Francis Coppola is a longtime, world-renowned movie director. With Coppola’s history of movies with directing “The Godfather” and “The Outsiders”, I walked into “Megalopolis” excited to watch a good movie, but the buzz around the movie showed it to be bad even with the years of planning he did. But as soon as my friends and I walked into the theater, we were lost because it made no sense.
Movies are supposed to draw you in, but all “Megalopolis” did was show me an unplanned scribble that leaves you confused. The movies Coppola has directed were painting a masterpiece for watchers. But to follow a masterpiece like that and then put out a movie like this, it’s just an utter disgrace to Coppola’s legacy.
They all live in a place called New Rome, which is slowly getting killed because everyone is fighting over it, arguing about how to move forward.
In the movie, Coppola shows that the U.S. could reach a similar end to the Roman Empire. It seems like he tried to make a failed world, where there was a way out, but no one wanted to change. He helped connect the movie due to its real-world connections through politics and conflicts. He shows, through the movie, how being against change will end up hurting the world’s future. As some of the characters fight the change towards the future they slowly start to pull the world apart.
The movie’s plot is mostly for an adult viewpoint of the world. But from a student’s point of view, it gets confusing and hard to follow. Luckily, it all comes together at the end with the last couple of scenes. They finally explain how the movie should work, and bring the characters together through conflict and understanding. Even though that pulls it all together at the end, the whole movie is hard to watch because it’s so confusing.
The way Cesar tries to connect with his dead wife shows how even though he’s looking to expand on the future, he’s still stuck up on the past. Coppola wants to show that looking for a better future shouldn’t mean leaving everything behind, leading to the plot’s growth.
The acting saves how confusing the movie gets. Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, and Giancarlo Esposito, who play, Cesar Catilina, Clodio Pulcher, and Franklyn Cicero. They all have completely different views of building the future, and the acting shows it perfectly. All of the actors were on track to fully fight over how the future of the movie should go and they played that conflict perfectly. They were able to fit their roles almost exactly as they should, helping the movie come together.
The camera work and shot angles truly expressed every minor detail, helping to pull together the film and make the movie watchable. The camera shots portrayed the characters extremely well and made scenes that looked impossible to pull together fully understandable and clear.
The entire movie was hard to watch. The camera angles and acting brought the movie together, making it watchable, but I still don’t recommend it. Overall, the movie is good, but certain parts could be clearer. Leaving you lost in translation trying to understand a fake reality.
