Pay close attention to the end credits of “BTS: The Return,” now streaming on Netflix, and as the documentary’s credits roll, viewers will see that Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jung Kook all earn individual “additional cinematography by” credits.
How did that happen?
The doc follows the band from Los Angeles to Seoul, South Korea, as they reunite after serving mandatory military service. All seven members return to the studio to record and mix their latest album, “Arirang.” When director Bao Nguyen set out to film the documentary and tell the story of the biggest band in the world, he knew he wouldn’t have access to the band 24/7. Speaking at the Los Angeles screening of the documentary, Nguyen said, “I had this idea of, what if we gave them their own camcorders?” He added, “They shoot their own content on their phone, but that’s a very specific visual language.” He added, “I wanted to evoke something like your brother, mother, or uncle were filming a vacation. To give them the cameras, added this texture that I think is very intimate.”
The portrayal is indeed intimate and personal as they ready to return to the global stage. Their journey is one he compares to that of Homer’s “The Odyssey.” Nguyen said, “When I first saw them at the So-Fi show, there was something really magical in that show, and just their connection to ARMY and that mythical storytelling that I always think about. ARMY was like Penelope, and BTS was like Odysseus.”
When Nguyen gave them camcorders, he opted not to give them directives on what to shoot or even when to shoot. He said, “I think coming into it, you just think that they’re a monolith, they’re just BTS, but they’re so, like, distinct individually. Certain members were like, ‘We should capture everything. We’re just gonna roll it.’ Other members are quiet, and they want their privacy. Whatever we can get from them. I was happy with.”
Between the footage his crew shot and that shot by BTS, Nguyen ended up with over 40 terabytes of footage.
The high stakes and pressures of their return is the core thread running through the documentary.
Early on, one scene shows the members sitting around a dinner table talking about recording their album. RM says at one point, “It’s a lot of pressure.” It’s a raw insight into the group and shows the immense weight of their anticipated return.
Joining Nguyen for the conversation were producers R.J. Cutler and Jane Cha Cutler. The team came in slightly later in the making of the album. Nguyen admitted, “They had picked a lot of songs and they were tweaking. My fear was like, “Oh, we’re just gonna capture, like people at their best, doing their best, which is not the best type of storytelling and drama.’ But within the first couple of days, we had live translation when we were filming. But I was watching the footage afterwards. You can see and hear this pressure, this challenge and tension.”
Jane Cha Cutler, who produced “Martha,” calls the BTS story a “singular” one. She added, “There are not that many bands that have to step down at the height of their popularity, and then the anticipation of their comeback is so huge. But for them, after the time away, they have to figure out how they’re different, how they interact differently as individuals, as a group. How much do they want to change? They talk about that a lot because it’s high stakes. It’s that they want to create something new and exciting and push themselves, but at the same time, they want to remain the band that people love and adore.”
When the band returns to South Korea, after spending two months in Los Angeles, a debate centers around Arirang, a traditional folk song featured in the standout track “Body to Body.” Chairman Bang (Si-Hyuk) [chairman of HYBE] and how it should be woven into the song.
The integration of Korean lyrics also becomes another topic. Suga says, “We’d like to write more lyrics in Korean. There’s too much English right now, especially for rap verses.” RM adds, “For this album authenticity matters.”
It’s just one of the many moments of the group coming together, but showing their uniqueness to a global audience, along with their sense of brotherhood and camaraderie.
R.J Cutler explained the 92-minute documentary really gets to the “guts of what it means to be BTS and how that relates to what it means to be each of them individually.” He added, “That’s a very rare thing to see with a legendary band. There are few and far between the films and the music documentary canon that you can think of that do that.”
The documentary comes as BTS earned its seventh No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with “Arirang,” scoring the biggest sales week for an album by a group in over a decade.
“Arirang” opened on the chart with 641,000 equivalent album units, 532,000 of which are pure album sales. It’s the biggest first week for an album by units since Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” bowed at No. 1 with over four million units last year.
As previously reported, BTS‘ live concert special reached 18.4 million viewers on Netflix. Provided by Netflix, that statistic accounts for viewers who tuned into “BTS The Comeback Live: Arirang” during the initial livestream plus those who watched it over the course of the next day. The special, recorded at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, South Korea, was among the 10 most-watched Netflix titles of the week of March 16-22 in 80 countries, and was No. 1 in 24 countries.
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