Warning: contains full spoilers for “Megalopolis.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is certainly a movie that exists.
It’s hard to figure out where to start when describing this bizarre failure of a film. It genuinely is. Francis Ford Coppola may have actually lost his mind during the more than 30 years (!!!) it took for this movie to have been made. The bloated monstrosity that emerged from this insane wait period can by no means be called a good movie. It is a terrible, nonsensical, unhinged, chaotic and flat-out weird movie. But in the best possible way.
The movie takes place in “New Rome,” which is very obviously New York. It’s obvious that Coppola wanted to create an alternative reality in which Ancient Rome and modern American society were intertwined, in an attempt to warn us against the decadence that destroyed the Romans. But this fusion falls flat. Most scenes look disarmingly normal, just like footage you could take in Manhattan today, with only a couple signs saying “New Rome” to let you know where Coppola wants this to take place. Roman concepts such as the Vestal Virgins and Saturnalia are haphazardly thrown into modern lifestyle with little regard to how any of it makes sense at all. But also everyone dresses like it’s the 50’s and rides around in retro cars, for some reason. Hell, there’s an Elvis impersonator performing on Saturnalia!
If this is meant to be an alternative reality, it’s certainly a universe in which no one knows how to talk, think or act like a normal human being does. It’s shocking to see so many great actors (okay, maybe Shia LaBeouf isn’t necessarily that great, but anyway) being paid millions of dollars to act like aliens wearing human skins. The movie’s dialogue is disjointed and dreamlike, with the actors speaking in an otherworldly manner straight out of “Xavier: Renegade Angel.” Let’s start with the main character, Adam Driver’s Cesar Catalina, a genius inventor and architect who controls something called the “Design Authority.” Is the “Design Authority” a government organization? A megacorporation? A fancy club? Who the fuck knows. It’s never explained at all.
Anyway, Adam Driver is a genius and a visionary, but he’s also comically pretentious. Here are some of his lines, copied almost verbatim from IMDB: “And you think one year of medical school entitles you to plow through the riches of my Emersonian mind? … I reserve my time for people who can think. About science. And literature, and architecture and art. You find me cruel, selfish and unfeeling? I am. I work without caring what happens to either of us. So go back to the cluUuUuUuUuUb, bear it all, and stalk the kind of people that you enjoy.” Note: when he says “the cluUuUuUuUuUb,” he really delivers it like that! It has to be seen to be believed.
Anyway, perhaps Adam Driver’s justified in his behavior, because he has invented a miracle substance called Megalon (while trying to bring his dead wife back to life, somehow. Is that how science works?). We aren’t told what exactly Megalon is, or what it does, other than that Adam Driver wants to use it to build a new city called … Megalopolis. Get it? Megalon Polis? Megalopolis? Wow, Adam Driver, you are so creative. What is Megalopolis, you might ask? It is, quite literally, the first result you see when you search up “utopia” on Google Images. It is a city where everything inexplicably glows orange, where all of the buildings look like some CGI artist’s fever dream and people ride around on giant escalators inside of glass hamster balls. Essentially, Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland, if Walt Disney only ever knew how to generate AI art.
Going against this plan is Giancarlo Esposito, as Mayor Cicero, who embodies the wealthy establishment who stand against Adam Driver’s progress, although we never get to know exactly why. All we know is that Giancarlo Esposito and Adam Driver absolutely hate each other. If you were expecting Esposito to pull out some of his intimidating villain acting skills, you will be disappointed. He delivers his lines in the same, strange, rhythm as everyone else, especially in an opening scene where he leans into Adam Driver’s ear and whispers something about his dead wife in what can only be described as a bad William Shatner impression. Either that, or he’s screaming into a microphone about Cesar being a threat to the city and how he needs to stop now – again, for no discernable reason.
Then there’s his daughter, Natalie Emmanuel, who portrays Julia, the Mayor’s daughter. She falls for Adam Driver, or at least it seems like she falls for Adam Driver, because of her strange and wooden acting, which seems totally lifeless and uninspired compared to her leading male counterpart’s moody Redditor-esque mannerisms. But don’t worry, because she does deliver such zingers as “Entitles me? Entitles me. Entitles me!?” and also delivering three different Marcus Aurelius quotes in a row, each time including the attribution to Marcus Aurelius. It’s clear that Coppola is trying to show that she’s Adam Driver’s intellectual equal, and equally clear that Coppola has no idea what that would actually entail.
Next, we’ve got Aubrey Plaza as the greatest character name ever conceived, Wow Platinum (we should mention that’s not her character’s real name, but we have no idea what it is). She is a newscaster who is obsessed with sex and money, and she, too, has many great lines such as “You’re anal as hell, Cesar. I, on the other hand, am oral as hell.” And there’s also Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher, the deranged cousin of Adam Driver, and son of New Rome morbillionaire Hamilton Crassus (John Voight). LaBeouf has turned his insanity up to eleven as he prances around like a maniac, giggling wildly, jumping up and down and making bizarre hand gestures. He’s also in drag for one important scene, for no reason. Why did Coppola decide to dress Shia LaBeouf as a woman? No clue! But let me tell you, Shia LaBeouf looks shockingly fabulous in a dress and lipstick. Who knew?
Also, I completely forgot to explain that Adam Driver can stop time. For no reason at all. At no point in the movie does he use this skill for anything relevant to the plot. He just does it to watch people on the street below, or to watch a building collapse, and the way he triggers this ability is by screaming “TIME, STOP!” in the hammiest voice possible. Also, Natalie Emmanuel is the only one immune to this, for some reason. Is any of this ever explained? No. Does any of this matter to the plot? No.
Shia LaBeouf absolutely despises his cousin Adam Driver, out of what seems to be pure jealousy towards Driver’s intellect, power and influence, (at one point, John Voight offhandedly mentions that LeBeouf’s hatred started when they were six years old, but that’s never brought up again). Because of this, he goes to such cartoonishly evil measures, nearly rivaling the Reverse Flash in pettiness and spite, to ruin Adam Driver’s career. For example, he broadcasts a deepfake sextape of Driver and the lead Vestal Virgin at Voight and Plaza’s wedding celebration, starts a Neo-Nazi movement who threaten to destroy Megalopolis and hires a twelve year old to shoot Adam Driver in the eye. No, you did in fact read that correctly, as Shia LeBeouf does in fact do those last two things:
Throughout the last three quarters of the movie, Shia LaBeouf and his right-hand goon Huey attempt to start a revolutionary group to take down Adam Driver and destroy Megalopolis. It starts out fairly normal (or at least as normal as anything in this movie can be), but it suddenly turns into a Neo-Nazi movement … I think. They never actually express any coherent political beliefs other than hating Adam Driver. Then why do I call it a “Neo-Nazi” movement? That’s simple: Huey gets a tattoo of the Black Sun on his forehead, and Shia LeBeouf gives a speech on top of a swastika-shaped tree stump. This plot point was very likely an allegory for the MAGA/Trump movement, down to the red “Make Rome Great Again” hats – unfortunately, just like every other message this movie is trying to push, it falls flat.
In one scene, Adam Driver’s car is stopped on the street by a little boy who asks him for his signature. Driver obliges, and then proceeds to make the WORST small talk that I have ever seen, but which is then followed by the boy whipping out a Glock 9mm and shooting him in the face, as the boy jumps into one of LaBeouf’s goon’s cars which drives away. Why did the child agree to this? Who knows. Does this kid even understand the differing political beliefs of LaBeouf and Driver? Certainly not.
Not to worry, though, because apparently Adam Driver’s skull was somehow fused with Megalon (???), and his bones instantly heal. Yes, that’s right. Adam Driver has become The Megalopolis. And following that there’s a scene where he screams “NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!” multiple times (always including all five “NO”s) before he unwraps his bandaged head in front of Aubrey Plaza, at which point his head starts glowing brightly and then a sitar twang plays as his head refracts into five heads. This isn’t even the weirdest scene in the movie, somehow.
That comes after Shia LaBeouf and his stepmom, Aubrey Plaza (who are meanwhile having incestous sex, during which he repeatedly calls her “Auntie Wow”. Yikes!) take over John Voight’s bank, which leads to John Voight suffering from a heart attack and being confined to his bed. LaBeouf and Plaza arrive in his room to taunt the dying old man, only to notice that John Voight has a ridiculous, 12-inch long (at the very least) protuberance sticking out of his crotch beneath the folds of his elaborate costume. “What do you think of this boner I got?” Voight asks the pair. Then he pulls off the clothes to reveal that his “boner” is really … a fully loaded bow and arrow! “It’s the closing bell, you Wall Street slut,” Voight murmurs as he shoots Aubrey Plaza in between the breasts, killing her instantly, and then (without getting up from the bed) shoots two more arrows into Shia LaBeouf’s butt as he runs away, screaming “Yeow!” all the while like a Looney Tunes Character. And also when he pulls out the bow and arrow, the arrow has a shiny fucking glint and a cartoon shing sound effect plays.
Yes, all of this actually happens in the movie. You have to see it for yourself – there’s no way that the sheer insanity of this scene can be put into writing.
In essence, this movie is a pure fever dream. It doesn’t have anything resembling a plot; just a series of events that happen to the characters. A series of extremely confused, contrived and nonsensical events. Yes, the conflict between Adam Driver and Giancarlo Esposito is set up, as is the conflict with Shia LaBeouf, but these end up being buried alive under a parade of hallucinatory scenes and editing.
Several times during the movie the screen splits into three vertical strips, each displaying a different still image or video like some sort of half-assed PBS documentary. A scene with Adam Driver giving a press conference is shrunken down so that the frame only occupies about a fifth of the movie theater screen, and is focused only on Adam Driver’s head and shoulders – the rest is completely black. (Apparently, in some theaters they have a guy come out and pretend to ask Adam Driver questions in this scene). Natalie Emmanuel delivers a voiceover about “liberty being in chains” as she looks out the window and sees a giant, moving statue of Lady Liberty in chains fall onto the street and smash into pieces.
And then there’s the scene with Adam Driver taking pills backstage at the Colosseum (which is very clearly just Madison Square Garden), cutting rapidly between the debauchery of Aubrey Plaza’s wedding festivities with shots of Adam Driver hitting ridiculous dance moves, his entire body jerking and convulsing in a corner, and spouting multiple arms like the Buddhist goddess Guanyin; all as he is shrouded in intense purple/red lighting and an intense voiceover mumbles “I refuse to let TIME have dominion over my THOUGHTS!” and other such nonsense. I guess this is what happens when you go back to the cluUuUuUuUuUb.
If these nonsensical and almost Dadaist visuals were intended to appeal to pretentious cinephiles, critics and obsessive Francis Ford Coppola stans, they’ve only alienated the movie from the people it depends on most – regular audiences. When we watched the movie in Downtown Boston, there were only about 15 others, and by the end of the movie they were all laughing. Not with “Megalopolis”, but at it. This movie goes so deep into its own pretentiousness that it turns into a farce. Hell, the movie ends with a title card showing a “Pledge of Humanity” – which is literally the Pledge of Allegiance with all references to America removed. All while school children recite it in the background. You can’t make any of this up.
Far from being another one of the great director’s masterpieces, “Megalopolis” is firmly among the ranks of such unintentional masterpieces as Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room,” which is probably furthest from what Coppola thought would happen. But in our opinion, to ignore “Megalopolis”, like most moviegoers have, is a mistake. You will not be moved, or disturbed, or challenged at all by this movie. You will, however, see one of the funniest movies of your life. “Megalopolis” is like watching a train crash; no matter how hard you try, you can’t look away from it. It’s a must-watch movie for all of the wrong reasons.
