Megalopolis
21 January 2026
Spoilers for Megalopolis (2024)
I have now seen Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis four times.
It's such a fascinating piece of media. At once a horrific dumpsterfire mishmash of concepts and ideas and a movie so obscenely entertaining you can't tear your eyes away from it. It's full of truly baffling performances, some of the most on-the-nose visual metaphors I've ever seen, terribly uninspired dialogue--it has everything you could possibly want from a movie directed by the guy who made The Godfather.
And I absolutely love it.
The Godfather
When I first saw Megalopolis, I had not seen anything directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I had seen movies directed by his daughter, Sofia Coppola [Priscilla and The Virgin Suicides], but somehow her father's more culturally notable works had managed to elude my gaze. Even still, when I saw that Megalopolis was playing in the only theater in the town my college is located in, I could not pass up the opportunity to see what was up with this Coppola fella people talk so highly of.
Needless to say, that showing surprised me. I was one of only three people in that theater, and by the end of the movie, I was alone in there. One person walked out basically immediately after Aubrey Plaza delivered her (incredibly iconic) line "You're anal as hell, Cesar. I, on the other hand, am oral as hell", before trying to perform fallacio on Adam Driver. The second walked out toward the end of the movie, after the scene where Aubrey Plaza's character and Shia Labeouf's character (stepmother and stepson) have an utterly repulsive sex scene/discussion of plans to take control of a bank.
My experience with Megalopolis was different from the two men who occupied that theater with me. It wasn't anything profound. I just found the movie to be incredibly entertaining. Every scene exudes such a bizarre vibe. Every detail Coppola thinks is important, he literally circles on screen with a Looney Toons-style circle vignette. If there's an idea that he wants to get across, he does it twice. The first time, either in an esoteric line (usually a Shakespeare or Greek/Roman epic reference at the same time), or some kind of--whatever the opposite of opaque is--visual metaphor. The second time in just pure plain English. It's jarring to see someone have so little faith in their audience understanding what they're getting at, while also being so confident in their skills as a filmmaker. This makes the movie simultaneously ridiculously easy to understand (as in: it's easy to see what the intended takeaway is for basically everything) and also incredibly confusing to follow plot-wise. It's fast-paced and feels like it's 3 hours long. It's both intentionally and unintentionally comedic throughout. Laurence Fishburne feels like he's just playing Morpheus again. The whole thing is just a whirlwind of ideas that just do not work together. I simply cannot fathom a more compelling media experience. It's a window into Coppola's soul in a way that even similarly bizarre movies like The Holy Mountain or Cremaster 3 are not for their respective directors.
I understand why someone might walk out of Megalopolis. If you're expecting The Godfather and you get Megalopolis, you will be disappointed. While the movie is visually pleasing at times in the same way as The Godfather, the story, dialogue, acting, editing--basically everything--lacks the polish and subtlety that The Godfather has. I'll get into this later on, but the thing The Godfather has going for it is that it's basically a perfect movie, and Megalopolis decidedly isn't. This is really the issue with being the director of The Godfather, isn't it? If you try to sell any of your other movies as visionary masterpieces, you will always fall short of the mark people expect you to hit. Even if you don't sell your movies as visionary masterpieces, you'll always fall short of expectations.
After watching Megalopolis for the first time, I did go home and watch The Godfather. I was curious to see if any of the wonderfully terrible, baffling strangeness present in Megalopolis was present in the movie that gave Coppola his reputation. Spoilers for The Godfather: it has none of that. Instead, The Godfather is the result of the question: "what happens when everything goes perfectly at every step of the development of a movie." (I realise that sounds strange if you know anything about the production of The Godfather, but I'm really just talking about the end product. You can't get something like The Godfather without every choice by every person with their hands on that production being absolutely perfect). It's a tight, pristine, subtle, gorgeous movie. It's also a major disappointment if what you want from it is Megalopolis.
I think looking at The Godfather in contrast to Megalopolis is a perfect example of why "Auteur Theory" is just utter bullshit. The Godfather is just not solely Coppola's masterpiece. If anything, it's a testament to the collaborative nature of filmmaking. The Godfather had an altogether tumultuous production and only came out as pristine as it did because everyone did what they needed to to make that movie what it is. The Godfather was produced before Coppola had the reputation that comes along with directing The Godfather. He was nearly fired by the studio multiple times throughout production. He faced challenges casting, contracting key members of the crew, securing places to film on location; basically every aspect of the film was produced in a chaotic, hostile manner.
Compare this to Megalopolis. This film is a passion project 40 years in the making, written, directed, and funded by one of the most influential directors of all time. Every report on the production of the movie I've read indicates that rather than Coppola being pushed around by production/casting/art/etc, on the set of Megalopolis, it was him doing the pushing. He would spend hours trying to get an effect for one shot of the movie, would randomly change filming locations, and improvise entirely new scenes. He was constantly messing with the shooting schedule. While there are exasperated reports of this behavior, there's really no indication that anyone challenged him on any of this (or at least none of them were able to have an effect on him). There are also reports that Coppola sexually assaulted multiple extras during shooting of a scene with topless party-goers. In any case, it seems that if any film is the result of a single person's vision in video form it is Megalopolis, not The Godfather. This is a movie that is only Francis Ford Coppola's, and no one else's.
Megalopolis
I've since shown this movie to multiple friends, my brother, basically anyone who will let me put it on. So far, everyone seems to have a different experience with it. My brother fell asleep about halfway through. One friend, we watched after taking some edibles, seemed to just enjoy it like it was a normal movie and has since seemingly forgotten everything that happened in it, left only with a vague recollection of having watched it. We did watch the open matte version of Blade Runner 2049 immediately after and they seem to recall that just fine though. My most recent victim has been haunted by nightmares of hands plucking the moon from the sky. "The omens are bad" they say. They told me that they told their dad they watched it and said his response was simply: "no." Apparently he had watched the movie on a plane ride at some point and was so traumatized by the experience he couldn't even acknowledge his child had endured the same torture, let alone enjoyed it.
If you're so inclined, please watch Megalopolis (piracy is always an option if you don't want to send any money in the direction of an old man who still doesn't understand the concept of boundaries). It's maybe the only example of a true auteur-film with any budget behind it. If you watch it with that in mind, it should be fun. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading my somewhat aimless ramblings about this horrible, horrible movie.