While every person on Earth has their own crop of favorite filmmakers, there are those who stand as an almost objective list of the most influential to ever live: Alfred Hitchcock (Rope), Akira Kurosawa (Hidden Fortress), Federico Fellini (8 ½), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal), Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), Spike Lee (Inside Man), Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out the Dead), and of course, Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather trilogy). Whenever one of the greats who we’re lucky enough to still have with us puts out a film, particularly in the late stages of their careers, it’s a celebration of life and art, and a feeling of great gratitude that we can be around during the time of their individual reigns, regardless of whether said film lives up to their previous works. For as many personal issues as I hold with Coppola (his continued defense of Victor Salva, his allegations of sexual harassment, etc.), I’m simply not enough of a moralist to prevent myself from being able to say “I was there” whenever the rare moment he puts out new work arises, especially not something as much of a White Whale as Megalopolis is for Coppola.
Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina in MEGALOPOLIS. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate. © 2024 Lionsgate.
Reportedly discussed with Laurence Fishburne (Apocalypse Now) on the set of Apocalypse Now over 45 years ago, and primed for production in the early 2000s, Coppola’s grand vision of the Fall of the American Empire has been gestating in his head since the Carter administration, and has hit as many speed bumps as there are visual effects in the film itself. It has gone through multiple reinventions through Reaganism, 9/11, the Iraq War, and the Trump era, each event reinventing the means by which America will come to destroy itself with its own hubris. It’s a grand, inaccessible idea, particularly for the price tag it came with, so with a sale of one of his wine companies, Coppola funded the entirety of the film’s $120 million budget himself. Even once the film secured late, leery distribution through Lionsgate after its polarizing Cannes premiere, Coppola was still asked to put up $15-20 million more of his own money to cover the marketing costs, though some of that was mitigated by boutique label Utopia stepping in to assist in the release of the film, as well. Difficult films often face uphill battles when it comes to securing release, but to see such a filmmaker struggle so heavily without anyone willing to take a chance on the film he’s been wanting to make for decades felt … odd.
Then I saw Megalopolis, and everything made sense! Well … at least the distribution part of it, because the rest of it is borderline incomprehensible.
Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero in MEGALOPOLIS. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate. © 2024 Lionsgate.
Set in an alternate New York City named “New Rome,” a once utopian metropolis is now being dragged down by crime, poverty, political corruption, and greed. On the brink of collapse, idealist architect and certified hot mess Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver, playing a character named after two salad dressings), blessed with the power to stop time, is given carte blanche by the federal government to design a futuristic utopia from scratch to replace the decrepit city, to the chagrin of Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and his cronies (Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman). Franklin’s daughter, reformed party girl and socialite Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), fascinated by Cesar’s presence and ideas, joins his team to help bridge the gap between Cesar and her father, only to find herself infatuated by Cesar’s magnetic, if challenging, persona. Meanwhile, Cesar’s billionaire uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), struggles to keep Cesar in his good graces when he is wooed by the opportunistic, power-hungry muckraker Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), while his son, Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) seeks to sow political chaos and overthrow Cesar, who has always been looked upon by his father with more favor.
Aubrey Plaza as Wow Platinum in MEGALOPOLIS. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate. © 2024 Lionsgate.
Perhaps the one thing that everyone, from those who despise the film to those who herald it as Coppola’s masterpiece, can agree on is that the film is messy … ambitious, but very messy. However, many are hailing the messiness as a feature, representing the chaos of a failed state in motion, not a bug. I, however, am the opposite. While I’d love to present the idea that my messy, incomprehensible work was all intentional, every time I have ever had to do that has been a lie, and just because it’s Coppola behind the camera does not mean that I’m not going to hold him to the same standard as I would any other filmmaker. Megalopolis feels like the product of a filmmaker staring at a script for decades on end, overediting, and constantly reinventing a once cohesive story into something barely resembling what it once was. There’s no doubt an insane amount of effort and time was put into the world, but much like a term paper or a piece of fashion design or any creative work, there comes a point when it’s best to put the pen down and let the work speak for itself. In its current state, Megalopolis is a lot of words, but seemingly isn’t saying much, despite it clearly having once said something clearly and concisely.
That quickly becomes the most frustrating part of Megalopolis. There are a ton of ideas, but too many distractions and side-thoughts that are forced into the already dense material that it quickly loses any sense of coherence. Much like the scatter-brained Q&A that played before the film, every idea that Coppola begins to explore seems to be cut off mid-sentence to explore something else that has sprung to mind, with a sort of cinematic ADHD that wants to be everything so badly that it loses sight of being the one thing that it initially set out to be, the tale of the final days of a grand empire. By the film’s conclusion, everything feels so unearned and scattershot that I wondered how we even got to the place we ended at.
While I initially balked at much of the cast from my high horse atop my glass house, with controversial figures like Jon Voight (Heat), Dustin Hoffman (Hook), and Shia LaBeouf (I, Robot) in the mix, I did appreciate Coppola’s justification in the casting by stating that in the quest to build a better world for our children, we do have to interact and work with people from all sides, including those who have done terrible things, and possess opinions so far removed from our own that we view them as insane. It’s not a pleasant thought, but it’s one that I actually found to be more poignant than anything actually presented in the film itself. Tragically, I found nearly all of the performances in the film as scattershot as the ideas Coppola had for its narrative. No one seems to be in the same film, with the likes of Driver, Emmanuel, Esposito, and Fishburne taking the film incredibly seriously, and the likes of Voight, Plaza, LaBeouf, and Schwartzman to be hamming it up the max. There’s no balance between the two, and there’s hardly any nuance to give the actors any room to find balance between the two extremes. Everything is all so broad, so empty, and so disjointed that it becomes difficult to even enjoy the wilder elements of performances like Plaza’s and LaBoeuf’s when it all feels so out-of-place and unearned.
R: Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher in MEGALOPOLIS. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate. © 2024 Lionsgate.
I could forgive a lot of this if the film was the visual spectacle that it was made out to be, but alas, it’s hardly that. It’s a wild notion that a film could secure an official IMAX release long before even securing a distributor, and that sells a big promise on the notion of a film’s scale. And sure, the film is grandiose in scale, but visually appealing it is not. When the film isn’t existing within the downtrodden streets of New Rome, it’s plastered with CGI so clunky and garish that it often feels straight out of Robert Rodriguez’s The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (2005), so much so that I’d almost assume it’s self-aware had the ads not pushed the visual element of the film so hard. There are moments of inspiration, but they are few and far between, and exist as only that: moments.
Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero in MEGALOPOLIS. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate. © 2024 Lionsgate.
While I haven’t struggled with my personal opinion on Megalopolis … frankly, I kinda hated it. It’s hard not to be touched by Coppola’s genuine earnesty surrounding the whole thing. It’s a massive, bloated, ugly mess with a vapid screenplay, bad performances, and a complete lack of a central narrative that makes any sort of sense, but there’s such a self-confidence in the whole ordeal that I almost appreciate it. It really does break my heart to speak on how much I disliked it, as any chance to see a new film from a legend like Coppola, likely for the last time at this scale, is something I should cherish, I just can’t cherish it enough to convince myself that it’s anything short of a colossally clunky mess.
Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina in MEGALOPOLIS. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate. © 2024 Lionsgate.
I would be remiss if not to paint the very real picture of how “love it or hate it” this film is to filmgoers, so despite my opinions and score, I can’t fully say to not waste your time with it, as: A. This might your last chance to see a Coppola film during its initial theatrical run, and B. You might find me to be a complete idiot who didn’t understand something you see as a masterpiece. Don’t deny yourself that, just don’t blame me if you end up in the same boat I’m in.
In select theaters and IMAX September 27th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Lionsgate Megalopolis website.
Final Score: 1 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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