Megalopolis

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: F

               It goes without saying that Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most revered directors of all time, primarily for what is arguably the greatest 4-movie streak of any director in film history (The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part 2 and Apocalypse Now). His filmography is, at best, inconsistent beyond that amazing run from 1972-1979, but that is enough to put him in the pantheon of great directors. Megalopolis has been Coppola’s passion project for decades; he has worked on the script for 40 years and came close to production a couple of times over the decades. Now at 85 years old, he has put up tons of his own money and mortgaged his wine business to finally bring his dream project to the big screen. Megalopolis is the culmination an artist struggling for decades to realize their ultimate vision, fighting against the commercial influence of the creatively-stifling studio system. Also, Megalopolis is fucking garbage.

               I’ve seen a lot of bad movies in 2024. I feel like I say this every year, but this may be the worst year of movies that I can remember. Despite all of the terrible movies released this year, this was my worst movie-going experience of the year and I pray to god that things can’t get worse. Megalopolis is absolutely insufferable to sit through. It’s an absurdly immature film and I know that seems like an odd comment, but allow me to explain: I think there are two distinct types of immaturity in film. The first is the traditional type of immaturity: toilet humor, sex jokes, etc. This doesn’t apply to Megalopolis, apart from an odd moment when Jon Voight discusses how he gets an erection from seeing Aubrey Plaza (not an invalid point, Jon, but seems odd to vocalize it in a movie like this).

               No, this is the second type of immaturity, that of pretentious intellectual condescension. While the first type is typically associated with children, this immaturity is often found among young adults that just read their first philosophical text, memorize quotes from it and want to tell you that they now realize how the world works. This is an odd condition for a man of Coppola’s age, but he has apparently reverted to the intellectual state of a college sophomore. The themes of Megalopolis are overbearing with very little story to support them. For a film that Coppola claims to be envisioned as a conversation starter, it is distinctly a lecture rather than a dialog. It is a film made by someone that desperately wants you to know that they are smart and have read books and, plot and characters be damned, they are going to obnoxiously quote Shakespeare, Petrarch and Marcus Aurelius to prove the point. This is a movie for stupid and insecure people to claim to enjoy because doing so will impress other stupid and insecure people.

               The plot, if I may stretch the definition of the word, is a mixture of The Fountainhead, Metropolis and Roman history. If that description sounds interesting, then I apologize for overselling it. The film takes place in a futuristic (?) version of New York called New Rome and draws parallels between the fall of the Roman Empire and the potential decline of the United States. That comparison is hardly a new idea, but this movie really wants you to think that it is and, in case you don’t get it at first, you will be beaten over the head with it. Adam Driver stars as Cesar, an architect that has invented a new material called Megalon that can amazingly move and expand structures. Cesar wants to use the revolutionary material to build a new community called Megalopolis, but the stubborn, non-intellectual mayor Cicero (played by Giancarlo Esposito from Maximum Overdrive) wants things to stay the way that they are. It is the classic narrative of the artistic visionary vs. the obtuse system, just stripped of anything that can make such narratives compelling.

               If you are watching a movie for interesting characters or story, then be gone. Megalopolis has no time for your pathetic, plebian desires. The characters exist only as vessels for messages, which is something that a terrible writer thinks is clever. The cast of this movie is staggering, making it one of the largest collective wastes of talent in cinematic history. In addition to the aforementioned Driver, Voight, Plaza and Esposito, we have Laurence Fishburne, Talia Shire, Shia LaBeouf and Dustin fucking Hoffman. Each seems to have been directed to act as if they are talentless student actors in a pretentious short film being made as a thesis project. Nobody acts like a person in this since they are the embodiments of messages instead of actual characters and they are seemingly trying to top each other for ridiculous takes. Several moments have already become meme material, but it is truly something to see actors of this caliber spewing such pseudo-intellectual drivel.

               The plot is simple enough on a surface level, but throws in more than enough extraneous bullshit to create the illusion that there is more to this. Cesar has the ability to stop time. That should be a major plot point, but yet it never factors into anything except as a lame analogy for the talent of artists. There is a scandal about a virgin (who is the focal point of show at a coliseum in Madison Square Garden, because this is an analogy for Rome in case you didn’t get it) that may not actually be a virgin. For awhile there is a subplot about Aubrey Plaza taking control of a bank. We see living statues at one point, including a crumbling Lady Justice (SYMBOLISM, get it??), that are never even acknowledged. Shia LaBeouf’s character has brutally obvious political parallels, as we shockingly discover that Coppola, a creator of our media, is actually anti-Trump. It’s a good thing that your career is nearly over, Mr. Coppola, because it would get mighty lonely in Hollywood with that kind of radical free-thinking. These (and many more) moments and subplots amount to little more than intellectual masturbation that is antithetical the conversations that the film supposedly intends to inspire.

               The evolving narrative around Megalopolis, mostly being pushed by pretentious asshats, is really starting to piss me off. Just because a piece of art exists doesn’t mean that it is exempt from criticism. Just because somebody has realized their vision doesn’t make their vision worthwhile. Despite this vitriolic review, I still have tremendous respect for Coppola as a filmmaker. He knows more about filmmaking than I will or could ever know. However, that doesn’t mean that I (or anyone else) can’t come to my own conclusions about his work. I’m not a filmmaker, sure. I’m also not a professional football player, yet I can still correctly ascertain that my Carolina Panthers are fucking terrible this season. If Megalopolis is intended to irritate audiences and lose money, as some people are now ridiculously claiming to be its goals, then it is a resounding success. In every other regard, Megalopolis is a cinematic failure of historic proportions.

Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolis_(film)#/media/File:Megalopolis_(film)_poster.jpg