Trip, as played by Dane DeHaan, is a skinny kid in black jeans and a hoodie. He is overwhelmed by forces larger than him. He is not physically strong. He is an outcast. James Hetfield may be a tattooed rock god, wearing all black and a bullet belt, stalking around on a stage the size of St. John the Divine like he owns the joint, but he still identifies with guys like Trip. He identifies with the outcasts, the scared kids of the world ("Enter Sandman." their most famous song, features a child's voice praying), and Trip is the stand-in for all kids who feel like they don't fit in, who are scared and feel powerless, who find strength in music like Metallica's. That's when the device stopped feeling like a device and felt like an expression of the band's identification with its own fan base, with the guys they used to be.

It was 1983 when Metallica's first album came out, a year where The Police and Michael Jackson dominated the pop charts. Heavy metal fans were part of a vibrant underground scene, where bootleg cassette tapes were passed around. Metallica are Rock and Roll Hall of Famers now. Their actions (and albums) have not always pleased their hard-core fan base. Remember when they sued Napster? Remember "Load," their sixth album, seen by many fans as a betrayal of what the band was all about? Some of the oldest fans think Metallica sold out with what is known as "the black album." These things are still being argued about on heavy metal websites and fan forums. And then of course, they all went into therapy in order to heal the rifts in their relationships, a process documented in the fascinating 2004 documentary "Some Kind of Monster." The album that resulted from that therapy process, "St. Anger," received mixed reviews but still sold millions of copies. You can see that up-and-down journey in the concert itself, as technical snafus threaten to derail the whole thing, forcing the band to go back to basics.

Some of the best moments in the film involve footage of the concert audience. There is one audience member I keep remembering, and he appears for only a second. He was pushed up against the barrier. He had his shirt off, like a lot of the guys did, and his arms were in the air, eyes closed, lost to everything else but that immediate moment. There are millions more of him around the world. And there were thousands more in that arena. The sound of the audience singing along is so powerful it sounds like a political rally about to turn violent. Even James Hetfield at one point seems a bit taken aback at the collective sound of thousands of people singing his lyrics. At the end of the film, during the credits, the words "To the Metallica Family of Fans" scroll by on the screen. "Metallica: Through the Never" is a vehicle that could reach a new generation of fans, who wouldn't even know what the term "bootleg cassette tape" meant, but know great music when they hear it.

With all of the dazzling special effects "Metallica Through the Never" offers, and with all of the violent encounters poor fictional Trip experiences, it's that shirtless fan, arms raised, that encapsulates what the film is all about, encapsulates what Metallica is all about. To paraphrase one of Metallica's most famous lyrics, that's the memory that remains.