Starting on a somewhat positive note, Reed says, “The first part of Michael as a child, I could kind of buy that.” However, “as soon as we go to the adult Jackson, played by his nephew Jaafar, that burst my bubble. I thought, he’s a great dancer, but his performance is very wooden, and one of the reasons for that is he didn’t have much of a script to work with. He becomes this waxwork who performs these jukebox songs, but there’s zero insight into what makes Jackson tick. He’s this asexual plastic action doll of a figure in the film.” Reed goes on to argue that Michael “creates a version of events that essentially portrays Wade, James, and others who’ve accused Jackson of child sexual abuse as liars without actually articulating it.”
Reed says that Jackson is portrayed like “an eccentric, overgrown child” throughout the film, which features scenes of him visiting children in the hospital. “That made me feel really icky. It suggests that Jackson’s engagement with children was entirely benign and motivated by nothing but philanthropy,” Reed argues. “The film just flips the truth on its head — black is white, white is black, and two and two make five — and none of the people who go and see the movie will ever question that,” he continues, adding that the movie is “impossible to take seriously as a counter-narrative” to Leaving Neverland. “They created this jukebox movie but haven’t managed to create a plausible narrative that would explain Jackson’s fondness for children.” Similar to his comments last week that people just don’t care about the allegations against Jackson, Reed says now, “To the culture, Jackson is like a religion. So, what I’ve done is essentially blaspheme, and this biopic reinstates the myth. As absurd as any religion, people have to believe in the miracle of Jackson being this asexual, pure being who only wished good for little children and helped them.”
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