Beatlemania never actually died, it just evolved into a legacy project. A steady stream of compilation albums and freshly updated remasters, as well as a “new song” shepherded into the world with the help of machine-learning tech, have ensured the Beatles remain an ongoing concern in the half a century since the group dissolved. But alongside the music, the Fab Four also spawned a parallel tribute-film industry all but dedicated to extolling their cultural influence. Their songs have inspired cinematic musicals, and the members have been fictionalized on screen, famously by themselves but occasionally by professional actors, including in Sam Mendes’s upcoming “four-film cinematic event” about the group. But befitting their heavily documented rise to fame, the Beatles are best and most frequently memorialized in documentary form, dating back to mid-century British TV specials that capitalized on their popularity.
While the three-part “The Beatles Anthology” series from the ’90s was once the gold standard for Beatles docs, Ron Howard’s “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” from 2016 kicked off a decade of new non-fiction films about the group, ranging from the specific to the hyper-specific, that utilize new restoration technology to bring old material to new 4K-resolution life. Peter Jackson’s acclaimed “Get Back” series, which chronicles the making of “Let It Be,” is likely the best of the bunch because of the plethora of unseen footage of the band at work. Yet other features like the Martin Scorsese-produced “Beatles ’64,” Andrei Ujică’s experimental “TWST / Things We Said Today,” and Morgan Neville’s recently released “Man on the Run” all attempt to wet the whistles of old and new generations of Beatles fanatics by reframing well-trodden territory as something more than mere nostalgia.
But Steven Soderbergh’s “John Lennon: The Last Interview,” the second John and Yoko-focused documentary from the past two years (and the third from the past decade), might test the patience of even the most ardent Beatles and/or Lennon fan. The film stems from an interview the couple gave to a San Francisco radio crew to promote their most recent album “Double Fantasy.” The two-hour conversation quickly digresses from the record and encompasses topics like fatherhood, politics, the dangers of television advertising, and just about anything else that flits through John and Yoko’s minds. Later that evening, Lennon was assassinated outside of his apartment building, rendering the interview his final words spoken on the record.
Aside from occasional on-camera recollections from the living members of the KFRC team, “The Last Interview” is primarily a visual annotation of the interview itself, edited down to a highlight reel that reflects the conversation’s rhythm and flow. Soderbergh deploys archival footage, stills, music, animation, and as he’s extensively discussed, generative AI to contextualize John and Yoko’s thoughts about their current moment. It makes sense why Soderbergh chose to helm this project. His two previous Spalding Gray documentaries, “Gray’s Anatomy” and “And Everything Is Going Fine,” are both exercises in lending visual flair to a famous monologist’s words. There’s ample possibility in trying to mine cinema from pure rhetoric.
With “The Last Interview,” however, Soderbergh adopts a disappointingly literal-minded approach to illustrating John and Yoko’s verbiage. If John talks about the counterculture or anti-war protests, for example, then Soderbergh will append stills of demonstrating activists; if he talks about the Beatles, then the viewer will be treated to seen-it-a-million-times footage of the group on stage. Kevin MacDonald’s “One to One: John & Yoko” suffered from some similar visual obviousness, but that film’s dynamic collage-like conceit helped smooth out some of its formal redundancies. In contrast, Soderbergh is hamstrung by John and Yoko’s voiceover in “The Last Interview”, which demands a rigidity to the direction in spite of the script’s freewheeling nature. The filmmaking begins dull before becoming frustrating.
The relationship between sound and archival image in “The Last Interview” might feel stale, but the AI-generated sequences, charitably described by Soderbergh as “theatrical surrealism,” are unsurprisingly worse. Basically, whenever John and Yoko talk about something vaguely abstract, Soderbergh elucidates his words with the help of Meta’s video-generative tools. When John discusses his loathing of “primitive” male behavior, caveman with six-pack abs populate the screen. Crying babies in hippie attire accompany John’s discontent with the counterculture’s retreat from politics after multiple defeats in the ’70s. Artificial psychedelic imagery, from brightly colored paint mixed together to blooming black roses, also recur throughout.
Soderbergh has remained consistent with his feelings about AI in interviews: it’s okay to use the technology in a creative context, as opposed to a political one, if a) you’re transparent about its origins, i.e., you don’t try to manipulate the viewer into believing an AI image is actually the real McCoy, and b) it’s utilized to generate images that are more-or-less impossible to shoot traditionally. The artistic crime in Soderbergh’s eyes would be to use AI to revive John Lennon himself and espouse things he didn’t say while alive.
“The Last Interview” admittedly never tries to frame its AI images as anything else, especially since Soderbergh seems to believe that their garish unreality makes them funny. With respect to humor’s inherent subjectivity, the appallingly ugly aesthetics of the AI overwhelm any possible comedic sensibility on display. The artificial imagery in “The Last Interview” is universally indistinguishable from the type of slop that gullible Boomers share on Facebook, even if Soderbergh has dedicated more thought to its creation.
Secondly, even if AI wasn’t the visual equivalent of spoiled milk, I question the necessity of its inclusion at all in the context of “The Last Interview.” Some AI scenes, like a diptych featuring multiple couples in embrace or Napoleon Bonaparte walking slowly surrounded by soldiers, could be accomplished with the use of performers. Additionally, given that the film employs a design studio anyway, animation seems to be the obvious alternative choice to capturing the film’s otherwise “impossible” imagery, especially if, as Soderbergh implies, verisimilitude is not a concern.
But let’s assume that neither of those options were available or possible for whatever reason: why does every single abstract thought that John or Yoko express demand a corresponding image in the first place? An early adopter of technology throughout his career, Soderbergh views AI as an efficient tool, no different than digital video or an iPhone camera. Putting aside the fact that tools are not created equally no matter who uses them, the use of AI in “The Last Interview” feels plainly unimaginative, especially given Soderbergh’s talent and the other tools he had at his disposal.
Speaking as a fan of Lennon in particular, the KFRC interview has its occasional moments. It’s nice to hear him express his opinions on then-contemporary music, like his love for The B-52’s “Rock Lobster” and The Cars’ “Touch and Go.” His palpable belief in fatherhood as a life’s work radiates off the screen. At one point, he waxes poetic about Burt Reynolds speaking with Barbara Walters. The most touching sections feature John expressing his love for Yoko, and drawing a connection between his love for her and his relationship with Paul, as well as his unresolved feelings about his 1970s activism. (“We may have been naïve,” Yoko remarks on the subject, “but we were always honest.”)
Yet, even correcting for the culture’s insatiable thirst for Beatles ephemera, or that the interview will be forever shrouded in grief because of its tragic timing, this particular facet of the group’s history hardly demands a cinematic treatment. No matter how pleasant and even insightful certain segments of the interview are, it would play immeasurably better as a stand-alone audio program than inorganically expanded into a feature film that’s part-archival and part-tech experiment. Soderbergh insists that only 10% of “The Last Interview” features AI imagery, but it makes a larger, more negative impression than its comparatively minimal presence suggests because the interview can only sustain attention for so long in the sheer face of its relative triviality. John Lennon may not return from the dead in Soderbergh’s latest, but he and his wife are still sharing the stage with Meta.
Grade: C
“John Lennon: The Last Interview” premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
