I’m no scholar of the works of Francis Ford Coppola. I agree THE GODFATHER I and II and APOCALYPSE NOW are amazing, and I’ve recently grown into a BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA zealot. I enjoyed THE CONVERSATION and THE OUTSIDERS and RUMBLEFISH and THE COTTON CLUB and DEMENTIA 13 and obviously CAPTAIN EO. I’ve had some of his wine, too – we get those little cans of Sofia for Oscar parties. But like most people I’m not really up on the experimental shit he’s been up to b’twixt the 21st century. In fact the last time I saw a new FCC joint was JACK in 1996.

But hell, I wasn’t gonna miss MEGALOPOLIS! You know the legend. He conceived it in the ‘70s, he’s tried to get it off the ground many times across the decades, now he finally did it with his own $120 million. Amazing. Whatever it is, you gotta respect what he did. Become a rich guy just to make a true indie on the largest possible scale. Pretty much all rich guys waste their money in far stupider ways.

When I first heard the title I certainly didn’t picture something like this. I imagined something closer to a straight forward sci-fi movie, even if it was a weird, arty one. But hell, you can get a studio to fund a BLADE RUNNER or a THE FIFTH ELEMENT. If you’re gonna use your own millions you better make god damn sure it’s a movie that even after it’s completely paid for and done the distributors turn the lights off and pretend not to be home. And to be clear that’s not due to any kind of controversial or provocative content in MEGALOPOLIS. It’s just that it’s made by a filmmaker with no reason to give a shit what any human being from an executive down to a ticket buyer thinks or says about his movie. A director who is truly free.

In a certain way my feelings about MEGALOPOLIS are the same ones I had about Jean-Luc Godard’s GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D in 2014: I’m just glad he gets to fuck around and call it a movie. He’s earned it. But I definitely enjoyed this one way more than the Godard movie, and not only because it wasn’t shot in purposely incorrect 3D to hurt your eyes as a prank or powerful statement or whatever that was. It also has the benefit of characters, performances, jokes, etc.

I do think there’s been some exaggeration about just how bizarre the movie is. It’s not some unprecedented thing you’ve never seen, it’s just unusually defiant in its use of unfashionable conventions, tones and styles, especially for a big budget movie by a great director. It explicitly labels itself “a fable,” it’s very up front about being based on the fall of Rome but in a near future. So it takes place in a city called New Rome, there are bacchanals and a chariot race, the main character is a genius architect named Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver, THE DEAD DON’T DIE), his rival is Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito, HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN), and he’s in love with the mayor’s party girl daughter Julia (THE KILLER 2024 herself Nathalie Emmanuel) so there’s a whole Shakespeare forbidden love thing going on. You know, there’s that cliche lately about how much men think about the Roman Empire, and this movie made me realize that’s because of generations before mine really learned that stuff in school, and didn’t have Star Wars or The Simpsons to compare everything to, so that was their frame of reference. It’s kind of like when I watched WYATT EARP and realized how much that generation prides itself on knowing every detail of the sheriff who shot the guy at the thing and treating it as the most important shit ever. Same here – you know these characters are supposed to be deep because they’re talking about Roman Empire shit.

(Kinda funny that one of the other big stereotypes about men is that we’re obsessed with THE GODFATHER. See: BARBIE, CITY SLICKERS II: THE LEGEND OF CURLY’S GOLD.)

If you, like me, have great respect for Godzilla’s rival Megalon, you will enjoy how often they name drop him in this movie. Cesar recently won the Nobel Prize for the invention of a material called Megalon, and “Sex, drugs and Megalon!” is an actual line in the movie that could make a pretty good tattoo. He wants to use Megalon to turn New Rome into a utopia, while the mayor proposes building a casino.

Cesar also has the ability to stop time with his mind as part of his artistic process, and discovers that Julia’s the only person who can walk around with him while everyone else is frozen. Romantic artist shit. I wonder if Professor X ever found a lady that way? Mayor Cicero doesn’t want his daughter to have anything to do with Cesar, who he unsuccessfully prosecuted for the alleged murder of his wife. (For which Cesar also blames himself, but it was suicide.)

I think most of us will agree that the best character is Wow Platinum, played by Aubrey Plaza in way more of an OPERATION FORTUNE mode than an EMILY THE CRIMINAL one. She’s a TV financial reporter and Cesar’s secret mistress until he starts seeing Julia, so she decides to marry the world’s richest man, Cesar’s uncle Hamilton Crassus III (John Voight, ANACONDA). She’s trying to get his money, as is his son/Cesar’s cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf, CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE), and she knows how to take advantage of Clodio. (She’s hot and he’s an idiot.)

Coppola uses that convention where there’s a seemingly omniscient narrator who turns out to be a character in the story. It’s Laurence Fishburne (BOBBY Z), obviously a good voice, and a guy whose first film was APOCALYPSE NOW. But it’s kind of funny that this wise narrator turns out to just be Cesar’s driver. And also that he turns out to be ordained (he performs a wedding).

There are chapter titles, shown carved into stone, and therefore looking like the BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA poster. A funny storytelling choice is when we need to know that the angry people of the city can’t decide whether to blame Cicero or Catalina for what they’re angry about, so there’s graffiti that straight up says “Who’s to blame, Cicero or Catalina?” This may be an exaggeration, but it feels like about 20% of the dialogue is comically on the nose while 40% sounds like it must be very smart but I honestly I have no clue what they’re on about.

Like a more normal futuristic city movie, there are pieces of world building throughout, and when I noticed a billboard advertising a pop album about chastity I thought it was just a little detail for color. But later the singer, Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal) is a major character, in a whole subplot about how she’s famous for being a virgin but then there’s a leak of a sex tape of her and Cesar and he’s gonna be busted for having sex with a minor but it turns out she’s an adult. I don’t know what that’s all about but, no joke, I think it has something to do with the Roman Empire?

Unfortunately Coppola doesn’t crank it up to full BRAM-STOKER’S-DRACULA-eyes-in-the-sky visual extravagance until he starts building the titleistical megalopolis, and it takes a while to get there. Even when he does, the clean digital look simply can’t compete with his old shit. But it has its moments. The deeper we get into the movie the more enthusiastic he gets about layering images like a Sam Raimi montage. And it does start to get pretty strange, even if the futuristic technology ideas are stuff like “what if there was a moving sidewalk, but it lights up?” or “what if there was a wavy gold thing to stand on?”

At the movie’s most entertainingly feverish, Cesar has a glittering Megalon-infused exposed skull, and Wow does shadow puppetry with scissors while sexually manipulating Clodio into a game of corporate chicken with his father.

Driver is game as always and there’s definitely some overlap between this role and what he did in Michael Mann’s FERRARI. The actors must’ve felt pretty free in their own way, being able to trust the documented cinema great telling them yes, I want you to go off script and mega. In this scene, you emotionally yell, “Creation! Destruction!”

But it’s also gotta feel a little silly playing a character whose entire deal is that he’s a Very Important Man. It’s rare that he talks about something besides The Future. When Julia tries to make peace between her dad and her husband and convinces Cicero to come have dinner with them it turns into an argument about the definition of utopia. Personally I would not want to talk to either of these guys about anything ever, under any circumstances.

Coppola seems to have intentionally cast a mix of A-listers, promising up-and-comers, and a few talented people who are now out of favor due to terrible personal lives or politics. I’m unclear whether he was genuinely trying to make a point with that, but if so it only sparked minor passing social media outrage. I never saw a discussion about whether rehabilitation/redemption is possible for a domestic abuser, or whether an old man who was in MIDNIGHT COWBOY should only be allowed to do Kevin Sorbo movies now because of his jerkwad politics. I don’t think anybody has the energy for those conversations, and I include myself in that. But for whatever it’s worth, the two most Problematic individuals in the cast (as far as I know) have the two (intentionally) funniest parts in the movie. I won’t give them away but one involves a hat and the other a bow and arrow.

Oh, also James Remar is in it. And D.B. Sweeney. And Balthazar Getty.

Coppola has cited METROPOLIS as an inspiration, and also I believe THE FOUNTAINHEAD, though he clearly doesn’t share that story’s politics, because his architect character wants to, like, help people. I thought of two other movies this vaguely reminds me of. The first is Andrei Konchalovsky’s NUTCRACKER: THE UNTOLD STORY, in the sense that it’s an ambitiously uncool epic in a fantasy world with historical allusions and is kind of fun for how crazy it is but also kind of unappealing in how little anything connects. MEGALOPOLIS is way better but NUTCRACKER is maybe the more likely one to show your friends and say “You have to see this.”

A less insulting comparison I can make is Spike Lee’s CHI-RAQ, in the sense that it’s a stylized mash-up of a modern world and ancient tale, that’s kind of cool but clearly is trying to say big things that are very corny and kind of hard to parse. I feel like I enjoyed CHI-RAQ more, but then again about all I remember is the general vibe and Wesley Snipes wearing a sequined eye patch. I bet I’ll remember Wow Platinum longer.

There’s a big list of filmmakers thanked on the end credits, not just Coppola’s old buddies but also younger directors. I’m assuming he must’ve shown the movie to them and asked for feedback, and I can’t help but laugh imagining Ryan Coogler watching that and telling the Maestro what he thinks about it. This also reminded me of how George Lucas said after he retired he would keep making movies, but they would be uncommercial art movies he’d never release, just show to his friends. So I wonder

1) has he ever really done that

2) are they anything at all like this

3) if so does he look down his nose at Coppola for releasing his instead of just showing it to his friends

4) wouldn’t it be funny if MEGALOPOLIS was a total ripoff of one of George’s unreleased movies

I’m not sure if I’d even say I liked MEGALOPOLIS. I guess I did. But it’s kind of beside the point. I’m glad Coppola was able to build his city of Megalon, and I’m glad I was able to visit it before Godzilla knocks it over. I honestly don’t really understand Coppola’s plea for the future with full clarity, but I think he sets a good example for a way forward for artists who have some sort of success. Fuck commercialism, get out the freak flag, pour your money on the floor and your heart on the screen. Sex, drugs and Megalon forever.