Is 'Megalopolis' The Worst Movie of the Decade?
I have no idea.
After 40 years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis dropped in cinemas to awful reviews. This movie was at the top of every cinephile’s “most anticipated” list, yet most of them left the cinema feeling disappointed and confused. Before all of the negative reviews from festival season, Megalopolis was seemingly set to dominate awards season. The movie has an all-star cast, one of the most respected directors of all time behind the camera, and it has a pretty unique story behind it.
Credit: Lionsgate (2024)
As most of us are aware, Megalopolis was self-funded by Coppola. He couldn’t find anybody willing to invest in the film, so he spent $120 million trying to make it happen. This, arguably, becomes one of the most prolific examples of a true auteurial vision, but is that a good thing? Are investors necessary to keep a director grounded? Is it fair to discount the ‘true auteurial vision’ because of a movie like this? So many questions with so few answers, as Megalopolis is unlike anything any of us have ever seen, and I’m still unsure whether that is a good thing.
The only thing I am sure of is that Megalopolis is a mess. You would think that after 40 years in production hell, the film would be in its top form, but this feels like a project that has been ruminated on for far too long. There are so many convoluted ideas in Coppola’s film that don’t entirely tie together or work and so many unnecessary side plots that the film begins to insist upon itself. It’s been three weeks, and I’m still unsure as to what the point of this movie actually was. It presents some interesting ideological ideas about tyranny and communism, yet it becomes so caught up in the spectacle of it all that it never establishes these ideas properly.
The film getting caught up in its own “spectacle” can be excused in some instances, as in movies like Dune: Part II, there is a spectacle to be had. I find it hard to argue that there is any substance to the “spectacle” of Megalopolis other than the big-name director. For any “casual movie-goer”, this “spectacle” that Megalopolis is riding on could risk becoming insufficient, as they might not know or care for the Ford-Coppola name as much as some film fans. Without thinking about the huge name behind the film, we’re left with one of the ugliest-looking movies of the year. This is on par with the Netflix original Uglies. This looks like it’s from a low-budget YA adaptation that got a 13% score on the tomato meter.
Fortunately, for Coppola’s sake, this movie is not all bad. The biggest thing that I respect about Megalopolis is its off-beat sense of humour. There are some hilarious moments in this thing, intentional or not. I’ve spent the past three weeks telling people to “go back to the clurb”, and my jaw hit the floor in that IMAX screen when I heard that boner joke. As always, Aubrey Plaza was great; she was by far my favourite performance, and I thought some of the costume design for this film was gorgeous.
Credit: Lionsgate (2024)
As much as I loved Plaza’s performance, there were points in this movie where she felt like she was in a different movie to other actors, and that was not her fault. The character-writing and world-building of this movie are so disjointed it felt like I was watching three different movies at the same time. Shia LeBeouf had the worst side plot, and he was insufferable for every second he was on-screen. Let’s not normalise casting Shia LeBeouf in movies; I hate him. The disjointed structure of the film’s worldbuilding is its biggest downfall and is the aspect that sums up the overall nature of Megalopolis: messy and unnecessary. It’s no shock that this movie massively flopped at the box office because this movie has no audience outside of the Francis Ford Coppola fanboys, but even they seem to be divided. The idea that a “true auteurial vision” has been reached due to Coppola’s financial freedom when making this project is interesting to think about, but it is disappointing to know that Megalopolis will be used as one of the most prolific examples for years to come.