‘BTS ARMY: Forever We Are Young’ rectifies the global fandom

Little of that caricature is on display in BTS ARMY: Forever We Are Young, the latest entry by co-directors Grace Lee and Patty Ahn in a booming market of celebrity documentaries and the already saturated infosphere about the ultra-popular, world-renowned South Korean boy band BTS (short for Bangtan Sonyeondan, literally meaning Bulletproof Boy Scouts). Unlike most films in this genre, in which the primary allure comes from exclusive interviews with the artists themselves or never-before-seen archival footage, Forever We Are Young differentiates itself by centering the band’s avid fanbase, ARMY. Through more than a dozen BTS fans worldwide recounting the band’s career via their collective and personal journeys, the film is both a buoyant celebration of BTS’s global fanbase and a rectification of the often misunderstood, if not maligned, fan culture.

If the name ARMY evokes the idea of militancy, or images of screaming teenage girls rushing stages or crowding airports, the fans here are nothing of the sort. True to the “Adorable Representative MC for Youth” acronym, they are indeed adorable, and all seem to exhibit a healthy balance of fervent devotion and critical distance. Seated against vibrant studio backdrops, they tell their ARMY origin stories with shy but palpable enthusiasm, recalling biases, favorite moments, and the underdog spirit BTS carried and which they resonated with—especially when they debuted in 2013 under a then-unknown and small company named Big Hit Entertainment (now HYBE) in a K-pop scene dominated by major labels such as SM, YG, and JYP Entertainment. “Everyone felt this collective bond of, ‘We have to protect these boys, but also be their fans, but also making friendships along the way,’” says Kaitlyn, an early ARMY interviewee who remembers seeing BTS’s first U.S. performance and free show in 2014 at a Los Angeles venue with barely 200 people.

Ele and Len are part of a Mexico City dance cover group who bring BTS's choreography to life.

Courtesy of Tremolo Productions

The choice to chart BTS’s meteoric rise to global stardom through ARMY’s eyes works beautifully here because of the fandom’s diversity—across age, gender, race, religion, language, and nationality. From a South Korean woman who credits a BTS song for helping her persevere in her dream of becoming a makeup artist, to a teenage Latina girl who found solace in the album Wings to cope with family hardships, to a middle-aged white woman from Tennessee who describes BTS as “God-sent” for helping her recover from depression—and who has since become the “BTS Lady” to kids in the small town as she has seized on every opportunity to promote the group to whoever will pause to look and listen—the film meticulously builds the case that the rise of the boy band was primarily a result of organic growth from a devoted global fanbase.

Those who identify as ARMY will undoubtedly have a blast with this film, but for those who don’t, there is more than just entertainment value. If 2020 revealed the political muscle of K-pop—when fans reportedly sabotaged President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by reserving tickets en masse and not showing up—then the behind-the-scenes story of BTS’s breakthrough into mainstream American consciousness from 2017-18 will be equally illuminating. ARMY members created virtual offices to organize and call local radio stations and persistently request BTS songs, despite encountering racist and xenophobic pushback. Lee and Ahn animate these online campaigns vividly, tracking down key figures including an organizer behind one virtual office and the DJ whose decision to play BTS on air transformed both her career and the band’s.

WHATCHAGOT2SAY filming a new BTS reaction video for their YouTube channel.

Courtesy of Tremolo Productions

The film’s overall wholesomeness is infectious, and watching this truly diverse group of people united by shared joy sometimes feels like peeking into a better future in which arbitrary barriers dissolve, and people collaborate and care for each other. It vindicates a fleeting feeling I had back in 2021 at my first BTS and K-pop concert at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, when a friend passed me an extra ticket from a family friend who had somehow secured a block of seats for the five-day tour. I expected to see mostly college students like us, but instead found a Latino family of four in front of us, the smallest member in the father’s arms; behind us were three teenagers of different ethnicities with glowsticks over their heads and necks and wrists. Throughout the night, they were waving their ARMY bomb lightsticks, clinging to each other shoulder to shoulder and singing every single line of the songs.

Yet concerts end, and utopias fade. Once an underdog becomes the reigning champion, both the allure and the fanbase inevitably change. The film captures what makes BTS’s fandom extraordinary, but it gets insular in its faithful chronology. A fleeting mention of toxicity in the online fan space hints at a larger critique, yet the subject vanishes as the film returns to foreground social upheavals in 2020 and BTS’s engagement with them. What’s missing is a more nuanced exploration of how ARMY compares to other fandoms, and how it might be prone to the same pitfalls. Without it, the documentary remains an affectionate portrait—warm, persuasive, but incapable of addressing the underlying question: whether love this intense can surpass the flaws and transform the culture that created it.

Fans spell out BTS ARMY in lights at a BTS concert.

Courtesy of Tremolo Productions