Megalopolis
“Don’t let the now destroy the future” -Cesar
Now the real question is, if the future involves this movie, would it be okay if the now did destroy it? This was a movie I truly believed that the critics were being strict and that the movie would actually be great. Around 10 minutes in, I realized that was not the case. For such a talented cast and renowned director, the fact this movie is so poorly thrown together is absurd. The harder part is that you also know what he is trying to accomplish and it just falls flat. It is hard to even find some redeeming qualities. If I had to land on some, the larger than life imagery was fun to look at throughout and Shai LeBeouf is electric. Beyond that, I don’t know if this movie needs to be kicked while it's down anymore, and I am not going to add to that. Overall, an extremely disappointing experience and is bad enough that it's not even worth watching in a ‘bad movie’ world.
-J
There was not a single interesting scene in Megalopolis. The only reason I am giving it a 1/10 and not a 0/10 is because it cast Shia LeBeouf, and, sadly, him playing a fascist Nazi is the only semi-interesting thing about this movie. Going into the watch, Jord said, “well if it’s bad, at least it’s not three hours long”, and yet somehow, this felt like it was FOUR hours long. SPOILERS AHEAD. It’s extremely difficult to understand much of anything in this convoluted mess of a movie, but the hero, Adam Driver, is supposed to be the misunderstood genius, whose grand vision and life’s work is a new kind of city, of which the central premise is golden mostly-horizontal escalators that interconnect everything and move you at a pace that would approximate that of a literal snail. In fact, it’s faster to just walk. They run to and fro these tall spire buildings, that are wrapped with these moving walkways, that have NO GUARDRAILS. Apparently the future is very pro-suicide. Everyone in the movie is against Adam Driver’s vision of the future, and I’m like, THEY’RE RIGHT. And I guess this is how Francis Ford Coppola must feel about himself and Megalopolis. He thinks himself to be Adam Driver. Why would it take the director of Godfather 25 years and 120 million of his own money to get this movie made? Because it’s the worst concept for a movie of all-time. And yet, FFC thinks, “no, it’s everybody else that’s wrong.” Sorry Frank, your swan song just ain’t it. I didn’t think I would watch a movie worse than Madame Web this year, and yet here we are. Madame Web is worse in almost every way than Megalopolis, except enjoyment and Madame Web reached 10/10 levels of it’s so bad it’s good, but Megalopolis is just bad. Our ZEJ 2.67 makes it our lowest rated movie of all-time (of movies that have been rated by the full ZEJ team.).
-Z
