Full spoilers for Michael follow.

I was legitimately shocked by the ending of Michael. Or maybe “ending” is giving it too much credit, because the movie arrives at Michael Jackson performing “Bad,” gives us one more enormous musical sequence and then essentially decides that this is where the story is going to stop.

That distinction matters because it gets directly to my biggest problem with Michael. I enjoyed watching this movie. It is propulsive, often beautifully shot and filled with some spectacular recreations of Michael Jackson performances. Jaafar Jackson is so good playing his uncle that there were stretches where I genuinely forgot I was watching an actor. But for a movie about one of the most complicated and culturally dominant people of the twentieth century, Michael has surprisingly little to say about Michael Jackson.

It gives us his life. I am just not convinced it ever finds his story.

Michael Jackson’s Life Is Not Enough To Make A Story

This was the thing I could not stop thinking about after leaving the theater. Say what you will about Elvis, Deliver Me From Nowhere or even Bohemian Rhapsody, but each of those movies has a point of view about the person at its center.

Elvis turns Elvis Presley into this gigantic, surreal piece of American mythology. Deliver Me From Nowhere uses Bruce Springsteen’s creative process to examine depression and isolation. Even the very conventional Bohemian Rhapsody understands that Freddie Mercury standing in front of tens of thousands of people becomes dramatically meaningful when the movie connects that fame to his loneliness.

Michael, by comparison, mostly gives us events. Michael joins the Jackson 5. Michael becomes a star. Michael clashes with his father. Michael makes Off the Wall. Michael makes Thriller. Michael becomes the biggest entertainer on Earth. Then eventually we reach “Bad,” and the movie ends.

The problem is not that any of those things are uninteresting. They are fascinating. The problem is that chronology is not the same thing as dramatic meaning.

The Joe Jackson Relationship Almost Gives Michael A Story

The closest the movie comes to finding an actual dramatic spine is Michael’s relationship with his father, Joe Jackson. Michael wants freedom from a man who helped create his success while also controlling, frightening and hurting him. That tension gives the movie some of its most interesting material because Michael’s rise is no longer just about becoming famous; it becomes about whether he can finally become his own person.

But there is an even more interesting movie hiding underneath that idea. Michael can eventually fire Joe. He can become rich enough and powerful enough that his father no longer controls his career. The harder question is whether he can ever escape what Joe taught him to value: perfection, approval, performance and control.

That is where I wanted Michael to go. Joe Jackson may eventually stop managing Michael Jackson, but does Joe Jackson ever stop living inside Michael Jackson? The movie occasionally gets close to that question, especially when Michael’s perfectionism, self-image and family obligations begin crashing into one another, but it rarely stays there long enough to really interrogate it.

Michael Keeps Choosing The Concert Over The Character

Instead, the movie repeatedly returns to the safest and most obviously entertaining version of Michael Jackson: the performer. And listen, I understand the temptation. If you have Jaafar Jackson recreating Motown 25, “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” Thriller and “Bad,” you are going to show the hell out of those performances.

The problem is that eventually Michael becomes so enamored with recreating the icon that it starts losing the person underneath him. The performances begin functioning as rewards because we know the songs rather than dramatic scenes that reveal something new about Michael.

Ironically, one of the moments I wanted much more of is significantly smaller. We see Michael working through the beginnings of an idea, feeling out the music and starting to create. That immediately made me want to understand his creative brain. How does somebody make Thriller? What does that level of perfectionism actually feel like from inside the person experiencing it? How much of that brilliance comes from joy, and how much comes from terror that being merely great will never be enough?

There is a fantastic movie in there. Michael just seems far more comfortable showing us the finished song.

Jaafar Jackson Is Absolutely Incredible As Michael

The frustrating part is that the movie has exactly the actor it needs to go much deeper, because Jaafar Jackson is phenomenal. I thought Austin Butler’s performance in Elvis was going to remain the gold standard for musical-biopic performances for quite a while. Jaafar genuinely made me reconsider that.

The dancing and physical resemblance are obviously remarkable, but that is not really what sold me. He captures this strange duality in Michael where the person offstage can seem incredibly small, soft-spoken and fragile, and then the music begins and suddenly he becomes ten stories tall. That transition never feels like Jaafar simply checking off Michael Jackson mannerisms.

There were moments when my brain just accepted that I was watching Michael Jackson.

That is an extraordinary achievement, particularly because Jaafar is working inside a movie that often refuses to give Michael the psychological messiness his performance seems capable of handling. He is not the problem here. If anything, he makes the limitations of the screenplay more obvious because you can see how much more this actor could have played.

Why Does Michael End With “Bad”?

And that brings me back to the ending, because I cannot stop thinking about it. I understand that this is not supposed to represent the entirety of Michael Jackson’s life and that the larger story is meant to continue. But being the first half of a larger story does not mean this movie gets to avoid having an ending of its own.

The question is not whether “Bad” is a good song or whether the final performance is exciting. Of course it is. The question is why this story ends here.

What has changed inside Michael? What has been resolved? What choice has he made that this particular performance now expresses? If this movie is ultimately about Michael escaping his father, what does freedom mean for him by the end? If it is about becoming the King of Pop, what did achieving that dream actually do to the man underneath the crown?

Michael does not give me a satisfying answer to any of those questions. It simply reaches a recognizable chronological destination and stops. That is why the ending feels less like a cliffhanger and more like someone walked into the editing room, pointed at a spot in the timeline and said, “Yep. Cut it there.”

Michael Jackson Deserved A Movie With A Point Of View

Mary and I recently had a conversation about Michael Jackson versus Taylor Swift and who was actually more popular at the height of their fame. Taylor Swift is obviously enormous. Beyoncé is enormous. We have had gigantic musical stars over the last twenty years.

But Michael Jackson was something different. He became a monocultural figure in a way that is difficult to recreate now. The music, the dancing, the clothes, the videos, the glove, the moonwalk and eventually even his physical appearance became recognizable almost everywhere. He did not simply make hugely successful records; he became part of the visual language of popular culture.

Michael is very good at reminding us of that scale. There is something genuinely exciting about hearing these songs blasting through a theater and watching Jaafar recreate performances that changed pop music. If the goal were simply to remind people why Michael Jackson was called the King of Pop, the movie absolutely succeeds.

But that enormous cultural footprint is precisely why I wanted more. Michael Jackson’s life contains questions about abuse, family, creativity, fame, perfectionism, identity, exploitation and the price of turning yourself into an icon. You could build an extraordinary movie around almost any one of those ideas.

Instead, Michael mostly builds a timeline.

My Knee-Jerk Reaction To Michael

Here is the strange part: I still enjoyed the movie. It moves quickly, the music works, the performances are fun to watch and Jaafar Jackson is legitimately astonishing. I never sat there wishing the movie would end.

But then it did end, and almost immediately I realized how little of it was sticking with me. Nothing fundamentally changed the way I thought about Michael Jackson. Nothing made me hear the songs differently. Nothing forced me to wrestle with the person underneath the icon in a way I had not before.

For a movie about Michael freaking Jackson, that is kind of unbelievable.

Michael knows exactly how to celebrate the King of Pop. I am just not sure it ever figures out who Michael Jackson was. Then “Bad” ends, the screen goes dark, and somehow a movie about one of the most unforgettable people who ever lived becomes almost immediately forgettable.

Official Mary & Blake Rating: C-