Spliced together from footage of Michael Jackson’s final concert rehearsals before his death, This Is It is expected to take in $400 million during its limited two-week run. Some Jackson fans are complaining that the film is a distasteful and morbid cash grab by Jackson’s family and Sony, and that Jackson would have been horrified at his portrayal in the film. Does This Is It exploit Michael or immortalize him?
The film is ghoulish: This “morbid patch job” of a film, says Lou Lumenick in the New York Post, only serves to help Jackson’s family and “longtime enablers” at Sony “cash in” on the singer’s death. We can be “confident that a perfectionist like Jackson would never want to be remembered by a shoddy piece of exploitation like This Is It.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Will California's EV mandate survive Trump, SCOTUS challenge?Today's Big Question The Golden State's climate goal faces big obstacles
-
'Underneath the noise, however, there’s an existential crisis'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
2024: the year of distrust in scienceIn the Spotlight Science and politics do not seem to mix
