Michael Film Frames Jackson's Anger as Creative Engine
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- "Michael" stars Jaafar Jackson as the pop icon and casts Colman Domingo as his father Joe, whom the film portrays as a violent antagonist who beats young Michael with a belt and treats his children as property.
- The biopic's central arc is Michael's separation from Joe's control, climaxing in a law-office scene where he fires his father as manager and culminating in a Pepsi commercial accident the film presents metaphorically as Joe's karmic backlash.
- The reviewer argues the movie's deeper thesis is that Michael's anger was "tamped down, redirected, channeled" into his music, becoming the defining quality of his artistry rather than just an emotional reaction to abuse.
- The piece contrasts "Off the Wall" (1979) as an album of joy and exaltation — citing "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough" and "Rock with You" — with the "Thriller"-era records "Billie Jean," "Beat It," "Bad," and "Smooth Criminal," characterized as expressing electrostatic fury, rage, and volcanic wrath.
- "Billie Jean" is singled out as potentially the greatest pop song of the 1980s, with its anger audible in the "fearsome up/down domination of the beat" and Michael's percussive vocal phrasing that "cut like a dagger."
- The film also reframes Bubbles the chimp as an act of "stand back aggression" against Michael's family rather than the running joke most audiences have long treated him as.
- The author criticizes coverage for fixating on what's absent from the film — specifically the child sexual abuse accusations that dogged Jackson from 1993 onward — rather than engaging with the anger-as-fuel-for-art argument the movie is actually making.
Why it matters: The piece reframes "Michael" from a sanitized jukebox biopic into a character study arguing that Jackson's signature fury — audible in "Billie Jean" and "Smooth Criminal" — was forged in his abusive relationship with Joe Jackson, recasting Jackson's carefully maintained family-friendly persona as the setup for the rage his music then unleashed.
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