Francis, what have you done? You have directed some of the greatest movies of all time: The Godfather, The Godfather II, and Apocalypse Now (the latter being one of my rare 10/10 rated movies). So, what the f*ck is this disaster you have given us in the year of 2024? Initially, Megalopolis was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, boasting a massively talented cast, a script that was allegedly decades in the making, and some curious production quality, I didn’t know where this film could’ve gone wrong. Now that I’ve seen it, I understand.
Megalopolis is a garbled, nonsensical story with a lack of fully constructed characters and provocative narrative. With a runtime over two hours, I was hoping there’d be SOMETHING that would indicate that this came from a crew of talented people. There’s some impressive set pieces, but don’t let this distract you. The color grading and VFX employed in this movie are the equivalent of digital vomit.
Superficial quality aside, Megalopolis is an embarrassing treatment of these creative efforts. You could not tell these actors had any talent based on the performances. Such an odd display of acting, coupled with truly bizarre dialogue writing. The characterization of the people set in this universe is so awkward. I don’t know what Coppola is going for with making every character in this movie a damn Looney Tunes cartoon. It screams a volume of pretentiousness that can be heard from Mars.
The worst of it is with the overall script. What the was all of this even about? Beyond the general Wikipedia description offered by the lines of exposition, the world and story of this film cannot communicate anything of value. And with a movie this long, I felt nothing but my valuable time fade away into nothingness. Megalopolis is a mega flop-olis. Francis Ford Coppola should mega stop-olis making self-indulgent, fart sniffing nonsense like this and regenerate the narrative genius he once possessed with his older classics.
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