For decades, the best way to get yourself recognized for a performance in Hollywood was to play a real person and show how easily you can assume their mannerisms. From Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer” to Olivia Colman in “The Favourite,” there have been 34 Oscar-winning performances of real people since just 2000.
Biographical dramas have begun to dominate the awards circuit, and in an effort to make their performances all the more impressive, a subgenre has gathered steam: musician biopics.
While it certainly wasn’t the first, the modern boom of musician biopics can largely be attributed to Rami Malek’s Oscar-winning performance as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the 2018 film “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Since then, we’ve been inundated with low-risk, Oscar-bait films starring actors vying for award recognition.
Timothée Chalamet played folk icon Bob Dylan in 2024’s “A Complete Unknown.” Jeremy Allen White was the titular lead in last year’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” In two years, we’ll be subjected to four interconnected biopics of each member of the Beatles, starring Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan as the Fab Four.
The most recent offender is the creatively titled “Michael,” which was released on Friday and, supposedly, takes a deep look into the life of Michael Jackson.
This most recent iteration was the one that made me realize my primary qualm with these films.
There’s no point.
Not every movie has to push the boundaries of the art form. You can make a perfectly enjoyable dramatization without taking risks, and if a big-name actor wants to play the role, then why not?
But these movies rarely effectively dramatize events.
In a best-case scenario, a film takes creative liberties to push together a more compelling story in an artful way (see “Oppenheimer”). But most of these are at the very least approved and often directly produced by the artist’s estate or management. In the case of Dylan and Springsteen, the musicians are still alive.
While Michael Jackson passed away in 2009, his influence over American pop culture is far from absent. Filmmakers aren’t able to take creative risks when the people directly involved in the events are making sure everything is to their standards.
Inevitably, these come off less like creative expressions and more like corporate cash-grabs, profiting off the memory of musicians. Sometimes contributing to their legacy, other times corrupting it.
Most of these movies come off as lazy, uncritical examinations of the most high-profile moments from the most high-profile artists.
If a Michael Jackson biopic came out in 2056, I’d be much more interested to see it after his influence and omnipresence in pop culture has subsided. But even though he’s been dead for almost two decades, it still feels like his story only recently closed.
I’m sure many of the people involved see this as a passion project. Jafaar Jackson has a chance to become a genuine movie star for his performance in this biopic. But without greater creative control, most of these films feel like something that was decided had to be made, rather than something that was desired.
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Paul Swartz
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Musician biopics are holding movies back
For decades, the best way to get yourself recognized for a performance in Hollywood was to play a real person and show how easily you can assume their mannerisms. From Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer” to Olivia Colman in “The Favourite,” there have been 34 Oscar-winning performances of real people since just 2000.
Biographical dramas have begun to dominate the awards circuit, and in an effort to make their performances all the more impressive, a subgenre has gathered steam: musician biopics.
While it certainly wasn’t the first, the modern boom of musician biopics can largely be attributed to Rami Malek’s Oscar-winning performance as Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in the 2018 film “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
Since then, we’ve been inundated with low-risk, Oscar-bait films starring actors vying for award recognition.
Timothée Chalamet played folk icon Bob Dylan in 2024’s “A Complete Unknown.” Jeremy Allen White was the titular lead in last year’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” In two years, we’ll be subjected to four interconnected biopics of each member of the Beatles, starring Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan as the Fab Four.
The most recent offender is the creatively titled “Michael,” which was released on Friday and, supposedly, takes a deep look into the life of Michael Jackson.
This most recent iteration was the one that made me realize my primary qualm with these films.
There’s no point.
Not every movie has to push the boundaries of the art form. You can make a perfectly enjoyable dramatization without taking risks, and if a big-name actor wants to play the role, then why not?
But these movies rarely effectively dramatize events.
In a best-case scenario, a film takes creative liberties to push together a more compelling story in an artful way (see “Oppenheimer”). But most of these are at the very least approved and often directly produced by the artist’s estate or management. In the case of Dylan and Springsteen, the musicians are still alive.
While Michael Jackson passed away in 2009, his influence over American pop culture is far from absent. Filmmakers aren’t able to take creative risks when the people directly involved in the events are making sure everything is to their standards.
Inevitably, these come off less like creative expressions and more like corporate cash-grabs, profiting off the memory of musicians. Sometimes contributing to their legacy, other times corrupting it.
Most of these movies come off as lazy, uncritical examinations of the most high-profile moments from the most high-profile artists.
If a Michael Jackson biopic came out in 2056, I’d be much more interested to see it after his influence and omnipresence in pop culture has subsided. But even though he’s been dead for almost two decades, it still feels like his story only recently closed.
I’m sure many of the people involved see this as a passion project. Jafaar Jackson has a chance to become a genuine movie star for his performance in this biopic. But without greater creative control, most of these films feel like something that was decided had to be made, rather than something that was desired.