As she greeted the viewers on the premiere of her new film, Taylor Swift sounded a bit sheepish.

“You’re caught with me, as a result of I’m going to sit down with you and watch this factor,” she instructed the group on the packed premiere of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” held on the sprawling Grove buying advanced on Wednesday night time. Nicely, one of the crowds, anyway: 13 of the theaters on the Grove’s AMC multiplex had been full of keen followers, and Swift stopped by all of them to present a particular introduction, finally settling into an auditorium’s viewers that included stars like Adam Sandler and Julia Garner.

Common moviegoers can solely hope that an apologetic Swift exhibits up for extra home calls as her live performance documentary makes its approach into theaters this week. Although it was initially set for launch on Friday, Swift simply introduced that the movie will start screening in the future early due to fan demand.

Nonetheless, even when they will’t watch “The Eras Tour” alongside the singer herself — who got here to the premiere in a pale blue Oscar de la Renta robe and danced in her seat for many of its working time — the film is poised to ship in a significant approach.

For theatrical exhibitors, whose enterprise has been in jeopardy because the actors strike scuttled plans to launch tentpole films like “Dune” this fall, “The Eras Tour” is being likened to the second coming of Barbenheimer: It’s acquired the grab-your-besties-and-go enchantment of “Barbie,” the shock-and-awe soundscape of “Oppenheimer” and the box-office monitoring to rival them each. Bullish movie analysts count on a gap weekend between $150 to $200 million, that means “The Eras Tour” has a shot at taking this 12 months’s box-office tiara from “Barbie,” which notched a $162 million debut.

Within the meantime, listed here are 4 of the takeaways from the premiere.

Count on no extras, although you’ll get a front-row seat

If followers are searching for perception into how Swift put her present collectively, or what was occurring in her life behind the scenes, they received’t discover it in “The Eras Tour”: There isn’t any extra embroidering on this live performance documentary, which was culled from Swift’s six-night August stint on the SoFi stadium in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles. For many who caught one of many 53 exhibits Swift performed in North American this previous 12 months, or for the followers hoping to see Swift in her remaining American dates (a global tour begins in February), this movie is kind of the identical factor as shopping for a live performance ticket.

There’s one essential distinction, after all: No stadium seat may supply as shut a take a look at Swift’s efficiency as this documentary, which is vigorously shot and directed by Sam Wrench. And because the 33-year-old singer designed “The Eras Tour” as a journey by way of the shifting musical genres of her previous 10 albums — from the country-pop “Fearless” all the way in which as much as the current, stripped-down data “Folklore,” “Evermore” and “Midnights” — this movie is the closest factor that exists to a definitive doc of one of many world’s greatest performers.

In that approach, it’s excellent viewing for newcomers and superfans alike: Curious individuals who had been unwilling to shell out for tour costs can now take a look at Swift at a diminished price, whereas Swifties who’ve already attended the live performance can relive it in a compelling close-up. My teenage niece, who went to one of many SoFi exhibits, accompanied me to the premiere and was thrilled by the higher take a look at Swift’s facial expressions and choreography. I seen that hardly a tune goes by with out some massive smiles from Swift and her backup singers: There’s sufficient pleasure on these faces to energy complete blocks of Barbie Land.

Only some songs get snipped

“The Eras Tour” runs a strong two hours and forty-eight minutes, and although that’s practically so long as “Oppenheimer,” Swift’s real-life live shows throughout this tour had been much more mammoth, usually clocking in simply shy of three and a half hours. Do followers have cause to concern there have been main cuts to the set checklist?

By my depend, solely a handful of her common songs go lacking on the way in which to the massive display, together with “The Archer,” “Cardigan,” “Wildest Goals,” and “no physique no crime,” which Swift carried out at SoFi with the band Haim.

Nonetheless, followers will get loads of bang for his or her buck, since Swift performs practically 40 songs through the film, together with a 10-minute model of “All Too Nicely” and two different bonus tunes, “Our Track” and “You’re On Your Personal, Child,” that Swift plucked from a rotating collection of shock songs throughout her tour. And one other trim is bound to be appreciated: Swift now strikes between the completely different eras and costume adjustments within the blink of an eye fixed onscreen, eliding on a regular basis these segues took onstage.

In Hollywood, everyone seems to be a Swiftie

Blockbuster premieres have been exhausting to return by because the actors strike started, and an eclectic cross-section of celebrities turned out for the “Eras Tour” premiere, together with Sandler, Mariska Hargitay and the singers Maren Morris and Hayley Kiyoko. Trend selections ran the gamut from silver sequins to cowgirl fringe, and Alex Atallah, a co-founder of the NFT market OpenSea, entered the theater foyer sporting the colourful, tie-dyed “I Am Kenough” hoodie seen on Ryan Gosling in “Barbie.”

“I’ve only a few shirts with this many pastel colours,” Atallah instructed me earlier than posing for a photograph with the “Barbie” co-star Simu Liu.

Close by, I caught Taste Flav deep in dialog with Swift’s father, Scott. Although they made for an unlikely duo, the 64-year-old rap icon isn’t any fly-by-night fan: He mentioned that he’d seen the “superior” Swift on two earlier excursions.

“I’ve been a Swiftie for the longest, bro,” Flav insisted.

However Swift’s greatest invite was reserved for an additional A-lister (and no, it wasn’t her new beau Travis Kelce, busy with a soccer recreation the following day): Earlier than the premiere started, Swift dined and posed for photos with Beyoncé, who has her personal live performance film “Renaissance: A Movie By Beyoncé” due for launch on Dec. 1. Like “The Eras Tour,” Beyoncé’s movie bypassed conventional Hollywood studios and shall be distributed by AMC Theaters.

Lastly, Swift will get pleasure from some big-screen success

Although she’s a celebrity within the music trade, Swift’s forays into movie haven’t been as well-received. Her final three film credit as an actress embrace the minor young-adult drama “The Giver,” the memorably cataclysmic adaptation of “Cats,” and final 12 months’s David O. Russell-directed “Amsterdam,” which coaxed Swift to pop in for a fast cameo after which promptly ran her over.

Not like Girl Gaga, who has these days toggled between music and flicks in equal measure, Swift has handled Hollywood as extra of a aspect hustle, solely committing to the occasional supporting function. However final 12 months, after she signed a cope with Searchlight to write down and direct an upcoming unique movie, eyebrows had been raised throughout city: Was Swift able to take her film profession a bit extra severely?

It stays to be seen whether or not Swift will star in her function directorial debut, however “The Eras Tour” nonetheless provides her with some much-needed big-screen juice. A enjoyable presence in her greatest numbers, just like the bouncy “Shake It Off” and rocking “Look What You Made Me Do,” Swift is much more interesting in acoustic numbers that commerce busy choreography for easy guitar taking part in. And within the centerpiece tune “Tolerate It,” she exhibits appearing chops throughout a well-choreographed routine a couple of dinner date gone fallacious: It begins along with her beseeching an inexpressive lover and ends along with her swatting a vase of roses off the desk.

Her actual expertise, although, is promoting humility with a megawatt charisma that few celebrities can muster. Introducing one tune, Swift insists she needed to invent an outsized model of herself as a way to write it: “In my fantasy, I’m not a lonely millennial lady coated in cat hair,” the singer says, despite the fact that she’s spent the entire movie wanting impossibly glamorous in sky-high Christian Louboutin heels

And but, you’re nonetheless tempted to imagine her. What’s that, if not a film star?