Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft tour sold out every one of its 106 shows across four continents. Over a million and a half people saw her perform hits including “Bad Guy,” “Ocean Eyes” and “Birds of a Feather.” If you missed it — or want to see it again — a concert film recorded over Eilish’s four-night stint at Manchester, England’s Co-op Live Arena last July is opening in theaters this week with a surprising name on the bill: James Cameron, who shares directing credit with Eilish herself.
“Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D)” captures Eilish’s minimalist, personal production using Cameron’s immersive high-frame-rate technology, last seen in “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” You can even see that Eilish’s two backup singers aren’t wearing matching shoes. With no dancers or costume changes, all attention is focused purely on her performance and the ecstatic fans.
Does the documentary supplant Beatlemania with Billiemania? Times pop music critic Mikael Wood and Times film critic Amy Nicholson hash it out.
MIKAEL WOOD: Like Kate Winslet’s well-to-do Rose and Leonardo DiCaprio’s impecunious Jack, the two of us come to “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour” from different perspectives. Amy, you know everything about James Cameron and his movies but have never been to a Billie Eilish concert. I’ve seen the singer eight or nine times but still haven’t sat through a single one of the “Avatar” films. (Love “Titanic,” obviously.)
Given your newness to Eilish, I’m eager to hear about the sense of her artistry you got (or didn’t) from the movie — whether it helped you understand why her fans feel so deeply connected to her and how she fits into the broader pop-girl matrix. And given your knowledge of Cameron, I’m curious what you make of his grandfatherly presence in the film — we see and hear quite a bit of him in rehearsal and behind-the-scenes footage — and how his use of tech here compares with the rest of his work. This man loves a high-def camera. At one point I was almost able to read the text messages on an audience member’s phone.
For my part, I’ll say I really dug the surprising degree of intimacy in the performance footage. I caught this tour at Inglewood’s Kia Forum in late 2024, just after Eilish became the first artist in history to be Grammy-nominated for album of the year for her first three LPs. As I recall, the evening felt like a big, noisy homecoming victory lap. Yet Cameron’s extreme close-ups convey the intricate emotions of Eilish’s music in a way you can’t get sitting even just a few rows back from the stage. Similarly, his state-of-the-art sound mix rescues the gorgeous detail in her singing from the inevitable muddiness of an arena sound system. (She’s probably the purest vocal talent of her generation.)
All that said, what most moved me about the film might’ve been the many shots of weeping teens in the audience. I never get tired of seeing how much music means to young people — its power to shape their ideas about the world and their place in it — and that’s something right at the heart of “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”
I mean, that rendition of “Your Power,” in which Eilish seems to be channeling an entire generation’s anxieties? Chills. So tell me, Amy: Do you feel like you’ve been to a Billie Eilish concert now?
AMY NICHOLSON: I feel like I’ve been to a Billie Eilish concert more than if I’d actually been to a Billie Eilish concert.
In the arena, I wouldn’t have gone under the stage to scoot around the scaffolding or noticed when someone in the second balcony missed the first half of “Skinny” because they were in the bathroom. Of course, I’d be the weirdo in the crowd wearing my nerdiest James Cameron shirt, a deep-cut reference to “Aliens.” But the high frame rate makes it crystal clear that Eilish’s fandom welcomes all weirdos.
Cameron seems to have given himself two challenges: make this Manchester stadium feel as hyper-real as Pandora and shoot the crowd like a reprise of “A Hard Day’s Night.” The first time he put the camera behind a row of fans, I had to look over the edge of my 3D glasses to double-check that those waving arms weren’t really in my theater. (Your tapping foot, however, was.)
Agreed, there’s incredible power in those close-ups of people singing and sobbing along with Eilish’s songs. Her music has a bedroom intimacy. It’s the soundtrack of first loves and first heartbreaks, rotten days, soured friendships and sweet hopes for tomorrow. Actually witnessing the audience’s emotional connection to her lyrics makes “Hit Me Hard and Soft” feel like an epic coming-of-age movie as much as a concert film. Still, by the 50th mascara-smeared face, I needed fresh air.
The camera seemed delighted by the illumination of all those cellphones, but mostly ignored the overhead Jumbotron, which, when I go to big shows, tends to be the only thing I wind up watching. If concert films are becoming as good as or better than concerts (and much cheaper), can you see a future when artists just release a movie and save themselves a year of touring?
Also, despite being filmed in England, I don’t remember hearing a single fan with a British accent. (I’ve heard anecdotally that American ticket prices have gotten so expensive that it’s more economical to fly across the pond. Is “Hit Me Hard and Soft” documentary evidence?
WOOD: Hmm, it might be — although I also noticed a clump of palm trees in the distance behind Billie in a scene where she’s gazing through the open window of an SUV ferrying her from a show. Do they have palm trees in Manchester? Maybe Cameron was so taken with Eilish’s act that he followed her around to multiple cities as he shot this thing.
As for your question about concert movies replacing concerts — I think we’re a ways off from that, if only because what makes all these kids sob is their physical proximity to the stars they idolize. But if these films keep getting made, I do think we’ll see more musicians start conceptualizing their live shows with the seen-on-a-screen experience in mind. I’ve already witnessed that at Coachella, where almost every headliner since Beyoncé has performed as much for the folks watching the festival’s YouTube live stream as for those on the ground right in front of them.
Let me ask you this: Our colleague Suzy Exposito recently interviewed Eilish and Cameron for a story in Elle about “Hit Me Hard and Soft” and in there, Cameron calls himself “a serial offender in extolling the virtues of female power and its many dimensions.” (Such an unc-ish way to put it.) How do you think about Eilish as compared with some of the heroes of the director’s other movies: Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in “Aliens,” for instance, or Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor in the “Terminator” films? Do you sense a connection between these women? Do you think Cameron does?
NICHOLSON: I like your idea that Cameron followed Eilish around like Phish. You’re right — he’s been obsessed over strong women for four decades and seems to find Eilish’s conductor-like command over 20,000 people as impressive as Linda Hamilton’s biceps. He puts his metaphorical spotlight on the fact that this is her show, the lasers and light-up floors that she designed, even rewinding back in time to establish that it was Eilish’s idea to film her entrance from her own POV. But despite his insistence that their shared directing credit will list her name above his and larger, at the end his name is ranked over hers in exactly the same font. My guess is that agents-slash-lawyers are the most powerful of all?
I loved watching him fall in love with Eilish’s screen presence, especially that backstage beat when she gave Cameron a makeup tutorial of how to make her ice-blue eyes pop on camera. Yes, everyone’s there to hear her sing but she connects with the lens like the great silent star Gloria Swanson: She’s ready for her 3D close-up, Mr. Cameron. (Also, she does her own glam? I’m doubly impressed.)
Eilish’s music has hummed through my house since we saw “Hit Me Hard and Soft.” More than that, now that I’ve had a better-than-front-row view of the passion Eilish puts into each syllable, it’s amped my interest in her rumored acting debut as Sylvia Plath in Sarah Polley’s upcoming adaptation of “The Bell Jar.” If that project happens, meet me back here for an encore.
The post Billie Eilish, intimate in even James Cameron’s eye: Our critics weigh in on 3D concert doc ‘Hit Me Hard and Soft’ appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
