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The Michael Jackson biopic had its U.S. premiere in Los Angeles on April 21 and the reviews are largely terrible. The film has opened to a 27% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The discourse around Michael hasn’t been helped by its director Antoine Fuqua, either, as the Training Day filmmaker downplayed the allegations made by MJ’s accusers over the years.
Michael director Antoine Fuqua downplayed the allegations made against Michael Jackson over the years by suggesting they had to do with race and money
In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Fuqua expressed skepticism about some of the accusers’ motives, citing financial incentives and the racial scrutiny faced by successful Black figures.
“When I hear things about us — Black people in particular, especially in a certain position — there’s always pause,” Fuqua told the outlet, which noted that “the filmmaker was skeptical of some of the accusers’ parents.”
While Fuqua reiterated that he did not know the truth behind the allegations made against Jackson over the years, he added that “sometimes people do some nasty things for some money.”
Michael clearly took the same stance as its director as the allegations are not even broached in the film. Scenes addressing the abuse allegations were removed from the final script after it emerged that Jordan Chandler’s settlement with Jackson contained a clause preventing any film from depicting or mentioning him.
In 1993, 13-year-old Jordan Chandler accused Jackson of molestation. The case was settled out of court for a reported $23 million and Jackson was never criminally charged in connection with this case. Then, in the early 2000s, Jackson was criminally charged with child molestation, conspiracy, and administering an intoxicating agent to a minor involving then-13-year-old Gavin Arvizo and was acquitted on all 14 counts in June 2005.
In 2019, the HBO documentary Leaving Neverland saw Wade Robson and James Safechuck allege that Jackson sexually abused them as children over many years. Both had previously defended Jackson publicly, though, including Robson testifying on his behalf at the 2005 trial.
As for reviews of the film, Variety called it “an engrossing middle-of-the-road biopic” that “avoids any reference to the child-sexual-abuse allegations that dogged Jackson starting in 1993, while Empire Magazine called it “a cynical moneymaking machine” that in its “ploddingly boring biopic-by-numbers way” renders the King of Pop’s professional success as “entirely frictionless.”
Michael stars MJ’s nephew Jaafar Jackson in the titular role alongside Nia Long, Laura Harrier, Juliano Krue Valdi, Miles Teller, and Colman Domingo.