Megalopolis: Coppola’s Megaflopolis? (Movie Review)

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film Megalopolis begins with an ominous warning, as visionary architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) balances precariously on top of the Chrysler Building in New Rome. “Let us go whither the omens of the gods and the iniquity of our enemy calls us. The die is now cast.”

Megalopolis takes place in a large city where a major divide exists between the wealthy and the poor. Cesar, winner of the Nobel Prize for his creation of the radically new building material Megalon, can stop the progress of time at will. He also drinks excessively to forget the tragic death of his wife Sunny Hope (Hailey Sims) for which former district attorney and current New Rome mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) failed to convict him. Cesar’s mourning for his wife, prompts his jealous mistress, TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) to leave him for his uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voigt), the wealthiest man on earth. Crassus’s nephew and Cesar’s cousin, the gender-bender Clodio Pulcher (Shia LeBoeuf) has his own designs on the Crassus fortune.  Much to Cicero’s dismay, Cesar has begun an unlikely romance with his daughter, the social influencer Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel).

At an over-the-top wedding party for Wow and Crassus, Cesar is nearly taken down by a video shown on large screens of Catilina’s having sex with teenaged pop singer Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal). Cicero has Cesar arrested for statutory rape but quick-thinking Julia gets him off the hook by finding Vesta’s real birth certificate that proves that she is actually in her 20s.

Pulcher tries to mobilize the city’s poor against this project and mounts an unsuccessful attempt on Cesar’s life. Ultimately, Pulcher’s attempt to take over New Rome is thwarted by a now-recovered Cesar (thanks to a Megalon face transplant) as the riotous crowd turns on their one-time leader. Cesar’s dream city will rise from New Rome’s ruins caused by falling debris from an aging Soviet satellite and an unlikely happy ending is just on the horizon.

Writer-director-producer Coppola spent nearly four decades trying to get this film project off the ground, and eventually underwrote its $120 million budget with his own money.  The production had a very bumpy ride during its two-plus year development, shot principally in Georgia.  The quirky nature of Roumanian cinematographer and frequent Coppola collaborator, Mihai Mălaimare Jr., evokes obvious comparisons to the camerawork that propelled Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once in which scenes rapidly come and go. The special effects that present the Megalopolitan futuristic city appear almost cartoonish—perhaps intentionally (?)—but come across as unreal ephemera in contrast to the monumental structures and plaques that portrayed New Rome’s proud history.

The cast had a number of big-name actors: Laurence Fishburne who plays Cesar’s chauffeur and occasional narrator Fundi Romaine; Dustin Hoffmann’s brief appearance as Cicero’s “fixer” Nush Berman; and Jon Voigt’s more extended role as the seemingly senescent Crassus. They all do their best to move this often-fragmentary tale along. However, this film’s underlying faults lie not in its stars like Driver, Esposito, Emmanuelle, Plaza or LeBoeuf but rather in a rambling script that often lacks coherence or cohesion.

If Megalopolis turns out to be octogenarian Coppola’s final opus that, to date, has fared poorly at the box office, it will make viewers long for the past glory this famed moviemaker has occasionally achieved with masterful films like The Godfather (I and II) and Apocalypse Now. Megalopolis must be considered as the flawed retelling of some ancient Roman history and is not well-served by the messy visuals that often fill the screen. Even devoted FFC make fans will admit that sometimes it is better to let sleeping ideas lie rather than give them such an intrinsically flawed film.

Megalopolis  is now available as video-on-demand on Prime Video and Apple TV. 

• Rating Certificate: R (for sexual content, nudity, drug use, language and some violence)
• Studios & Distributors: American Zoetrope | Caesar Film LLC | Lionsgate Films
• Director: Francis Ford Coppola
• Country of Origin: USA
• Language: English
• Run Time: 138 Mins.
• Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1
• Release Date: 27 September 2024 (Theatrical) | 12 November 2024 (VOD)