Leaving Neverland 2 should focus more on Michael Jackson ...Middle East

For many former Michael Jackson fans, the 2019 documentary Leaving Neverland marked a horrific line in the sand. Convenient arguments about separating the art from the artist felt cheap and redundant as the film gave a voice to Wade Robson and James Safechuck, who alleged that, as children, they’d been groomed and abused by the self-appointed King of Pop. Jackson’s reputation has never recovered.

Six years later, director Dan Reed has made a well-intentioned but unnecessary sequel, Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson. It has little new to say about Jackson and the crimes of which he has been accused (and which he consistently denied up to his death in 2009). Instead, the film is an often tedious critique of the glacial pace of the American civil justice system.

It follows Robson and Safechuck as they fight to have their lawsuit against the companies that handle Jackson’s business interests go to trial before a jury, while adding absolutely nothing to our knowledge about the singer and his supposed secrets.

The trauma Robson and Safechuck say they suffered at Jackson’s hands is still raw; these are wounds that will never fully heal. “Generally speaking, I lose one client a year, sometimes two, to suicide or the ill effects that come from abuse – alcoholism, drug abuse,” says their lawyer, Vince Finaldi. “I get to deal with the ghosts of at least 20 or 30 clients that I think about all the time.”

As the years pass with no confirmation of a trial date, the dismay Wade and Safechuck experience is understandable. But it doesn’t deserve an entire documentary and the navel-gazing focus on American jurisprudence distracts from the alleged abuse so horribly detailed in the original Leaving Neverland (named after Jackson’s private amusement park).

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In one of many drawn-out scenes, we see lawyers for Jackson’s companies, MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures, arguing over Zoom with a judge about the limits of corporate responsibility. We’re sent down the wrong rabbit hole, and the bigger issue around Jackson’s continued popularity is obscured.

That said, the film does an adequate job of capturing the grinding nature of the search for justice. MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures push for the case to be delayed while they prepare their legal arguments. Meanwhile, Robson and Safechuck try to get on with their lives while hoping to finally have their day in court.

“Now that Michael Jackson is dead, the [Jackson estate’s] sole duty is the making of money on Michael Jackson’s music,” says a member of their legal team as the camera cuts to crowds in London queuing for MJ: The Musical. “The truth is very inconvenient. The more delay they have, the more money they make.”

Reed’s deep dive into the entropy of the US legal system is frustrating given that the film references in passing a far more interesting subject: the continued insistence by many Jackson fans that the singer is innocent and that Robson and Safechuck are in it for a big payday.

Their smoking gun in defence of Jackson is that Robson testified under oath in 2005 that abuse “never occurred”. He today attributes that testimony to unresolved trauma, but Jackson’s defenders are unconvinced. “My belief is we’re all innocent until proven guilty,” says Andy Signore, a YouTuber who believes Jackson is innocent. “I think these two are financially motivated.”

But once touched upon, the subject of the backlash against Jackson’s accusers is dropped again, and it’s back to court for another obscure argument over the procedural elements of the case.

I appreciate the exasperation felt by Robson and Safechuck as they become ever more deeply mired in legal limbo – but Leaving Neverland 2 would surely have benefitted from a broader perspective. By fixating on the legal aspects of the story, the music industry which continues to make millions off Jackson’s tainted legacy is left entirely off the hook.

‘Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson’ is streaming on Channel 4

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