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.
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.
> 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.
> I've never been involved in films, but from my own experience, the answer is a strong 'yes'
I worked in film visual effects for a decade and the answer is a strong 'no.'
In my case, we were in it for the enjoyment of the work and the craft. We didn't write the scripts, and the quality of the film wasn't our job. We were hired to make the best effects we could and if we delivered quality, we were happy. I'm sure a similar attitude works in other aspects of film (or any large collective enterprise, really).
You missed the prior sentence where I stipulated "as long as everyone knows the score when taking the job"
If you know it's a rich person's pet project, and they will be creatively involved, if you are informed, you have choice.
And thus my prior post stands as valid.
I am fully aware people often care about their output, but there are many who don't, or just want work. Up-post was saying the rich shouldn't be allowed to have such projects, my response indicates conditions where it is reasonable, and there is no harm to actors/crew.
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
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.
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.
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.
I had this notion that all the hip comedy writers in Hollywood should write jokes to make this he next Rocky Horror/Room. Do the old man a favor and help him make at least some of the money back. edit - I am seeing this is a common theme in the comments - there is something joyful about an earnest(?) movie that swings and misses.
I remember around the time of Army of Darkness Sam Raimi said his ideal running time for his pictures was 65 minutes -- he disliked the idea of blowing somebody's day over a silly movie.
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.
The Rome part might seem stale, but you should know that he's repeatedly spoken about how the works of Graeber and Wengrow are his biggest influences. It's not a simple Neo Rome story or just Ayn Rand. It's certainly an unexpected and interesting inspiration and an optimistic one.
This is without commenting on how well it translated to screen (I saw it on IMAX for a NYFF partner screening with Q&A)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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)
With comments from Coppola about Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, but also Cao Xueqin's The Dream of the Red Chamber, William Bolitho's Twelve Against the Gods, Cole and Chinoy's project Directors on Directing, and Goethe's Elective Affinities
An old, rich, out-of-touch director known for making intentionally obscure and pretentious movies sells this one with a sexist, pseudo-archeological rant. Really makes me want to go see it!
EDIT: The more I read this the stupider it gets and the more angry it makes me. How do we know these societies were matriarchal if they didn’t write anything down and didn’t pass on any surviving oral tradition? Why did these matriarchal societies suddenly fail because of horses? How did males invent plagues? Is Coppola suggesting we return to a civilization without writing?!
It just seems to mean that societies with sedentary spirit, construed to focus on construction and maintenance, are threatened by invaders of the conquering spirit.
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.
It's not like The Room. Tommy Wiseau wanted to be Marlon Brando, a serious actor in a serious drama. He just so happened to write the most embarrassingly revealing movie ever made. All his insecurities are laid bare on the screen, and they're presented so transparently that you can't help but laugh.
Megalopolis is like a Neil Breen movie. A power fantasy with magical powers, with a cadre of power-hungry demagogues who must concede to the morality of the main character.
It is NOT a high budget The Room. It's not an amazing movie, but it has some very good parts. Makes me think of the concept behind that book "Javascript, the good parts". Once you take out the flat, and occasionally cringe, parts, there is a lot of good stuff to be seen (unlike Javascript!).
The Room has no good parts - it's all terrible unintended humor.
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.
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.
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)
> 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
> 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]
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 (it’s just 20 seconds)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The released dune movies follow a cliche hero's journey. (At face value)
Talented hero faces tragedy -> adopted by outcasts-> is the promised savior -> learns their ways -> defeats the challenger -> wins heart of ladies -> becomes king.
Dune's wildness is only evident once Paul Atreides' arc ends in a tragedy of galactic proportions ushering an era of worm NSA personified.
No, they don't. Like the book series they deconstruct the hero's journey. The outcasts only accept him because of his mother. He is the promised savior because of deliberate societal manipulation, something he even repeatedly points out within the movie. He doesn't defeat the challenger; he is the challenger. He repeatedly rejects being a hero and assumes the role of villain, first as a terrorist and latter as a tyrant who leads an invasion that murders millions. And in the movie at least he loses Chani's heart at the end; a deliberate change from the books.
Dune's wildness is only evident once Paul Atreides' arc ends in a tragedy of galactic proportions
This doesn't happen in the books for several thousand years, long after Paul has died.
No, the Fremen jihad was necessary to delay the Golden Path, a series of wars and genocides so violent they would push men to spread our amongst the stars. (Retconned by his son and KJA to provide for pockets of human survival after the robots return to exterminate most of mankind.)
The fact it was ultimately necessary in Paul's reading of the future doesn't mean it's not a tragedy. By your logic, if I can find a future benefit for a genocide, I can't call that a tragedy.
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.
As I remember it, the use of hen came from feminists wanting an ungendered third person pronoun to use for a person of unspecified gender instead of defaulting to male ("han") or writing "han eller hon" (he or she).
It's not exactly a new word, it's borrowed from Finnish, which doesn't have grammatical gender. So it doesn't have the "he or she" problem at all.
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.
In many cultures all things have genders. One can say the solution is to just try to care less, like Russians don't care that a table is male and a rain cloud is female. (Or some can say there is pervasive sexism at grammatical level, idk)
> 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.
nominal antideterminism? (although the closest bit of france to the philippines looks to be just off of Queensland: La Nouvelle-Calédonie ... and I guess he'd have to have been Jaime Peche for it to really work)
[in other surfing, "Bongbong" is the 2nd President and 3rd (of 4 current) generation of the Marcos family as a national political dynasty — under the spanish, Fabián Marcos y Galimba was also in politics but only locally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobernadorcillo ]
Deborah Ross is a “she” not a “hen” and having read her reviews for many years, I believe I’m on safe ground saying she wouldn’t appreciate the implication of ambiguity or uncertainty in that regard.
I loved dune 1, was a huge childhood fan of the books, like Villeneuve as director, but still
couldn't get into Dune II. The whole move felt like a montage. Not the artistic montage I would hope for, but a clunky montage with forced lines like something from a marvel movie. I got the sense that either critical parts were left of the chopping block or the film was relying on the book knowledge for context cohesion and gravitas.
Instead of feeling exhilarated by scenes of sandworm ridding, I found myself rolling my eyes.
Similarly, I'm ok with modifying the source material to make a story work on screen, but I thought the changes had the opposite effect. They muddled the message and created more narrative issues than they solved.
Also, was #triggered by the voiceovers. In the words of Robert McKee in adaptation (2002) :
>God help you if you use voice over in your work my friends, God help you. It is sloppy flaccid writing. Any idiot can write voiceover narration to explain the thoughts of a character
I’m the opposite. I liked Dune, but I loved Dune 2. Villaneuve said that he didn’t think he quite hit the mark with the first movie. He didn’t get in close enough to the characters. He did that in the second movie, and I felt it was more emotionally engaging.
Same here. Dune 1 was gorgeous and accurate to the book, but felt stale and mechanical. Dune 2 came much more alive and vibrant and actually had something to say, although it deviated quite a bit more from the book.
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.
I saw it and thought it was awful.
I wonder if there's a sort of imposter syndrome thing going on, not letting people say it's bad.
"I didn't get it, but I'm unclear on the backstory of the roman empire. I better keep my mouth shut or they will know I'm uneducated!"
In comparison some movies are sort of a mess that resolves into something in the end.
Charlie Kaufman movies are like that. I liked synecdoche ny (didn't like anomalisa)
Or even the plastic bag in american beauty.
Ok - most recent movie I would recommend spending your money on: Didi
I've seen someone say along the lines of "we need more old rich men to sponsor passion art projects"
Yes, sponsor. But not necessarily be involved in any of the decision making.
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.
> 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
> I've never been involved in films, but from my own experience, the answer is a strong 'yes'
I worked in film visual effects for a decade and the answer is a strong 'no.'
In my case, we were in it for the enjoyment of the work and the craft. We didn't write the scripts, and the quality of the film wasn't our job. We were hired to make the best effects we could and if we delivered quality, we were happy. I'm sure a similar attitude works in other aspects of film (or any large collective enterprise, really).
You missed the prior sentence where I stipulated "as long as everyone knows the score when taking the job"
If you know it's a rich person's pet project, and they will be creatively involved, if you are informed, you have choice.
And thus my prior post stands as valid.
I am fully aware people often care about their output, but there are many who don't, or just want work. Up-post was saying the rich shouldn't be allowed to have such projects, my response indicates conditions where it is reasonable, and there is no harm to actors/crew.
> 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.
Fun fact: More people worked on the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise than there were pirates in the Caribbean.
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.
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
Just wait for the sequel! And then the prequel!
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.
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.
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.)
He's said several times that his primary influence in the last decade? of rewrites has been David Graeber and David Wengrow
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.
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.
I had this notion that all the hip comedy writers in Hollywood should write jokes to make this he next Rocky Horror/Room. Do the old man a favor and help him make at least some of the money back. edit - I am seeing this is a common theme in the comments - there is something joyful about an earnest(?) movie that swings and misses.
It's too long. Rocky Horror is 100 minutes, Megalopolis is 138 minutes. The bad movies that endure have shorter runtimes.
I remember around the time of Army of Darkness Sam Raimi said his ideal running time for his pictures was 65 minutes -- he disliked the idea of blowing somebody's day over a silly movie.
Rocky Horror wasn’t bad, though. Campy, sure. But in many ways it was a masterpiece.
[dead]
In my theater people just left, and I barely made it through the film. It was rather bad I should say.
My theater people were just bored.
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.
You wrote a pretentious post to say the movie was pretentious.
Maybe Coppola made an obvious movie to say a thing is obvious?
Or maybe not, and neither one of you was being clever.
I liked his review. The way he wrote reminds of a funny review for Inception.
Is this post about the movie or about you?
The Rome part might seem stale, but you should know that he's repeatedly spoken about how the works of Graeber and Wengrow are his biggest influences. It's not a simple Neo Rome story or just Ayn Rand. It's certainly an unexpected and interesting inspiration and an optimistic one.
This is without commenting on how well it translated to screen (I saw it on IMAX for a NYFF partner screening with Q&A)
What a strongly negative review from someone who hasn’t seen it. A negative review of the very idea of it.
i can understand walking out due to disgust or confusion but “bored” is hard for me to comprehend.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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)
Also see: https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/francis-ford-c...
With comments from Coppola about Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade, but also Cao Xueqin's The Dream of the Red Chamber, William Bolitho's Twelve Against the Gods, Cole and Chinoy's project Directors on Directing, and Goethe's Elective Affinities
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]
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.
Rainmaker is the short story that Coppola rec’d above, it appears as an Appendix in The Glassbeadgame
Thanks I missed that. I haven’t read Hesse
An old, rich, out-of-touch director known for making intentionally obscure and pretentious movies sells this one with a sexist, pseudo-archeological rant. Really makes me want to go see it!
EDIT: The more I read this the stupider it gets and the more angry it makes me. How do we know these societies were matriarchal if they didn’t write anything down and didn’t pass on any surviving oral tradition? Why did these matriarchal societies suddenly fail because of horses? How did males invent plagues? Is Coppola suggesting we return to a civilization without writing?!
It just seems to mean that societies with sedentary spirit, construed to focus on construction and maintenance, are threatened by invaders of the conquering spirit.
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.
It's not like The Room. Tommy Wiseau wanted to be Marlon Brando, a serious actor in a serious drama. He just so happened to write the most embarrassingly revealing movie ever made. All his insecurities are laid bare on the screen, and they're presented so transparently that you can't help but laugh.
Megalopolis is like a Neil Breen movie. A power fantasy with magical powers, with a cadre of power-hungry demagogues who must concede to the morality of the main character.
It is NOT a high budget The Room. It's not an amazing movie, but it has some very good parts. Makes me think of the concept behind that book "Javascript, the good parts". Once you take out the flat, and occasionally cringe, parts, there is a lot of good stuff to be seen (unlike Javascript!).
The Room has no good parts - it's all terrible unintended humor.
> 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.
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".
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.
Ah. I took it from an online article about names with connotations of surprise. I thought they might know what they were talking about.
> There is nothing sexier than a megalomaniac architect
I am flattered
--
Does this community have any good insight on this "project and implementation"?
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)
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
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_coll...
[2]: https://movieweb.com/megalopolis-director-reviews-his-own-mo...
Isn't this also what happened with Ghostbuster 2016?
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 (it’s just 20 seconds)
I see, yes, that is a big difference.
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https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/may/14/has-thi...
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News just in!
# Francis Ford Coppola on Books That Influenced “Megalopolis”
https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/francis-ford-c...
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.
Sounds almost like a fever dreamy Fellini movie. A modern satyricon?
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.
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.
I'll bite. In what ways
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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...
Dune is actually pretty baffling and nuts honestly, I think we're just accustomed to it by now.
The released dune movies follow a cliche hero's journey. (At face value)
Talented hero faces tragedy -> adopted by outcasts-> is the promised savior -> learns their ways -> defeats the challenger -> wins heart of ladies -> becomes king.
Dune's wildness is only evident once Paul Atreides' arc ends in a tragedy of galactic proportions ushering an era of worm NSA personified.
At face value
No, they don't. Like the book series they deconstruct the hero's journey. The outcasts only accept him because of his mother. He is the promised savior because of deliberate societal manipulation, something he even repeatedly points out within the movie. He doesn't defeat the challenger; he is the challenger. He repeatedly rejects being a hero and assumes the role of villain, first as a terrorist and latter as a tyrant who leads an invasion that murders millions. And in the movie at least he loses Chani's heart at the end; a deliberate change from the books.
Dune's wildness is only evident once Paul Atreides' arc ends in a tragedy of galactic proportions
This doesn't happen in the books for several thousand years, long after Paul has died.
The jihad Paul unleashes on the Known Universe is a the tragedy of galactic proportions. That it then produces other tragedies is a byproduct.
No, the Fremen jihad was necessary to delay the Golden Path, a series of wars and genocides so violent they would push men to spread our amongst the stars. (Retconned by his son and KJA to provide for pockets of human survival after the robots return to exterminate most of mankind.)
The fact it was ultimately necessary in Paul's reading of the future doesn't mean it's not a tragedy. By your logic, if I can find a future benefit for a genocide, I can't call that a tragedy.
Duncan Idaho.
>What is my purpose.
I don't know, I just like bringing you back to life.
>Oh my god.
Yes.
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)
It's the Swedish version of 'they'
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.
As I remember it, the use of hen came from feminists wanting an ungendered third person pronoun to use for a person of unspecified gender instead of defaulting to male ("han") or writing "han eller hon" (he or she).
It's not exactly a new word, it's borrowed from Finnish, which doesn't have grammatical gender. So it doesn't have the "he or she" problem at all.
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.
In many cultures all things have genders. One can say the solution is to just try to care less, like Russians don't care that a table is male and a rain cloud is female. (Or some can say there is pervasive sexism at grammatical level, idk)
This is amazing.
I was just reading it as if someone from Glasgow was drunkposting.[1]
1: https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/id/6154
Same...
> 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.
Sir, this is a glorified Markov chain
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A cardinal rushes up to a visibly shaken pope, asking if anything happened:
— I have good news and bad news. The good news is: God just spoke with me.
— That's wonderful! But what's the bad news?
— Ble wanted me to use bler pronouns.
https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.htm...
> A cardinal *
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Sin (like that joke)
nominal antideterminism? (although the closest bit of france to the philippines looks to be just off of Queensland: La Nouvelle-Calédonie ... and I guess he'd have to have been Jaime Peche for it to really work)
[in other surfing, "Bongbong" is the 2nd President and 3rd (of 4 current) generation of the Marcos family as a national political dynasty — under the spanish, Fabián Marcos y Galimba was also in politics but only locally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobernadorcillo ]
EDIT: not to say local politics wasn't exciting back then; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariano_Marcos#Nalundasan_murd... et seq
I'm partial to pers myself.
You can judge it as childish but what exactly is harmful about it?
> We're better than that.
You disproved yourself.
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I assumed it’s a chicken reference. Like phrase people say that I just haven’t heard about.
Deborah Ross is a “she” not a “hen” and having read her reviews for many years, I believe I’m on safe ground saying she wouldn’t appreciate the implication of ambiguity or uncertainty in that regard.
Well, I think Dune II from Villeneuve is pretty bad in most aspects.
It just that the cinematography and the soundtrack are so fantastic by themselves, that they make us forget how mediocre is the rest of the movie.
I loved dune 1, was a huge childhood fan of the books, like Villeneuve as director, but still couldn't get into Dune II. The whole move felt like a montage. Not the artistic montage I would hope for, but a clunky montage with forced lines like something from a marvel movie. I got the sense that either critical parts were left of the chopping block or the film was relying on the book knowledge for context cohesion and gravitas.
Instead of feeling exhilarated by scenes of sandworm ridding, I found myself rolling my eyes.
Similarly, I'm ok with modifying the source material to make a story work on screen, but I thought the changes had the opposite effect. They muddled the message and created more narrative issues than they solved.
Also, was #triggered by the voiceovers. In the words of Robert McKee in adaptation (2002) :
>God help you if you use voice over in your work my friends, God help you. It is sloppy flaccid writing. Any idiot can write voiceover narration to explain the thoughts of a character
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQgHNnlmErg
I’m the opposite. I liked Dune, but I loved Dune 2. Villaneuve said that he didn’t think he quite hit the mark with the first movie. He didn’t get in close enough to the characters. He did that in the second movie, and I felt it was more emotionally engaging.
Same here. Dune 1 was gorgeous and accurate to the book, but felt stale and mechanical. Dune 2 came much more alive and vibrant and actually had something to say, although it deviated quite a bit more from the book.
I agree it did zoom in on the characters and have more to say. I just didn't care for the characters, message, or think they were well presented.
The voiceovers may be bad, I don't know, but I don't know what blade runner would be without them. So I generally give them the benefit of a doubt.
One of the only movie quotes I know by heart is a voice over.
"Immediately after making that statement, Royal realized that it was true."
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It reminded me of Southland Tales.
Not a bad thing
Megalopolis is Calamitus Maximus!