Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola's self-financed passion project Megalopolis (2024) is set in New Rome, a retro-futuristic New York drawing heavily from the grandeur of the Roman Empire. But when gifted architect Caesar (Adam Driver) plans on upgrading New Rome with the fabled city of Megalopolis, he draws the ire of figures like Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), envious cousin Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), and TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza).

Worldbuilding potential torn down by on-the-nose social commentary. For Francis Ford Coppola, worldbuilding is crucial. We've seen that in the case of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and even his flawed but visually breathtaking Dracula adaptation, Bram Stoker's Dracula. Sadly, none of his former glory is replicated in Megalopolis — a project so deep in the writer-director-producer's heart that he had to delay it for four decades and sell his vineyards to finance it. The film's ambitious but overly convoluted screenplay suffers from exposition right from the start when Laurence Fishburne's narrator spoonfeeds the audience in explaining how modern America is like ancient Rome (with lines like "built on the power of men with greed" literally written in stone). If this weren't enough, Megalopolis' hyper-capitalistic, wealth-dripping characters deliver Shakespearean lines that explicitly state their simplistic objectives. Take this scene as an example. Aubrey Plaza's Wow Platinum (yes, that's her name) climbs up an elevator, indicating it's going up. Platinum remarks: "Yes, we are going up, and they are going down."

A Hollywood fable with embarrassingly glossy visual effects. Even if you tend to forgive such juvenile, over-explained writing, the promise of witnessing a big-budget fable might still compel a cinephile to watch Megalopolis on the biggest IMAX screen ever. Sadly, Coppola's comeback is no visual treat, with grandiose buildings and sculptures of this NY-Rome hybrid reduced to shoddy green screen backgrounds. Even when Adam Drivers' Caesar comes up with the Utopian land of Megalopolis, the art design stops down to visuals reminiscent of psychedelic Windows XP screensavers. As for everything else in the CGI department, Megalopolis' visual (un)originality rests between 2000s-era PlayStation 2 graphics and a sparkle effect on everything golden and shiny. Nothing in between.

Adam Driver and co. are well-cast but annoyingly over-the-top. On paper, Megalopolis boasts one of the best-ever Hollywood ensembles. But no matter how talented these artists might be, Coppola's haphazard storytelling reduces them to one-dimensional caricatures of a capitalist American society. Driver's Caesar is the madman genius reminiscent of Thomas Edison with a hint of Elon Musk (making him more unlikeable even if he breaks into speeches on change and free will). This is Driver at his most over-the-top, be it when he breaks into an unreasonably hyperactive rendition of Hamlet or be it when he's just screaming "No, no, no" after a financial setback. Giancarlo Esposito stars as Caesar's ideological enemy, Mayor Cicero, a representative of the old ways who's unable to flip a new page in New Rome's history. Then comes Game of Thrones alumna Nathalie Emmanuel, who stars as Julia, Cicero's daughter and Caesar's love interest. Her precarious position puts her in the middle, but this ambiguity gives way to Julia becoming fully obsessed with our dashing hero. The stakes in Caesar's rise to greatness seem too mundane to care about. And even though the only major person to hate Caesar is his eccentric, manipulative cousin Clodio, Shia LaBeouf's excessive screen energy makes for an easy mood-killer. Aubrey Plaza might be the best performer of the lot. Still, even her journalist-turned-socialite is so overdramatic that it leaves you thinking whether Megalopolis is silly camp disguised as high art.

Megalopolis' biggest enemy is its own hype. Megalopolis has dominated Hollywood conversations this year, thanks to the film's rigorously documented production history, the casting of "canceled" celebrities, and the trailer that allegedly boasted fake criticisms of Coppola's previous movies. But now that it's finally out, Megalopolis goes down as one of the director's weakest works. On an optimistic note, this fable might have been penned ahead of its time. As for the current generation, Megalopolis is bogged down by the flamboyant art design of the 90s Batman movies, dialogues that undermine the intellect of its audiences, zany editing with rushed subplots, and snooze-inducing pacing. For a film whose protagonist can stop time by saying, "Time Stop!" this 2-hour and 18 minutes-long epic sure does slow down time.