“I can thrill you more than any ghost would ever dare try!” belted out Michael Jackson, ironically dancing amidst a motley crue of ghouls, ghosts, vampires or whatever netherworldly creatures you feel like naming.
It didn’t matter. In the era of MTV where music video was magic, it was peak Jacko with his white sequined glove, Bubbles the chimp and of course, ‘Thriller’, a masterpiece of an album that sold over 7 crore copies and cemented his position in the stratosphere of global megastardom. And mind you, it was pre-internet and pre-streaming, and an era of rampant music piracy, of mix tapes and bootleg copies, and intellectual property rights but a dream. But nothing could keep a bona fide thriller down, and his sheer talent shone through the many controversies that marred his later life.
Nearly half a century later, Hollywood is attempting to capitalise on the posthumous reinstatement of Jackson’s stature with the biopic Michael, hitting cinemas across India, and the world, on April 24.
On the face of it, the film has everything going for it: a storyline as colourful as that of Michael Jackson would only be ripe for the plucking even in normal circumstances. Throw in the music and the global fandom, not to forget the fact that you have none other his own nephew Jaafar Jackson playing the titular role, it is no wonder that public interest, aptly fed on by social media marketing, has gone off the wall. The slickly produced big screen spectacle is produced by Graham King, who in a way kickstarted the recent Hollywood craze for music biopics with Bohemian Rhapsody back in 2018. That superhit film on the life of Freddie Mercury, the India-born lead singer of Queen, earned Rami Malek, who played Mercury, an Oscar for best actor, while the film itself grossed more than $900 million on a budget of just around $50 million, becoming the highest grossing musical biopic in history.
But while the sound and spectacle can draw the initial surge, Michael’s ultimate test would be whether it can make everyone really care about it long enough to taste blood at the box office. Already initial preview reports on social media is divided, with some praising the acting and music extravaganza, while criticising the narrative.
The story line has always been a sore point when it comes to biopics – a film on a big superstar would always command interest from fans, but for the makers, it is twin trouble territory. One, there is this business of stripping down a newsy and complex life into a short, gripping storyline of under two hours. Even tougher is that thing of keeping the star (if he or she is alive) or his estate (if he is dead) satisfied with the script and narrative.
That is where things often take a turn south – many stars are adamant on controlling production decisions and having a sanitised storyline (Madonna, for example, insisted on writing and directing her biopic herself, though she wisely gave up the whole project altogether after a few writing sessions), and that is when the film loses something intrinsic to its depth and movement, due to too much interference.
Many recent biopics, like the one on Bruce Springsteen (Deliver Me From Nowhere), Amy Winehouse (Back to Black) and Robbie Williams (A Better Man) all bit the dust. Even more perturbing to Michael producers would be the ignominy that fellow black mega star Whitney’s biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody got about three years ago.
In retrospect, while going to watch a familiar star’s familiar life story recreated on stage, most cine goers would be expecting one thing – authenticity. Combined with a patch of uniqueness. Whitney’s makers probably accounted for it by zeroing in on the controversial claims about her LGBT status, but perhaps it was a bit too much for her largely PG 13 audience who were taken in by her clean image of The Voice.
In the end, nobody left the cinemas happy, just like Robbie William’s attempt to project himself as a special effects monkey in his own biopic A Better Man, to satirise the whole ‘performing monkey’ aspect he equated his pop star career with. Maybe the teenyboppers who bought his albums and stuck his poster up in his bedroom begged to disagree.
There have been astounding successes as well – other than Bohemian Rhapsody’s near-billion dollar gross success, Hollywood’s latest golden boy Timothy Chalamet played Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown couple of years ago, earning an Oscar nomination and praises from critics for the film itself. The film managed double its production budget in earnings. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis also earned close to 300 million dollars on a budget of just 85 dollars or so – here also the lead actor, Austin Butler, earned an Oscar nomination.
Will it be Jaafar’s turn next? And more importantly, will Michael check all the right boxes, from critical acclaim to commercial success (read: music lover approval). Will it gloss over the paedophilia allegations or will it take them on with the same honesty with which it seems to have taken on Jackson’s fight with his father (according to the trailer)? The legacy of one of the greatest musical talents the world has seen now lies in the verdict a new Hollywood flick will get this weekend. Will movie goers go Bad, or will they exult ‘Don’t stop till you get enough?’