In Asia, Michael Jackson never really lost his reputation like he did in the US. Here, he is apparently remembered as the King of Pop, and that’s it.
With the release of the 2026 biopic, which involved the cooperation of family members, the yuckiness surrounding his image seemed to recede substantially, returning his status to that of a fantastically successful and exceptionally gifted, if strange, artistic performer. In fact, my impression of him based on the movie (I didn’t know anything about his family life previously) is that he was for many years a pitiable victim of his father’s controlling tendencies.
Movies that are based on a true story tend to fail on one or both of two counts: they simplify, exaggerate, embellish, or otherwise bend history too much for the sake of manufacturing an engaging drama, or they keep too closely to the facts and wind up being boringly sequential—but I imagine that actually this latter happens seldom because it too obviously spells financial doom. In any case, the point is, real life doesn’t have plot; it doesn’t naturally supply one particular antagonist or challenge for a person to overcome. Life is messy. A film can’t afford to be, even though the process of making one, as in this case, is often anything but straightforward.
