Why Michael Is The Death Of The Biopic

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]All right. So, Michael is getting absolutely cooked right now. Not oh, it's a bit decisive cooked, more like critics are dissecting this thing like it owes them money cooked. And what's interesting is audiences aren't reacting the same way at all. People are walking out entertained, nostalgic, emotional, singing songs in public like nothing happened, fully convinced they just had a great time. So, we've got this really weird split reality happening. Critics going this doesn't really work anymore, and audiences going no, it worked fine actually. And usually when that happens, we pretend it's just taste or expectations or critics being critics, which is a polite way of saying they've never been emotionally moved by anything in their lives.

[00:00:47]But I don't think that's what's going on here because Michael isn't just another biopic people are arguing about. It feels more like the genre itself has finally walked into a wall it's been casually ignoring for years. And the wall, unfortunately, is called the internet existing now.

[00:01:06]Because here's the uncomfortable truth.

[00:01:08]The traditional biopic is built on a promise we don't really need anymore.

[00:01:12]That promise is let us tell you the life story of this person start to [music] finish. Clean structure, emotional beats carefully arranged like a PowerPoint presentation titled human life deluxe edition. And for a long time that worked, but now it's starting to feel a bit like cinema is politely reading we already skimmed on at 2:00 a.m. on Wikipedia. And Michael, whether intentionally or not, just made that point very very obvious.

[00:01:44]>> [music] >> To be fair, this wasn't always a problem. There was a time when films like Ray or Walk the Line weren't just entertainment, they were access. That was your introduction to people like Ray Charles or Johnny Cash because back then you didn't have everything at your fingertips. You couldn't just fall into a 3-hour YouTube rabbit hole called The Dark Truth Behind while eating noodles at midnight. So, the biopic had a job.

[00:02:10]It had to explain a life, and it developed a very specific structure to do that. Childhood struggles, discovery of talent, rise to fame montage where everything suddenly becomes sepia-toned, emotional collapse usually with rain, then redemption, reflection, legacy, emotional swell, roll credits. It worked because it's simple. It's legible. It tells you how to feel. And honestly, at that time, that wasn't lazy filmmaking.

[00:02:35]That was efficient storytelling.

[00:02:38]But the problem is we don't live in that time anymore. Now we already know the story. We know the hits, the scandals, the breakdowns, the comebacks, the interviews, the documentaries explaining the documentaries. So, when a film shows up and follows that exact same path, it doesn't feel like discovery anymore. It feels like revision. Like the movie is politely reminding you of something you already passed the test on years ago.

[00:03:06]>> [music] >> And this is where Michael becomes really interesting. Because it's not doing anything wrong in a technical sense. If anything, it's doing the traditional biopic very well. You've got Jaafar Jackson stepping into the role of Michael Jackson in a way that's genuinely uncanny at times. You've got Colman Domingo delivering that level of performance where you start wondering if he's contractually obligated to be this good in everything. It hits the beats.

[00:03:32]It delivers the moments. It gives you the legacy. But it also does something very safe. It keeps moving, and that's the kind of issue. Because the traditional biopic is built like a checklist and you can feel it. Step one, childhood. Step two, talent discovery.

[00:03:49]Step three, fame rise montage. Step four, emotional downfall, step five, inspirational ending. It's almost comforting, like watching a very expensive art form being filled out correctly. But, the more you think about it, the more you realize something slightly awkward. [music] Real lives don't fit into neat forms.

[00:04:07]Especially not lives like Michael Jackson. They're contradictory, complicated, messy in ways that don't resolve cleanly in a two-act structure and a carefully licensed soundtrack. And when a film keeps trying to organize that mess into a straight line, you start to feel what's missing. Not information, but [music] depth.

[00:04:31]Now, this is where things start to change because a new wave of films has basically stopped trying to explain lives in a traditional sense. Instead, they try and translate experience.

[00:04:43]Take Rocketman. On paper, it's the story of Elton John. Same genre, same category, but the execution? Totally different. The film doesn't behave like a timeline. It behaves like a memory.

[00:04:55]Scenes [music] bend, reality shifts, music becomes emotional expression rather than performance. There's a moment where Elton is performing and the world around him starts behaving normally. It becomes surreal, almost weightless. And instead of thinking, "Ah, yes, historically accurate moment number 47." You realize something else.

[00:05:15]This is what fame feels when you're inside it. Not the facts of it, the experience of it. And that is a very different thing. Then you've got Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which takes the opposite approach and just throws the entire idea of accuracy out the window.

[00:05:33]It invents events. It exaggerates everything. It fully commits to the chaos and yet somehow it ends up feeling more honest about Weird Al Yankovic than a traditional biopic ever could. [music] Because Weird Al's entire identity is built on parody. So, the most truthful version of his story is a parody of storytelling itself, which is either genius or completely unhinged, possibly both. Then there's Better Man, a film where Robbie Williams is portrayed as a CGI chimpanzee, which sounds like someone lost an argument in a pitch meeting and just committed to the bit, but it actually works. Because it reflects how Robbie Williams experienced fame as performance, as spectacle, as something slightly removed from normal human identity. It's not saying this is what happened, it's saying this is what it felt like to be seen like this. And that distinction is everything. Lastly, how could we not mention Piece by Piece, which turns Pharrell Williams's life into LEGO, which again sounds like a creative pitch that survived against all odds, but it makes all sense. Because his creativity is literally about construction, building ideas, layering sound, taking pieces and forming something bigger.

[00:06:47]>> [music] >> So, instead of pretending life is a straight line, the film shows it as something assembled.

[00:06:55]>> [music] >> When you take a step back, the difference becomes pretty clear.

[00:07:00]Traditional biopics are about reconstruction. They take a life and try to organize it into a clean narrative.

[00:07:06]Modern biopics are about translation.

[00:07:09]They take a life and try to express what it felt like. One is about structure, the other is about perspective. One gives you the timeline, the other gives you the experience.

[00:07:18]>> [music] >> And in a world where we already have access to all these facts, experience becomes the thing that actually matters.

[00:07:26]>> [music] >> So, coming back to Michael, it doesn't feel like a bad film at all. It just feels like a very polished, very confident version of a storytelling approach that we're slowly moving past.

[00:07:39]Not because it's wrong, but because it's complete. It already did its job in a different era. Now the audience is asking for something else, something less structured, less procedural, less step one through step five, more feeling, more interpretation, more perspective. And that's why this moment, it matters. Because we're not watching the death of biopics, we're watching the death of a single way of telling them.

[00:08:05]And what replaces it isn't one new formula, it's a whole range of approaches trying to answer question in different ways. Not what happened in this life, but what was it like to live it? And honestly, that's a much harder question, >> [music] >> and also a much more interesting one.

[00:08:28]So yeah, the traditional biopic isn't gone yet, but it's definitely no longer the only language we speak. And if films like Rocketman, Better Man, and Piece by Piece are any indication, the future isn't going to be cleaner, it's going to be stranger, more subjective, more interpretive, and a lot more willing to ask, what if the truth of a life isn't something you can just line up in order?

[00:08:53]Because once you start thinking like that, going back to the old formula suddenly feels like trying to describe a storm using bullet points. Technically accurate, but emotionally incomplete.