people should watch The Jacksons miniseries over this for a better-told story of Michael Jackson and his family’s rise in music. That being said, I was entertained, and this is not giving this factor enough space. The sound mix in this is excellent for playing all these amazing songs.

Michael, as a film, can feel like the best impersonator concert you could ever see. It has strong performances for Michael Jackson from both actors and one of the best villains of the year in movies with Domingo’s Joe Jackson. MJ fans will like this movie, and everyone involved could be proud of that, even as I feel Michael Jackson deserves a stronger film that everyone involved is capable of doing.