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Megalopolis Early Reviews: Francis Ford Coppola's Bold, Messy Sci-Fi Movie Demands To Be Seen

Adam Driver in Megalopolis American Zoetrope
By Danielle Ryan

How often do you think about ancient Rome? If you're director Francis Ford Coppola, the answer is apparently "quite a lot." HIs latest film is "Megalopolis," a passion project that he had to finance himself in order to have full creative freedom, and it takes place in a crumbling city called New Rome, following an architect named Cesar (Adam Driver) as he seeks to build a more sustainable future. It's some wacky stuff, and Coppola has bought in completely.

The very first batch of reviews and reactions to "Megalopolis" are coming out of Cannes Film Festival in France, where the film made its world premiere. Given the movie's troubled production and absolutely wild teaser trailer, it should come as no surprise that the reviews are as intense as they are mixed, though most praise the unique sci-fi epic for its audacity and willingness to fully commit to its ideas and world. Vulture's Bilge Ebiri called the movie "the craziest thing I've ever seen," and that seems to be a common sentiment. For all its weirdness, "Megalopolis" also seems to be a bit of a mess, with critic Robert Daniels tweeting that the "first hour was a disaster" but the second half worked better, praising the film's "sharp" visual language. Like many other big, goofy, weird science fiction films before it, "Megalopolis" sounds like it was designed to divide because it was created with such a singular vision and no compromise. It also sounds like something messy and audacious, like the criminally-underrated "Southland Tales," which is great. I love mess. 

The early Megalopolis reviews are in

Aubrey Plaza in Megalopolis American Zoetrope

Vulture's full review says that "there is nothing in 'Megalopolis' that feels like something out of a 'normal' movie. The characters speak in archaic phrases and words, mixing shards of Shakespeare, Ovid, and at one point straight-up Latin." That's positively bonkers and sure to alienate some audiences, like The Hollywood Reporter, who wrote that "Megalopolis" is "a distancing work of hubris, a gigantic folly, or a bold experiment, an imaginative bid to capture our chaotic contemporary reality, both political and social, via the kind of large-canvas," and a "high-concept storytelling that's seldom attempted anymore" before going on to call it "windy and overstuffed, frequently baffling and way too talky."  

On the nicer side, The Telegraph said that "Megalopolis" was "'Succession' crossed with 'Batman Forever' and a lava lamp" (was Coppola reading my dream journal?) in their 4/5 star review, while Variety calls it " a sexless 'Caligula,'" which might be the harshest indictment of them all. The Guardian was similarly unkind, calling "Megalopolis" "megabloated and megaboring," saying that it is "simultaneously hyperactive and lifeless, lumbered with some terrible acting and uninteresting, inexpensive-looking VFX work." Yikes.

Social media reactions to Megalopolis

Adam Driver in Megalopolis American Zoetrope

IndieWire's David Ehrlich was one of the biggest fans of the film, tweeting that the silliness was "a feature, not a bug" before going on to say that it gives him hope for the future of movies in his review, which is pretty effusive praise. Regardless of whether people loved it, hated it, or fell somewhere in the middle, people's responses to "Megalopolis" are intense. Here are some of the best reactions from around twitter, starting with Ehrlich's:

Back in the United States, the rest of us will have to wait until "Megalopolis" gets picked up for distribution to see it (it has distribution in some international countries already), but for now, we can dream of the fall of New Rome. 

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