Megalopolis

This is a movie that I have been desperately pushing off this year. I would say that there have been mixed reviews but the reality is that people hated it, and there were a few people singing its praises. As we know I don’t trust the general publics opinions on anything, as I very rarely agree. All that said, even the synopsis for this movie is a hot mess, as is the cast. So let’s go ahead and start in on Megalopolis.

Francis Ford Coppola was definitely trying a lot here. The film definitely gives you it's thesis statement up top. America is being compared to Rome, as in the fall of. It is attempting to explore the possible fall of America through the lens of it being deemed “New Rome”.

Naming the main character Caesar is a little heavy handed don’t you think? Apparently he has a dead wife and he is sleeping with the reporter chick.

The first scene with Caesar and Julia is so contrived. Every movement and word is so mechanical and choreographed. There is no natural flow to this scene at all. It is so posed. I feel very much like it's trying to mimic 1950s/60s romantic comedies, with the banter and the very specific dialogue delivery but it's just coming off as labored.

This is far more out there than anything Francis Ford Coppola has ever done. His work is very much realistic, it's rooted in reality and though it may reflect what is going on in the world, there is nothing otherworldly or absurdist about his films. I think this perhaps just wasn’t his style. This is very different from all of his other films.

Madison Square Garden, now resembling the colosseum is holding games to celebrate the wedding of the old rich guy with news reporter lady.

Caesar seems to be able to bend the laws of physics at will. He briefly loses this ability but regains it pretty quickly when Julia simply asks him to stop time.

There is a lot going on in this movie. There is the whole Megalopolis thing between Caesar and the mayor, there is a satellite coming down on the city, there is the cousin that wants to take down Caesar, there is the love story subplot,, oh also the wife’s death keeps popping up. It’s too much. He really needed to focus this script and just chose not to. This is what happens when directors/writers have full creative control and they don’t have anyone keeping them in check. It's why we have to keep dealing with Zach Snyder cranking out just the worst movies known to mankind. Film is inherently collaborative, NO ONE should have full creative control, ever. Otherwise you are simply stating that you alone are so brilliant that you don’t need anyone else’s input. And that is simply untrue of literally anyone.

God this movie is so long and it's just wandering aimlessly, seriously going absolutely nowhere. This is what happens when you overload a script,in order to explore every goddamn storyline you decided to throw in here it's gotta be obscenely long. The story in the back half completely shifts from Caesar and it is just a weird narrative and tonal change.

This whole film is a wild waste of time. It deviates so far from it's promise in act 1. Coppola has no business using fantastical realism or absurdism of any kind, it's not his thing and he doesn’t seem to understand how to use it beyond visuals. This is obviously the worst thing he has ever produced, and nearly every single person in this movie was too good for this movie. There is hardly an actual plot, and the development of the story is so chaotic and confused. We needed to streamline the script, whatever commentary that he thought he was making got lost in the atrocity that was the third act. It deserves no more than a 2//10 only because some of the visuals were nice to look at, and he managed to assemble a good cast.