Start With Thriller. Moonwalker Is the Optional Long Cut.

This is streaming coverage, built for watching at home rather than tracking theatrical presentation. Availability changes by country and service, so links and purchase options should be checked at publication; the order works whether the titles are included with a subscription, rented separately or found on compatible discs.

Spoiler note: The guide discusses the structures and closing images of Thriller and Moonwalker. The opening recommendation above is safe if you want to go in cold.

Build the order around Smooth Criminal

The doorway into Club 30s is the useful anchor. Michael Jackson enters a silent nightclub in Moonwalker, drops a coin into the jukebox and turns a room of motionless patrons into the extended Smooth Criminal routine, where costume, camera placement and group choreography all serve the beat before the larger story resumes.

That sequence explains why Moonwalker belongs in this order but does not automatically deserve the entire evening. It has the concentration of a standalone short film trapped inside a feature whose structure keeps changing. The movie begins as a career collage, moves through comic and animated variations on Jackson’s screen persona, then settles into a fantasy chase involving children, gangsters and transformations. Smooth Criminal arrives as the organizing event, although the plot surrounding it is much less disciplined.

Start with Thriller because it teaches the screen grammar that Smooth Criminal expands. Finish with This Is It because its rehearsal material removes the finished surface and shows Jackson negotiating timing, movement, musicians and planned screen inserts. The order moves from a short film built to look complete, through an anthology straining toward feature length, to footage of a production that never reached its intended stage.

It also prevents This Is It from being mistaken for a standard concert film. The 2009 release was assembled from rehearsals for Jackson’s planned London residency after his death, and its performances were not recorded in front of a paying concert audience. It documents preparation through an authorized feature shaped after the fact, which makes it valuable for process but limited as biography.

The short sampler takes about 40 minutes

Play the full version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, not a shortened upload that begins at the cemetery dance. The narrative setup matters: a 1950s-style date scene turns into a monster movie, the movie theater resets that fiction, and the walk home gradually pulls the characters into another horror framework. When the dance arrives, it feels like a release engineered by editing and staging rather than an isolated routine.

The short film runs under a quarter-hour, so there is little reason to trim it. John Landis directs it as a succession of reversals, with theatrical makeup, widescreen framing and a spoken-word break creating room for Jackson’s performance to change modes. Its final look back at the camera leaves the fiction open by one beat. That is the first essential stop.

Next, jump to the extended Smooth Criminal section in Moonwalker. Use a chapter menu if the edition labels it, or find the officially distributed standalone short where available. Do not substitute a brief promotional edit without checking the length, because the Club 30s entrance, jukebox cue and sustained dance passage are the point of including it. This is Jackson’s music-video craft at its clearest: the song does not interrupt a story so much as seize control of one.

Finish with the Billie Jean rehearsal near the closing stretch of This Is It, continuing into Man in the Mirror if time allows. Billie Jean needs less planned spectacle than several other numbers in the film, which leaves the relationship between bass line, isolated movement and the watching crew exposed. The footage also gives the sampler a useful ending: after two pieces designed around costumes, sets and postproduction, the last selection shows how much of the effect could begin with a mostly open stage.

This route takes roughly the length of a television episode, depending on which cuts and menus are available. It does not explain Moonwalker as a feature or This Is It as a memorial document. It does establish the progression from narrative short, to extended musical centerpiece, to rehearsal, which is the practical reason to watch these works together.

The fuller evening needs a break

For the complete route, watch Thriller, all of Moonwalker, take a short break, then play This Is It. Set aside just under four hours before pauses, credits and time spent finding the correct editions. Starting with Moonwalker saves minutes at the front but weakens the order, since its early career montage assumes familiarity and its genre changes become easier to read after Thriller has established Jackson’s interest in horror effects and screen transformation.

Moonwalker is the optional long cut because its anthology construction, meaning a feature assembled from distinct segments rather than one continuous dramatic line, is both the attraction and the problem. Badder restages Bad with children. Speed Demon combines live action and clay animation. Leave Me Alone turns tabloid imagery into a moving collage.

The Smooth Criminal storyline eventually takes over, yet the movie never makes those sections feel like necessary steps in one plot.

Watch the whole feature if those collisions interest you. Skip to selected segments if the goal is to understand Jackson’s strongest screen work without treating every connective scene as equally important. The gangster material gives Smooth Criminal a setting and a threat, but it continues after the routine into effects-heavy fantasy, and that back stretch asks the thin rescue plot to carry more weight than it can.

Return to the Club 30s doorway when the structure starts wandering. Before it, Moonwalker behaves like a collection of visual concepts. During it, every entrance and cut has a shared destination. After it, the film has to become a conventional adventure again, and the loss of focus is immediate enough that a sampler can stop without missing another sequence of equal formal control.

This Is It then changes the viewing posture. Kenny Ortega’s film follows the broad shape of a planned arena show, moving among songs, production meetings, dancers, musicians and screen material prepared for the stage. Repetition has a job here. A phrase may restart because Jackson wants a musical cue adjusted or needs to explain where he is conserving his voice, so the film’s pauses reveal working relationships that a polished concert recording would remove.

The feature still packages those rehearsals into a smooth posthumous narrative. It is not raw archive footage, and the absence of the completed concerts cannot be edited away. Watching it last keeps that distinction clear: Thriller and Smooth Criminal show the designed outcome, while This Is It shows plans, partial runs and decisions still awaiting an audience.

Check the cut before paying

Search by full title and year, then compare the listed running time and description with the work you intend to watch. Thriller may appear as a music video, a restored short or an extra attached to another release. Moonwalker can be harder to locate consistently across regions. This Is It is a feature-length rehearsal documentary, so a listing that offers only music clips is not the same purchase.

Free official uploads are fine for the sampler when they preserve the complete sequence. Fan edits, reaction videos and cropped reposts can remove the narrative openings or replace the original frame with a vertical crop. That matters most with Thriller, where the movie theater and walk home establish its layered fiction, and with Smooth Criminal, where the width of the Club 30s staging lets the ensemble create patterns around Jackson.

For a disc, check format and region coding, a playback restriction tied to the market where a disc was sold. Also confirm that a used listing names the correct title rather than relying on cover art alone. Buying Moonwalker solely for one sequence is difficult to justify when an authorized standalone Smooth Criminal option is available, although the disc makes more sense for viewers who want Speed Demon, Leave Me Alone and the surrounding experiment in one place.

Sound deserves the best home setup already available, but this order does not require new equipment. Use a television or monitor rather than a phone for the group choreography, turn off motion smoothing if it makes film movement look unnaturally slick, and choose the original aspect ratio instead of filling the screen by cropping. Headphones help in This Is It, where rehearsal instructions and small changes in the band can sit below the main vocal track.

What this order does not claim

These three works do not form a complete Michael Jackson biography. Thriller is a controlled fiction, Moonwalker builds a self-authored screen persona, and This Is It was assembled by collaborators and rights holders from footage never intended to become the final concert film. They show changing methods of presentation, not an unfiltered private record.

That is also why release order works better than beginning with the rehearsal feature. This Is It gains meaning when the finished images are already in mind. Its planned Smooth Criminal screen material can then be compared with the Club 30s doorway rather than received as another isolated effect.

Questions people ask

What is the essential

Michael Jackson watch if I only have 20 minutes?

Watch the complete Thriller short film. If a few minutes remain, begin the extended Smooth Criminal sequence at Jackson’s entrance into Club 30s. Do not skip straight to the Thriller dance, since the monster-movie setup and theater reset explain how the short turns narrative into choreography.

Do

I need to watch all of Moonwalker before This Is It?

No. The practical minimum is Smooth Criminal, with Leave Me Alone added if you want another example of collage and effects work. Watch all of Moonwalker for its anthology structure and genre changes, not because its gangster plot supplies information needed to understand This Is It.

Is

This Is It a concert film or a documentary?

It is best treated as an authorized rehearsal documentary assembled after Jackson’s death. It contains sustained performances and outlines the planned concert, but there was no completed public show for the cameras to preserve. Watch it for process, musical direction and stage planning rather than a definitive performance of the residency.

Where can

I stream Thriller, Moonwalker and This Is It?

Availability varies by region and can split the three works across official video channels, rental stores, subscription catalogs and physical editions. Check each title separately at publication, confirm the cut before paying, and use the sampler order even if Moonwalker is available only through selected authorized shorts.