It's hard to make a case for shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars for concert tickets if you're not a devoted Swiftie, but $19.89 is a small price to pay for the opportunity to see one of the most elaborate touring productions in pop-music history portrayed on film. Here are a handful of good reasons to see the movie during its 13-week run in theaters — plus a couple of drawbacks that will help you decide if you're on the fence.
The Wins
POV (Taylor's Version)If you were lucky enough to score a ticket to the first leg of the Eras Tour, you've already witnessed one of the most impressive touring productions in entertainment history. The Eras Tour film invites audiences to relive the concert — and it goes a step further, giving fans the chance to experience the show from the point of view of the performer commanding a crowd of 70,000 people at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.
One particularly grand shot during Swift's performance of "The Man," places the camera just above her left shoulder as she crosses her legs and places them on a railing. The glow of the sparkling crystals on her red-bottomed stiletto boots reflects the light-up bracelets of the audience in the distance, drawing the eye to the sea of humanity in the stands. Later, the camera captures her face from a low angle as she sings "Marjorie" against a backdrop of a veritable wall of people in the nosebleed seats engulfing the screen behind her. Among director Sam Wrench's many movie miracles is the ability to convert one of Swift's weakest songs — "Look What You Made Me Do" — into an Eras Tour film highlight, with cameras zooming around the performer, racing to match her impressive onstage stamina.
Fearless Theater Etiquette
This year has seen a lot of discourse about waning concert etiquette, including, but not limited to, fans' apparent inability to refrain from throwing hard objects at the heads of their favorite performers. The Eras Tour and its accompanying film gives audiences a license to be their most obnoxious, extroverted selves without fear of derision or the risk of physically harming their favorite artist. Screaming, crying, dancing, and chanting are all encouraged at these screenings. I've seen the film twice, and this held true on both occasions.
The first viewing took place on a Friday night at a packed AMC Sunset Place, on what was supposed to be opening night. (Swift wound up releasing the film a day early.) The audience screamed along to every song, recited every tour chant, and danced in the aisles. ("You Belong With Me" hits particularly hard with preteens who were infants when the song was first released back in 2009.)
At my second screening, only seven people straggled into the Ocean Cinemas theater: my party of five plus two strangers across the aisle. I was hesitant to go full-throat with my singing and held back during most of the movie. But when my favorite Swift pop song, "Style," kicked in, I ran to the back of the theater with my 13-year-old cousin and runway-walked with her all the way down to the front. By the time we got to the foot of the screen, our fellow theatergoers were on their feet and dancing, too.
Surprise Songs
Tens of thousands of people attend every Eras Tour concert, but given the ubiquity of social-media livestreams, millions more watch online each night. Swift knows this, so she implemented an acoustic set of rotating songs and deep cuts to keep things fresh for fans at each show. Save for a few exceptions, she rarely repeated these songs during the first leg of the tour.
Much like the "Mute Challenge" at Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour, Swift's acoustic set created a unique moment during a show that is otherwise necessarily rote owing to its massive scale. Fans who attend a screening of The Eras Tour will be treated to two surprise songs — one accompanied by piano, the other on guitar — just as they would if they were attending a live show.
The Lows
Death by a Thousand Cut SongsTaylor Swift has a confounding tendency to leave some of her strongest work on the cutting-room floor. Some of her greatest songs were left off standard versions of her albums and relegated to bonus tracks. (See, "Right Where You Left Me" off evermore, "You Are in Love" and "New Romantics" off 1989, and "Would've, Could've, Should've" off Midnights, among others.) She has also been known to choose some of the worst songs on her albums as lead singles. (The aforementioned "Look What You Made Me Do" off reputation is one. "Me!" off Lover when "Cruel Summer" was right there also comes to mind.)
Swift finally got it right in 2020 when she released "Cardigan" as the lead single for her artistic reset album, folklore. Sadly, when it came time to whittle down songs from The Eras Tour film, "Cardigan" didn't make the cut. To be clear, edits had to be made — even after trimming seven songs from the setlist, the film clocks in at a lengthy two hours and 45 minutes. Still, omitting "Cardigan" is a regrettable move. folklore's hidden, fictional love triangle storyline is the heart and soul of that album, and presenting only two of its three emblematic songs — "Betty" and "August" — makes the story (and the set) feel incomplete. Another miss: scrapping fan love letter "Long Live," which became a cathartic tour highlight after the release of Speak Now (Taylor's Version). The song soundtracks the film credits, accompanied by a reel of tour bloopers, but that only serves as a reminder of the performance that could have been.
Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Ticketmaster broke when tickets to the Eras Tour went on sale last November. Addressing the fallout, Swift assuaged fans' devastation with a statement that read in part, "[M]y hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs."
She delivered on that promise with the concert film. But with skyrocketing ticket prices, the record-breaking success of the film, and the imminent release of Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, it's hard to shake the feeling that companies might start to view these concert films as a lucrative consolation prize for fans who can't afford to wait in Ticketmaster queues or buy tickets on the exorbitantly priced resale market. Fans like to think of music as a great equalizer, but the privilege of experiencing live music has increasingly become a luxury pastime limited to a shrinking pool of participants.
If The Eras Tour film is simply an expansion of the tour's reach, that's a welcome development. But if it's a harbinger of more corporate fuckery to come, it could sour the legacy of this era-defining cultural event.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour. Now showing at theaters throughout Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties (and beyond). Tickets are $19.89.
