Michael VS Blonde
▸ WHICH ONE HOLDS UP BETTER
Michael holds up better here: it's rated QUESTION IT, while Blonde is SKIP IT.
Verdict🟡 QUESTION IT🔴 SKIP IT
The RealityThe box-office claim checks out: Michael opened to $97.2M domestic / $218.8M worldwide and crossed $1.029 billion globally, making it the highest-grossing biographical film and highest-grossing music biopic ever, per Deadline's and Billboard's box-office coverage. But critics were far less generous than the marketing implied: Rotten Tomatoes sits at 38% across 307 reviews, with the site's consensus calling the film 'a greatest hits album that could've benefitted from including liner notes.' NBC News/Today.com reported that scenes depicting the 1993 Neverland Ranch investigation into child sexual-abuse allegations were cut after Lionsgate cited 'certain legal considerations' tied to a settlement agreement barring mention of accuser Jordan Chandler. Michael's own daughter, Paris Jackson, told press the film 'panders to a very specific section of my dad's fandom that still lives in the fantasy. It's not real, but it's sold to you as real.'The film is actually an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates's 2000 novel of the same name, which its own author has always maintained is fiction, not biography -- but this distinction got lost for many viewers given how the film was discussed and marketed. Multiple specific scenes have no basis in Monroe's real life: biographer Anthony Summers, who interviewed almost 700 people for his research, found nothing suggesting Monroe was ever raped by a studio executive as depicted, and there's no evidence her mother tried to drown her as a child. The film also depicts a 1957 miscarriage after a fall on a beach, when the real event was an ectopic pregnancy, and includes a scene implying sexual assault by a president with no supporting evidence -- a scene Summers separately called 'historical libel' when it appeared in the original novel.
SHORT ANSWER
Michael: Yes, Michael really is the highest-grossing biopic in film history, crossing $1.029 billion worldwide. But the marketing's framing of an honest, complete portrait is misleading: Lionsgate cut scenes on the 1993 child sexual-abuse allegations for legal reasons, and critics (38% on Rotten Tomatoes) have panned the result as sanitized.
Blonde: Blonde is based on a novel its own author has always called fiction, but its docudrama presentation led many viewers to read invented, unverified events -- including a fabricated rape scene and a fabricated childhood drowning attempt -- as real facts about Marilyn Monroe's actual life.