Michael’s box office record doesn’t thrill me - biopics are lazy wins

The Michael Jackson biopic has now made history, surpassing Sir Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer to become the highest-grossing biopic of all time.

Raking in $977.4million (£740.9m) after its belated release in Japan, it’s likely Michael will go the full distance and become the first billion-dollar biopic as well.

I’m delighted about what that says for the health of cinema, proving that shared big screen experiences can still pull a crowd in the age of streaming, bouncing back to better days after the back-to-back blows of Covid and Hollywood strikes.

However, I’m not particularly thrilled that it’s Michael taking the title as a paper-thin so-called examination of the King of Pop, which arrived with a distinct ‘daytime TV movie’ whiff thanks to its schmaltzier moments and far too basic approach.

Michael’s triumph is not a win for stellar filmmaking – as its miserable 38% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes can attest to – and neither is a box office triumph any kind of marker of quality in and of itself.

It hit the cultural zeitgeist, sure, and it’s excellent for Lionsgate that it’s pulled in so much cash, but why do fans now care about and comment on that so much? Whether a film grossed $10m (£7.5m) or $100m (£75.5m) shouldn’t alter your enjoyment or appreciation of it.

Biopics are also a bit of a cheat when it comes to movies too, as they are often held up as ‘original’ fare against the ever-increasing dominance of franchises, sequels and movies based on IP. But they are anything but, when someone’s life and times are right there on Wikipedia or – God forbid – in a book.

Obviously, some are done very well, even in the over-stuffed musical biopic sub-genre, like 2019’s Rocketman and also Better Man – the ill-fated Robbie Williams movie that crashed and burned at the box office but was one of the most imaginatively realised movies of its type that I’ve ever seen.

But with the uninspired Freddie Mercury movie Bohemian Rhapsody, which was, until now, the top-grossing musical biopic, everybody agreed quite quickly afterwards (despite actor Rami Malek’s Oscar) that it was pretty naff and toothless.

Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a notable exception as well, as the filmmaker could never be accused of being a by-the-book director by any stretch. But the rest don’t need that kind of brilliance or boundary-breaking because they often do well financially regardless because of their built-in fanbase. Biopics don’t have to bold, it could even be seen as an alienation risk (see: Better Man). So it’s far safer for them to stick to the middle of the road and broaden appeal. They’re lazy, dare I say it.

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Often with biopics about colourful figures a lot of their controversy is pared back as well, smoothing those rough edges and sanitising less appealing aspects of their lives – especially if the figure themselves or their estate is involved.

That was very much the case with Michael, with the late star’s estate a producer on the movie. Yes, the biopic did initially involve mention of the child molestation allegations against Jackson which began in 1993. But after it was discovered that a clause in the settlement with one of the singer’s accusers, Jordan Chandler, prohibited his mention or inclusion in any movie, the final act was scrapped and reshoots ordered. We have no idea how this situation would have been portrayed in Michael, but it’s likely it would have leaned heavily on his being found not guilty in his 2005 criminal trial.

Instead, the whole film was restructured to focus on his rise to remarkable fame, with the bad guys purely the related pressures and his domineering father (played by Colman Domingo), before ending comfortably (if abruptly) in the 1980s before any unsavoury allegations came to light.

Sadly, Michael’s milestone financial success will no doubt mean many more biopics on the horizon. Perhaps it will even ultimately convince Universal to give Madonna the budget big enough for her ‘huge life’, which she recently revealed was the reason the movie had been scrapped.

Obviously, a sequel has already been confirmed for Michael too, with Lionsgate’s motion picture chair Adam Fogelson saying back in May that ‘we think we’ve got 25 to 30% of a second movie already shot from the prior production activity’.

These are the sorts of bets you can take when a film can rest on the laurels of its – admittedly exceptional – soundtrack and clamouring fans. Smooth Criminal and Man in the Mirror, for example, didn’t make the cut for the first film, which ended on Jackson’s 1984 Victory tour. Again, we don’t know how (or even if) they will address the accusations against Jackson a second time around.

As a critic, the biggest box office hitters making me happy last year were things like Sinners – an original vampire film from Ryan Coogler – and Josh Safdie’s frenetic Marty Supreme with Timothée Chalamet, as well as brilliant films like The Secret Agent and The Ballad of Wallis Island whose excellence I would never diminish simply because they weren’t smash hits.

Most recently, we’ve witnessed the one-two punch of horror’s assault on the box office with Obsession and Backrooms, both original concepts from up-and-coming writer-directors. Hopefully we’ll continue to see more of that this year, rather than surrender to the banality of biopics.

Michael is available to rent on platforms such as Prime Video, Apple TV and Sky Store.