Over the weekend, I sat in a movie theater and watched as an elaborately sequined Taylor Swift sang and strutted across a stage made of screens at Los Angeles' SoFi Stadium in a film version of her ongoing Eras Tour. For nearly three hours, Swift performed songs from albums spanning her entire career, which now runs the better part of two decades. And the roughly 70,000 fans in the stadium—some equally sparkly—ate it up, screaming and crying and OMGing and tearfully, joyfully singing along.
In fact, the movie probably represents the efforts of more like 200,000 fans, since it was shot over three nights in August. Swift's tour stop in Los Angeles was even longer, playing for six nights; tickets reportedly cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars and required a Taylor Swift–like level of focus and effort to obtain. Tickets to the movie, which was released following a surprise announcement this summer, were not quite as arduous to acquire, but on opening weekend, screen after screen sold out, instantly making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time.
