Moonwalk through fame

The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, is back in the spotlight in a new biopic. Starring his nephew Jaafar Jackson, the movie ‘Michael’ has captured Jackson’s life during his early days in the music industry while also showing a glimpse of the pressure he faced being in the public eye.

Directed by Antonie Furqua, the movie goes back to Jackson’s time in the band ‘Jackson 5’ showing how Jackson was never really fond of a normal childhood. His father Joe Jackson was the talent manager for the band and had disciplined the group for success. 

The movie shows emotional and physical abuse Jackson had faced from his father to become a better musician. In one scene Michael is being hit by his father for making mistakes during practice as the other boys and Michael’s mom watched but could not really say or do anything about it. The movie really reveals the environment Michael was in that made him lose his childhood but also rose him to fame quicker for his talented voice. 

As the movie carries on a lot of controversies have come out about this biopic. One of them consists of the actor who was chosen to play Jackson himself. As mentioned before Jaafar is the nephew of Michael Jackson and people had speculated that he got the role due to nepotism.

However that was not the case, Jaafar had heard about the biopic and was interested in seeing who would be casted to play Michael. The director had met with Jaafar and started discussing how he would be a perfect match for the role. Jaafar had spent over two years with a coach to embody and audition for the role. He told NME that he would be sore from rehearsals and questioned if he should go again. He reminds himself what his uncle would do in his situation and would go back into the studio. 

“I was fortunate to have access to some of Michael‘s personal writings, which allowed me to get even closer to him…I created a research room with every inch of the wall filled with quotes of his mantras, his personal handwritings, facts of things that he achieved and a complete timeline of what was going on in the world at different points in his life,” Jaafar said. 

Alongside Jaafar’s acting, his performances in the movie closely resemble Michaels style. The movie shows a variation of dances Jaafar had learned. He had recreated the choreography done in the ‘Thriller’ music video, Michael’s signature moonwalk, and matched Michael’s voice. Jaafar’s effort in embodying Michael had paid off as some fans wondered if they were seeing the real Michael Jackson on screen. 

While the movie shows Michael’s early days into fame, fans were disappointed that the movie ended after showing his Bad Era tour in 1990. In some fans’ opinion they felt the movie was incomplete and didn’t get a chance to grasp the allegations and controversies he was facing after the tour ended. As a result, fans found the movie to portray a picture perfect image of Michael rather than a well grounded one. 

The movie was given a 38% by critics from Rotten Tomatoes but fans left the theaters in tears. With the immense amount of effort Jaafar put into this role, fans loved every performance in the movie. The movie itself was more a concert heavy film with there being more scenes of Michael dancing on stage or music videos rather than portraying his life outside the stage. Overall, the movie itself was incredible, letting a lot of fans reminisce about Michael one last time.