{"id":425195,"date":"2026-05-04T18:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T18:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/425195\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T18:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T18:30:09","slug":"fan-critic-divide-rages-as-sequel-movie-nears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/425195\/","title":{"rendered":"Fan-Critic Divide Rages as Sequel Movie Nears"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWith talk ramping up about a second Michael<\/a> Jackson biopic<\/a>, the star\u2019s fans continue to push back against some professional critics over the way that the current Lionsgate<\/a> movie makes them feel.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Antoine Fuqua\u2019s Michael was an immediate smash upon opening theatrically April 24, with its $97 million domestic total<\/a> marking the biggest weekend launch for a biopic en route to a current global sum surpassing $423 million. The late pop star\u2019s nephew Jaafar Jackson<\/a> plays the lead role, with Colman Domingo<\/a>, Nia Long<\/a>, Miles Teller, Laura Harrier and Larenz Tate rounding out the cast.<\/p>\n

\n\tMichael holds a 97 percent fan approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but its critical score stands at just 38 percent<\/a>. Among the many social posts on the topic was one viral tweet<\/a> chiding reviewers who had \u201clegit lost the plot\u201d and declaring that \u201cthere needs to be a major shift in criticism.\u201d (Needless to say, memes ensued.) Social media users have attributed the disparity to critics taking into account that Michael was intended as a lengthy film spanning the star\u2019s complete life, including child abuse allegations and other scandals, but that the third act was retooled due to legal issues. Instead, the movie ends its story in 1988, with a follow-up feature in active development<\/a> from Lionsgate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI do think the critical response seems a bit disingenuous, just compared to the other string of biopics that we\u2019ve seen,\u201d Joe Vogel, author of the 2011 biography Man in the Music<\/a>, tells The Hollywood Reporter about higher Rotten Tomatoes critic scores for music films like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman and Elvis, all of which spurred discussion over whether they seemed overly sanitized. \u201cThey all follow a pretty similar blueprint, so it seems to me that the Michael film is being singled out, in some ways, because of what\u2019s not in the film, as opposed to what was actually in it. In essence, Michael is about introducing him to new audiences. It\u2019s disingenuous for critics to expect this two-hour biopic that goes to the late \u201980s to do everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTHR gave the movie a generally positive review<\/a>, calling it \u201csurprisingly affecting\u201d while adding, \u201cThe film leaves itself open to accusations of making Michael a saint, which will not sit well with the cancel crowd.\u201d Michael centers on Jackson\u2019s early years as part of his family\u2019s band, the Jackson 5, and the release of his first solo albums. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJaafar Jackson as Michael Jackson<\/a> in Michael. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGlen Wilson\/Lionsgate<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFilmmakers have the right to make the films that they choose to make and with the subjects that they choose to make. It\u2019s the reason why critics are important,\u201d says Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke University professor who teaches a course on Jackson. \u201cThe last thing we want are critics who basically co-sign what an artist is doing, whether or not we\u2019re talking about a music artist, filmmaker or author. That\u2019s not the job of a critic. That\u2019s the job of a publicist, and we cannot turn critics and journalists into publicists for art. That\u2019s not their job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInherent in the debate surrounding the disparity of reactions to the film is the awareness that the Jackson estate has been involved in the making of Michael and has a substantial vested interest in portraying the artist in a favorable light. Analysts see biopics as a key way for those overseeing an artists\u2019 music catalog to increase song sales and streaming numbers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cExpecting a sanctioned biopic to deliver unvarnished truth misunderstands the dynamics: The estate is the gatekeeper, and the film is a catalog activation strategy \u2014 a two-hour advertisement engineered to send audiences straight to streaming platforms to rediscover the back catalog,\u201d says attorney James Sammataro. His law firm, Pryor Cashman, represents Sony Music, which owns a stake in Jackson\u2019s catalog.<\/p>\n

\n\tVogel, whose book credits also include biographies on Prince and James Baldwin, notes that there \u201care always some tensions\u201d when dealing with a public figure\u2019s estate. \u201cThere was some back and forth, I would say, because they\u2019re very protective,\u201d Vogel recalls of working on his Jackson book. He points out that his book had a generally smooth path due to his decision to not focus much on the controversies: \u201cIn my case, since really, the whole point of my book was to put the emphasis on the artist, there weren\u2019t too many issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCertainly, Michael is hardly the first music biopic to see critics and audiences challenging whether the full story is hitting the big screen. And given that the unsavory headlines surrounding Jackson generally came after the events depicted in the first film, it\u2019s possible that the debate over a second movie could get louder, depending on how the scandals are addressed.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe controversy surrounding\u00a0Michael\u00a0is not new:\u00a0Bohemian Rhapsody\u00a0was an estate-endorsed, score-settling session that made $900 million despite critical reception,\u201d Sammataro says of the Oscar-winning\u00a0film about Queen\u2019s Freddie Mercury. \u201cA slew of musical biopics followed in its path.\u00a0Bob Marley: One Love, produced and endorsed by the Marley estate, depicted Marley as a beatific figure who frictionlessly moves through a world teeming with conflict \u2014 the same glossy template, a different icon. The pattern is structural, not incidental.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite their propensity to fuel debate \u2014 not to mention the lukewarm critical and commercial response to last year\u2019s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere \u2014 plenty of Hollywood music biopics remain in the works, most notably Sony\u2019s four-film project about the Beatles<\/a> that has sign-off from the band and its label. While some observers hope for an ideal world in which independent movies can tell grittier narratives about key music figures while also including the hit songs, there is still an argument to be made that an estate\u2019s involvement does not necessarily preclude a studio biopic from holding value for audiences.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat a biopic serves the catalog doesn\u2019t mean it fails the audience,\u201d notes Sammataro. \u201cEven imperfect biopics do something streaming algorithms cannot: They restore context. They remind audiences that songs were written by real people, at particular moments in time, often under extraordinary circumstances. For a younger viewer encountering Jackson\u2019s catalog through a playlist, a film \u2014 even a flawed, protective one \u2014 can be the thing that turns a familiar hook into an artist worth understanding. That\u2019s a real cultural function, even when it\u2019s also a commercial one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With talk ramping up about a second Michael Jackson biopic, the star\u2019s fans continue to push back against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[32405,51639,146,85,46,77849,19369,76011,24905,409,154314],"class_list":["post-425195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-biopic","tag-colman-domingo","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-jaafar-jackson","tag-lionsgate","tag-michael","tag-michael-jackson","tag-music","tag-nia-long"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}