Disney+ has released a new trailer for one of the most hotly anticipated music documentaries of the year, The Beatles: Get Back. Peter Jackson‘s documentary on the making of The Beatles‘ final album Let It Be premieres on the streaming service beginning November 25th.
The ever-evolving project from the famed Lord Of The Rings director has now taken its final form as a three-part limited series on Disney+. Broken up into three installments with a runtime of two hours apiece, the chapters of Get Back will premiere one at a time beginning on the 25th and running through the 27th.
In the newly released trailer, shared on Wednesday, The Fab Four are seen constructing what would prove to be their final album, 1970’s Let It Be (though many of the recordings were actually made prior to 1969’s Abbey Road). This is not a new sight, as Michael Lindsay-Hogg‘s 1970 documentary Let It Be already showed ostensibly the same plot. On the surface it appears to merely be the same thing: there are John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison in the studio, Singing the same songs in front of those same weird pastel backgrounds.
While the cast and the setting may be the same, Jackson’s documentary tells a completely different story. One of the most striking things gleaned from the Get Back trailer that was absent from Hogg’s film is the band’s self-awareness that they are, in fact, being taped for a movie. With that knowledge, the fourth wall comes crumbling down and even adds another layer of humanity to the at-times tense—and other times loving—interactions between characters.
Moreover, and one of the primary reasons for Jackson agreeing to sift through over 50 hours of film, is that there is so much more to the Let It Be story than history has held onto. Even in the four-minute trailer, Get Back takes a passionate plunge to take back the legacy of The Beatles’ final release. As history progresses, it’s easy to simplify great events down to their simplest explanations. The overwhelming narrative that The Beatles hated each other during the recording of Let It Be is an easy one to accept. The band broke up not much later, after all. But like a musical Mandela effect, Jackson took up the project to counter that narrative that has existed in the popular ideology for over 50 years.
“In many respects, Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s remarkable footage captured multiple storylines,” Jackson said in a statement. “The story of friends and of individuals. It is the story of human frailties and of a divine partnership. It is a detailed account of the creative process, with the crafting of iconic songs under pressure, set amid the social climate of early 1969. But it’s not nostalgia — it’s raw, honest, and human. Over six hours, you’ll get to know The Beatles with an intimacy that you never thought possible.”
Watch the new trailer for Get Back and stream the mini-series beginning on November 25th via Disney+.
The Beatles: Get Back | Official Trailer | Disney+
[Video: Walt Dinsey Studios]