What happens when an elderly man, who thinks about the Roman Empire every day, sells his vineyard to afford to make the movie of his dreams that he has been planning for 40 years? Well, you get nothing good or worthwhile out of it; you actually get Megalopolis, 2024’s most anticipated failure.
Megalopolis follows Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), who aims to take the city of New Rome into a utopian, idealistic future, while his opposition mayor, Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), remains committed to a regressive status quo. Torn between them is Franklyn’s socialite daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who, tired of the influence she inherited, searches for her life’s meaning.
Disappointment is the best word to describe how I’m feeling after watching this film. After years of anticipation and finally getting a new clip and trailer, I was ready to witness this masterpiece. Except, it isn’t a masterpiece at all. Francis Ford Coppola used his own money to fund this film without the help of any studios, and some might argue that it’s impressive, but can it really be impressive when your so-called dream film amounts to absolutely nothing?
The story isn’t hard to follow at all. It’s quite simple, actually: Cesar wants to create this “megalopolis” with his newly found, indestructible metal, and everyone else is against him. The only issue with the story is that it overcomplicates things with all the characters involved, their sub-stories, and the visuals. It is clear that Coppola spent too much time trying to break boundaries within cinema instead of just focusing on an enjoyable film to watch. Sometimes films don’t have to be complicated to be good or even worth talking about. Simplicity is sometimes better.
Francis Ford Coppola comes up with concepts that on paper sound creative, innovative, and groundbreaking, but on screen (or, should I say, in person), they aren’t executed well. There’s a scene towards the end of the second act where an actual person comes onto the stage and asks Adam Driver’s character a question, with him responding. There are several issues with this, and I’ll state them all here.
The first issue is that this is supposed to feel immersive and have the audience feel like they’re part of the film; it in fact has the opposite effect, and instead of making me feel immersed, it takes me out of the film completely. In addition, the film’s ratio aspect gets smaller, which seemed unnecessary, and I truly don’t know what Coppola was trying to achieve. The second issue is that this isn’t a concept that they’ll be able to pull off when it releases in cinemas, so why go through all the effort for this substandard scene in the movie that will only be witnessed at Cannes?
The third and final issue that I have with this sequence is that it wasn’t utilised to the best of its capabilities. The actor playing a journalist comes onto the stage to ask only one question and then leaves. That right there is the definition of wasted potential. Maybe Coppola was scared that the scene wouldn’t receive well and didn’t want to spend too much time on it, but if you’re going to do something so different, why not go all the way? I would’ve enjoyed this scene more if it felt like an actual conversation between Adam Driver and the journalist on stage, with more questions being asked and a back-and-forth battle. That would give this scene the substance that it’s lacking.
There aren’t many redeeming factors in this film, so unfortunately, it’s hard to praise even the actors when it comes to their performance in the film. The only one who stands apart from the rest is Aubrey Plaza, mainly because the character just feels like herself, but even then, some of her line readings just aren’t at their best. There’s only so much an actor can do with a bad script, and it’s clear with Megalopolis that there wasn’t much they could do. The dialogue itself is just laughable and adds to the complete incoherent mess that this film is.
For a film with a high budget, the film looks visually off-putting and is just simply ugly to look at. The CGI feels very old-school and just seems off with the way the rest of the film looks. The cinematography is truly the saving grace of this film. Aside from the bad visuals, there were a few great shots in the film, but unfortunately, they amount to nothing as each great thing about this film is instantly torn apart by something treacherous.
Megalopolis will undoubtedly be known throughout history as one of the worst and most decisive films to release in 2024. In a film that focuses so much on breaking boundaries in cinema that it fails to actually be a good film first, Francis Ford Coppola takes a wonderful cast and a simple story and wastes both of them by overcomplicating the entire project with a poorly written script. It starts to all become clear why the film hasn’t been bought by a US distributor; it’s a huge risk to take.
Megalopolis releases in theaters later this year.
