*Antoine Fuqua’s “Michael” has done something rare — it opened huge, divided opinion sharply, and now has a sequel on the way.
The biopic debuted April 24 to $97 million domestically, pushing its global total past $423 million and setting a new record as the biggest opening weekend ever for a biopic. Jaafar Jackson, nephew of the late pop star, leads the cast alongside Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Miles Teller, Laura Harrier, and Larenz Tate.
On Rotten Tomatoes, “Michael” holds a 97% audience approval rating alongside a 38% critical score — a gap that ignited a fierce debate across social media, per THR. Many fans directed their frustration at reviewers, arguing the criticism had less to do with the film on its own merits and more to do with what it chose not to address. The story’s abrupt endpoint traces back to production complications — legal issues required late-stage changes, leaving the film’s narrative at 1988 rather than spanning the full arc of Jackson’s life and career.
Author Joe Vogel, who wrote the 2011 Jackson biography “Man in the Music,” sees a double standard at play. “I do think the critical response seems a bit disingenuous, just compared to the other string of biopics that we’ve seen,” he said, pointing to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Rocketman,” and “Elvis” as films that followed similar formulas yet earned warmer critical receptions.
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“It seems to me that the Michael film is being singled out, in some ways, because of what’s not in the film, as opposed to what was actually in it,” Vogel added.
Not everyone agrees. Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal pushed back on the idea that critics should soften their assessments. “The last thing we want are critics who basically co-sign what an artist is doing…That’s not the job of a critic. That’s the job of a publicist, and we cannot turn critics and journalists into publicists for art,” he said.
Attorney James Sammataro offered perhaps the sharpest framing of the film’s commercial purpose, describing it as “a catalog activation strategy — a two-hour advertisement engineered to send audiences straight to streaming platforms to rediscover the back catalog.”
Yet Sammataro also acknowledged the cultural value even a compromised biopic can deliver. “That a biopic serves the catalog doesn’t mean it fails the audience,” he said. “Even imperfect biopics do something streaming algorithms cannot: They restore context…For a younger viewer encountering Jackson’s catalog through a playlist, a film — even a flawed, protective one — can be the thing that turns a familiar hook into an artist worth understanding.”
MORE NEWS ON EURWEB.COM: Legal Troubles Forced a Major Overhaul of the Michael Jackson Biopic
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