Megalopolis (2024) It’s A Lot, And A Lot Of It Is Not Good

At the age of 85, Francis Ford Coppola has literally nothing to prove as a director, and whatever the reception was to his small-scale films throughout the 1990s and 2000s, they managed to coast by due to the fact that the filmmaker behind them made the first two Godfather films which, let’s face it, he’s never going to top. Then again, it could be argued that a divisive film like Megalopolis – his first film in over a decade and, supposedly, his final and most ambitious one ever – is more important at this stage in the man’s life. After all, since the first two Godfather films are so cemented into history it’s almost boring to talk about how stupidly perfect they are, isn’t it better to shoot for the moon, go all-in, and divide the crowd?

At least that way the conversation’s going to be interesting … well, my conversation after Megalopolis certainly was. I was sitting in a pub discussing a new Francis Ford Coppola feature with film buff friends – that’s certainly a cool experience, right? Yeah it was, but it would’ve been even cooler if just one of us had liked it. I’ve heard the film’s detractors cruelly refer to it as Megaflopolis, so I’ll throw a new one on the table – Messalopolis, because Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is the most incoherent thing with a budget I have ever seen in my entire life. I say “with a budget” as it feels rude to compare any low-budget indie film made by amateurs trying to prove their worth, to a 120-million dollar epic directed by the man who made The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The indie filmmakers don’t know better, but Coppola bloody should.

Megalopolis calls itself “a fable”, and on paper the concept here is simple, but grand in scope – a daring creator envisions a perfect society, while the cruel and corrupt arms of the law and government try to undermine him. It’s a tale of biblical and ancient proportions really, and indeed Coppola makes many allusions to the Roman Empire (Adam Driver’s main character is literally called Cesar for crying out loud). I suppose you could even say it’s a classic fable, but one that’s badly-organised, tonally abrasive, bizarrely structured and thematically clumsy. The classic, simple story is suffocated by incoherent family drama, philosophical musings that add nothing to the narrative and stop the pace dead in its tracks, an overcrowded side cast of characters with confused loyalties, and an exhaustive list of abandoned plot elements that would make Tommy Wiseau pause for thought.

I get that Coppola’s trying to make an epic, and in typical epics there’s lots more going on than just the basic story, but not this much!

Visually the film is just as all over the place, looking quite stunning one minute, but the next like a Nintendo 64 game. The city of New Rome is seemingly designed as a general example of a large metropolis-like area, but it’s clear from the filming locations that it’s New York. We see the Empire State building, Central Park, the Plaza Hotel (which I totally knew was a real place and didn’t think it was a made-up hotel from Home Alone 2), and Times Square, making it obvious that this is New York, so why is it never referred to as that then? 

We know this is the world that we live in because of references to Hitler, 9/11 and other things, so why doesn’t Coppola use that to accentuate the differences between the normal world and this utopian vision? That would’ve be quite interesting, but as it stands, the difference between New Rome and this new Megalopolis don’t feel nearly as pronounced as they should since half the shots of New Rome are in this rich golden hue, which gives it a beauty and a majesty that the film doesn’t want it to have. 

The confused setting also translates to the film’s attempts at social commentary, and Coppola’s clearly drawing on recent events here. Shia LaBeouf’s character (Clodio Pulcher – who is unimaginable levels of annoying), is obviously a Donald Trump stand-in, promising to restore New Rome to its former glory and not replace it with a new society. Giancarlo Esposito’s character (Mayor Cicero), is also a man of tradition who’s dealing with conflict in his family, so there are allusions to Joe Biden and all the controversy regarding his son Hunter. At times this is subtle enough to the point where you don’t notice it, but it becomes so on-the-nose towards the third act, you’d have reason to think Coppola is mistaking his audience for idiots – especially with the casting of Jon Voight, who’s basically playing an exaggerated version of himself (when the normal version of him is already insufferable).

What’s even more annoying is that Coppola has clearly had a long time to think about how he tackles this stuff as he’s been developing Megalopolis on the side since the 1980s, and there’s so much political upheaval and societal change that you could draw on from the intervening decades. The improvisational element to the film is perhaps intentional, giving it the feel of being in constantly change, but ultimately the mix between ancient fable-like story aspirations and ham-fisted parallels to very contemporaneous politics just don’t work at all. 

It’s time to bring up the issue of length. 

When I first heard Megalopolis was going to be an “epic” I took that information, as well as the fact it was a passion project for Coppola, and assumed it would be a 3-4 hour all-encompassing experience – much like the Godfather movies, Ben-Hur, Oppenheimer, etc. However, Megalopolis only clocks in at around 2 hours 20, which is still fairly long, but let’s face it, a lot of Marvel and Star Wars movies are around that length, if not longer. 

You can criticise Marvel films all you want (and admittedly, most of them could do with 10-15 minutes being trimmed off), but if I’m comparing Megalopolis to their films that are the same length, I can look at Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Black Panther. I can see that they’re paced much better than Megalopolis, have way better tonal control, and understand how to balance the visually dazzling spectacle with a well-written and engrossing story. If films that Martin Scorsese has infamously referred to as “theme parks” can understand the basic conventions of cinematic storytelling better than the man who arguably perfected them 50 years ago, then we know something has gone horribly wrong. 

Perhaps the most frustrating thing with Megalopolis is that I can see the good Coppola in there, and in some of the shot setups and dialogue exchanges you can tell it’s the man that made The Godfather. He’s the man that filmed some of the best scenes of dialogue ever in cinema, the man that got earth-shattering performances out of Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, James Caan and so many others, and there are also great performances here. Adam Driver is occasionally brilliant and Giancarlo Esposito always delivers his best work, while Nathalie Emmanuel and Aubrey Plaza are successfully debunking the theory that every woman in a Coppola film is terrible, and Laurence Fishburne is also really good – even if his narration feels really arbitrary and redundant. 

However, I really must call out the people who say that this film has none of his ego in it – come on guys, the entire thing is Coppola’s ego. Never mind the fact that he self-financed the film by selling off his wineries and going through several studios and distributors, this is still the product of a jaded, dirty old man (don’t think I was going to let his creepy behaviour towards some of the female cast and crew slide), who’s espousing his own ideas over how the world can be perfected. The idea that we can do that through conversation and dialogue is an earnest one on paper, but put it into a two-hour self-financed vanity project and it can’t help but sound like pretentious posturing. 

I brought up Tommy Wiseau earlier, and while that may have been an unfair comparison there were genuinely moments of this film that reminded me of The Room, from the overacting and overwritten dialogue, to the vague allusions to being deep and the improvisation that feels so out-of-place. It’s obviously not as bad as The Room, but there are times when it’s just as unintentionally funny, and for a director like Coppola that’s kind of unforgivable. 

I will say this – Megalopolis never, ever bored me. It’s certainly a fascinating curio that’s directed by a man who clearly had something he wanted to say, and the film’s got enough of an allure to make it worth watching at least once, but it’s, by any sense of the word, bad. It’s a completely incoherent, shoddily put-together mess that promises incredible things but can’t possibly deliver on them. It’s certainly got people talking, and I’m sure that when Coppola started to make this he wanted people talking about Megalopolis as a superb last hurrah for one of cinema’s most iconic and legendary directors. Much like the vision for a brighter future, that dream is significantly more complicated than it seems – especially when Jon bloody Voight’s involved.

Alex’s Archive – Megalopolis