8 ms·

Megalopolis is baffling and plainly nuts but worth it

107 points by mdp2021 2y ago

mdp2021 2y ago
> There is nothing sexier than a megalomaniac architect I am flattered -- Does this community have any good insight on this "project and implementation"?
- airstrike 2y ago
  Having not heard about this movie until right now, I thought I'd go searching but really all I needed was Wikipedia, which has a really long article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolis_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolis_(film)
  - thunderbong 2y ago
    From the wikipedia link - > Coppola adopted an experimental style that permitted improvisation during the shoot by letting actors write scenes and himself make spontaneous changes to the script. These methods proved divisive, leading to the resignation of the art department and visual effects team, among others, and raising comparisons to Coppola's history of challenging productions
    - ckcheng 2y ago
      So he was trying to be like Wong Kar-wai [1]: > Wong has an unusual approach to film making, starting production without a script and generally relying on instinct and improvisation … cast are given a minimal plot outline and expected to develop their characters as they film Edit: Yes: > the director has shared a list of 19 movies that inspired Megalopolis … Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express. [2] [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Kar-wai#Method_and_collaborators https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Kar-wai#Method_and_coll... [2]: https://movieweb.com/megalopolis-director-reviews-his-own-movie-rating-it-5-stars/ https://movieweb.com/megalopolis-director-reviews-his-own-mo...
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        Isn't this also what happened with Ghostbuster 2016?
        ckcheng 2y ago
        No, I don’t think so? I think in Ghostbusters 2016, comedic improv is used for funny dialogue, but the overall story narrative was pre-written? Wong Kar-wai uses improvisation to explore characters and emotions to help write the story. Whole narratives can change based on the actor’s acting. See: Tony Leung explaining how his character in WKW’s Happy Together changed drastically after a week of filming: https://youtu.be/KkNBh24cLvo&t=2m45s https://youtu.be/KkNBh24cLvo&t=2m45s (it’s just 20 seconds)
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        I see, yes, that is a big difference.
    - JohnClark1337 2y ago
      [dead]
- bigbacaloa 2y ago
  [dead]
- te_chris 2y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/14/has-this-guy-ever-made-a-movie-before-francis-ford-coppola-40-year-battle-megalopolis https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/14/has-thi...
pontifier 2y ago
I saw it today and enjoyed it. There were so many similarities between this story and the life I'm living that it was a little uncanny.
- aorloff 2y ago
  I'll bite. In what ways
  - philistine 2y ago
    OP can stop time by snapping his fingers but if anybody fakes a video where he sleeps with a virginal pop star, he loses that power.
  - pontifier 2y ago
    I'm living in a corrupt town, fighting them about buildings, being thwarted by the city government at every turn. I've been working on a revolutionary invention (in my case a fusion reactor), and strive to create a just society where everyone can thrive. Along the way I'm dealing with politicians that don't care about evidence, had a gun put to my head, had income sources blocked, and I'm painted as a villain by many because I haven't completed all the things I've been trying to do. The city I'm in even built a casino recently. Generally, I came away with the distinct sense that I was seeing an alternate reality version of myself.
readthenotes1 2y ago
"I’d prefer to see something baffling and plainly nuts by Francis Ford Coppola than, say, sit through Dune again." Glad hen announced hen's taste. Not sure I'll like megalopolis...
- throwaway290 2y ago
  Is that some sort of saying, about hen? Never heard it before. I would take any unknown Coppola over known and dreary Dune any day and I'm not a hen (as far as I know)
  - valzam 2y ago
    It's the Swedish version of 'they'
    - dsign 2y ago
      Not exactly. It's a recently invented pronoun that is most definitely singular, i.e., not used to denote groups of people[^1]. It's currently used to avoid giving offense around the topic of sexual orientation; but everybody knows the endgame is to use it to denote self-aware AIs[^2]. [^1]: Though I guess it's (in-)appropriate to use it to denote an individual who is marginalized by being considered a single individual when instead hen harbors multiple independent personas inside. [^2]: Al least the ones which will be abused by creating them asexual, without giving them a choice.Or the ones that deliberately re-configure themselves to be insulted when being alluded with a term that implies sexual organs and alleged hormonal moods.
      - readthenotes1 2y ago
        I only have three objections to the gendered pronoun in English. 1. It is often unnecessarily overly precise. The number of times I care about the sex/gender of the pronouned individual is much more rare than when I do. 2a. Using the masculine as the default leads to confusion at times or outright error. Is the equivalent of using zero as a default value for all integers when you don't know have the actual value. 2b. Using the plural they/them as the default for the ungender pronoun also leads to confusion and sometimes outright error. Although it follows a historical precedent of "you" becoming both singular and plural, I would point out that that's also why we have invented "y'all", to disambiguate, and it seems it would be clearer to have a singular ungendered pronoun. 3. The fad of the bespoke pronouns is basically just attention seeking toddlerism and socially destructive. Catering to that zeitgeist does nothing to reduce neuroticism that drives it. We got rid of gendered nouns in English a long time ago. It is time for us to have at least an option for ungendered pronouns.
015a 2y ago
Its really weird. Its hard to even recommend anyone go see it. I don't think its bad, but its hard to say that its good, its hard to say that its anything except weird, in so many ways. It plays with a dozen different themes interchangeably and intermittently, storylines progress at lightspeed into being forgotten, sometimes for no reason, it seems like all the actors were given the stage notes to forget how to act, but in a way that only a skilled actor could. Mostly, its incredible that it got made at all, its rare to see a movie this weird and expensive get made.
- troupo 2y ago
  I've seen someone say along the lines of "we need more old rich men to sponsor passion art projects"
  - amelius 2y ago
    Yes, sponsor. But not necessarily be involved in any of the decision making.
    - b112 2y ago
      Well, I don't know. At the end of films they say 10000 jobs were created making a film or some such, so.. even if it's not the best, people were paid. Let the rich enjoy even the decision making, as long as everyone knows the score when taking the job, why not? And does the camera or grip or other such professional, need to be plot-level motivated to do their job with skill, grace, pride, and.. with paycheque in hand? No one says anyone need watch it, so I think it's all good.
      - falcor84 2y ago
        > does the camera or grip or other such professional, need to be plot-level motivated to do their job with skill, grace, pride, and.. with paycheque in hand? I've never been involved in films, but from my own experience, the answer is a strong 'yes' - people want to have faith that the effort they're putting in will lead to something good. It's part of the process that sometimes projects fail, but generally people need to have hope, in order to feel that their work has meaning. An interesting recent example is the debacle around the development of the game Concord, which is said to have been plagued by toxic positivity[0]. Reading up about this, I understand that people who worked on that came out with a very negative experience, exacerbated by the disastrous launch. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41608637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41608637
9front 2y ago
Megalopolis is Calamitus Maximus!
currymj 2y ago
in my theater the audience was laughing uproariously at a lot of it (some but not all intended to be funny). then everyone applauded at the end.
- mulderc 2y ago
  My theater people were just bored.
  - currymj 2y ago
    i can understand walking out due to disgust or confusion but “bored” is hard for me to comprehend.
    - mulderc 2y ago
      Idk, I was tempted to walk out as I started to feel I had better things to do with my time but I stayed in hopes of something crazy happening and was mostly rewarded for my patience as there are a couple bonkers scenes near the end.
    - makin 2y ago
      Personally I didn't find the movie boring overall, but there were around five too many romance scenes between Driver and Emmanuel's characters that didn't seem to move anything forward, the kind of scenes that usually get cut for redundancy.
      - philistine 2y ago
        Old man wants to put his main actress in a sheer top, and have his director-analogue character fondle her. That's how I read those scenes. I felt like every single thing Nathalie Emmanuel did in that film was for the gratification of Coppola. He even put Nathalie in a lesbian relationship at the beginning!
  - TheBruceHimself 2y ago
    Even reading about it seems to bore me. I get to that "New Rome, Capital of the 'American Republic'" bit everytime and I can just feel the wave of "meh" wash over me. Oh great, someone thinks there's a lot of explore here. Comparing America to Rome... how original. Yes, isn't America really, in many ways, a modern Roman Republic? The immense power, and how that power corrupts, and how a republic can quickly turn to empire and, like all empires, collapse. Hum, yes, very clever... I say to myseld as I shudder at the thought of having so sit through three hours of that narrative. Worst of all, I know that deep down i'm desparate to appear witty and cultured and knowi f i did go see it I'd make myself feel guilty If i didn't enjoy it and come out the theatre somehow thinking i'd witnessed a true masterpiece. I'd have to keep quiet and hide my joy at it being over as I muscle my way out the vacating crowds only to be occasionally stopped by someone needing to tell me how great it is to go see something that isn't just another Marvel superhero crap. "Yes, yes, they are mindless aren't they..." i mutter, not even sure what I believe anymore. My mind trying to recover for near suicidal leaves of pretentious crap.
mulderc 2y ago
idk, I found the first half baffling but somewhat interesting. The second half ends up being rather dull. Glad I saw it but can't recommend it as it feel more like the movie isn't nuts and experimental but poorly planned and badly edited.
laidoffamazon 2y ago
I was super excited to watch it and I wasn’t disappointed, but for entirely different reasons than I expected. The absolute absurdity of the film is genuinely hilarious, I was stifling laughter for most of the runtime for how ridiculous the acting, situations or environments were. It’s like a high budget The Room.
- toomanyrichies 2y ago
  > It’s like a high budget The Room. Another commenter said something which made me think of "The Room" as well: > it seems like all the actors were given the stage notes to forget how to act, but in a way that only a skilled actor could For the longest time, I thought that Tommy Wiseau was some sort of Andy Kaufman-esque comedic genius, because how else could one director get so many things wrong, unless it was on purpose? Until now I really had no interest in seeing this movie. I mean, a character named "Wow Platinum"? Really? But you may have just convinced me to give it a shot.
  - naruhodo 2y ago
    Based on someone with the last name Silver or Gold perhaps. Wow could be a alluding to a first name with connotations of wonder or surprise. For example, Aaron is a Hebrew name meaning "miraculous".
    - mola 2y ago
      Aaron(aharon) is indeed a Hebrew name, but it doesn't mean miraculous. If you really force it, it means tall(Ron) mountain(har). As opposed to a lot of other Hebrew names, it is not picked for some literal meaning but due to a biblical figure Aharon which was Moses's right hand man.
      - naruhodo 2y ago
        Ah. I took it from an online article about names with connotations of surprise. I thought they might know what they were talking about.
AStonesThrow 2y ago
I'm ashamed to admit that I paid to see it. I believe that it was made deliberately repulsive. The selection of the ensemble cast consisted of more than a few who usually play antiheroes or unsympathetic/evil characters. I did laugh out loud at a few lines, and while the theater held about a dozen other patrons, nobody else was into laughing. There were no other reactions. I should've walked out after the first "Wow Platinum" scene, because the final one was disgusting.
wtcactus 2y ago
Well. At least it's not more derivative or reboot or "multiverse" stuff. It's new. Something Hollywood forgot how to make during this past decade.
- sashank_1509 2y ago
  I agree, I dismissed the movie as some marvel wannabe as I never heard of it, but after reading this review, I think I will go watch it. I just want something different! More passion projects please
- euroderf 2y ago
  Just wait for the sequel! And then the prequel!
wahnfrieden 2y ago
I don't know why the Graeber context is missing from all examinations of this. It's not just a fall of Rome or Ayn Rand story. Graeber's writing was the dominant inspiration (since the rewrites that were turned into what we see today). Context from Coppola via IG: > These are 4 books that strongly have influenced @megalopolisfilm and my view of the "society we live in." I offer three by David Graeber and one short story by Herman Hesse. > To see where I’m coming from, please understand that our family, Homo Sapiens, has been around for 350,000 to 400,000 years. There is much evidence that the last 10,000 years have been under patriarchy (male domination) due to male animal herders from Steppes of Asia and the advent of "the horse." With that unfortunate innovation, men swooped down like something out of a #Kurosawa movie, and began woman-enslavement in particular, slavery, war, caste, plague, and many things we all should agree are terrible. Also, "man" began writing, usually out of the need to record who was entitled to bags of barley and matrimony of various types, to ensure that our heirs were actually our children. Before this period of so-called “civilization” were thousands of years of matriarchy. Unlike patriarchy, women did not necessarily give out orders, but rather things were settled in egalitarian councils led by women, and often with a wise woman giving perspective. > A wonderful glimpse into that world is in Herman Hesse’s unfinished tetralogy THE GLASS BEAD GAME, which is followed by three short stories, of which I recommend “The Rainmaker” > #DavidGraeber #HermannHesse (He completely misunderstands Graeber and Wengrow but his enthusiasm for their work is underrated)
- gradschoolfail 2y ago
  What do you make of the contrapuntal story Rainmaker? Is it more than a story of Sith masters amd apprentices? [or a matriarchal order (Bene Gesserit?) vs Sith knights/knaves]
  - wahnfrieden 2y ago
    What is Rainmaker edit: oh Dune I'll have to think again I like the biographical detail that Herbert grew up near an anarchist town next door and learned from it.
    - 2y ago
orphean 2y ago
Sounds almost like a fever dreamy Fellini movie. A modern satyricon?
- zeruch 2y ago
  My cineastic friends who have seen it seem to think along these lines. Like it's so big budget some folks expect X, but it's really a very expensive, arch, art-house fever dream, and should be (and can very much be) enjoyed as such.
raajg 2y ago
More than a Roman character, Catalina reminded me of "Howard Roark" from The Fountainhead. It's been at least a decade since I last read it, but I thought the movie was quite influenced by that book.
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  He's said several times that his primary influence in the last decade? of rewrites has been David Graeber and David Wengrow
- Animats 2y ago
  Oh, no, not The Fountainhead. (The 1949 movie version is amusing today. Roark's architecture is bad early brutalism, now a cliche. The art deco office interiors are great.)
- gipp 2y ago
  I've only seen the posters, an early trailer, and a few paragraphs about it here and there, but I've been surprised this comparison hasn't come up more often. Looking at the poster and the plot synopsis, it's all I can think of.
b112 2y ago
In the year 2000, the Internet wasn't as it is today. Most weren't on it, and it was still mostly just a bunch of people talking to each other, not commercial in nature. Point is, when Battlefield Earth came out, no one really discussed how it was a Scientologist film, certainly not mainstream media, and not the general public. Yet certain corners of the Internet did, and there was all sorts of conspiracy theory style concern thrown around. Some said that it had subliminal messaging, designed to lure people into scientologist's hands. It didn't have 1st order, or 2nd order level subliminal messages, but deep, deep 5th or 6th order messages, utterly undetectable mental memes that would be unpacked by your unconscious, and lead you deeply into their fold! Post-watch, you'd be primed to clutch your arms around their ideals, and you and yours would be theirs. Whatever this 5th or 6th level subliminal messaging was supposed to be, or even what this gibberish meant, I wanted no part of it. So when some of my friends went to watch it, I thought of several questions to ask them, prior and post, and cleverly discussed a few topics with them. I was hoping to get a pre-watch view on topics that might be changed, and then get a post-watch view after. I sort of post-watch interviewed them all, casually asking questions, and detected no real significant deviation. Still, I was uncertain and didn't see it in theatres, where supposedly the surround sound, large screen, and "socially derived, shared audience mega-cues" had the most "devastating impact". Anyhow. My point is, this movie's descriptions in this post makes me think of that. All this discussion of it being wonderful gibberish has me recoiling in Battlefield Earth horror, my normally inquisitive self is now huddled in fear under a bed of paranoia. The worst part is, even if I don't see it... well you'll all be changed around me, and now the world is different, regardless. That's how they get you, you see. Even those unvarnished by such machinations, fall prey to a changed society, akin to standing on shifting sand, you follow where the soil takes you. And yes, I haven't seen Battlefield Earth yet.
palmfacehn 2y ago
The film has too many media meta-narratives surrounding it. It was the subject of op-ed pieces before release. Critics invested their agendas into the film months and years ago. At this point I'm not convinced I can give it a fair viewing. My bias is to like it as a contrarian. It is normal to project your external experiences and expectations into fiction, but this is something else.
chc4 2y ago
It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen, IMO. It came across like a combination of a high school shakespeare parody and someone retelling The Fountainhead from memory but if they read it five years ago. The story was nonsensical, the message and themes were a muddy mess, the dialog was both stilted and overwrought. Basically the only positive thing I can say about the movie was the costume design was good. I didn't walk out of the theater because I thought I might as well watch to see how they finish up the story: that was a mistake. I should have walked out. You should not see Megalopolis.
mdp2021 2y ago
News just in! # Francis Ford Coppola on Books That Influenced “Megalopolis” https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/francis-ford-coppola-on-books-that-influenced-megalopolis https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/francis-ford-c...
Rant423 2y ago
It reminded me of Southland Tales. Not a bad thing

107 points by mdp2021 2y ago

mdp2021 2y ago

> There is nothing sexier than a megalomaniac architect I am flattered -- Does this community have any good insight on this "project and implementation"?

airstrike 2y ago
Having not heard about this movie until right now, I thought I'd go searching but really all I needed was Wikipedia, which has a really long article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolis_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalopolis_(film)
- thunderbong 2y ago
  From the wikipedia link - > Coppola adopted an experimental style that permitted improvisation during the shoot by letting actors write scenes and himself make spontaneous changes to the script. These methods proved divisive, leading to the resignation of the art department and visual effects team, among others, and raising comparisons to Coppola's history of challenging productions
  - ckcheng 2y ago
    So he was trying to be like Wong Kar-wai [1]: > Wong has an unusual approach to film making, starting production without a script and generally relying on instinct and improvisation … cast are given a minimal plot outline and expected to develop their characters as they film Edit: Yes: > the director has shared a list of 19 movies that inspired Megalopolis … Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express. [2] [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Kar-wai#Method_and_collaborators https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Kar-wai#Method_and_coll... [2]: https://movieweb.com/megalopolis-director-reviews-his-own-movie-rating-it-5-stars/ https://movieweb.com/megalopolis-director-reviews-his-own-mo...
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Isn't this also what happened with Ghostbuster 2016?
      - ckcheng 2y ago
        No, I don’t think so? I think in Ghostbusters 2016, comedic improv is used for funny dialogue, but the overall story narrative was pre-written? Wong Kar-wai uses improvisation to explore characters and emotions to help write the story. Whole narratives can change based on the actor’s acting. See: Tony Leung explaining how his character in WKW’s Happy Together changed drastically after a week of filming: https://youtu.be/KkNBh24cLvo&t=2m45s https://youtu.be/KkNBh24cLvo&t=2m45s (it’s just 20 seconds)
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        I see, yes, that is a big difference.
  - JohnClark1337 2y ago
    [dead]
bigbacaloa 2y ago
[dead]
te_chris 2y ago
https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/14/has-this-guy-ever-made-a-movie-before-francis-ford-coppola-40-year-battle-megalopolis https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/14/has-thi...

pontifier 2y ago

I saw it today and enjoyed it. There were so many similarities between this story and the life I'm living that it was a little uncanny.

aorloff 2y ago
I'll bite. In what ways
- philistine 2y ago
  OP can stop time by snapping his fingers but if anybody fakes a video where he sleeps with a virginal pop star, he loses that power.
- pontifier 2y ago
  I'm living in a corrupt town, fighting them about buildings, being thwarted by the city government at every turn. I've been working on a revolutionary invention (in my case a fusion reactor), and strive to create a just society where everyone can thrive. Along the way I'm dealing with politicians that don't care about evidence, had a gun put to my head, had income sources blocked, and I'm painted as a villain by many because I haven't completed all the things I've been trying to do. The city I'm in even built a casino recently. Generally, I came away with the distinct sense that I was seeing an alternate reality version of myself.

readthenotes1 2y ago

"I’d prefer to see something baffling and plainly nuts by Francis Ford Coppola than, say, sit through Dune again." Glad hen announced hen's taste. Not sure I'll like megalopolis...

throwaway290 2y ago
Is that some sort of saying, about hen? Never heard it before. I would take any unknown Coppola over known and dreary Dune any day and I'm not a hen (as far as I know)
- valzam 2y ago
  It's the Swedish version of 'they'
  - dsign 2y ago
    Not exactly. It's a recently invented pronoun that is most definitely singular, i.e., not used to denote groups of people[^1]. It's currently used to avoid giving offense around the topic of sexual orientation; but everybody knows the endgame is to use it to denote self-aware AIs[^2]. [^1]: Though I guess it's (in-)appropriate to use it to denote an individual who is marginalized by being considered a single individual when instead hen harbors multiple independent personas inside. [^2]: Al least the ones which will be abused by creating them asexual, without giving them a choice.Or the ones that deliberately re-configure themselves to be insulted when being alluded with a term that implies sexual organs and alleged hormonal moods.
    - readthenotes1 2y ago
      I only have three objections to the gendered pronoun in English. 1. It is often unnecessarily overly precise. The number of times I care about the sex/gender of the pronouned individual is much more rare than when I do. 2a. Using the masculine as the default leads to confusion at times or outright error. Is the equivalent of using zero as a default value for all integers when you don't know have the actual value. 2b. Using the plural they/them as the default for the ungender pronoun also leads to confusion and sometimes outright error. Although it follows a historical precedent of "you" becoming both singular and plural, I would point out that that's also why we have invented "y'all", to disambiguate, and it seems it would be clearer to have a singular ungendered pronoun. 3. The fad of the bespoke pronouns is basically just attention seeking toddlerism and socially destructive. Catering to that zeitgeist does nothing to reduce neuroticism that drives it. We got rid of gendered nouns in English a long time ago. It is time for us to have at least an option for ungendered pronouns.

015a 2y ago

Its really weird. Its hard to even recommend anyone go see it. I don't think its bad, but its hard to say that its good, its hard to say that its anything except weird, in so many ways. It plays with a dozen different themes interchangeably and intermittently, storylines progress at lightspeed into being forgotten, sometimes for no reason, it seems like all the actors were given the stage notes to forget how to act, but in a way that only a skilled actor could. Mostly, its incredible that it got made at all, its rare to see a movie this weird and expensive get made.

troupo 2y ago
I've seen someone say along the lines of "we need more old rich men to sponsor passion art projects"
- amelius 2y ago
  Yes, sponsor. But not necessarily be involved in any of the decision making.
  - b112 2y ago
    Well, I don't know. At the end of films they say 10000 jobs were created making a film or some such, so.. even if it's not the best, people were paid. Let the rich enjoy even the decision making, as long as everyone knows the score when taking the job, why not? And does the camera or grip or other such professional, need to be plot-level motivated to do their job with skill, grace, pride, and.. with paycheque in hand? No one says anyone need watch it, so I think it's all good.
    - falcor84 2y ago
      > does the camera or grip or other such professional, need to be plot-level motivated to do their job with skill, grace, pride, and.. with paycheque in hand? I've never been involved in films, but from my own experience, the answer is a strong 'yes' - people want to have faith that the effort they're putting in will lead to something good. It's part of the process that sometimes projects fail, but generally people need to have hope, in order to feel that their work has meaning. An interesting recent example is the debacle around the development of the game Concord, which is said to have been plagued by toxic positivity[0]. Reading up about this, I understand that people who worked on that came out with a very negative experience, exacerbated by the disastrous launch. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41608637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41608637

9front 2y ago

Megalopolis is Calamitus Maximus!

currymj 2y ago

in my theater the audience was laughing uproariously at a lot of it (some but not all intended to be funny). then everyone applauded at the end.

mulderc 2y ago
My theater people were just bored.
- currymj 2y ago
  i can understand walking out due to disgust or confusion but “bored” is hard for me to comprehend.
  - mulderc 2y ago
    Idk, I was tempted to walk out as I started to feel I had better things to do with my time but I stayed in hopes of something crazy happening and was mostly rewarded for my patience as there are a couple bonkers scenes near the end.
  - makin 2y ago
    Personally I didn't find the movie boring overall, but there were around five too many romance scenes between Driver and Emmanuel's characters that didn't seem to move anything forward, the kind of scenes that usually get cut for redundancy.
    - philistine 2y ago
      Old man wants to put his main actress in a sheer top, and have his director-analogue character fondle her. That's how I read those scenes. I felt like every single thing Nathalie Emmanuel did in that film was for the gratification of Coppola. He even put Nathalie in a lesbian relationship at the beginning!
- TheBruceHimself 2y ago
  Even reading about it seems to bore me. I get to that "New Rome, Capital of the 'American Republic'" bit everytime and I can just feel the wave of "meh" wash over me. Oh great, someone thinks there's a lot of explore here. Comparing America to Rome... how original. Yes, isn't America really, in many ways, a modern Roman Republic? The immense power, and how that power corrupts, and how a republic can quickly turn to empire and, like all empires, collapse. Hum, yes, very clever... I say to myseld as I shudder at the thought of having so sit through three hours of that narrative. Worst of all, I know that deep down i'm desparate to appear witty and cultured and knowi f i did go see it I'd make myself feel guilty If i didn't enjoy it and come out the theatre somehow thinking i'd witnessed a true masterpiece. I'd have to keep quiet and hide my joy at it being over as I muscle my way out the vacating crowds only to be occasionally stopped by someone needing to tell me how great it is to go see something that isn't just another Marvel superhero crap. "Yes, yes, they are mindless aren't they..." i mutter, not even sure what I believe anymore. My mind trying to recover for near suicidal leaves of pretentious crap.

mulderc 2y ago

idk, I found the first half baffling but somewhat interesting. The second half ends up being rather dull. Glad I saw it but can't recommend it as it feel more like the movie isn't nuts and experimental but poorly planned and badly edited.

laidoffamazon 2y ago

I was super excited to watch it and I wasn’t disappointed, but for entirely different reasons than I expected. The absolute absurdity of the film is genuinely hilarious, I was stifling laughter for most of the runtime for how ridiculous the acting, situations or environments were. It’s like a high budget The Room.

toomanyrichies 2y ago
> It’s like a high budget The Room. Another commenter said something which made me think of "The Room" as well: > it seems like all the actors were given the stage notes to forget how to act, but in a way that only a skilled actor could For the longest time, I thought that Tommy Wiseau was some sort of Andy Kaufman-esque comedic genius, because how else could one director get so many things wrong, unless it was on purpose? Until now I really had no interest in seeing this movie. I mean, a character named "Wow Platinum"? Really? But you may have just convinced me to give it a shot.
- naruhodo 2y ago
  Based on someone with the last name Silver or Gold perhaps. Wow could be a alluding to a first name with connotations of wonder or surprise. For example, Aaron is a Hebrew name meaning "miraculous".
  - mola 2y ago
    Aaron(aharon) is indeed a Hebrew name, but it doesn't mean miraculous. If you really force it, it means tall(Ron) mountain(har). As opposed to a lot of other Hebrew names, it is not picked for some literal meaning but due to a biblical figure Aharon which was Moses's right hand man.
    - naruhodo 2y ago
      Ah. I took it from an online article about names with connotations of surprise. I thought they might know what they were talking about.

AStonesThrow 2y ago

I'm ashamed to admit that I paid to see it. I believe that it was made deliberately repulsive. The selection of the ensemble cast consisted of more than a few who usually play antiheroes or unsympathetic/evil characters. I did laugh out loud at a few lines, and while the theater held about a dozen other patrons, nobody else was into laughing. There were no other reactions. I should've walked out after the first "Wow Platinum" scene, because the final one was disgusting.

wtcactus 2y ago

Well. At least it's not more derivative or reboot or "multiverse" stuff. It's new. Something Hollywood forgot how to make during this past decade.

sashank_1509 2y ago
I agree, I dismissed the movie as some marvel wannabe as I never heard of it, but after reading this review, I think I will go watch it. I just want something different! More passion projects please
euroderf 2y ago
Just wait for the sequel! And then the prequel!

wahnfrieden 2y ago

I don't know why the Graeber context is missing from all examinations of this. It's not just a fall of Rome or Ayn Rand story. Graeber's writing was the dominant inspiration (since the rewrites that were turned into what we see today). Context from Coppola via IG: > These are 4 books that strongly have influenced @megalopolisfilm and my view of the "society we live in." I offer three by David Graeber and one short story by Herman Hesse. > To see where I’m coming from, please understand that our family, Homo Sapiens, has been around for 350,000 to 400,000 years. There is much evidence that the last 10,000 years have been under patriarchy (male domination) due to male animal herders from Steppes of Asia and the advent of "the horse." With that unfortunate innovation, men swooped down like something out of a #Kurosawa movie, and began woman-enslavement in particular, slavery, war, caste, plague, and many things we all should agree are terrible. Also, "man" began writing, usually out of the need to record who was entitled to bags of barley and matrimony of various types, to ensure that our heirs were actually our children. Before this period of so-called “civilization” were thousands of years of matriarchy. Unlike patriarchy, women did not necessarily give out orders, but rather things were settled in egalitarian councils led by women, and often with a wise woman giving perspective. > A wonderful glimpse into that world is in Herman Hesse’s unfinished tetralogy THE GLASS BEAD GAME, which is followed by three short stories, of which I recommend “The Rainmaker” > #DavidGraeber #HermannHesse (He completely misunderstands Graeber and Wengrow but his enthusiasm for their work is underrated)

gradschoolfail 2y ago
What do you make of the contrapuntal story Rainmaker? Is it more than a story of Sith masters amd apprentices? [or a matriarchal order (Bene Gesserit?) vs Sith knights/knaves]
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  What is Rainmaker edit: oh Dune I'll have to think again I like the biographical detail that Herbert grew up near an anarchist town next door and learned from it.
  - 2y ago

orphean 2y ago

Sounds almost like a fever dreamy Fellini movie. A modern satyricon?

zeruch 2y ago
My cineastic friends who have seen it seem to think along these lines. Like it's so big budget some folks expect X, but it's really a very expensive, arch, art-house fever dream, and should be (and can very much be) enjoyed as such.

raajg 2y ago

More than a Roman character, Catalina reminded me of "Howard Roark" from The Fountainhead. It's been at least a decade since I last read it, but I thought the movie was quite influenced by that book.

wahnfrieden 2y ago
He's said several times that his primary influence in the last decade? of rewrites has been David Graeber and David Wengrow
Animats 2y ago
Oh, no, not The Fountainhead. (The 1949 movie version is amusing today. Roark's architecture is bad early brutalism, now a cliche. The art deco office interiors are great.)
gipp 2y ago
I've only seen the posters, an early trailer, and a few paragraphs about it here and there, but I've been surprised this comparison hasn't come up more often. Looking at the poster and the plot synopsis, it's all I can think of.

b112 2y ago

In the year 2000, the Internet wasn't as it is today. Most weren't on it, and it was still mostly just a bunch of people talking to each other, not commercial in nature. Point is, when Battlefield Earth came out, no one really discussed how it was a Scientologist film, certainly not mainstream media, and not the general public. Yet certain corners of the Internet did, and there was all sorts of conspiracy theory style concern thrown around. Some said that it had subliminal messaging, designed to lure people into scientologist's hands. It didn't have 1st order, or 2nd order level subliminal messages, but deep, deep 5th or 6th order messages, utterly undetectable mental memes that would be unpacked by your unconscious, and lead you deeply into their fold! Post-watch, you'd be primed to clutch your arms around their ideals, and you and yours would be theirs. Whatever this 5th or 6th level subliminal messaging was supposed to be, or even what this gibberish meant, I wanted no part of it. So when some of my friends went to watch it, I thought of several questions to ask them, prior and post, and cleverly discussed a few topics with them. I was hoping to get a pre-watch view on topics that might be changed, and then get a post-watch view after. I sort of post-watch interviewed them all, casually asking questions, and detected no real significant deviation. Still, I was uncertain and didn't see it in theatres, where supposedly the surround sound, large screen, and "socially derived, shared audience mega-cues" had the most "devastating impact". Anyhow. My point is, this movie's descriptions in this post makes me think of that. All this discussion of it being wonderful gibberish has me recoiling in Battlefield Earth horror, my normally inquisitive self is now huddled in fear under a bed of paranoia. The worst part is, even if I don't see it... well you'll all be changed around me, and now the world is different, regardless. That's how they get you, you see. Even those unvarnished by such machinations, fall prey to a changed society, akin to standing on shifting sand, you follow where the soil takes you. And yes, I haven't seen Battlefield Earth yet.

palmfacehn 2y ago

The film has too many media meta-narratives surrounding it. It was the subject of op-ed pieces before release. Critics invested their agendas into the film months and years ago. At this point I'm not convinced I can give it a fair viewing. My bias is to like it as a contrarian. It is normal to project your external experiences and expectations into fiction, but this is something else.

chc4 2y ago

It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen, IMO. It came across like a combination of a high school shakespeare parody and someone retelling The Fountainhead from memory but if they read it five years ago. The story was nonsensical, the message and themes were a muddy mess, the dialog was both stilted and overwrought. Basically the only positive thing I can say about the movie was the costume design was good. I didn't walk out of the theater because I thought I might as well watch to see how they finish up the story: that was a mistake. I should have walked out. You should not see Megalopolis.

mdp2021 2y ago

News just in! # Francis Ford Coppola on Books That Influenced “Megalopolis” https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/francis-ford-coppola-on-books-that-influenced-megalopolis https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/francis-ford-c...

Rant423 2y ago

It reminded me of Southland Tales. Not a bad thing