Co-directed by James Cameron, the pop superstar's new movie proves she's the only bird of her feather

Billie Eilish’s excellent new concert movie Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) is the rare film that’s directed by two Oscar winners: James Cameron and Eilish herself. These two make an unusual pair, coming from two totally different worlds — the man who directed Titanic and the woman who wrote “Lunch.” (She’s won Best Song twice, for the Barbie song you remember and a James Bond theme you don’t.) It’s a 3D film, for that extra-immersive experience. But onscreen, as onstage, there’s nobody else on earth like Billie Eilish.

Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) is her third concert film, after the animation-heavy 2021 Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles and the 2023 Live at the O2. But despite the 3D effects, it ends up as a straight-ahead presentation of a no-frills stage show. Like the tour, it all comes down to Eilish and the power of her deeply personal songs. It’s no behind-the-scenes doc of wacky backstage shenanigans. Nothing distracts from the emotional intimacy of Eilish onstage, belting “The Greatest” or “Happier Than Ever,” on an artistic peak.

The show opens strong with “Chihiro” and “Lunch,” which set the tone for the whole concert—no dancers, no costume changes, no glitz, just Eilish bringing her songs to life. She works hard to make it feel like one woman alone with her audience. At one point she shows the camera the scrapes on her hands from running through the crowd high-fiving fans. 

The Hit Me Hard and Soft tour was her most ambitious live venture yet. It was also the first one without her brother and musical collaborator Finneas O’Connell—the first time she’d faced audiences without him there by her side. There’s a poignant scene where she recalls getting flowers from him on the opening night in Quebec, as she reads the note he sent her.

The film is full of interview footage of Eilish perched on a couch backstage talking to Cameron, who’s hoisting a giant camera on his shoulder. (Somewhat awkwardly, to comic effect.) Cameron has always been a technical wizard who’s not necessarily known for the human touch, but he labors valiantly to speak the language of pop music on her terms. For most of the movie, he’s the only human who interacts with her. 

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But the focus is all on Eilish, who makes it practically a solo show. “It’s kind of all on me,” she tells Cameron. “Every time I’ve toured, it’s basically just me running around and jumping. And that comes from my love for rap and hip hop and how those were my favorite performers when I was younger. I just wanted the freedom of being a guy on stage, shirtless, running around, jumping. And the whole crowd is just in awe of this one person on stage able to make the entire room jump and watch.” That’s the kind of performer she always aspired to be. “I had never seen a girl do that,” she says. “Thats’s part of why I don’t want a bunch of people on my stage — because I want to feel like it’s me and them.”

In one of the best moments, she takes Cameron to her backstage sanctum, the Puppy Room, where she snuggles with dogs from a local shelter. “Tour is so brutal and so like taxing,” she says. “I like to have a puppy room for the guys to kind of go chill.” She makes this a regular part of her touring regimen, saying, “Everyone needs some dog love.” Cameron replies, “I’m doing this on my next movie for sure.”

The film reveals how she achieved some of her onstage effects, as in a scene where she gets launched out of a giant cube into the audience. A note taped to the inside of the cube helpfully reads, “We are in Manchester, England.” Everyone is self-consciously aware that the cameras are there — before taking the stage, the back-up band chants, “one, two, three — 3D!” We briefly see her getting her sprained ankle taped up, and waving out a window at fans camped in the parking lot. 

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She isn’t seen dealing with any other people besides Cameron and her brother, so there’s no attempt to discuss her offstage life or her inner thoughts. Her larger-than-life personality is muted for the most part, as she talks about her creative process with regard to the live show (“I’m my own hair and makeup person”) and her clothes, but not her music-making or songwriting. Her back-up musicians might as well be coffee machines. She’s all business.

She revisits her classic 2018 debut for a rowdy “Bad Guy” and a fantastically creepy version of “Bury A Friend.” This the original Billie Eilish that the world first fell in love with, the zany bedroom-pop conceptual mastermind of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? But the show focuses mainly on the confessional tunes from her next two albums, Happier Than Ever and Hit Me Hard and Soft, which elevated her artistic game even though the whole world would have been perfectly happy if she’d stayed in the same zone as her debut.

The most powerful sequence in the film comes late in the show when Billie gets down to business, guitar in hand, to do a trio of her most touching songs, “Your Power,” “Skinny,” and “TV.” It’s a stunning showcase for her as a songwriter, a performer, and as a pure vocalist, hitting high notes of raw emotion as she reflects, “21 took a lifetime.” “What Was I Made For” feels both inevitable and irresistible, a deeply private lament that turns into a whole different song when Eilish turns it over to the crowd to sing.

The film’s biggest weakness is that it’s marred by way too many cheesy-close-ups of audience members crying and mugging — a standard cliche of manipulative concert-movie shtick, but not one that should be getting in the way of a performance this original and powerful. There’s also too many close-ups of the audience’s hands clutching phones, which doesn’t work so well in 3D — it keeps giving the sensation that some rando just held up a phone in front of your face.

Eilish keeps her playful side under wraps, for the most part. At the end, there’s a brief glimpse of her air-humping a human skeleton, and while there’s probably a funny story in there, that’s not the kind of thing she was keen to put on display in this movie. But she does “Guess,” her awesomely salacious remix duet with Charli XCX — unfortunately, Charli doesn’t show up, which is a shame since it might have been a more fruitful cinematic move for her than The Moment.

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Toward the end, Finneas makes an unexpected appearance onstage, sitting down at the piano to join her for “Lovely.” (“Surpriiiise!” Billie tells the audience.) He visibly lifts her mood quite a few notches. So many of Eilish’s innovations have transformed pop music, yet it’s easy to overlook what an unprecedented thing it is to see her bond with Finneas, simple as it may seem in retrospect. Seeing two siblings who casually and un-neurotically adore each other onstage is not something we’ve ever been used to getting from pop music, at any point in its history. 

That’s always been an undeniable key to the music’s impact. So it’s a delight when Finneas returns to help out on guitar for “Happier Than Ever” and “Birds of a Feather” (even singing a line), ending the show and the film on a high note. But make no mistake: the movie, like the show, is all Billie Eilish standing on her own. She’s the only bird of her feather, and it’s a better world for having her and all her plumage on display.