Megalopolis (2024)

[Robert Zwilling]

Trailers for Megapolis, Francis Ford Coppola latest movie, a science fiction story, which he paid production cost of 120 million out of his own pocket. He couldn't get a distributor until he agreed to pay marketing costs, which could be anything he wants to shell out. Lionsgate took the bait.

Originally conceived in 1977 while working on Apocalypse Now , he started actively creating a script in 1983. The movie production was interrupted twice by major world events that put the everything on hold. He eventually fired the art department, which had just come off making some Marvel movie, apparently because it was using too much money to do the same old thing or else he thought he could do a better job for less money.

Rated R for sexual content, nudity, drug use, language and some violence.

The movie style is far from commercial Hollywood's idea of what a finished script is and what a finished movie looks like. There is talk that TikTok users have no idea what a real movie looks like, and that a movie can run longer than 15 seconds. While this could be a history recreating movie, it could also be a long running TikTok inspired apparition empowered by steroids.

Supposedly it could change what movies look like in the future.
But is it science fiction and does it have character development.

 

[BAYLOR]

If not a hit, it could become the next great cult film. I actually want to see this film.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

He's made some great films. We'll have to see if he made something primarily for himself to appreciate, or if it's made to be appreciated by people he doesn't know.

 

[apocalypsegal]

Trailers for Megapolis, Francis Ford Coppola latest movie, a science fiction story, which he paid production cost of 120 million out of his own pocket. He couldn't get a distributor until he agreed to pay marketing costs, which could be anything he wants to shell out. Lionsgate took the bait.

Originally conceived in 1977 while working on Apocalypse Now , he started actively creating a script in 1983. The movie production was interrupted twice by major world events that put the everything on hold. He eventually fired the art department, which had just come off making some Marvel movie, apparently because it was using too much money to do the same old thing or else he thought he could do a better job for less money.

Rated R for sexual content, nudity, drug use, language and some violence.

The movie style is far from commercial Hollywood's idea of what a finished script is and what a finished movie looks like. There is talk that TikTok users have no idea what a real movie looks like, and that a movie can run longer than 15 seconds. While this could be a history recreating movie, it could also be a long running TikTok inspired apparition empowered by steroids.

Supposedly it could change what movies look like in the future.
But is it science fiction and does it have character development.

Whoa, Coppola's Megapolis sounds wild! $120 million out of pocket? I'm curious to see how his unconventional style turns out, especially with the R rating. Hope it's got some solid character dev and a good story to back up the sci-fi elements.

 

[BAYLOR]

It's not getting great reviews .

 

[Robert Zwilling]

I look at the negative reviews to get a better idea of what is happening. Most of what bothered some people, doesn't bother me at all. The positive reviews are all over the place in terms of topics.

I looked at the reviews at rotten apple, I mean tomato. They're mostly running 50/50. In todays world that means you either get it or you don't. Its an art movie for sure, and if you can appreciate the ideas without criticizing the appearance it's probably something to watch.

Google was pulling reviews out of somewhere for their reviews which gave the same sort of views as rotten did. People were impressed, people weren't impressed. In between were people who said they some saw something and knew they had seen something, but not quite sure what they saw, could be good, bad, or ugly. Its probably going to insult people who think life is perfect. For people who want everything perfect, well, there's always color TV.

One York Times review ended on this note, "In the end, what matters is the movie, a brash, often beautiful, sometimes clotted, nakedly personal testament. It’s a little nuts, but our movies could use more craziness, more passion, feeling and nerve. They could use a lot more of the love that Coppola has for cinema, which he continues to pry from the industry’s death grip by insisting that film is art."

Coppola did use special effects, but not for the spectacularity of it, but for the artistry of it. The movie apparently hasn't much in it for commercialization so it might go to streaming or DVD that much quicker. Worth waiting for, but for many, including me, not willing to spin out the price of one movie ticket for one showing.

Coppola listed 8 books as influencing his movie, Megapolis.

3 books by David Graeber, anthropologist and anarchist activist
Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Updated and Expanded, before there was money, there was debt. 2012
bullsh** Jobs: A Theory, meaningless, unfulfilling jobs, and their consequences. 2013
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution. 2021

The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) a Novel, an interesting novel about a future society, written from 1931 to 1941.
Hermann Hesse

The Chalice and the Blade, a new story of our cultural origins based on partnership, not domination. 1988
Riane Eisler

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, history of the origins of modern democratic societies. Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state, some of which are now dysfunctional. 2012
Francis Fukuyama

The War Lovers. Roosevelt, Lodge, and Hearst, Their rush to empire. 2011.
Evan Thomas

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, a book about how the Lucretius’ ancient poem On the Nature of Things, was rediscovered by Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance, and published in 1417. It' a universe that functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, that pleasure and virtue are not opposites but intertwined, and that matter is made up of very small material particles in eternal motion, randomly colliding and swerving in new directions. Its return to circulation changed the course of history. 2012
Stephen Greenblatt

 

[Foxbat]

The scenes of excess in the trailer remind me of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis where the false Maria leads the ruling class deeper into debauchery whilst simultaneously urging the workers to rise up.

I had trouble trying to nail down the plot but the wiki page helped a little (the wildly polarised reviews I found didn’t help).

Megalopolis (film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I’ll definitely give it a look at some point.

 

[BAYLOR]

The scenes of excess in the trailer remind me of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis where the false Maria leads the ruling class deeper into debauchery whilst simultaneously urging the workers to rise up.

I had trouble trying to nail down the plot but the wiki page helped a little (the wildly polarised reviews I found didn’t help).

Megalopolis (film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I’ll definitely give it a look at some point.

It's tanking at the box office .

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The quicker it gets to DVD

 

[BAYLOR]

It's tanking at the box office .

It's a dream project and a personal film that he wanted to make for a very long time .I. get the impression that he was more concerned with getting this film made then he was with the probable box office result. The previews looked interesting bu, t I can get no sense of how good or bad a the film story is and Im not inclined to take the critics at their word because they're not always right . I need to actually see it to decide .

There are film that did do well at the box office that ended getting rebased and becoming classic.

The Wizard of Oz 1939 was not a great hit for MGM and id nt wow the cricks but has since become a beloved classic . It happens. Zardoz was box office bomb in 1974 with movie gores and critic alike This a film does a few silly moment byut over its a pretty damned good dystopian science fiction novel . The very concept ot the Tabernacle computer and visual reality tech is a mazing and ahead of time. This one wis now being re-appraised Event Horizon in 1994 did go great box-office or screen wit the critics Itto become a classic. It very dark and a very damend scary.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Apples and oranges. Though it's a curious thought what Megalopolis could win out over. It's losing out to The Wild R0b0t, a feel good family oriented story about how a shipwrecked robot helps an orphaned gosling. No doubt the psychotherapist industry was busy making sure all the right strings were plucked so that technology (aka cute robot) comes out looking like the nicest thing to ever happen to humanity vs a supposed mad hatter's guided tour through a decadent see through crystal palace of power, intrigue, and greed. Will the powers to be let it drag out and die, or will it get cut short and start the short trek to cult status

 

[BAYLOR]

Apples and oranges. Though it's a curious thought what Megalopolis could win out over. It's losing out to The Wild R0b0t, a feel good family oriented story about how a shipwrecked robot helps an orphaned gosling. No doubt the psychotherapist industry was busy making sure all the right strings were plucked so that technology (aka cute robot) comes out looking like the nicest thing to ever happen to humanity vs a supposed mad hatter's guided tour through a decadent see through crystal palace of power, intrigue, and greed. Will the powers to be let it drag out and die, or will it get cut short and start the short trek to cult status

In the short term, Megalopolis will lose out to the Wild Robot film. In the long run it will be remembered and Wild Robot , will become largely forgotten.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Then again maybe critics aren't all that excited about this year's movies. The Joaquin Phoenix Joker, itself a 1 billion dollar box office success, has produced a sequel which so far has scored 39% on Rotten Tomatoes, and has been panned by many critics, and not all that great at the box office. Maybe it's a slow windup. It is a musical with Lady Gaga, so it's not exactly a rehash of the same old movie. A review in the New York Times called the film a "dour, unpleasant slog" and the Daily Beast branded it "so bad and so boring it's absolutely shocking." Maybe the dialog obscured the singing. Still, it's a new take on an old theme. For now, Megalopolis has some good company.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Pitch Meeting didn't suggest much of a story. From that it would be easy to imagine Coppola basically had lots of different scenes and film angles in his head, and wasn't too worried about how they connected. Pretty much how George Lucas originally developed Star Wars, before writing friends and circumstance forced a story to take shape.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Carefully edited material where everything ends up in its rightful place is entertaining and if it's done so little work is needed by the audience to figure out what is going on, makes the time spent satisfying. Maybe Coppola didn't want to make things easy so you could just walk away from the show after it was over.

 

[KGeo777]

I have seen it being criticized for performances but the main thing to me is that Coppola was better as a work for hire director--when he did The Godfather he was under studio management (he knocked it as a hindrance to his genius but really--all those studio people helped shape the movie).
I am not a fan of The Conversation or Apocalypse Now or Dracula. Like Lucas, he was wildly promoted as a genius auteur but unlike Lucas, he was never into crowd-pleaser film territory.
On the other hand, the Joker film is also avant garde despite using a corporate brand.

At least Coppola wanted to do something different. Whatever the finished film, the idea is unusual. Not another superhero or robot story.
It probably won't end up like The Phantom Menace unless Shia LeBouef contributes some "Meesa sorry" moments.

If he could have made it in the 80s or the 90s or 2000s he would have been better off.
Driver isn't Russell Crowe in terms of audience status. Coppola doesn't even have the advantage of a big star to use for promotion.

The title is also kind of goofy.

I notice in the original post, it is Megapolis.
That does have a better ring to it.

Megalopis?
Snuflapagus?
Expialadotius?

 

[BAYLOR]

I have seen it being criticized for performances but the main thing to me is that Coppola was better as a work for hire director--when he did The Godfather he was under studio management (he knocked it as a hindrance to his genius but really--all those studio people helped shape the movie).
I am not a fan of The Conversation or Apocalypse Now or Dracula. Like Lucas, he was wildly promoted as a genius auteur but unlike Lucas, he was never into crowd-pleaser film territory.
On the other hand, the Joker film is also avant garde despite using a corporate brand.

At least Coppola wanted to do something different. Whatever the finished film, the idea is unusual. Not another superhero or robot story.
It probably won't end up like The Phantom Menace unless Shia LeBouef contributes some "Meesa sorry" moments.

If he could have made it in the 80s or the 90s or 2000s he would have been better off.
Driver isn't Russell Crowe in terms of audience status. Coppola doesn't even have the advantage of a big star to use for promotion.

The title is also kind of goofy.

I notice in the original post, it is Megapolis.
That does have a better ring to it.

Megalopis?
Snuflapagus?
Expialadotius?

And it could well end up with a more favorable reappraisal in a few years time.