After thirteen years away from the big screen, Francis Ford Coppola’s splashy new drama Megalopolis finally hit the big screen last month. A self-funded passion project forty years in the making, Megalopolis is nothing if not self-indulgent. The film is comparable to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon or Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and is massive in scope and vision. The film centers around a troubled architect, Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who discovers an element called “Megalon.” He believes that Megalon can and should be used to create a new, utopian version of futuristic New York City, now called New Rome. Ancient Rome is a fascination of Coppola’s because the story of Megalopolis both acts as its own story, but also a metaphorical version of Rome. A self-funded passion project forty years in the making, Megalopolis is nothing if not self-indulgent. However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 movie was purely about his feelings of loneliness following his father’s death. Quentin Tarantino’s entire filmography is self-indulgent, as all of his movies can be summed up as compilations of movies from his youth with electric dialogue.
Beginning with some positives, the film stars Adam Driver, who is a favorite of many filmmakers such as Noah Baumbach and Steven Soderberg. He offers an incredibly committed performance and is one of many actors who is ready and willing to execute FFC’s massive vision. The intentionality and interiority within Driver’s performance are nothing short of miraculous since the movie is a loud, somewhat flashy dramedy attempting at one time to invoke the tone of an episode of Succession while also trying to project the themes of There Will be Blood. Another notable member of the cast is Aubrey Plaza- who is the most fun part of the film as though she is in her film. The movie that she is in is the one that most people would want to see. It is satirical, funny, and sharp. Instead, we got a 2-and-a-half-hour clunker of a movie from an American “great”. For the rest of the cast, it has an out-of-her-element Nathalie Emmanual from Game of Thrones, an awkward John Voight, a puzzling Shia LaBeouf (who is fresh off of his various scandals), and a somehow wooden Giancarlo Esposito.
Unfortunately, the movie contains inconsistencies that affect all involved. As previously stated, the performances are either contrived or out of place, and the tonal shifts are underdeveloped and undeserved. But what strikes an even more worrisome chord is how the story and structure simply make no sense. In fact, the first scene we see is of Nathalie Emmanuel’s character Julia Cicero doing things of a socialite-ingesting different drugs among other illicit things. At about the twenty-five-minute mark, after having a conversation with her father, (played by Giancarlo Esposito) Mayor Cicero, she inexplicably goes to her father’s rival, Caesar (Adam Driver), and asks for a job. Why the sudden switch-up? Plot holes. This movie is also chock full of structural incoherence, as one sequence lasts over forty minutes and is just abysmally boring. FCC employs a ton of cinematic technique and stylization during this, but the content on the screen is about as digestible as cardboard. Another story beat is the satellite that falls to the ground in the middle of New Rome. It takes about 15 minutes to get that fixed when it is the crux of the movie’s plot. Additionally, it happens about two-thirds into the movie, thus the emotional payoff or catharsis that the eventual utopia offers is simply unattainable due to the endless table setting. At one point, Caesar is shot in the face(!) by a twelve-year-old, and Megalon somehow revives him. This also happens in the span of around 15 minutes, and is simply plot armor to distract from more interesting or harder questions the audience has. Megalon is never explained fully, which could be interesting if there was slightly more ambiguity within the film’s overall story and characters. Everything in the movie is extremely cut and dry while simultaneously not explaining the most important part of the film; a fatal flaw.
The “Pillars” film are: Plot/Story, Character, Ideas, and Structure. The movie fails to be effective in all four categories, most notably the ideas and structure categories. While watching the film, I was amazed at how indulgent it was. It is a token “Great Man” film, but the “Great Man” here is just Coppola. The main idea is that FCC has all the good ideas and that Hollywood is broken without him. In the era of constant superhero/IP movies, I would agree that Hollywood is broken. However, FCC hasn’t made a truly good movie since 1997’s The Rainmaker, which is just a pretty run-of-the-mill John Grisham adaptation with no real directorial flare. But to say that he is the only one with good ideas is a slap in the face to many people in Hollywood, not to mention avid moviegoers.
Megalopolis is a movie that I strongly disliked, and would assume that the three other people who have seen it didn’t care for it as well. It made 7.5 million dollars on a supposed 120 million dollar budget (FCC is notorious for going over budget) plus whatever money Lionsgate put down to distribute it. It is the biggest flop of 2024 and deserves to be. This movie stinks, flat out.
So will this movie have any sort of adverse effect on FCC’s legacy? Given that he made The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, I don’t think so. However he will be remembered for seriously jumping the shark in his later years, and that could potentially tarnish his filmography. Nevertheless, he will always be an American great.
