IVE the 1st World Tour Movie Review

[RussianRoulette]

I saw the IVE world tour concert movie last night and I was so touched by the movie I just had to make a post about it.

I went into the movie as just a casual IVE fan (though I listen to a lot of their music on the daily) and just expecting a fun light-hearted time because they make a lot of cute bubbly songs and this movie got me so emotional I was starting to tear up like 20 minutes in and left a serious IVE stan now. I am moved.


I am also heavily pms-ing right now which is also probably contributing to why i'm uncontrollably sobbing at this movie but let's ignore that for now.


Here is my movie review:

The Audience

There wasn't many people there, but we had one row of people like me (aka 18+ kpop stans here by themselves/with a friend to see the movie).
Something I thought was really touching and was tearing up over was there was a bunch of elementary/middle school kids here with their dads. One dad even brought both his daughter and his daughters friends. I know Wonyoung is popular among kids because she's a popular role model and I thought it was so sweet all these dads were going out of their way to take their daughters out to a kpop movie after school/work. W Dads

There was one audience member though giving me the ick which i'll put under cut.
*Slight Trigger Warning*

Spoiler

There was randomly some 40-70 year old due alone in a row in the corner with a baseball hat on drinking beer who was giving me the massive creeps???
(For some side context: I would like to shout out that in Texas it is completely legal to drink in public. People sell alcohol everywhere here, including at the movies. I know when I was living on the east coast this would be heavily illegal but it's legal here in yeehaw for some reason?)

I know kpop fans come in many different ages, I know at the Taemin concert the ages of the fans were all over the place. I was in a shuttle bus with a bunch of old ladies who travel place to place just enjoying their lives and watching whatever concert is playing but like...

At first I thought this dude was 70's? But when the movie was over and we could see everyone with the full lights on he seemed maybe younger which is why i'm saying he was maybe 40's-70's? Once again he had a baseball cap on so you couldn't see his full face. He also was wearing the concert tour merch so he's definitely seen them live before as well.

Once again I don't want to stereotype, but to have this old guy alone in the corner (not back corner) in a theater full of kids and young women, watching a kpop group of minors and young women, this dude's vibe just seemed off...

The Editing

The editing was amazing in this! Previous to this I saw the Gidle concert in theaters and the camera editing in it was giving me a headache because every other second they changed to a new camera angle for no reason and it was very overwhelming.

There was a good balance between showing the group shots and solo shots of the members when it's their part/solo.

The only complaint I have is that the concert in real life was 3 hours and this movie was about an hour and a half? So i'm pretty sure a lot got cut?
I'll go into this in the next part, but they would show 3-4 songs then cut to a interview with one of the members. During the interview portions they would show clip montages and they included outfits/stages we definitely not in the movie.
At the end of the movie though they shows clips from the concerts in other countries so idk if maybe those outfits were from other tour stops? Or if the encore concert was 2 days and maybe they were from the day not filmed? I have no idea, but stuff definitely got cut.

I also appreciate how in the bottom corner of the screen they would put the name of the song playing for a few seconds in the beginning. As someone who hasn't listened to a lot of their b-sides I appreciated this cause it made it easier for me to look up whatever song was playing after the movie and add it to my playlist.


Member's Interviews

In between songs they would show a one-on-one sit down interview with one of the members. The questions they would be asked would be stuff like how was their trainee days, how did it feel to debut, what was your most memorable experience in the group, what is your most memorable concert moment, what song means the most to you, etc. It was during these parts that I was starting to cry.

If feel like we don't hear much about the member's backstories so having them open up about it and how/why the group means so much to them really changed my view on them.

These are the member interviews that stuck out to me the most/that I can remember:

Yujin

Her story touched me the most. I'm going to put it under cut since it might be a bit triggering?

Spoiler

Yujin shared how hard she worked/waited to debut as a group and shared a story of her days leading up to finding out she's debuting and moving into the dorms.

Prior to the dorms she lived with her family. She shared during these times she fought with her mother a lot because in order to debut she wasn't eating much at all (trying to diet/loose weight to debut.)
She talked about how she fought with her mother all the time over her never eating. One day while she was sleeping (?) she woke up to her mom already gone but her mom left her a plate of food asking to her please eat and because seeing her eat brought her happiness and Yujin ate the whole plate and started eating again after that.

I know IVE has a lot of young fans who look up to them as role models. I don't think Yujin was intentionally trying to talk about having an ED? But I thought being open about her struggles to her fans who also are going through the same thing was pretty special/important. We need more idols to talk about how extreme diets are bad.

I know Yujin's the groups leader, and hearing her talk about how hard she worked along with seeing how talented she was on stage has bumped her into being my bias wrecker in the group. Yujin i'm cheering for you

Wonyoung

Wonyoung was talking about how she learned so much from all the different countries

In her part she talked about the song she wrote for the group:

She talked about how this song is really special to her because she was the lyricist and was projecting her own feeling/experiences along with the feeling and experiences of all of her members.

Rei

In Rei's portion she was talking about how I AM is the most special song to perforn. She explained she wasn't able to participate in the promotions for I AM which was their first full album and very special to them. She was so depressed about not being able to promote she couldn't even watch the performance stages of the other members during promotions, but then at one of the stages the members gave her a shout out and said how much they missed her and want her to come back soon. Rei was really moved by this and this snapped her out of her depression and she was determined to recover so she could join the members on stage again. This is why

Seeing Rei cry really broke my heart and she's also in my bias line now. She is now my daughter, Rei get behind me if anyone every tries to make you cry I will fight them

Liz

In her interview Liz shared how she was originally from Jeju but was determined to attend this academy for acting, modeling, and singing in Seoul. Every weekend for several months she would fly back and forth from Jeju to Seoul to attend this academy and her hard work paid off because Starship was moved/impressed by how dedicated she was traveling this far and she passed her audition. She then switched schools and moved to Seoul, away from her family, to train at Starship.

I was really moved by her dedication to follow her dreams. This is a one hour flight one way, and the commute time time was probably at least 2 hours if you consider the fact that you need to travel to the airport, from the airport, to the academy/whatever place you are staying, and to do this for MONTHS while being in school full time is a crazy amount of work and dedication. Also shout out to her parents for taking her back and forth for months, her parents must really love her and support her dream

Rei was also a cryer and was said she was trying really hard not to cry during the concert cause having a world tour and performing at such a large venue was their dream, but during a group hug she finally broke down crying on stage and I started crying too.

Y'all don't realize how much these concerts meant to them

Final Thoughts

I also want to shout out that their outfits were GORGEOUS and very on theme with their brand! They looked like fairies/princesses.
I also appreciated how all of their outfits were age-appropriate as well. The younger members would have their skirts modified to be longer and include more layer/skirts and only the older members (aka Wonyoung and Yujin) would be in more shorter skirts/shorts, though even their outfits were never that revealing.

I've seen a couple kpop concert movies by now and never got emotional during any of them, but this movie really moved me for some reason. Their personal stories were surprisingly touching. I left the movie feeling like I learned a lot more about them and definitely left an official DIVE now.

IVE i'm rooting for you! I will fully be supporting your dreams and buying your albums from now on.

My next concert movie will be Red Velvet's whenever SM decides on a US release date.​

 

[choively]

how y'all able to see KPOP in theaters/cinema/theatres while I cant : ( ??

 

[RussianRoulette]

how y'all able to see KPOP in theaters/cinema/theatres while I cant : ( ??

What country are you in? The movie was shown pretty much world wide

 

[choively]

What country are you in? The movie was shown pretty much world wide

I'm in the free country where most kids here are dummies

 

[RussianRoulette]

I'm in the free country where most kids here are dummies

… The USA?

There is a website that tells you where the nearest theater playing the movie is if that helps!