Review: Muse HAARP at the cinemas

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Matt’s face is clearly not suitable for HD, I’m sure most of you living in the UK (and some of you fanatic types) went to see Muse’s epic Wembley Stadium gig at your local theatre. If not, shame on you, if you have a valid reason, shame on them for airing it in one date (granted I can picture someone “touring” the entire country to watch the “movie” over and over again). It does the justice of showing it in the cinemas I must say. We begin asking ourselves whether or not this was just a memory jog for our experience at Wembley Stadium or was it an actual reliving the gig experience. The question is whether or not it replicated the atmosphere and mood that is when you’re gigging. I’d say not enough, but it’s really close. Having the damn thing blaring at you in 5.1 surround sound is pretty epic. The beauty now is that you can get a better view of the band and appreciate the subtle things such as that little robot that carried Matt’s guitars or Matt doing all sorts of gestures and noises on the mic.

Muse tickets (of the cinema variety)

Now let’s get into the meat, I was quite pumped for the “gig”, the fact that 75,000 people were clapping their hands to Starlight made you want to conform to the others and clap along. The mood was certainly there, the problem is, “is everyone going to let themselves go and pretend it’s the gig all over again?” Sadly the answer is no, so although you’re getting the full on experience and sound, unfortunately the atmosphere of a cinema simply means you won’t be jumping along and doing all the air guitar bits when Matt does New Born or Invincible. Granted this was the cinema I went to and not really speaking for everyone else, however I’m certain about a few things that we all shared, and perhaps I should just list them:

The fans depicted in the movie were hilarious, if they were Muse fans than boy have they turned emo. I guess they cut the scenes where fans were overexcited about the gig and do more headbanging than the usual head banging Tom, Dick or Harry. Notice the kid who had his eyes covered and him mouthing the words? Or the numerous amount of girls with thick eyeliners mouthing the words with such passion that it can almost be deemed as love making? Or that random chav crowd surfing? The list goes on…

The movie was broadcasted from Belgium. Someone suggested that you might see the buffering going on or the progress bar sliding away, better yet a youtube sign or something to really give it that streaming quality. It was pretty decent, especially when it was all in HD quality (again, Matt’s face shouldn’t be in HD). There were about 3-4 times where the streaming cut off, one noticeable one was when the riff to New Born kicked in. We started cheering each time that happened. Had to be done I suppose.

Chris did a lot of smiling and giggling during the gig, bless him

Quite a lot of saturation and contrast going on, works pretty well but adds that emo tone towards it, especially when contrast is a girls ultimate weapon when taking photos of themselves (in myspace poses no doubt (do people still use myspace?)). The colour was nonetheless rich and pretty.

As predicted, the camera work did involve a lot of crazy zooming, I believe plug in baby had the “shaking camera” effect to get that rock and roll feeling going on, most of this has been done during Absolution and Hullabaloo so nothing new there, I suppose the effects, HD quality as well as super lighting makes up for it all.

All in all, it was a good visit, getting tickets was funny because you hardly get guestlisted to cinemas haha. We had a few annoying women in front of us constantly yappering and going on about how good muse are, not to mention two oddballs who got taken out of the cinema for recording the show. Pretty eventful night I must say. Let’s hope more bands do this because it can come out really well, especially for landmark gigs such as the Wembley one. Now all you need is a decent home cinema system to relive that gig once again.

So yeah, share your experiences, on the scale of 1-5, how would you rate it?

3 Comments to Review: Muse HAARP at the cinemas

  1. Max says:

    I have to say that’s a pretty spot on review.

    I still think that the fan who was falling to sleep whilst singing the words to Invincible was my favourite.

  2. [...] inside the London Planeterium and it really captured the feel of it with the visuals etc. The Muse HAARP at vue screening was also another epic [...]

  3. James says:

    I saw it at the Worcestershire VUE. The screen was small and it was annoying when people clapped along. I dont know if it was the case for every cinema but it was really quiet to start with, it wasnt until we had all been shouting “turn it up!” for about a minute until there was a noticeable change in volume.

    Regardless it was still awesome to watch and a great night out. The HD screen was exceptionally clear, you could see every ounce of sweat fall from Bellamys face.

    What I loved was you could tell what fans disliked which songs as that would be the one where people left for a toilet break (an actual toilet break may have helped to ;) ) Personally I went during the start of Invincible but was planning to go during Soldiers Poem but forgot where it came on the setlist.

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