Many a time has there been a movie proclaimed, promotionally speaking, to be reinventing a genre or experience in the way that “Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour” has been sold. Few actually do. Then again, even fewer have Mr. James Cameron himself as a director.
If you were to bet on a single filmmaker changing the game, it might just be Cameron, the man of “Titanic” and terminators, aliens and avatars; yet surely a losing bet would be on the 71-year-old giant of movies doing so for a pop star’s concert film in 2026?
Cameron, who directed the film with Eilish, had apparently showed some of his 3-D camera technology for the upcoming “Avatar” projects one evening to Eilish’s mother, then offhandedly mentioned the singer ought to play with it herself for her own tour. Eilish agreed, and off Cameron went to go shoot a few days of Eilish’s tour in Manchester, England, with shiny prototype 3-D tech in tow. The result is something that, on a purely technical viewing experience, does feel like if not a reinvented, then a totally reinvigorated affair.
This is an often electric document of Eilish’s show: the pure quality of image and visceral sense of 3-D immersion is spectacular, as if we’re feeling a new form of presence in performance. You can already imagine the spiritual experience it might offer for her devotees. But even for the uninitiated, the film intimates a palpable sense of the connection Eilish has with her fans, most of whom we see throughout the concert sobbing and crooning in communion with the star.
We can hear individual voices in an arena singing every word, and we can feel the desperate sense of hope and belonging they see in her as she sits cross-legged, her voice sighing with longing as she sings “What Was I Made For?” inches away from a mound of outstretched hands. Onstage, as in her music, she is equal parts free, devilishly playful and earnest in a way that makes it clear why she offers young fans a way of seeing themselves differently.
But that looseness and intimacy translates to a concert production that is not particularly dynamic — by her own admission, she wanted to command and connect with a crowd without big spectacle and backup dancers. One wonders how the kind of camera technology here might look on a more involved performer or maximalist show.
The movie does offer some brief behind-the-scenes snippets of Eilish, but “Hit Me Hard and Soft” dispenses with any narrative around her or this artistic era, focusing almost entirely on the Manchester shows (simply watching her scurry under the stage during a set can be bracing in 3-D) or on the making of it. There are none of the raw peeks into an artist’s inner world, and brief interludes with Cameron following Eilish around are almost quaintly shorn of the typically stylized tints adorning music movies.
The concert film, after all, is not exactly a creatively audacious subgenre (though there are some notable exceptions, such as Jonathan Demme’s “Stop Making Sense”). But in some ways, the movie is a bizarre Venn diagram of aesthetic and emotional interests: a totally immersive experience into the power of Eilish’s music, and a test film for Cameron to play with his latest gadgets.
That’s not exactly a bad thing. Concert movies may become more prominent in the coming years, with the combination of feverish fandoms, the cultural boost that “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” phenomenon gave to the experience, and the increasingly prohibitive pricing of concert tickets. But most crucially, our era of screens also means that even if you didn’t go to the show, you’ve likely already seen clips from all kinds of angles online, some of which provide a kind of intimacy that a standard concert film might never give you.
“Hit Me Hard and Soft” has an immediacy that does offer something unique to that experience. It might become canonical for fans of Eilish’s music simply by virtue of having her in it, but for the rest, it feels more like a steppingstone for future stars to bring the stage to the screen in even grander ways.
Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour
Rated PG-13 for strong language and suggestive references. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters.
