The Hulu Original documentary Imagine Dragons Live in Vegas captures the Grammy-winning pop combo playing their hits like “Believer” and “Radioactive” to a sold-out house at Allegiant Stadium, the giant domed home of the Raiders that was recently built in view of the Strip. This is a town Imagine Dragons know well. Vocalist Dan Reynolds was born and raised in Las Vegas, and it’s where the quartet came up as a band. So this concert, which was filmed in September 2022 during their ongoing world tour in support of Mercury – Acts 1 & 2, is billed as a sort of homecoming.
The Gist: This show at the Allegiant in Vegas isn’t just a homecoming for Reynolds, guitarist Wayne Sermon, bassist Ben McKee, and drummer Daniel Platzman, the unit that solidified under the Imagine Dragons moniker after a round of early lineup changes. It also caps a ten-year run, beginning with 2012’s Night Visions, their full-length Interscope debut, that has seen the band notch a Best Rock Performance Grammy for “Radioactive,” log sales in the millions for their ensuing five albums, and take to the world for multiple full-scale tours. Perhaps it was Imagine Dragons’ wish to showcase all of that material which led to Live in Vegas to feature little of the interviews and adjacent rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle content that usually fills out docs like this. But anyway, it’s time to prime the confetti guns.
There is a brief prelude as Reynolds prepares for his performance in the bowels of the stadium. He has his straight edge-style ‘X’ carefully applied to his hand by a roadie. He closes his eyes and whispers cues and lyrics to himself, like a quarterback pregaming set plays in his head. And then he rises from beneath the stage to sing the Coldplay-ish vibes of “My Life” solo before wild bits of confetti start to fly, multiple smoke machines trigger, and the rest of the Dragons kick in for an opening set combo that includes “Believer,” “It’s Time” – Reynolds picks up a Pride flag thrown on stage for that one as the crowd sings “I’m never changing who I am” in unison – and the one-two punch of “I’m So Sorry” and “Thunder.” Throughout, the house lights stay down, the massive stage stays lit, and the whole thing reaches a level of spectacle that Imagine Dragons could probably only imagine back when they were playing to 50 people a night at O’Sheas. Cheapest beer on the Vegas Strip!
“I love to unite people,” Reynolds says during one brief interview segment in Live in Vegas. “I like to be part of a united cause, of representation, for people to feel safe.” And the people in the stadium certainly repay that sentiment, singing along with Imagine Dragons songs that so often lean heavily on simple, repeatable lyrical couplets. “Birds.” “Lonely.” “Natural.” “Younger.” “Enemy.” Reynolds enters the front row crowd during an acoustic segment of the set (he’s literally kissing babies), Imagine Dragons bring out Cirque du Soleil for “Sharks,” and they close with the hit “Radioactive” and the U2-ish “Walking the Wire” as balloons bop heads in the crowd and Reynolds delivers a reprise of “My Life” on a grand piano.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Imagine Dragons’ fellow Interscope artist Machine Gun Kelly got the Hulu Original doc treatment in 2022 with Life in Pink. And there was also that time Werner Herzog, of all people, went to Las Vegas to make a corporate-sponsored mini documentary about another of the city’s gaudy pop band exports, The Killers.
Performance Worth Watching: Whatever the perception of his band’s sound, Imagine Dragons vocalist Dan Reynolds definitely takes a strenuous route to performing it. In Live in Vegas, he tramps up and down the lengthy thrust portion of the stage as it juts into the audience, periodically hops onto the drum riser, and as the rest of the band plays acoustically on the smaller “B” stage setup, Reynolds jogs a circuit around the general admission section of the concert floor. “He’s always been that guy,” Wayne Sermon says of Reynolds’ physical exertion on stage, no matter the size of the room they’re playing.
Memorable Dialogue: Live in Vegas doesn’t dwell on cutaway interviews with its featured subjects in the manner of many recent music documentaries. But Reynolds does manage to encapsulate his band’s ethos in one such moment. Everyone in the band, he says, has invested thousands of hours in their work together. “So the hard work is there. But you also have to have some Vegas luck, because there are tons of musicians who would say the exact story I’m saying.”
Sex and Skin: Nothing here. At all. Little kids are visible in the crowd at this show. Lots of them. And Imagine Dragons songs are free of any suggestive references or profanity. There is nary a “Lemme fuckin’ hear you, Vegas!” roared from this band’s stage.
Our Take: Around 65,000 people bought tickets to see Imagine Dragons at Allegiant Stadium, and they definitely weren’t all in the room for the band’s early days, playing O’Sheas and various Vegas lounges, a formative era they reference at least twice in Live in Vegas. So for all of those people to be in the much bigger venue and much larger media platform this homecoming concert represents, Imagine Dragons must engender some kind of connection beyond just Vegas with their collection of paint-by-numbers pop platitudes. Maybe it’s the simplicity of it all. As a songwriter, Dan Reynolds favors lyrics that verge onto inspirational poster territory – “Seasons, they will change; Life, will make you grow” – and he strains into a higher register as vocalist, aiming for shoutalong majesty with stuff like “He’s comin’ to get you; (Chick, chicka) Woo, woo.” And when the flavors of pop, of rock guitar heroics lifted from Muse, and of bits and pieces of dubstep and hip-hop all blend together – and on many Imagine Dragons songs, these elements really do simultaneously combine – then it’s possible to understand how the band’s sound became appointment listening for so many. It’s built to be arena big, and it’s got portions of everything, even if it all amounts to pretty much nothing. But still. Even if people say it’s basic, say it’s too easy, Imagine Dragons are the ones smiling from the stage and cranking out their spectacle to the nosebleeds. It takes all kinds.
Our Call: STREAM IT if you’re an Imagine Dragons fan, because minus a few surprises specific to Live in Vegas, the band’s set here follows the contours of what they’ve been touring the world on for nearly two years.
Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges