It’s a movie starring his nephew in the lead role, approved by his estate, and by all accounts it just feels like an attempt to whitewash him. This is a man who was accused of being a serial child molester, settled with a family out of court for $25 million just to avoid a trial (Chandler), and openly admitted he slept in the same bed as kids while he was an adult (Bashir interview), among other things. I don’t really see what there is to debate.
Anything pointing this out gets backlash on movie-related subreddits, which I find wild. It makes me wonder, if Epstein could sing and dance, would he have gotten a biopic too? Would people be defending him like this?
I mean, Melania’s movie was unapologetic whitewashing form what I’ve heard, so maybe not the best comparison.
I do agree that there is compelling story to be told from the lens of building a revolutionary music career. I think simply making a movie isn’t inherently whitewashing, and there are compelling reasons to make a movie about MJ other than as a PR stunt so I’ll wait and see what comes out.
Well… I was referring to “It makes me wonder, if Epstein could sing and dance, would he have gotten a biopic too?”.
Obviously Melania’s movie was essentially a corporate gift to the Trump family/administration, despite the fact that they were very close friends with Epstein. I don’t think it was a serious attempt at telling a genuine story about a strange person’s life, even if it could have been. Donald Trump has more proven connections to convicted sex traffickers than MJ ever had, just as a matter of fact, and even that didn’t prevent him and his family from taking over the world or having a movie made about his fake-ass wife.
That’s not really the point… I should say that I don’t know anything about either movie and I’m not that interested in seeing them. I never even heard that there was a Michael Jackson biopic in production until seeing this threat.
But my point is that film-making is a storytelling medium. A good filmmaker can tell a compelling story about good people and bad people alike.
Good or bad, Michael Jackson is an interesting character who lived an interesting life. As such, it would be possible to make a great movie about him, just like someone could make a great movie about Hitler, Kim Jung Un, Donald Trump, etc.
Will this movie be good? How will this movie depict MJ? Will he be treated as a sympathetic showbiz kid who never had the chance to grow up and live a normal life? Will he be treated as a pedophilic monster who systematically raped and trafficked children? …who knows… Ideally a good MJ biopic would drill down somewhere close to whatever the truth happens to be, depicting a complex and troubled person who lived an extraordinary (in the literal sense) life.
If it’s just a cash grab by his estate to whitewash his character and ignore all of the deeply troubling things that happened in his life (both to him and by him), then it’s just not a good movie.