Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour Live in 3D, is the first of her concert films I’ve seen, albeit is the third for the pop star that represents Gen Z who, these days, don’t know if they’re Arthur or Martha, with all that ‘they/them’ pronouns nonsense.
I barely know any of her songs, but I’ll go and see almost anything on the big screen, as well as the fact I came for the 3D, even though from the trailer, I couldn’t see what would make this a *must* in three dimensions, but for as drawn out as some of the Avatar films get, if anyone can do something with 3D, surely James Cameron can?
The set list for the film is clearly not quite as long as the concert would’ve been, since this comes just under two hours and didn’t have as many songs as the full set list I saw online, but for the tracks I have heard of, we get Bad Guy and What Do You Want From Me?, plus the awful Barbie
theme, What Was I Made For? However, we don’t get the tedious No Time To Die theme from the last James Bond movie.
Cameron mostly comes in for the occasional interview clips, I understand for which were shot at the Centre Vidéotron in Quebec, Canada. Meanwhile, the concert, itself, was shot at the Co-op Live, in Manchester, so I’m glad I didn’t have to go there to see her, since while I fully inderstand the need for security, the venue is a ballache to deal with, even down to the fact you can only take in a tiny water bottle for example – AND it be empty, yet you can buy huge 2-pint glasses for nearly £20!
For some of the interesting aspects of this films, despite being worth over $50m, Billie Eilish does her own make-up and hair, and gets a lot of leg pain becauase of all the running about – often disappearing down one section of the stage, to come up elsewhere in the middle of a cube, sometimes ending up sitting on a rising platform, which would give me vertigo. These effects are largely because she’s the only one on stage. Her band is in a recessed part of the stage, and she doesn’t have any dancers to parade about around her.
We get some vox pops with teens who talk about what her music means to them, and how much it’s helped them, while during the gig, everyone has their phones out in the audience, so they’re clearly not told to put them away, like the audience was for a Suzanne Vega concert I saw in 2023.
She has a camera to film the audience, making them feel like theyy’re part of the show, and in the backrooms, she has a puppy room with rescue dogs, to calm everyone down from the stress of putting on a show.
Eilish also comes across as being very down to Earth, so whereas most pop stars would shy away from any contact with the public, even as her entourage is driving away from the venue after a gig and passing the audience as they leave the venue, she winds the window down to wave to them all. Personally, one thing I wouldn’t do is frequently be touching hands with audience members during the show, as they practically grab her into the crowd. We’re told she does this because she knows what it’s like to be on the other side, and how you want to have contact with the stars, but I’d just be thinking about who didn’t wash their hands when they went to the toilet, or sneezed into their hands when they had a cold, both of which are gross things you see in an office.
And now for the 3D aspect, the effect of which might be dependent on the cinema in which you see it.
For my case, in screen 3 at my local Odeon, the lower part of the screen was a bit blurry. This screen normally doesn’t have any problems with 3D, but then screen 2 is normally a bit blurry right at the bottom – making it a problem if you’re watching a film with subtitles on that screen, even in 2D – and yet more recently, it looks like it’s been fixed. Hence, I’ve realised that there’s zero point complaining about these issues, because no-one in head office gives a toss as nothing gets fixed, and bar one or two situations (like the overscanning screen 12, which has been a problem for the last 3-4 years at least), it usually gets fixed a few months later.
At least there was nothing crucial in the lower third, apart from once or twice when there was text in there.
I’d read that the Dolby 3D version looks a lot better for this, so I might check that out if it’s still around in there in the coming week or two. It stated that the Dolby screen is a lot brighter, since 3D often means the image is a bit dark, although for screen 3, it actually was a decent brightness. I wonder if the distributor had made the image a bit brighter for this version to compensate for that?
Meanwhile, I can’t trust their screen 5, as in the grounds of hit-and-miss, that screen fails way too often. God, I wish they’d replace them with Laser, like they’re very SLOWLY doing.
That said, the 3D doesn’t really add anything. 3D works best when the camea is allowed to flow through a frame, but here, the camera cuts between many different angles on a frequent basis, so the human eye just can’t get a proper handle on the effect. Even with James Cameron’s involvement, this is hardly the Avatar series! And I can’t see why he got involved in the first place.
Still, as a concert, for someone who has never heard a Billie Eilish album, the music is reasonably pleasant and not something I’d rush to turn off, even if I also wouldn’t rush to buy an album.
NOTE: There are no mid- nor post-credits scenes.
Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour Live in 3D is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 114 minutes
Release date: May 8th 2026
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Rating: 7/10
Directors: James Cameron, Billie Eilish
Producers: Michelle An, Steve Berman, John Brooks, Geoff Burdick, James Cameron, Paul Clarke, Chelsea Dodson, Billie Eilish, John Janick, Maggie Laird, Justin Lubliner, Jason Owen, Maria Wilhelm
Show creators: Tarik Mikou, Billie Eilish
Cast (as themselves):
Billie Eilish
James Cameron
Finneas O’Connell (Vocals, Piano, Guitar)
Andrew Marshall (Drums)
Solomon Smith (Bass)
Abraham Nouri (Keys, Guitar)
Tom Crouch (Keys, Guitar)
Jane Horner (Background Vocals)
Ava Horner (Background Vocals)
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.