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/u/Sam34go
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I know I won't make a lot of friends here, but this movie is a disgrace to Michael and the fans. The start of the film had me thinking the online criticism was completely unjustified, but as soon as Michael hits adulthood and Jaafar Jackson takes over, the film completely loses its footing. His performance was genuinely remarkable, but the material let him down entirely. This felt like a high-budget YouTube documentary, and having his family so involved was a horrible decision, as they portrayed him as a saint with zero complexity. Every major moment of his life gets name-dropped and immediately abandoned with no development whatsoever. The pacing is a disaster, jumping from milestone to milestone with no breathing room or emotional weight. They mentioned MTV but said nothing about how Michael changed the channel and the impact it had; they didn’t mention how he revolutionised music videos forever, his vitiligo and plastic surgery got one brief scene before being dropped completely; and nobody talked about how his faith as a Jehovah’s Witness nearly prevented Thriller from ever being made. Joe Jackson was clearly softened beyond recognition. The film frames him as harsh and strict when the reality of what that man did to his children was far darker and far more damaging, and brushing over the abuse the way they did completely erases the trauma that shaped so much of who Michael was. That trauma matters; it is central to understanding him, and this film had no interest in going there.As for the people rating this 8 to 10 out of 10, I think they loved the music, felt the nostalgia, and simply did not come looking for anything deeper. And that is fine, but a 10 out of 10 means something like, idk, a 10/10 movie is alongside The Godfather and The Lord of the Rings. This film does not belong in that conversation. We learn nothing we did not already know, we see no real portrayal of how the world responded to Michael beyond blind adoration, and we leave knowing no more about who he actually was than when we walked in. A beautiful surface with nothing underneath.
submitted by /u/Sam34go
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submitted by /u/Sam34go
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