Michael ★★★

Released: 22 April 2026

Director: Antoine Fuqua

Starring: Jaafar Jackson, Colman Domingo, Nia Long, Miles Teller, Kendrick Sampson, Larenz Tate & Juliano Valdi

In Antonie Fuqua’s Michael, we see Michael Jackson (played by his nephew Jaafar Jackson in his debut film role) in his element. It occurs during the Beat It sequence, where the King of Pop brings together rival LA gangs, the Bloods and the Crips, to help choreograph the video. Upon arrival, the gangs are starstruck, one even building up the courage to ask for his autograph, comically claiming it’s for his sister. But as he begins to use his celebrity to build trust, he spins, struts, punctuates the air with his fists and smoothly glides across the room. For a split second, you think you’re watching MJ himself. 

It’s one of many ‘blur between the lines’ moments Fuqua recreates of Jackson’s life, an artist who, at the peak of his career, was the living embodiment of perfectionist artistry. He moonwalked, broke racial barriers on MTV, became a global icon with decades worth of music (including the greatest album of all time in Thriller), and performed sold-out concerts that would make fans scream and faint at the sight of him. If there is one thing Fuqua accurately gets right for Michael, it’s that joyous feeling of euphoria MJ created, enough for this millennial to smile with glee at the memory it unlocks. The first time listening to I Want You Back. Hiding behind a cushion while watching the Thriller video. Trying (and failing) to mimic the high-pitched note from Human Nature. The first time trying to imitate the moonwalk in the family sitting room, having seen Michael’s performance of Billie Jean on Motown 25. 

Yet all of this is part of the growing trend with music biopics. The word “biopic” has become a loose term, evolved and repackaged into concert-light movie experiences delivering a greatest hits sample through an artist’s back catalogue. Whether it is Bohemian Rhapsody, A Complete Unknown, Respect, Back to Black, Whitney: I Wanna Dance With Somebody or even last year’s effort, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, they’ve set in stone a formulaic convention of passable format beats charting a lifetime from their birth to their legacy. You would think Jake Kasdan’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story would have put that convention to bed with its satirical take on the sub-genre, but Hollywood and certainly the artists’ estate have no interest in breaking free of this mould or learning lessons from it. The biggest lesson they fail to grasp is that oversimplification of its subject, offering little to no new insight and a complex life wrapped and distilled in a bubble of musical convenience instead of what they are, a human being.

Fuqua’s Michael falls victim to such convention, a whistle-stop tour through Michael’s career with basic, Wikipedia-like entries tying everything together. That doesn’t make it a bad movie, but when films like Rocketman and Better Man have pushed unconventional boundaries to capture their respective artist, this plays predictably safe.

John Logan’s script tries to encapsulate Michael’s zeitgeist energy. He charts his journey from 1966 Gary, Indiana, with the child prodigy (played by Juliano Valdi) breaking through with The Jackson 5 before concluding Part One with the beginning of Michael’s Bad tour. The controversies that would later mar Michael’s career are being saved for Part 2, a sequel reportedly steeped in legal hell and a $15 million reshoot. But this is not like the 1990s miniseries The Jacksons: An American Dream (featuring a young Angela Bassett), where moments are given weight and range to operate in. Logan’s dramatisation is not interested in scratching beneath the surface of the Jackson family. Granted that this is from Michael’s point of view, but the screenplay lacks the curiosity to dig deeper. This ‘cliff note’ adaptation is treated with the same attitude as a musical interlude, cueing up the next signature track from the Jacksons’ back catalogue. And soon enough, like a blink-and-you ’ll-miss-it moment, MJ enters his Off the Wall era with Jaafar taking over the reins.

The film instead leans into the ‘tug-of-war’ battles between Michael and his father Joseph (Colman Domingo). Fuqua reinforces what we already know about Michael’s early life; Joseph rules the family with a patriarchal fist, working his sons to the bone in endless rehearsals “until they get it right”. You can feel young Michael’s fear whenever he struggles to make eye contact with his father. The demands Joseph places upon him are high, the consequences of failure even higher when Joseph decides to dial up the tension and cruelty before beating him profusely. It establishes early on Michael’s desire for creative freedom versus Joseph’s exploitative control over his family, a decision that would later impact Michael as he grows up when his managers, such as Miles Teller’s John Branca, were his emotional buffer in their conflict. The eccentricities that were commonly associated with the artist are carefully repositioned as severe loneliness, often finding solace in his pet animals, including a CGI version of chimpanzee Bubbles.

Through 2026 eyes, these moments could have built an empathic understanding behind Michael’s mythology. The problem is, Logan and Fuqua never slow down to let these significant moments sink in and breathe. Not only is it endowed with the biopic trope of cramming an entire lifetime into a film, but undermines the complexity of MJ’s motivations and his yearning to go solo. Under better direction, we would get more time to spend with Michael’s creativity. It would have allowed more time to unpack the pain and abuse he endured and his ‘Peter Pan’ complex, which he developed that fed his desperate need for escapism. It would have paved the way for the physical changes he would go on to make, painting a better picture of his mental state and further extending its critique of the trappings of fame and power. Yet, the gamut Michael paints is far too broad to take those leaps. It introduces and then swiftly moves on, either omitting certain details or leaving its supporting characters like Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson) by the wayside with a lack of screentime. The Jackson brothers are more like peripheral figures, his sister Janet is bizarrely left out, and not even Michael’s friendship with Diana Ross gets a mention.

Fuqua’s direction, in particular, never excites, nor does it ever match Michael’s energy. When in full flow, such as the Motown 25 performance, it’s an over-edited mess, lacking patience as it cuts between the audience, Michael himself and his feet. While it may understand the impact of Michael’s influence, it doesn’t do it justice when the beauty of his choreography is lost in that moment. 

But the truth – which is very apparent early on – is that Michael is not invested in those points mentioned. This glossy, sandpapered version of events is built as a celebration of his music, banking on Jaafar’s performance to sell the experience. That side of it pays off because he is the highlight of Fuqua’s film, and it shows.

Jaafar embodies Michael with genuine sincerity and spirit that would make the King of Pop proud. He effortlessly recreates his mannerisms, smooth choreography and perfectionist mindset that’s scarily uncanny. When Fuqua actually allows for breathing room, we see the inspirations behind those moments, such as Michael endlessly watching James Brown, Charlie Chaplin and Fred Astaire, memorising every shuffle, look and confidence that he reimagines for himself. Even when the film fails him, Jaafar still overcomes and dazzles, knowing one misstep would immediately pull you out of the illusion. That energy continues in his performance of Human Nature and Bad, which is given the showstopper ending similar to Bohemian Rhapsody’s Live Aid moment.

It will be interesting when the sequel inevitably rolls around and how Jaafar’s performance handles those expectant shifts to bring Michael Jackson’s story to a close. But for now, it basks in the glory years, a greatest hits montage where we remember the King of Pop best. For some, that’s more than enough to satisfy their needs as a film, but one wonders whether Michael deserved a better biopic than this.