The high quality footage is gorgeous, and thatâs about it. I donât mean to sound unsatisfied, but the unreleased footage is the only thing that makes it worth watching, for me. I donât personally need these people, many of whom were not even involved in making the album, to tell me the same well-known and oft-repeated stories. Hearing âhe was a perfectionistâ in every existent documentary about the man gets tiring after a while, even if you know how true it is.
Retrospectively, I feel like everything about the Thriller 40 release had a tremendous amount of potential and unfortunately it did not deliver. It could have been so much more. Firstly, it would have worked extremely well as a âThriller: Deluxe Versionâ. The idea of a 40th anniversary in itself does not make a whole lot of sense, especially because youâve had a 25th anniversary in the past and because you make a timeless album have an ephemeral anniversary, which most people will forget after two weeks. And Iâve said this before, but why not wait for the 50th anniversary and do something truly fabulous with the material you have available? Even the bloody titleâŠâThriller 40â. UhmâŠif anything it should be âThriller: 40th Anniversaryâ, like every other anniversary release so far.
The artwork was atrocious at first, and then became decent, but still not great. The new songs were nice to have, especially Who Do You Know and What A Lovely Way To Go, as well as the two high quality music videos. These were the few strong points with regard to the release.
Everything else: the time it took and will take until they will finally release the documentary, the fact that they included those 25th anniversary songs and remixes, the artwork, the title, choosing a director who has said some not-so-nice things about Michael in the past, the way they announced the songs, the fact that they did not even make a big thing out of the short films being in pristine quality, the fact that the Motown 25 performance is not on the official YouTube channel, the fact that they wonât release the Victory Tour on Blu-Ray and/or on streaming platforms, the fact that the vinyl only includes the original songs, but with crappy artwork, it was bad and made the anniversary unexceptional and frustrating.