Coppola abandoned the project entirely in 2007 and didn’t start developing it again until 2019
Synopsis
The city of New Rome faces a duel between Cesar Catilina, a brilliant artist who favors a utopian future, and Franklyn Cicero, a greedy mayor. Among them is Julia Cicero, whose loyalties are divided between her father and her lover. Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay in the early 1980s, but the film was shelved in part due to his financial debts. Pre-production finally began in 2001 after shooting 30 hours of second unit footage and holding a table read with Paul Newman, Uma Thurman, Robert De Niro, James Gandolfini, Nicolas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Edie Falco and Kevin Spacey. but the project was scrapped after the 9/11 attacks because a scene from the script (page 166) "predicted" attacks. The security video of Cicero’s arrival at Caesar’s office is supposedly from two different cameras, as the small text in the upper left corner indicates.
It’s just the same material flipped and tilted a bit
Hamilton Crassus III: What do you think of this hatch I have? "Ultimate IMAX Experience" in the film version, the actor asks questions during a filmed press conference.. Referenced on The John Campea Show: Adam Driver directs Francis Ford Coppola’s new film Megalopolis (2022). My PledgeWritten by Grace VanderWaal Performed by Grace VanderWaal Courtesy of Columbia Records Application with Sony Music Entertainment Produced and orchestrated by Kris Kukul. On the other hand, this movie has some interesting ideas and visuals, but some ideas never develop, and some of the visuals don’t look good. It is challenging to understand what Coppola’s intention was with this film.
If we remove all misleading character development, what remains is misleading idea development
It seems that he decided not to focus too much on the characters but rather on the themes. However, some scenes suggest that the audience should empathize with the characters, but no one simply can. One reason for this is the pace of this film; it somehow manages to be fast, yet feels slow, and that might be because some scenes are boring. Megalopolis bombards you with interesting ideas, but since there are quite a few, none of them develop into a solid conclusion. As I already mentioned, it’s hard to see where Coppola was going with all this. If his intention was to go against the classic narrative structure and challenge viewers with a different kind of storytelling, that didn’t work either.
Sometimes Megalopolis feels right, sometimes it doesn’t
Some scenes contain clichés, and the overall structure feels like a mix of 50s and 90s scenery. One interesting thing that film often does is plant a seed that sometimes doesn’t grow—it stays in that scene, and then it’s on to the next. This method of storytelling is misleading and confusing to most audiences, and would probably work better if this technique had a solid foundation throughout the film. But it just doesn’t feel right David Lynch once said that you can make any movie, any art you want, as long as it feels right. His films are weirder and harder to understand than Megalopolis, but watching Lynch’s work you don’t feel misled – everything feels right, no matter how strange. This movie was shot by the same person who shot The Master.
There is something in this movie that I didn’t see the first time
Still, this movie feels like any expensive commercial shot today – too vivid, too warm, too simple, I will definitely watch this movie again in the future, all jokes aside. All in all, it’s a little sad that this is Coppola’s last film, but I’m sure she has no regrets about making it.