Michelle Shiers on December 22nd, 2015

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“This is better than Star Wars” said a fan who, along with 20,000 others, was enjoying all the trimmings of Muse’s mighty performance at Staples Center on Friday night.

Touring in support of their seventh studio album “Drones,” released in March, Muse are certainly no strangers to inherently outsized performances. The trio emerged amid real drones — glowing balls that floated down from above, symbolic of the band’s heavy message — to the three-part stage that stretched to both ends of arena, opening their set with “Psycho” and “Dead Inside” from the new album.

Fans were completely immersed in the thrill-ride that is Muse’s live show, this time made more enjoyable by the stage’s 360 visual experience. Singer Matt Bellamy and bassist Chris Wolstenholme moved from microphone to microphone and back and forth across the stage extensions – rarely meeting, but always orbiting around drummer Dominic Howard’s muscularly rhythmic gravitational pull.

Muse are largely and lovingly about presentation, and while U2 or the Rolling Stones may still hold the tag as biggest band in the world, they don’t quite measure up to Muse’s current arena-rock bombast. The aptly-named “Hysteria” from 2003’s “Absolution” was enough to melt the faces off every audience member who couldn’t take their eyes off the spectacle, and longtime fans screamed at the first bar of “Plug In Baby” from 2001’s “Origin Of Symmetry” all the way through its extended outro.

Semi-transparent curtains hung down projecting video and lyrics. A maniacal puppeteer projection showed strings connecting to Bellamy and Wolstenholme, whose bass neck was lit up by lights that changed color throughout the set. The stage itself began to rotate and the giant white globes that hung above were slowly lowered during clap-along “Starlight,” which Bellamy dedicated to his son.

While Muse’s occasional long intros and outros were just as pleasantly excessive as their songs, it felt like a few more gems could have fit into the 100-minute show without them. Howard pushed through song after song occasionally swathed in frenetic spotlights. Bellamy, who was buzzing through his signature textured guitar solos, put on an eye mask of red lights during “Undisclosed Desires” from “The Resistance.”

The voice of JFK boomed overhead then Muse moved into “Revolt” and then the very popular “Time Is Running Out,” during which the whole of the Staples center went unhinged. A giant blow-up drone flew slowly overhead during “Uprising” making it clear that Muse have no fear expressing their underlying political message in the most extravagant ways. They closed their main set yelling “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, FIRE” during “The Globalist,” followed by the celestial harmonies of “Drones'” reprise.

They returned for an elaborate encore of “Mercy” featuring confetti and ribbon cannons, and ended with an intense “Knights Of Cydonia,” featuring some of Bellamy’s finest moments of operatic wailing and a hefty closing drum solo.