Contrast the documentary Leaving Neverland (2019) and the popular new biopic Michael (2026), both about Michael Jackson (1958-2009), and the former receives a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics versus the latter’s 38%. General superficiality, including the complete omission in Michael of allegations that Jackson was a pedophile, are factors behind some of those poorer critiques.
Leaving Neverland and Leaving Neverland 2
Director Dan Reed‘s Leaving Neverland documents the experiences of two different men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who allege that as boys they were sexually abused by Jackson. “Their accounts of sexual abuse are among the most specific and heartbreaking to emerge in the Me Too era,” stated Matthew Jacobs, HuffPost.
Although many have rejected the claims, including Jackson’s estate and many fans, Reed stands by what’s presented in Leaving Neverland. “We spent months looking at the old documents, everything that was published, conversations with investigators. I never found a single investigator who didn’t think Michael was guilty, and I never came across anything at all that led me to doubt either Wade or James.”
Per Seth Abramovitch, Hollywood Reporter, “The harrowing four-hour documentary seemed poised to permanently reshape Jackson’s legacy. Wade Robson and James Safechuck’s highly detailed accounts of childhood abuse at Jackson’s hands were, to many viewers, impossible to forget. The film won an Emmy, with the Jackson Estate deriding the decision to honor ‘a complete fiction’ that is ‘completely one-sided’.” Ultimately, Leaving Neverland left its HBO home due to “a legal settlement with the Jackson estate.”
Director Reed has not been deterred, though. His Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson (2025) chronicles Wade’s and James’s legal battles over the last 10 years-plus—their attempts to hold responsible “the late entertainer’s corporations…alleging that MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures enabled and covered up their sexual abuse as children.” A civil trial has finally been set for late this year.
Watch the trailer below and the full-length film, less than an hour, on YouTube.
Michael
Interestingly, the original script did address the abuse controversy regarding a different accuser. “In one scene…the King of Pop stares at his reflection in the mirror, capturing his sorrowful gaze as police car lights flash behind him. It’s 1993, a decade after ‘Thriller’ gripped the culture, and Jackson has just been accused of child molestation” (Variety). Again, legal stuff posed an issue.
Selected Reviews of Michael
John Nugent, Empire Online: “…(I)t is very difficult to avoid watching certain moments without thinking of the unspoken context, of the enormous, looming, hulking elephant in the room.”
Derek Smith, Slant: “The one narrative through line is Michael’s contentious relationship with his father, Joe (Colman Domingo). By all accounts, the man was emotionally and physically abusive, and Michael certainly sees him as a narcissistic control freak. But while he emerges as a villain of sorts, who Michael had to break free from to become his own man and fulfill his artistic promise, the film stops short of depicting him as anything much worse than a domineering patriarch.”
Liz Shannon Miller, Consequence: “This is a movie terrified to explore the interiority of its protagonist, and that approach will work just fine for the fans who just want to watch an uncomplicated ramble of a movie that plays all the hits. That’s why artists like Michael Jackson remain immortal beyond death — no matter what we might know about their lives, great songs will always endure.”
