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Megalopolis is a film I went into mostly blind, although while I had seen the trailer some time ago, it doesn’t really tell you what you’re about to witness.
The film is basically set in New York, but it’s an alternate present day in ‘New Rome’, and feeling much like The Last Days Of Rome where society’s about to collapse. So, the same as modern-day life, then.
Adam Driver (Ferrari) takes the role of artist Cesar Catilina (despite posing like Kylo Ren with a lightsaber in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens), also the creator of a new type of building material, Megalon, in order to quickly build a fancy new city if ever one was to be completely demolished. So, that would be most welcome after Israel’s actions in the past year!
His talents also include the ability to stop and reverse time, which he uses as bizarre performance art, as shown in a scene of a building collapsing.
Although Cesar and TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza – My Old Ass) are an item at first, he’s constantly at loggerheads with Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito – MaXXXine), and while Cesar’s taking an interest in the Mayor’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel – Fast X), Ms Platinum’s also casting an eye for the older man, wealthy CEO Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight – Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them), who’s also the artist’s uncle.
As the late, great Caroline Aherne might’ve said as Frank Sidebottom’s character, Mrs Merton, “What first attracted you to the billionaire Hamilton Crassus III?”
Megalopolis is technically brilliant, but as a film, it feels like lots of disconnected scenes of random gibberish, one after another. Plus, the scenes where he’s standing on a clock face in the sky makes this look like an overlong perfume advert.
It’s basically the equivalent of what Federico Fellini would make if he was still alive, along the lines of 1969’s Satyricon, which really is the worst film I have ever seen.
This one, at least, looks nice, and I saw it in the IMAX screen, so that it would be presented properly. As the aspect ratio is that odd middling ratio of 2.00:1 which doesn’t suit a cinema screen, it was either IMAX, or a 2.39:1 screen where, like Barbie, for example, since the cinema doesn’t have a 2.00:1 setting on their screens, it would be treated like a 1.85:1 film, and would sit hovering windowboxed in the middle of the screen.
I also noted that the film had part of it in 1.43:1 – although it wasn’t clear whether or not Vue Printworks Manchester, who has such a screen, were showing it in that format – but from the IMAX subreddit, the film contains “2 separate sequences, maybe 4-5 minutes total, both in the 3rd act. It’s impressive but I wouldn’t travel extra far to see it in a 1.43:1 venue.”
Another said: “Honestly I wouldn’t waste an hour drive for it. The 1.43:1 sequences are so short, and he didn’t use the format to the full extent he could have. It really just seems like Coppola wanted to check something off his bucket list and threw something together so it’s technically 1.43:1”
I can see which scenes were being referred to, and the content is so brief and whizzes past you, so isn’t something that would’ve been worth the long trip.
It wasn’t well-populated, either, since the room was fairly empty with just a handful of people in there for its singular IMAX showing of the day. For its second week, Megalopolis only has a couple of screenings each day in the smallest screens.
There’s also a ton of famous actors in this film – including Laurence Fishburne, Coppola’s Godfather star, Talia Shire, plus Jason Schwartzman, James Remar and Dustin Hoffman – which Coppola and his overindulgence has spent almost $140m on (plus the marketing costs), but in its opening week it took a mere… $7.1m! That’s rather unfortunate for a film he first conceived of making in 1977. OOPS!
The project was also shelved after the 2001 September 11th attacks, given the collapsing building scene, amongst another key scene I haven’t mentioned, so as to avoid spoilers.
As an aside, Shia LaBeouf, who plays Cesar’s cousin, Clodio, also reportedly tattooed his whole chest for the movie The Tax Collector, yet that’s clearly a nonsense, since when he’s seen bare-chested in this film at one point, it’s nowhere to be seen! It would be obvious if he’d just had it removed, so it clearly never happened in the first place. After all, would you really go to that trouble for a film with a $4m budget, that doesn’t even recoup that at the box office?! Oh, and the only outlet that I can find reporting on the tattoo is clickbait shite Digital Spy.
There is no mid- or post-credit scene.
Megalopolis is in cinemas now, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD. However, once announced, it will appear on the New DVD Blu-ray 3D and 4K releases UK list.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 138 minutes
Release date: September 27th 2024
Studio: Lionsgate
Aspect Ratio: 2.00:1, 1.43:1 (IMAX GT Laser, two scenes) (ARRIRAW (6.5K, 4.5K), Super Panavision 70
Cinema: Odeon Trafford Centre
Rating: 3/10
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Producers: Michael Bederman, Francis Ford Coppola, Barry Hirsch, Fred Roos
Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola
Music: Osvaldo Golijov
Cast:
Cesar Catilina: Adam Driver
Mayor Cicero: Giancarlo Esposito
Julia Cicero: Nathalie Emmanuel
Wow Platinum: Aubrey Plaza
Clodio Pulcher: Shia LaBeouf
Hamilton Crassus III: Jon Voight
Fundi Romaine: Laurence Fishburne
Constance Crassus Catilina: Talia Shire
Jason Zanderz: Jason Schwartzman
Teresa Cicero: Kathryn Hunter
Vesta Sweetwater: Grace VanderWaal
Clodia Pulcher: Chloe Fineman
Charles Cothope: James Remar
Commissioner Stanley Hart: DB Sweeney
Claudine Pulcher: Isabelle Kusman
Huey Wilkes: Bailey Ives
Claudette Pulcher: Madeleine Gardella
Aram Kazanjian: Balthazar Getty
Sunny Hope Catilina: Haley Sims
Nush ‘The Fixer’ Berman: Dustin Hoffman
Zena The Model: Sonia Ammar
Dr. Lyra Shir: Neri Oxman
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.