“Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” Movie Review: Long Live the Eras Tour

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At the premiere of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour on Wednesday, Swift told fans in attendance they are “the main characters of [her] life.” They’re also a central force in the pop superstar’s already record-setting concert film.

Before she rises out of the center of the stage and begins to sing through her 10-era career, director Sam Wrench shows us the outside of SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, where she’s performing for the movie. It’s the final stop on the first U.S. leg of her tour—a tour projected to generate over $1 billion in ticket sales by the time it ends in 2024—and it’s packed with around 70,000 Swifties for one of six consecutive sold-out nights. Swift had worried she was nearing the end of her pop music career in the 2020 documentary Miss Americana. Four years later, we’re reminded who wouldn’t let that happen on their watch.

Then, she emerges. Just like when I saw her on a warm evening in Tampa this spring, and then in a four-hour torrential downpour in Boston weeks later, Swift performs like she’s grateful for every millisecond she spends onstage. In high-definition, she is radiant, confident, and, as she says in a speech midshow, having the time of her life with us.

Much like Swift’s catalog, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour has the same expert balance of glittery, bombastic pop production and deeply felt, stripped-down moments. Even if you watched the entire tour on TikTok and have the set list memorized, it will feel brand new. Wrench’s direction allows the transitions from era to era and song to song to pop onscreen, contrasting intimate close-ups of Swift and her instruments with overhead shots of the packed stadium. (The swirling camera movements for the transition from the soaring harmonies of “Don’t Blame Me” to the campy revenge chant of “Look What You Made Me Do” were a personal highlight.)

Swift’s voice has never sounded stronger. The moments she picks up her guitar or sits down at the piano are the emotional peaks. She casts a spell that turns a cavernous stadium into a closely intimate performance with “Champagne Problems” and the 10-minute rendition of “All Too Well.” No, none of the expletives were censored out.

Cuts were inevitable, given the colossal length of the original set list. Fan-favorite tracks were wiped from nearly every section (including “The Archer,” “Long Live,” “Cardigan,” and “Wildest Dreams”). Swift’s monologues about her songwriting process were also edited down. With the remaining songs, Wrench offers viewers a chance to see details up close that they may have overlooked, or underappreciated, when they saw the show live. Shots of Swift show off the intricate beadwork and embroidery on costumes by Versace, Alberta Ferretti, Oscar de la Renta, Zuhair Murad, and other designers, coordinated by Swift’s longtime stylist Joseph Cassell-Falconer. Swift’s four backing vocalists, band, and dancers—who turned each song into a living and breathing story—were also given ample screen time.

Back to the 70,000 other main characters: the fans. As in most concert movies, there are shots of audience members singing along (and sometimes crying). Thanks to the wristband lights every member of the audience wears, they’re also twinkling in the background for a significant part of the film. You can see the crowd jumping up and down for “Love Story,” can see fans all the way up in the nosebleeds waving their hands in unison for “You Need to Calm Down.” Swift brings the energy, and the Swifties match it. “Look at you!” she exclaims.

And, listen. You can hear fans singing along through every segment of the show, with swells of screaming and applause that go from loud at the opening to ear-shattering when the “surprise songs” arrive. Swift performs a two-song acoustic set toward the end, one piece on her guitar and one at the piano, which changed every night of the tour. The two tracks she and Wrench chose for the film are bookends to her career at this moment in time. First there’s “Our Song,” a twangy bop about a high school romance from her 2006 self-titled debut album. Then comes “You’re on Your Own, Kid,” from 2022’s Midnights, on the piano.

“You’re on Your Own, Kid” needs only three minutes and 14 seconds to cover the same 17-year musical period as the entire Eras Tour. It’s a profoundly lonely song that surveys the heartbreaks, sacrifices, and realizations comprising Swift’s rise from teenager writing songs in her bedroom to global phenomenon.

The camera cuts in close on Swift’s face as she reaches the emotional crest of the song. The chorus builds by tallying up moments that have wounded her, but she then makes a lyrically sharp turn toward a sense of purpose and self-actualization: “I looked around in a blood-soaked gown / And I saw something they can’t take away,” she sings. As she plays for 70,000 people hanging on her every syllable, I could imagine she saw that irreplaceable something again.

Maybe that something is the fans who find themselves in her music, who are compelled to make friendship bracelets in the style of that song’s final lines and trade them at arenas and theaters and airports—who, like me, will dance with her even through storms. Swift shares a dedication written in friendship bracelet beads after the credits roll: “Thank you to the most generous, thoughtful, loving fans on the planet. This is all because of you and for you.”

I wished I could respond with a question Swift herself asks in the title track of 2019’s Lover: “Can we always be this close?”

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is now playing in theaters.

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