I was late to the party with BTS... i came across them about 6 months on youtube. I was watching lots of unrelated conspiracy videos, a rabbit hole that led me to a video about the fans of BTS. and from there to BTS themselves. Before i knew it, i was consuming BTS content like there was no tomorrow. I was hooked. I was in love. I was a fan.
The whole package of BTS just brings pure joy. The songs, the message, the costumes, the make up, the stage shows, the dance routines, and the individual members themselves.... all of it has been a light of glory in these dark times.
This is the 4th BTS movie, and the first one i have seen. I saw it in a huge cinema in london on a superscreen. Prior to the film the 'Dynamite' music video was shown - that in of itself is worth the price of admission alone! The song is a huge cultural moment and to see it on such a big screen was like being injected with happiness - under my compulsory face mask, I was smiling from ear to ear.
Unfortunately due to this darn pandemic, cinemas are still extremely quiet. So in a screening room with a capacity of about 400+ people, there was just me, a 34 year old man, and two teenage girls. The girls were having a whale of a time, they were bopping about and cheering, it was wonderful to see. But at the same time, it was kinda sad that the coronavirus means I couldn't experience that sense of enthusiasm with a bigger audience.
And this is the crux of this review, the word enthusiasm. Because if you are a BTS fan, that's what they make you feel - just being in their presence makes you feel good inside, makes you feel hopeful, inspires you. I'm a huge movie fan, but alas it's almost impossible to look at a film like this critically. I mean, it's BTS... the film could be 4 hours of them just sitting in a room chatting and i'd feel like it was the best night of my life.
As a documentary? If I was to step back from my personal love of BTS, I guess I would say that as a film it's very unsurprising. And I get why that is. BTS is a massive machine, and part of that machine is the movies about them - the films are made by the people who manage them and so we will never truly get a deeper insight into the members as individuals - we will always see them through the filter their management/record label impose. I got the impression the film was trying to coax out a deeper look at the whole phenomenon which at times didn't really feel organic...
One day, maybe in 15/20 years time, someone will make an epic documentary about the whole BTS experience that will really get under the finger nails of what it must have felt like for these young guys to become the biggest thing on the planet. But that can only come with reflection, when time has passed, when it is all finally over... but that's not today, and that's not what this film can offer. What it can do is give just a little glimpse into the roller coaster that this band is still riding. It'll make you shine, it'll make you dream, it'll make you smile, but more importantly it'll make you feel connected and in this locked down world of 2020, that's all we can hope for.
