Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis

Perhaps...but Megalopolis is ranking in all-time box office failure numbers with it's 70% drop.

Remember that thing from tiktok or wherever a couple of years ago about men spending a lot of time thinking about the Roman empire? Megalopolis is like the film of that.

I don't think it is even remotely like that. I mean, that may sound like a humorous comment, but it really doesn't hold up to examination.

Coppola is using the "New Rome" motif as a way of allegory, comparing the downfall of the Roman Empire with the (possible) downfall of American democracy. It is a movie that is more forward-looking in nature than the old social media thing about modern-day men spending a lot of time thinking about the old days of the Roman Empire.

What a mess. Credit where credit is due, Francis Ford Coppola's film is original in concept and ambitious as hell, but it is a complete mess. The best way to describe it is think of a timeline where the Roman Empire did not fall and carried on into the society we live in today, and the world of 'New Rome' (which is very clearly New York), being the stage where this is played out. While Coppela has a lot to say, he has made a complete dog's breakfast of it.

The acting is weird, varying wildly all over the place in tone and not entirely sure what FFC was conveying to his cast on set, but it's end result is that it just all seems like ill fitting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Visually I am told it is every bit as much of a mess, the colour tones of a largely sickly yellow prominance and cheap looking CGI (again, I cannot conifirm this), and as for the writing, it is confused.


As someone who studied Ancient Rome and do have a pretty decent grasp on that end of things, even the parellels on offer are a mixed bag. Throw in Shakespeare (entire swathes of which, such as Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy), and flourishes of modern politics, the debate between moving toward an idealized future against the entrenched ways of keeping things as they are/have been, legacy and politics, throw it all in a blender and hit 'puree' and this is the end result.

I really wanted to like to like this, for all of the originality and ambition, and really wish there was more films that had even a fraction of what FFS aspired to here.


But despite those aspirations this is not a good movie. Maybe in years to come there will be a new edit that will make more sense (holding out the same hope for Ridley Scott's Napoleon), but even for it's seemingly reasonable 2hr 20-odd min runtime, it really feels like it drags on for far longer without a whole lot of clarity. Perhaps having a longer edit with restored scenes etc so that to make things fit into place and make more sense would actually benefit the movie and make it into something that is genuinely worthwhile (think of something like what has been the case with Blade Runner over the years, or more recently, Justice League for instance).

However, in this current original theatrical form, it is just a complete mess.

That's odd, the movie definitely didn't feel like a mess in any way when I watched it.

I think that's a normal reaction, tho, when looking at something that is almost completely experimental and applying the expectations of conventional cinematic syntax to it. You expect a movie that follows the normal narrative convention, maybe some of it just doesn't "feel right" in some ways...

I wouldn't make so much out of the "parallels", because as Coppola explained with the title card, it is supposed to be a fable. Not something to be taken too literally, as fables in general probably never should be.

I get that it is a fable, my point about timeline was more about an explaination for how the world in which New Rome exists, as opposed to it trying to mirror events of Ancient Rome, or of various actual historic figures (of which some clearly are derivative or composites) but I get that these are not meant to be taken as parellels. Just because someone is named Ceasar does not mean that this person is reflective of what any one of the historic Ceasars (which was a title anyhow) was or stood for, rather it is a name that is just part of the world - like someone being named 'John King', doesn't make them King, it is just etymology of a name.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. The movie is set in the 21st century; yet the Soviet Union still exists (you can see "CCCP" in the satellite). So there's all kinds of different things that allow Coppola to just create his own parallel reality - this is the first time he's ever done anything in the realm of sci-fi.

You can definitely spend hours thinking about the symbolism and what different things are meant to stand for/evocate.

In my mind, that's great cinema. Something that presents you with a whole different world, where different rules apply, where maybe people don't behave the same way they would in our world. That's what makes it exciting, at least for me. That nothing here is the way we would expect - the world is different, and the cinematic syntax that Coppola is using is clearly a totally new and revolutionary one, which means that our normal expectations have to fly out the window from the start.

That's what differentiates a truly gigantic cinematic genius from those who just take bits and pieces of things that have done before and just try to re-assemble them in a slightly different way (like with The Substance).

It got an HONEST TRAILER...ofcourse it did

I've been waiting to see if this would happen. Megalopolis has reached under 5.0 on Imdb (although, when you think about 10 - 1 being nine, that means the halfway point between the bare minimum rating on Imdb, 1, and the maximum is actually 5.5). Ironically, the film was also selected for Imdb's sci-fi and fantasy staff picks of 2024.


Posting this because I'm still interested in how the future will treat this film, so since it's been a while, this is a short update on its status with the moviegoers.