robertlove said:

purplesweat said:

huh? What has selling out stadiums got to do with it? I'm talking about creativity. Britney is no. 1 in the US, so i have i can't critize her either?

Riverpoet I think you should go and see the movie instead of just looking at snippets which don't offer the full movie flow. That being said I suppose even if you see it, we can predict your review anyway as you have little to say in MJ's favour.

To the rest who always wanna talk MJ down, it doesn't matter what you say, your argument is invalid. He was Michael Jackson and the majority of the world loved him. You can argue till you're blue in the face, you can't change history with your talk. What you can do is make history with your own actions and talents. But criticisms on a forum sure ain't gonna make history, I can tell you that.

[/quote]

Yeah that

robertlove said:

The dome project sequences were brand new. I know a lot of the routines were the same, but he updated them all and made them more fresh.

At the end of the day people want to see a Michael Jackson concert and have very specific ideas about what to expect from one. He delivered what the people wanted. No different from Prince coming out and doing Purple Rain and Let's Go Crazy for the gazillionth time.

robertlove said:

purplesweat said:

LOL! you don't make any point at all, what kind of discussion is this? You only send pictures of greatest this and greatest that, but thats not the point at all. I'm not talking about who is the greatest, i was talking about Michael's show, which looked the same as 20 years ago. This is a forum, you discuss....but its ok, if you can't have a normal discussion and can't take criticism, keep those pics posted

Since I never had the pleasure of seeing MJ live, it didn't bother me what he would perform at his concerts. Though, I have watched numerous videos, I'm assuming that what's being discussed is what he did during live performances. If he is being repetitive, I'm sure it can get "old" to a fan who's followed it all, on the other hand, I can't even begin to imagine what it would take for MJ to try and add to his performances by switching up music, choreography etc. . .

It just seems like it would be exhausting, especially after a decade of no concert performances. Not to mention the time. Seems I read that he didn't have a lot of time to put even this redundant (not my feeling) concert together.
It makes me wonder if he would have been up to it, even if he seemed quite capapble during THIS IS IT rehearsals. I wonder if we'll ever find out how and why MJ chose to do his concerts the way he did them. Maybe as he performed the London concerts, he would have switched out a few routines here and there. Seems like even he'd get tired of repeating the same movements and songs.

robertlove said:

There WERE differences, albeit minor ones, we'll never know really if there were going to be more than meets the eye in TII.

Michael has always followed a successful blueprint in how certain songs were performed. I'd liken how MJ performed Billie Jean to how Prince performs Purple Rain, the hat tilt, the glove, moonwalk and dancing solo at the end = Prince bathed in purple light getting everybody to go "Whooo Ooooo Oooo" while waving your arm from side to side. you don't hear people saying i wish he'd change it up, put the guitar down and play it on a fucking xylophone.

Again, certain songs are expected to be performed a certain way.

Ultimately,It doesn't matter really now does it? It wasn't broke for most folks, so no major fixing required. I'd have dug Dirty Diana from the descriptions of how it was proposed to be performed. But we'll never know.

Marrk said:

You're right about Purple Rain, thats why i sometimes can't stand watching him sing that song again, but i think Prince changes up a lot of his songs during concerts. Its like Michael said during This is it: "I want the exact same sound of the record", maybe thats what people want, or do they want a live version of the song? I think there's a difference

DesireeNevermind said:

You make me laugh so much!!! It is quite refreshing.

Arnotts said:

You're right, the FANS wanted something different. It's the casuals and general public that never let him change. Look at the reviews from people actually really disappointed that he didn't moonwalk in a Billie Jean rehearsal. I didn't give a shit.

He'd do interviews in the past and he'd be asked to demonstrate the moonwalk time after time after time. If I had him in front of me to dance like a puppet I'd get him to do about 50 other famous moves above the freakin' moonwalk. Hell, I can moonwalk, every old skool breakdancer can backslide and it's about the only MJ signature move that crappy impersonators can do and not look stupid.

robertlove said:

Then you didn't see Michael when he was married to Lisa.. she said he was all about Passion... understand!

It was a greatest hits tour. You don't do 50 dates at a massive arena for hardcore fans. If he'd of opened with Unbreakable and gone into Who Is It, Is It Scary and We've Had Enough about 3/4 of the people in the arena would be staring at eachother with blank faces waiting for Billie Jean.

That is what the majority of people wanted from these shows. The people who bought tickets are probably made up 1/4 of hardcore fans and 3/4 of casual music fans. It was widely reported when these shows were announced that AEG made MJ give them a setlist for them to approve, to make sure he was going to perform songs that people knew.

I enjoyed the little nods to Invincible though, such as the Break O Dawn club in the SC Dome Project sequence and the little bit of Threatened and Speechless he performed...
[Edited 11/5/09 9:15am]

MattyJam said:

True. Especially after what happened the years before, he HAD to do greatest hits.

It just sucks though. We were never asking for him to sing Mind Is The Magic or Cheater (actually, yeah, I was wanting Cheater!). I got people at my work now umming and erring over seeing This Is it at the cinema because they want to know if he sang Butterflies.

Ellie said:

Well your work friends have much better taste than mine.

The majority of people outside of hardcore fans couldn't hum you a single song from Dangerous, let alone Invincible.

I do wish more of the over seas fans' knew classic MJ songs I guess thats how I should put it.

robertlove said:

To say that those shows are the same as years 20 years ago is a big fat LIE, those shows intended to be different, and they looked different, its so apparent and obvious in the film but as always, some cats don't want to give MJ the credit he deserves, you simply one of them, you are no different to the others.

seeingvoices12 said:

co-sign!

Ellie said:

The fact is there are loads of songs MJ could have sang in concerts that he didn't and I ain't talking "Isn't It Scary" or "Who Is it" I don't care much for the likes of Thriller, Bad or Black or white. But neither did I care much for Who Is It, Child-hood or Threatened(like the hard-core fans).

I am old skool, so give Let Me Show You The Way, Time ~Waits For No One, I can't Help It, That's What You Get for Being Polite rather than Beat It, Thriller or Black & White. Give me I wannabe Where You Are or Looking Through the Windows rather than ABC and I be There.

He rarely sang those songs in his solo concerts, either, but I wished he did.
[Edited 11/5/09 10:45am]

purplesweat said:

LOVE it!

I saw the movie 3 times and enjoyed it.

Just saw it...laughed, cried, smiled, cheered, bawled.

THIS IS IT....brilliant...

whatsgoingon said:

Listen, I love Triumph and Destiny as much as the next hardcore fan and I would give my left arm to see a live performance of Walk Right Now, but I don't know what planet you're living on if you thought that he would perform songs from obscure group albums over the classics which made him the legend he is today.

Can you imagine the look on peoples faces if Michael had performed Show You The Way To Go instead of Beat It and Looking Through The Windows in place of Thriller?

I can see them lining up for their refunds right now...
[Edited 11/5/09 14:01pm]

Just saw it for the first time this evening and took my mother with me. Lots of tears and laughter.

It was fantastic and better than I expected. Of course, I would love a concert consisting of songs like "Style of Life", "Streetwalker", "Can't Let Her Get Away", "the Way You Love Me" and other non-hits, but who except us would have wanted that? I don't get the complaining.

But then again, the only live Jackson films I've seen are the officially released concerts (Yokohama, Bucharest, and some of the Victory Tour clips), so I'm not hardcore enough to obsess over the fact that Michael used the exact same "woo" that he used twenty years ago at 1:36 in a song.

And another thing..."Threatened" sounded fantastic performed live, I just wish Michael would have sang at least a part of it.
[Edited 11/5/09 16:05pm]

MattyJam said:

people do know those songs, you forget MJ was famous before Thriller. So never underestimate what people know. You feel because people are not "hard-core" fans they will not know "Show You the Way To Go", but wasn't it number 1 in the England back in 77, before many of the people on this site were born? I still hear the song on the radio even before MJ died. And no one saying he shouldn't have sang songs like Billie Jean and Beat it. It wouldn't be a MJ concert without them, but that doesn't mean he could never sing a couple of vintage songs that were not big hits either.
[Edited 11/5/09 15:07pm]

whatsgoingon said:

In all honesty, for the casual fan, that would be akin to him saying, "Now here are some songs from my upcoming album." That's not what they are going to the concert for. They want to sing along to every single song. So, it has to be the big hits.

If it's some $10 concert, then maybe he could sing all the lesser known songs.
[Edited 11/5/09 15:18pm]

The answer is somewhere in the middle. Yes, he has to do Billie Jean and Thriller, but there were also plenty of songs he could sacrifice to do other hits, and it doesn't hurt for the concert to be between 2 and 3 hours. Blood On The Dancefloor, Stranger In Moscow, Heal The World, HIStory and a couple other songs could easily be sacrificed.