Original of the Species

Pure visuals, the kind once ruined by “talkies,” never met the Edge.

Or Larry Mullen Jr. for that matter.

Okay, the singer too. And when “Where the Streets Have No Name” closes the main set with Adam Clayton’s dazzled grin and red tunic melting into a digital flare on the enormo screen behind him, sound and vision become F.W. Murnau.

Opening in multiple dimensions at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum IMAX next Friday, Jan. 25, U2 3D isn’t quite the German expressionist’s Sunrise, one of the first silent films to sync music and image. And yet, hovering over one of Edge’s slide guitar solos or floating disembodied above Mullen Jr. pounding his beat are singular cinematic sensations. Kleenex on the drummer's kit side table, and what appears to be a glass of ice tea, speak to the detail 3-D allows viewers. Wearing those special Mr. Magoo glasses and having this 85-minute South American pit stop on U2’s Vertigo tour end on “The Fly” are a small price to pay for theatre audience's practically getting to play “New Years Day.”

Natural successors to the Rolling Stones as beloved global juggernauts, U2 one up their predecessor’s Live at the MAX from the early 1990s by adding reach-out-and-touch-someone depth to already towering screen height. Mick Jagger 60-feet tall gets dwarfed next to moviegoers flying in Bono’s face as he launches into arena mode in Buenos Aires. Stones DVD A Bigger Bang, starring their 2006 Zilker Park show, features the English quartet blistering Argentina far hotter than their Irish counterparts, but what U2 3D lacks in performance it tantalizes in music theory. The IMAX process remains prohibitively expensive for most acts, but imagine Bruce Springsteen watching this. Hear the gauntlet hitting the floor.

Or better still, the cartoon metropolis rising out of U2 3D’s end credit sequence begs for contemporary visual stylists like Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep) or Julie Taymor (Frida) to sidle up to the concessions counter. Psychedelicize the Mars Volta beyond their wildest visions, or drip some of Jay-Z's American Gangster on us from its NYC stage debut. You name it. The days of midnight Lazariums with Pink Floyd and 12 of your closest degenerate friends might today be as quaint as Dazed and Confused, but U2 can’t be the only rock concept poking its nose into music industry complaisance. Coachella, Lollapalooza, ACL in 3-D! The Led Zeppelin reunion.

In the meantime, there’s Edge’s sprinkling glitterati guitar work on you and “Sometime You Can’t Make It On Your Own,” and drill sergeant Bono huffing “Johnny Comes Marching Home” into “Bullet the Blue Sky” as it goes off like a grenade in your lap. Latin lovelies at the barricade staring at you across time and space as “Pride (In the Name of Love)” lifts their voices. The two guitar picks left on Edge’s mic stand by the time “One” rolls around in the encore. Bow to the “Spydercam.”

U2 3D, stepping off a screen near you.

Set List
Vertigo
Beautiful Day
New Years Day
Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet the Blue Sky
Miss Sarajevo
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Where the Streets Have No Name
One
With or Without You
The Fly
Yahweh