My long, surprisingly quiet Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour experience

At 8:27 p.m., three minutes before my opening night screening of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour was set to begin, a grand total of 11 other filmgoers (I counted) filled the seats of Theater 1 at the 34th Street Manhattan AMC. Yes, you read that right. The $100 million-grossing, second-most notorious film event of the year that put Beyoncé in a regular old AMC seat and bumped The Exorcist: Believer out of its rightful Friday the 13th premiere slot was kind of an under-attended snooze-fest.

All the lyrics my friends had dutifully learned were replaced by a single question: uhh … what? As I left the theater three hours later, though, I was able to posit some answers. First, there are obviously far more urgent things happening in the world right now than a Taylor Swift premiere. Also, as of this Wednesday (long after I waited in the virtual AMC queue to buy my tickets), Friday the 13th was technically no longer even the actual premiere of the film. In a rare foregoing of her usual obsession with numerology, specifically the number 13, Taylor and her team decided to release the film a full day early, likely to the delight of both ravenous fans as well as Taylor Swift’s checking account.

More likely though, at least in what would become my experience, it was because people just didn’t really want to go. When the film was announced on August 31, just weeks after the SoFi stadium shows at which it was shot, Eras-mania was at an all time high. It was still warm enough to wear rhinestoned Lover costumes from cities past. Surprise songs were still being ranked and debated. Society was still months away from thinking the phrase “ketchup and seemingly ranch” referred to anything but condiments. Now, long after the salt air has all blown away, the prospect of sitting in a kind of small theater for three whole hours to watch something you’ve likely already seen either live or on social media is more than a little daunting. To borrow Taylor’s words, we really did take the moment and taste it … while it was happening. Now, the after-taste is just a little bit sour.

Let me back up a bit. If you had asked me my opinion on Taylor Swift before July 2020, I probably would have answered with a noncommittal shrug. I liked her well enough, but I certainly didn’t know my “Cruel Summer”s from my “New Year’s Day”s. I know, I know. I’m a band-wagoner. But while I became a Swift-convert listening to folklore for the first time, I don’t think I really became a Swiftie until this summer.

Not once did I consider fighting in what has now been deemed The Great Ticketmaster War when it all went down almost a year ago today. I regretted that decision the minute the first of many TikTok clips began pouring out of Glendale, Arizona. Just from one night’s worth of shaky videos and screaming fans, it was abundantly clear that this would be the event of the summer, if not 2023 as a whole. I, along with countless celebrities and what felt like the rest of the world, absorbed livestream after livestream, tracked surprise songs, memorized the set list, and learned the chants, all seemingly through osmosis. I talked with friends about what we would have worn had we been lucky/smart enough to try to score tickets. I commented some version of “omg so jealous” on numerous Instagram posts. I explained what a Scooter Braun was to my dad.

By the time the L.A. shows—the last on the (first) U.S. leg of the tour—rolled around, I had seen every song, every jumpsuit, and every transition. But I’d never traded friendship bracelets, shouted “let’s go, bitch” or participated in the fan fervor that made this tour—and Taylor herself—feel so monumental.

That, at least in my mind, is what this movie was for. Concert tickets are almost impossible to get a hold of these days, even for smaller acts. Audience etiquette is at an all time nadir. A movie theater is more accessible, less intimidating, and certainly more affordable. (Tickets to Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour cost $19.89, of course.) If Barbenheimer showed us that a night at the theater can be an event, the Eras film, and Beyoncé’s upcoming Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, were supposed to prove that it can also be a performance … or at least, almost as good as one.

I was on board. I was ready and excited, per Taylor’s own ruling, to attend a far lower-cost event where “Eras attire, friendship bracelets, singing and dancing [were] encouraged.” But after tonight, I’m more convinced than ever that a movie theater should be for just that: movies. That’s not to say the film itself was bad. Far from it. In many ways, it did everything a concert film was supposed to do. It captured the spectacle, and more importantly, the joy of shared experience that makes a good tour so powerful. But seeing all those weeping fans onscreen in a silent, mostly empty theater with not even an AMC-branded friendship bracelet in sight rang especially hollow. Customized, pandering previews for Mean Girls: The Musical and Trolls Band Together with catchphrases like “Hey Swifties: Get ready for your next musical celebration” didn’t help. As a fan, the film didn’t feel “all because of you and for you,” in the words of an end-credit dedication screen; it felt sold to me.

Of course, this was only one experience. While no one was in costume in my theater, I did take a pee break halfway through, which revealed an entirely different crowd from an earlier screening that had just let out. (By the way, even though a few songs have been cut, the film is still almost three hours long, so maybe plan accordingly in that regard.) In the other audience, there was more pink, more rhinestones, more souvenir popcorn buckets, and at least two limited edition folklore cardigans, so the vibe might have been totally different. You may be reading this right now in a folklore cardigan of your own, throat hoarse from screaming along to all your favorite songs, thinking “this writer is the maddest woman I’ve ever seen.” I sincerely hope you are. As someone in active mourning over the current inaccessibility of live music, I really, genuinely want this trend to work out. Maybe Beyoncé is the answer. Maybe Trolls Band Together really will be the musical celebration the Eras tour wasn’t, at least for me. Who knows.

What I do know is that right before the credits rolled on a very long and very quiet three hours, it felt to me like something had ended. This rare cultural event that brought genuine joy through the freedom to laugh, scream, cry, and connect—even for people like me who didn’t go to a single show—really was what it was because of the fans. Taylor Swift is an undeniably singular performer at the absolute top of her game, as the movie proves over and over and over again. But in the quiet vacuum of the 34th Street AMC, I can’t think of a single moment of the film that made me as happy as an end-credits montage of fan costumes, signs, and general excitement (along with a fun “Errors Tour” blooper or two), set against the Speak Now anthem, “Long Live.” Those are the moments I want to remember.