Moonwalker: Difference between revisions

Moonwalker
Directed by	Jerry Kramer, Will Vinton (segment "Speed Demon) Jim Blashfield (segment "Leave Me Alone"), Colin Chilvers (segment "Smooth Criminal")
Written by	Michael Jackson (story) (segment "Smooth Criminal") David Newman (screenplay) (segment "Smooth Criminal")
Produced by	Frank DiLeo, Michael Jackson Dennis E. Jones Jerry Kramer Will Vinton (segment "Speed Demon")
Starring	Michael Jackson Joe Pesci Sean Lennon Kellie Parker Brandon Quintin Adams
Cinematography	Thomas E. Ackerman Robert E. Collins Frederick Elmes John Hora Crescenzo Notarile
Edited by	Dale Beldin David E. Blewitt Mitchell Sinoway
Music by	Michael Jackson Bruce Broughton
Production company	Ultimate Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures
Release dates	December 26, 1988 (UK) January 10, 1989 (USA home video)
Running time	93 min
Country	United States
Language	English

Moonwalker, also known as Michael Jackson: Moonwalker, is an American film released in 1988 by singer Michael Jackson. Rather than featuring one continuous narrative, the film is a collection of short films about the King of Pop, several of which are long-form music videos from Jackson's Bad album. The film is named after the dance technique known as the moonwalk, which was one of his trademark moves. The name of the dance move was dubbed by the media, not by Jackson himself; however, he did choose the title of the film himself.

The release of Moonwalker was originally scheduled to coincide with Jackson's 1987 album, Bad. During the theatrical release of Moonwalker, Jackson was also embarking on a world tour. Moonwalker was not released until January 10, 1989 on Home Video in the United States and Canada, just as Michael Jackson's Bad World Tour finished. His tour was supposed to finish sooner, but postponed due to some vocal strain, so it went on until the last week of January 1989. The film was released theatrically in Europe and South America, but Warner Brothers canceled plans for a theatrical release in the U.S. for Christmas 1988. The video sold more than 800,000 copies in the U.S by April 17, 1989.^[1]

The film consists of a collage of short stories, rather than being one continuous storyline. Each of the segments is described in the separate sub-sections below.

The music video to Jackson's song "Man in the Mirror" acts as the opening music to the film. This short segment features a montage of clips of children from Africa as well as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, and other historical figures.

A short biographical film about Jackson, covering the years from his birth until the Bad tour. Excerpts of the following songs are played:

• "Music and Me"
• "I Want You Back"
• "ABC"
• "The Love You Save"
• "2-4-6-8"
• "Who's Lovin' You"
• "Ben"
• "Dancing Machine"
• "Blame It on the Boogie"
• "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)"
• "Rock with You"
• "Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough"
• "Can You Feel It"
• "Human Nature"
• "Beat It"
• "Thriller"
• "Billie Jean"
• "State of Shock"
• "We Are the World"
• "The Way You Make Me Feel"
• "Dirty Diana"

A parody of the music video for Bad's title song, featuring children filling the roles of various people from the original clip.

The video stars Brandon Quintin Adams of Mighty Ducks as the young Michael Jackson. It also featured Jermaine Jackson, Jr. and a young Nikki Cox, who later starred in Unhappily Ever After and Las Vegas. The singing group The Boys appeared as background dancers. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog co-writer Maurissa Tancharoen, future R&B star Bilal Oliver.

The "Badder" clip transitions into a second short film, referred to as "Speed Demon" , directed by Claymation innovator Will Vinton. This acts as the music video to the song Speed Demon. In the film, Michael, in an attempt to avoid overzealous fans (even The Noid), disguises himself as a rabbit (named Spike), but ends up taunting the fans into chasing him. During the chase, he morphs into other celebrities, including Sylvester Stallone, Tina Turner and Pee-Wee Herman. After finally losing the fans, he removes the costume, which comes to life and challenges him to a dance-off.

In the end, a policeman tells him he is in a "No Moonwalking Zone", and when Michael turns to point to Spike, the rabbit has already left. The policeman then sarcastically asks for his autograph (as opposed to "signature") on the ticket. Just as Michael is preparing to leave, the rocky crag in front of him morphs into Spike's head, who then nods to him, leaving Michael one-upped by his own alter-ego. Nonetheless, he seems happy enough as he leaves.

Michael wrote this song because he received a traffic ticket and arrived late to the recording studio. After telling Quincy about it, Quincy then told him to write how he felt about it therefore turning into a song later on.

The fifth segment of the film is the short film for the song "Leave Me Alone", and features an animated music video focusing on media interest in Jackson's personal life, because he had felt that the tabloid, media, press, paparazzi, etc. wouldn't leave him alone. He feels that no matter what he does to prove his innocence, they will not leave him alone. The video for the song won a Grammy in 1989 for Breakthrough, animated video, the only Grammy Award received for the album, Bad.

Jackson plays a benevolent gangster who uses his powers, as a crime fighter, to protect the children of an unnamed big city. The film opens with a framing sequence depicting a scene linked to events occurring near the end of the film, in which a group of children (including Sean Lennon) watch as Jackson exits a music store and is attacked by mobsters with machine guns. The film then backtracks to a scene of Jackson playing in a field with those children and their dog. The dog runs away, but in their search for it, Jackson and the children uncover the lair of Mr. Big, Frankie Lideo (Joe Pesci, as a parody of Michael Jackson's manager, Frank DiLeo), a drug-dealing mobster with an army of henchmen, who wants to get the entire populace of Earth addicted to drugs, starting with the children.

Mr. Big discovers Jackson and the children, but they escape; Jackson tells the children to meet him at Club 30's, which turns out to be a haunted nightclub abandoned since the 1930s. The story goes back to the mobsters attack on Jackson, and here it is revealed that Jackson is actually a magical gangster, who draws his power from shooting stars. As one passes by the club, Jackson transforms into a sportscar and mows down several of Mr. Big's henchmen. The story picks up on the children at Club 30's, and at first the children are afraid, but when Jackson appears the scary atmosphere of the club transforms and the children find themselves back in the 1930s. The club is now filled with zoot suiters and swing dancers. Jackson participates in a dance-off with the other club members, which serves as the music video for "Smooth Criminal".

The version of the song used in this segment is different from the album version — there are several new lyrics and the song is much longer, including symphonic material by Bruce Broughton. The extra lyrics are to make the story of the song clearer. The more commonly seen music video form is a four-minute collage of clips from the movie.

At the climax of the song, Mr. Big lays siege to the club and kidnaps one of the children, Katie. Jackson follows them back to Big's lair and ends up surrounded by his henchmen. Mr. Big appears and mentally tortures Jackson by threatening to inject Katie with highly addictive narcotics. While Katie manages to wriggle free, Mr. Big decides he's had enough and orders his men to kill Katie before finishing off Jackson, but not before a shooting star flies by. Jackson transforms into a giant robot and kills all of Mr. Big's soldiers. After Jackson turns into a giant spaceship, Mr. Big gets into a large hillside mounted energy cannon, firing on the spaceship into a nearby ravine. The children are his next target, but the spaceship returns from the ravine just in time to fire a beam in the cannon with Mr. Big inside.

The sports car into which Jackson morphs in this segment is the 1970 prototype Lancia Stratos 0. The automobile now resides in the private show room of the Bertone stile center at Caprie (in Susa Valley).^[2]

The film closes with Jackson performing a cover of the Beatles' song "Come Together." One of the child actors in this movie is Sean Lennon, son of John Lennon. Released as the B-Side to "Remember the Time" in January 1992 and a slightly different version appeared on the 1995 release of the HIStory album, on disc 2.

During the closing credits, two more segments are shown. The first has Ladysmith Black Mambazo performing "The Moon is Walking" in Club 30's amidst behind-the-scenes clips. The second is the four-minute version of the "Smooth Criminal" music video.

• Michael Jackson - Himself
• Joe Pesci - Frankie Lideo ("Mr. Big")
• Sean Lennon - Sean
• Brandon Quintin Adams - Young Michael/Zeke (as Brandon Adams)
• Kellie Parker - Katie

Variety reported, Moonwalker seems unsure of what it was supposed to be. At the center of the pic is the Smooth Criminal segment, a musical/dramatic piece full of dancing, schmaltzy kids, sci-fi effects and blazing machine guns [directed by Colin Chilvers, based on a story by Jackson]. Around it are really just numerous Jackson music videos with little or no linkage. Although quite enjoyable the whole affair does not make for a structured or professional movie. ^[3] The Internet personality Nostalgia Critic considered Smooth Criminal the best in Michael Jackson's videos, but felt the rest of the movie was a surreal ego trip for Jackson.

Throughout the 1990s, VH1 often featured Moonwalker in their Michael Jackson marathons, but have ceased since the last marathon in 2001.

The movie is available on VHS from Sony. In April 2005, Moonwalker was released on DVD by Warner Home Video (Europe only, in Region 2). The DVD was also released in 2006 in a Region 3 code in South Korea. It has also been released on DVD in a Region 4 code in Australia and an NTSC transfer is available on the Warner Brothers Japanese R2 DVD. The film has also been released on VCD and Laserdisc.

After Michael Jackson's death, the Region 2 version of Moonwalker went to No. 3 on Play.com's DVD chart and the available copies were sold out.

Although bootleg transfers can be found on at many video specialty stores, online auction and shopping sites, there are no known plans for an official region 1 release.

Hong Kong's TVB Pearl premiered Moonwalker on July 12, 2009.^[4]

Philippine's also launched Moonwalker in DVD and in VCD. Available in any Home Video Stores. As well as the movie "The Wiz". It was been re-launched due the death of the King Of Pop.

Moonwalker was developed into an arcade video game by Sega with the help of Jackson, which was released on the Sega System 18 hardware. Home versions of the game were released for Sega's Genesis/Mega Drive and Master System home video game systems, though the gameplay was completely different on home computers such as the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC, which was a more puzzle based video game, with the view looking down on Michael. The console versions of the game were actually based on an evolved version of the side-scrolling Sega Mega Drive Shinobi series engine, while the arcade version was a three-quarters view shooter/fighter type game. The games involved the player controlling the pop star in a quest to save children (the console version features only "Katies", while the arcade version includes all three chidren) that had been kidnapped by an evil gangster.

In the three player simultaneous arcade game, contact with Bubbles, Michael's chimp, transformed him into a robot warrior, replacing Michael's "star magic" and melee dance attacks with missiles and laser beams. In the one or two player (taking turns) console versions on certain levels rescuing a certain child first, would trigger a comet to fall from the sky that could be grabbed transforming Michael into the robot (which could fly with a rocket pack as well as use lasers and a missile special attack). Michael automatically changes into a robot for the final showdown with Mr. Big's henchmen and finally into a space ship for the last battle, in a sort of flight-sim shooter in the Genesis/Mega Drive version. All incarnations of the game featured the ability of Michael to use some form of "Dance Magic" which would force his enemies to dance to the music of various tunes from "Bad" or "Thriller" and be destroyed as a result.

• Moonwalker at IMDb
• Search for 'Moonwalker' on Games-db.com.
• Search for 'Moonwalker' on MobyGames videogame database.
• Moonwalker information and screenshots
• Michael Jackson lunar crater ("Moonwalker")
• "Human Nature" animation video from Moonwalker on YouTube
• Smooth Criminal video on Youtube (Movie version)