Megalopolis is a FLOP

I am reluctant to watch a movie with Adam Driver in it. What was he thinking?

The clips on Twitter are already becoming laughable memes.

I can't decide what's worse: the acting, writing, or directing.

R3, all of the above and I’ll add editing. This was a hot ass mess! Most critics though are bending over backwards to praise this film and they sound fucking ridiculous.

It looks psychotic and I am very much looking forward to seeing it.

For free.

On TV.

In the comfort of my own home.

Also, Adam Driver is abysmal. He needs to be channeling Joan Crawford and Charlton Heston.

Great point R6. This would’ve been a great role for Charlton Heston and he would’ve been much better at it.

It needs big actors who know how to fill the screen and not be intimidated by the silliness of epic movies.

I know there are actors younger than Denzel Washington and Jack Nicholson and Russell Crowe but few in their 40s and 30s is springing to mind. Mayyybe Christian Bale and Edgar Ramirez.

This Driver guy…I just don’t get the appeal.

Yes, he’s distinctive-looking, but is that enough?

I mean, we all knew it would.

Joker 2 is the one that is gonna rock the industry.

Another flop for Adam Driver.

Driver is much better on the small screen.

I haven’t seen it and I’m not sure it’s a movie for me, but I think the public has just decided to hate the movie. That just happens sometimes.

People who are actually going to see it like it though.

I may end up watching it anyway.

Driver is funny looking but he’s a good actor. Directors seem to love his work.

R8, back in the day—in 1949, specifically—Hollywood gave us Gray Cooper in The Fountainhead as a visionary architect. Gary Cooper. And he had off the charts chemistry with his co-star Patricia Neal, too.

[quote] People who are actually going to see it like it though.

No they don’t.

I saw it the day after it opened and I honestly don't know what to say or how to describe it. Clearly it's a statement on leadership, art, dedication, politics, history etc. The art direction and cinematography was incredible. I also loved how they threaded the elements of ancient Rome into the modern world. It makes you wonder if Rome never fell, would it look just like what Coppola envisioned, NRPD on police cars instead of NYPD, brilliant. The scene where Julia was trading quotations from Marcus Aurelius with her father the mayor on the qualities of leadership were quite profound. But Coppola was trying to pack too much into it and it got lost. I'm sure there is a 4 hour version sitting on his desk someplace that we may get to see and answer all the questions.

who is gonna pay money to see that ugly cunt? Even if free, not gonna waste my time!

Jesus…the above clips make Susan Lucci and other daytime soap-opera actors look like fucking Bogarts and Hepburns.

Also I loved that the dialog took on prose from time to time just like the play Charles III, also set in the modern world. Maybe this project was too high brow for people. It's clearly not a mainstream film. Also the fact that I'm still thinking about it more than a week after seeing it says a lot.

It's hard to believe it's a flop given how handsome Adam Driver is!

Let me gaze upon THAT gorgeous kisser for over two full hours!

He put up his own money - something like $200mm.

I give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is, but honestly, has he made a decent movie since the early 2000s?

It just looks so, so great.

I love how Aubrey Plaza says "Two--the bank is mine" just like Charles Busch as Angela Arden in Die, Mommie, Die!

MegaFLOPolis

[quote] I love how Aubrey Plaza says "Two--the bank is mine" just like Charles Busch as Angela Arden in Die, Mommie, Die!

Oh my god! I would have NEVER made that connection until reading your post! 😂😂

looks like a turgid nightmare. i want to get really fucked up and see it as a joke.

The CGI is laughably bad.

I saw it tonite. It is a huge turgid turkey. 🦃

[quote] looks like a turgid nightmare. i want to get really fucked up and see it as a joke.

I think that’s a good idea. I saw the hot mess and I can say it does seem like a film that could be better appreciated when you’re fucked up.

Adam Driver is terrible in this.

From the clips I’ve seen it reminds me of a TV show I would have seen in the 90’s on USA or Sci-Fi Network.

Most critics I've read use a more-sorrow-than-anger tone about this, as though FFC at 85 doesn't deserve to be laughed out of town. Even the writer of the 'Sight & Sound' cover story on FFC, in a devoted interview with the director, couldn't muster more than polite baffled respect about the film. I'll see it one day out of sheer curiosity, with low expectations duly in place.

The New York Times says it’s not a FLOP flop, but rather an “auteurist flop.”

[QUOTE]The auteurist flop is different from the box office bombs that litter theaters every year. These flops are not things designed by committee to haul in cash that often fall short. “Madame Web,” for instance, the Spider-Man spinoff from earlier this year that its own star appeared to disown, was many things, but auteurist it was not.

[QUOTE]Instead, these are opuses in which a brilliant filmmaker really goes for it but flies too close to the sun. Often they have their defenders, who insist that audiences were beneath appreciating them. Film aficionados can name some offhand: Peter Bogdanovich’s “At Long Last Love” (1975). Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” (1980). Elaine May’s “Ishtar” (1987). Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld” (1995). Perhaps, even, Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter One” (2024).

[QUOTE]“A lot of these filmmakers are coming out of film school, they’re very arrogant, they don’t work their way up the ladder as the previous generation did,” said Smukler, who wrote “Liberating Hollywood,” a study of female directors in 1970s Hollywood.

[QUOTE]“That rise and fall,” she added, “is a juicy narrative.”

[QUOTE]Film may be uniquely susceptible to flop discourse, because box office receipts for theatrical releases are widely available and pored over like baseball statistics.

[QUOTE]Yet the ways in which “Megalopolis” differs from typical auteurist flops may be as revealing as the ways in which it lines up with them, said Mark Harris, a film historian.

[QUOTE]Harris compared “Megalopolis” with “Heaven’s Gate,” which was greatly anticipated as Cimino’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning 1978 Vietnam War movie, “The Deer Hunter.” Both the budget and length of “Heaven’s Gate” ballooned (its run time, 3 hours and 39 minutes, was actually a compromise with the studio), and its critical reception was harsh.

[QUOTE]“‘Heaven’s Gate’ was the next movie by the young wunderkind,” Harris said. “The narrative that got written almost before the movie was seen by anyone was, ‘Is he too big for his britches?’”

[QUOTE]By contrast, Harris continued, “Coppola is obviously not a young gun — he is this quite old and very revered titan of American movies.” His reputation, Harris added, “no matter what the fate of ‘Megalopolis’ is, is completely secure.”

[QUOTE]For some observers, the unavoidable flop discussion is a baleful byproduct of American movie fandom, a symptom of the country’s Puritanical obsession with morality and public failure.

[QUOTE]“A filmmaker who takes investment in a film and makes a film that is extremely gratifying and consistent with the filmmaker’s personal vision but doesn’t make back its money is taken as a violation of the moral contract — not legal or professional, but moral,” said Richard Brody, a film critic for The New Yorker.

[QUOTE]Brody, who recently published a rave of “Megalopolis” (as did The New York Times), urged observers to untether their judgments of a film’s worthiness from its box-office success.

[QUOTE]“There are filmmakers whose personal vision seems to mesh extremely well with the public’s,” Brody said. “I don’t think Steven Spielberg or James Cameron are doing anything other than what they see fit. They’re fulfilling their personal vision, which for whatever reason happens to reach wide audiences.

[QUOTE]“That is a determinant of what makes a good investment,” Brody added. “It is not a determinant of what makes a good film.”

Leave it to Richard Brody, who is as much of a contrarian as Armond White, to praise this bloated mess.

He’s not the only one. Francis Coppola’s fellow directors are circling the wagons. Steve Soderbergh, Guillermo Del Toro and Spike Lee are also on record praising it.

The Filmspotting podcast made excuses for this bull shit as well.

[quote]Maybe this project was too high brow for people.

Um, no.

This movie is a complete MESS. People were laughing as though we were at a screening of The Room. It's a chaotic, inflated, indulgent, stressful mess. The acting is wooden, the plot lacks any whiff of cohesion, and the morals and messages come at you like so many long dangly wieners slapping you in the face as you sit there with your hands tied behind your back.

You know the old adage "Show don't tell?" Coppola tells. He stuffs on-the-nose moral urgings into the mouths of the characters, and it is nonstop -- utterly relentless. Then, he shows. With the subtlety of Gallagher smashing a watermelon with a hammer. As in, a populist interloper climbing onto a swastika-shaped stump to give a speech. As in, a giant twenty-dollar bill hung like a flag. above a sea of poor homeless people. As for the visuals, it's a really odd mix of high/low. Amazing set pieces and costumes comingle with dated CGI and green screen. Then there is the horrifically graphic and cringeworthy cunnilingus scene between Audrey Plaza and Shia Le Boeuf which gives this noble didactic film, meant to inspire, educate and guide humanity, a needless R rating. Finally there are multiple moments where the editing goes off the rails and you are forced to endure split screens of chaos while Coppola shoves even more nonsense down your eyeholes at breakneck speed. There is simply no way to properly describe with words how weird, disjointed, ugly, strange and chaotic this movie is. You just have to see it to get the full impact, and to see how manipulative it all is. This film hijacks you and forces you to submit to its message, ramming it down your throat, over and over. The director doesn't trust the audience to connect any dots, to draw any independent conclusions or construct their own theories or meanings. I've never felt so irritated, confused, suffocated and trapped watching a movie before.

It's as though Coppola felt the breath of the grim reaper on the back of his neck and felt extreme urgency to just throw all the spaghetti he had left at all the walls, hoping to God that something, anything, sticks. That through this existential creative megadump, he might be able to die emptied of all remaining creative urges, sated and at peace.

EXCELLENT R37!!! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

I actually feel motivated now to watch it. If only he had not cast Driver…,

Isn’t this the movie with all the leaked footage of Coppola feeling up dancers on the set? What a creep. Does he have dementia??

Does Kevin Costner’s “Waterworld” really belong in the list of "auteurist" flops in R33? Poor NYT.

To judge by the clips and stills I'm seeing, the lighting and design resembles AI-generated images. Nothing auteurist about that.

[quote] Driver is funny looking but he’s a good actor.

He's had his ears done, hasn't he? Good for him. Looks better now.

R41 Nailed it! It has an AI-generated feel in both the visuals and the dialogue. Especially the dialogue.

MEGALOPOLISH??

The clips I saw look exactly like a soap opera!!! wtf!

Let us not forget that Barry Lyndon was panned when it came out as overwrought and overlong. Universally considered an absolute masterpiece now.

R46, there’s no comparison. Barry Lyndon had a more cohesive story and the editing and overall pacing wasn’t all over the place. Stanley Kubrick allowed the story to BREATHE.

I agree with R47, there is no comparison between Barry Lyndon and Megalopolis. Megalopolis is hyperactive, its all over the place. Barry Lyndon is totally cohesive. It doesn't genre-hop or experiment with an ever-revolving cacaphony of editing techniques. But most crucially, Barry Lyndon was not attempting to be didactic. I didn't feel scolded, cajoled and exhaustively morally schooled watching Barry Lyndon. Megalopolis is a brazen didactic teaching aid, for better or worse.

In addition, Kubrick had the solidity of a distinguished 19th century novel and novelist from which to work. Fascinating to consider what so inspired him about the book. In any event, Thackeray can of course never have known that his creation would one day be revived so magnificently. At a guess, 'Barry Lyndon' will continue to be watched and revered at a greater rate, and for longer, than 'Megalopolis.'

True R47-49. And most importantly Barry Lyndon was perfectly cast.

DL Fave, Be Kind Rewind, just dropped an hour long essay on the making of Megalopolis.

$1 million in its second weekend. A 75% drop.

At this point, it will struggle to make $10 million.

R41 waterworld is at least camp and entertaining

I finally figured out why I find Driver so disturbing.

Dead behind the eyes.

If I met him on the street, I’d wonder if he’d kill me on the spot, or take me to a dank warehouse and kill me slowly for his amusement .

R54, he’s just ugly.

I mean this film bombing isn’t surprising. Anyone could see it from miles away. Studios didn’t want to touch it.

Coppola hasn’t made a good movie in decades.

R37 nailed it.

And this movie will never be compared to Barry Lyndon, and shouldn't be. Say what you want about BL, but that film isn't a hot mess. Mega is a huge, smelly turd.

It doesn't make sense much of the time, and the incoherence isn't offset by the visuals, which are often amazing. As you watch the cast of great actors flail hopelessly, you know you're witnessing an abortion.

People at my screening were laughing at the screen. At the movie, not with it.

What’s with these time stops? It sounds like stupid, unnecessary idea.

An example of the ham-fistedness with which Coppola attempts to shove concepts down the audiences' throats at the expense of cohesion and storytelling is when Cesar Catalina's randomly visits his narcissistic mother (Coppola's sister Talia Shire).

There is no reason for this mother character, as we already have the Mayor character standing in as the one who doesn't believe in Cesar's vision for the future. But I guess Coppola had a narcissistic mother so he needed to unburden himself by committing this type of mother to film before he dies. That is my theory. Anyway, in this scene, Cesar's cold, unyielding mother goes from telling him what a disappointment he has been, to suddenly perking up and asking if Cesar has heard of something called "String Theory"! It just comes out of NOWHERE. My jaw was on the floor at this point. Everyone in the audience was dying laughing. She talks about vibrating strings for about five seconds and then goes back to being an unsupportive bitch. If Coppola wanted to touch on String Theory, this mother person was the last person on earth whose mouth he should have put those words into. She is meant to be a symbol of lack of vision, lack of progress. But ya know, FFC had a checklist of five thousand things he wanted to touch up on in this film, so I guess it had to be shoved into someone's mouth somehow before briskly moving on to the next and the next.

So when people say the film lacks cohesion, we mean it UTTERLY LACKS COHESION. Coppola had far, far too many aims and concepts which he tried to force together into a unified whole, and the result is about as elegant as a donkey wearing a Minnie Pearl hat with the price tag hanging off it.

My goodness, string theory- this is so lame. He must be stuck in 2004. This is “metichlorine” level of stupidity.

Does it have a least cool architectural models?

Ish, R61. Most of the architecture of New Rome is just footage of contemporary NYC with an overlay of a few extra Roman columns here and there, and Roman fashion. Driver's character has a vision for the future, and it involves a glowing substance that he invented called Megalon, which can take any form. We do get to see the eventual creation of a new development made out of this substance. The space to build this new slowing structure was created by tearing down the tenement housing of thousands of poor people, who stand huddled, gazing through a chainlink fence at this new glowing structure. It is never made clear to us if these now-homeless folks will get to be rehomed in the new Megalon development, or if they are collateral damage -- the price of progress. It is also left unclear how humans would inhabit the new hypermodern spaces. It's totally, utterly unclear what the hell is going on, practically, with the Megalon structures. Just serpentine swirls of glowing substance. Yay, I guess?

Not to be confused with Godzilla's foe Megalon

*Glowing, not slowing. Sorry!

Megalon = Midichlorians

And giving a Nobel Prize to an architect/engineer is laughable.

Wasn’t the Roman politics thing already done ad nauseam in Star Wars I-VI?

I forgot that Driver's character was awarded the Nobel, R65! Thank you for the chuckle. Jesus. That is hilarious. And they bring it up a few different times, too. I guess Coppola really is getting THAT baked every day in his old age.

Yes, R66! Yes.

R63, I forgot about that Megalon. For me, the word brought to mind the amazing synthetic fabrics of the ‘fifties and ‘sixties, such as Dacron and Orlon.

Did or did I not read recently if you saw the movie in an IMAX theater, there was a "live action" component to the showing?

I think maybe there is supposed to be an actor in the audience interacting with the movie somehow.

Is this true, or did I make it up in a dream?

No it's true, R70. It's just one line in the film. This person is meant to stand in for humanity as a whole, and break the fourth wall, anticipate what the audience might be thinking, or fearing, about the kinds of progress and change that Driver's character is advocating for. In the film there is a reporter who says to Driver's character, ”Mr. Catilina, you said as we jump into the future, we should do so unafraid. But what if when we do jump into the future, there is something to be afraid of?” The live person was just supposed to talk over the reporter for that one line. I think maybe this happened at select locations during the initial screening.

*insert eye roll*

Why do you think most film critics are depending and making excuses for this crap?

R72, Coppola is a part of a great moviemaking age that’s gone and will never come back. One of the problems Coppola had in making this was that he couldn’t get the actors to effectively improvise. He couldn’t make spontaneous changes during the filming (or rather, he could, but only with disastrous results). Everything costs so much and needs CGI. We’re just in a different era.

R73, I’m not seeing the connection between your reply and my question about critics licking FFC’s taint over this hot mess of a film.

utter shite

[quote]Why do you think most film critics are depending and making excuses for this crap?

Respect and reverence. FFC is old, bereaved, and spent decades pondering his bonkers fever-dream, and also spent about nine figures in realising it. His four or so masterpieces have earned him kid gloves.

The same ruefulness greeted 'Eyes Wide Shut', which is always so nearly good, but at least bears rewatching. Few critics wished to take down a genius such as Kubrick in his old age, specially when he was dying or suddenly dead.

Jesus, he looks fugly in OP's photo.

[quote]'Eyes Wide Shut', which is always so nearly good

Oh, dear!

Damn, they threw it out of the theaters already. 😂. Said it won’t make 7 and a half million. One of the biggest bombs in history.

Adam Driver is world class ugly.

Hopefully this is the end of him headlining movies.

Movie sounds really intriguing. I'm curious to see what Coppola does with it.

However, I am not an Adam Driver fan. I actively avoid movies that he is in.

Coppola generally has good casting choices, but building your signature return movie that you are financing with over $150 million of you own money around Adam Driver seems unwise.

Is Adam Driver the American Benedict Cumberbatch? Someone with a commanding voice but physically unpleasant to look at as a leading man?

Benedict Cumberbatch is an Adonis compared to Adam Driver

That scene with Aubrey Plaza in the elevator is BAD. 😜

[quote] That scene with Aubrey Plaza in the elevator is BAD. 😜

Charles Busch would've been better in that role.

Who the hell is Shia LaBeouf playing in the movie?