Fiasco total: La tragedia de Astroworld

As "Trainwreck: The AstroWorld Tragedy" (2025 release; 80 min.) opens, it is "November 5, 2021" and Travis Scott headlines Live Nation's AstroWorld festival that he started in 2018. It's the first big event in Houston after COVID, and people are ready to party, and party hard. The venue is massive so what in the world could go wrong? Turns out, plenty... At this point we are 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: I remember these events vaguely but had not seen any footage or further analysis of it, until now. This documentary lays it all out in a clear and concise manner, including plenty of interviews with people that were there: festival goers, but also a Live Nation photographer, a professional event planner, and even 2security guards who, believe it or not, were hired the day before the festival started and seemingly without any prior experience in security services. It soon becomes very clear that things are going terribly wrong, with tragic results. Surely someone is going to be held accountable, right? How about Travis Scott, who has a prior record of inciting crowds (we see footage of a prior Lollapalooza show where he incites the crowd to rush the stage, and then, SHOKCER (not), the crowd does exactly that). We see details of the horrendous layout of the site, essentially turning the space into several inescapable death traps. We see texts from Live Nation officials as the concert is starting that they fear the worst, including death. Watching this documentary is not easy and certainly is not a lot of fun. In fact, I felt incensed and angry, as this tragedy did not have to happen, but instead, as one talking head puts it, they "ignored blaring warning signs". For shame.

"Trainwreck: The AstroWorld Tragedy" started airing on Netflix last week. If you wonder how a large music festival botches so much in so little time, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

This documentary does a solid job capturing individual experiences at Astroworld, but it lacks a deeper investigation into why the tragedy happened in the first place. There's a clear absence of critical reflection on the organizational failures, especially from Live Nation's side.

As someone who has attended many hip-hop shows over the years, I've seen firsthand how dominant Live Nation is in the live music scene-and how little seems to have changed since Astroworld. I went to Rolling Loud last year, also produced by Live Nation, and it honestly didn't feel like any lessons had been learned. Security staff seemed untrained, and crucial aspects like venue selection, crowd flow, and transportation were clearly not well thought out.

Given the intensity of hip-hop crowds, the rise of rage culture, and the continued lack of proper organization, it's not hard to imagine something like this happening again (though I hope it never does). I really hope this documentary sparks serious conversations among concert organizers and show producers about safety, logistics, and accountability in live event production.

Absolutely shook after watching Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy on Netflix. I couldn't breathe just watching this - my chest was tight the entire time. This isn't just a documentary; it's a gut-punching, meticulously laid-out exposé of everything that went wrong that night.

From the very first few minutes, you know you're in for something heavy. The way they interweave real crowd footage, survivor interviews, and expert analysis creates this unrelenting sense of dread. You already know what happens, but watching it unfold - watching the warning signs be ignored in real-time - is nothing short of harrowing.

What this documentary does so well is show how utterly systemic the failures were. It wasn't just one misstep. It was everything: overcrowding, poor infrastructure, a shockingly dangerous stage layout, totally inadequate security, and a horrifying lack of accountability. The festival was a pressure cooker, and no one stepped in to relieve it until it was far too late.

Shame on you, Travis Scott. The documentary doesn't sensationalise - it lays it all out, fact by fact. You see the crowd screaming for help. You see people trying to stop the show. And yet the music kept going. The lights kept flashing. The hype machine didn't stop - even as lives were being crushed right beneath the stage.

It's painful. It's infuriating. But it's essential viewing. If you care about live music, about public safety, or about basic human decency, Trainwreck is a must-watch. It's more than just a documentary. It's a demand for accountability.

The documentary is well-produced and emotionally impactful, but it lacks objectivity and balance. It fails to fully investigate systemic responsibility and instead fixates too much on Travis Scott's persona, undermining its own stated conclusions. The editing choices from the ominous music to the lingering shots of distressed fans feel crafted to steer emotion rather than inform. By leaning heavily into aesthetic mood and symbolic blame, Trainwreck misses an opportunity to ask deeper, harder questions about Live Nation, security protocols, city planning, and crowd control. Instead, it subtly nudges viewers toward a singular emotional conclusion, even while claiming neutrality. That disconnect is why it doesn't fully succeed as a documentary.

This documentary was genuinely so hard to watch as they made the entire thing as emotional as possible 😭, it really felt like I couldn't breathe the entire time and really made me feel like I was there in the awful tragedy. It was very well made and was so sad the entire way throughout, it really gave me so much more insight into the incident and definitely made me think so much deeper about it. Live Nation handled it horribly and Travis really could've stopped performing during his time, even though he couldn't "stop the show", he was was the show, and he could've just put the mic down. Also the black and white forehead rub was a terrible apology. R. I. P to all of the lives lost in the incident 🕊.