This Is Michael Jackson

Watching This Is It Without Losing Your Mind

The 2009 documentary This Is It is a mess if you approach it expecting a polished biographical film. It was assembled from hundreds of hours of rehearsal footage for Michael Jackson's canceled London residency, shot over roughly six weeks before his death on June 25, 2009. The result is fragmented. Cut together by Kenny Ortega and Eddie Porter after the fact, it lacks narrative arc, conventional interviews, or any real dramatic structure beyond observing what happened backstage. That means you need a different strategy for getting anything useful out of it than you would for a standard documentary. I spent about three evenings trying to get a clean watch going with a rip I'd pulled from a DVD a while back. The original release comes in a few different quality tiers depending on your source. The theatrical cut runs roughly 111 minutes. There's also a director's cut that adds another 20 minutes or so. If you're just trying to understand what made these rehearsals notable, start with the theatrical version and treat the extended cut as supplemental, not required viewing.

This Is Michael Jackson: What the Footage Actually Shows

The footage is valuable because it captures Jackson in a working environment that almost no one has seen at this level of detail. You see him blocking choreography for "Smooth Criminal," working through vocal arrangements with his background singers, and making split-second creative decisions about staging and lighting cues. The value isn't in any single moment. It's in the cumulative picture of how he operated day after day under pressure. One thing most people miss: the audio on many home releases is compressed more than it needs to be. If you're watching on anything decent, look for versions that preserve the original Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. The difference between a compressed stereo downmix and the proper surround track is significant, especially during the musical numbers where the orchestration gets buried. I switched to a 1080p source with the native AC3 audio and the rehearsal sequences for "This Is It" and "Slave to the Rhythm" became noticeably clearer within the first five minutes. There's also a practical issue with subtitle files if you need them. The documentary includes minimal dialogue-heavy sections, and the automatic caption tracks that show up on streaming platforms are often out of sync by several seconds. I found a manually timed SRT that corrected the drift, but you might spend ten to fifteen minutes getting it right if you're picky about timing. It matters less for the dance numbers and more for the quieter moments where Jackson is actually talking through staging choices with his team.

Where to Find It and What to Avoid

The documentary has been available through major streaming platforms in various regions at different times, but availability shifts. It's been on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and iTunes at different points. Physical media remains the most reliable option if you want consistent quality. The DVD release is still widely available used, and the Blu-ray version (when it appeared) gives you a meaningful step up in picture quality over the DVD master. Here's what I'd skip: anything labeled "HD" that originates from a CamRips or internal DVD screener. Those sources will have visible compression artifacts, inconsistent audio levels, and sometimes even timecode overlays from the original editing suite still burned in. I once sat through an hour and a half of a "high quality" rip only to notice that the playback speed varied slightly during scene transitions, which made the whole thing feel oddly disorienting. That was a bad encode from a DVD9 source that had been double-transcoded. Not worth your time. If you're going the physical route, the 2009 DVD is the standard release. It includes the theatrical cut and a handful of bonus features, though most of those are shallow. The real bonus content is scattered across different regional pressings. Some European editions include slightly different bonus discs. It's not worth hunting down every region-specific version unless you're building a serious collection.

What Makes This Footage Different From Other MJ Documentaries

Most Michael Jackson documentaries that came out before or after this one are either celebratory eulogies or sensationalist explorations of his personal controversies. This Is It is neither. It's closer to a work diary. You're watching someone do his job, repeatedly, with a large team around him. The choreography rehearsals are the core content because that's where the most material exists. Jackson was known for being exacting in rehearsal, and the footage shows that without any narration telling you he was exacting. One counter-intuitive thing about the footage: the moments that feel most revealing are often the ones where things go slightly wrong. A singer misses a cue. Jackson stops the band and restarts from measure one. He does this not out of frustration but as routine calibration. That's the pattern. Watch for it. The documentary doesn't highlight these moments because they're dramatic. It shows them because they're factual, and the fact that he kept repeating them is the point. There's also a technical detail most casual viewers overlook. The rehearsal footage was shot on digital video at 24fps to match film standards, but some of the performance segments were shot at different frame rates or interpolated. If you notice occasional timing inconsistencies during certain dance numbers, that's not your perception. It's a real artifact from the production workflow. The editing team did their best to smooth it over, but it's there if you look closely.

Practical Watching Notes

If you're new to this material, don't expect to absorb everything on the first viewing. The documentary assumes you already know the songs and the performances. It doesn't explain what you're watching. I'd suggest listening to the This Is It soundtrack album first so you know what the rehearsed arrangements sound like in their finished form. The gaps between what you hear on the album and what you see in rehearsal are where the documentary's real interest lives. Runtime breaks down roughly like this: the opening sequence with "This Is It" is about twelve minutes. The "Smooth Criminal" rehearsal segment runs twenty to minutes depending on which cut you're watching. The "Earth Song" and "Will You Be There" sequences each add another fifteen to twenty minutes. The remaining time is distributed across shorter rehearsal snippets, costume fittings, and vocal sessions. If you're screening it for someone unfamiliar with Jackson's work, you might want to pre-select the longer musical numbers and skip some of the shorter transitional material. The full runtime is manageable, but the pacing drags in the middle sections. I also learned the hard way that the Blu-ray edition has a different color grade than the DVD. The Blu-ray is cooler and slightly desaturated. Some people prefer it. I didn't. If you own both and you're particular about image quality, stick with the DVD for the warmer tones and the Blu-ray for detail in the dance sequences where stage lighting creates complex contrast. They're not interchangeable masters.

The documentary doesn't resolve any of the larger questions about Jackson's life or career. It doesn't claim to. It shows a man working. That's it. If you're looking for analysis, there are plenty of books and long-form articles that cover the cultural and business context around the This Is It concerts. This footage is primary source material. Use it accordingly.