Warning: This article contains spoilers.

“Megalopolis is a lot of things, and one of them is like if Baz Luhrman[sic] made a Batman movie but lost the rights halfway through production.” That’s how X user @danielleradford describes Francis Ford Coppola’s new film, Megalopolis, which made its big-screen debut on September 27th and has yet to earn back even ten percent of its 120-million-dollar budget.

The movie follows architect Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) in his quest to transform New Rome into a utopian city known as “Megalopolis” using a mysterious resource called “Megalon.” He simultaneously balances his romance with Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) and venomous feud with her father, Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants to maintain New Rome’s status quo of greed, division, and safe haven for the wealthy. In short, the primary conflict—which is immediately lost to the film’s overly complex storyline—is “stop the mayor from building another casino!”

Starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Shia Labeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, America’s Got Talent winner Grace VanderWaal, and Francis Ford Coppola’s granddaughter, Romy Mars, Megalopolis truly has everything. In fact, it probably has too much—it’s bloated with excessive B-plots, countless tropes, and what is probably an hour’s worth of dramatic montages, including but not limited to an inexplicable multicultural winter holiday sequence and a series of shots that follow news anchor Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) as she seduces her boyfriend’s uncle. The movie is so overwhelmed with content that Megalon’s properties are never clarified and Cesar’s baffling ability to stop time is solely explored as a romantic plot device. Honestly, it’s easy to see why Coppola had to sell his vineyard to obtain any funding for this project.

While marketed as a dramatic science fiction film and “new Roman epic,” Megalopolis pushes genre boundaries, exploring romance, political satire, crime, comedy, dystopia, and something akin to a musical in each of its strange side plots. It also engages in some of the most heavy-handed symbolism we have ever seen. In one scene, when a statue holding scales crumbles, Julia says, “we’re surrounded by injustice.” In another, a wealthy banker (Jon Voight) donates all of his money to the titular Megalopolis project while dressed as Robin Hood. It feels like Coppola doesn’t trust the audience to make connections on their own, and instead works overtime to make every small choice as painstakingly obvious as possible.

On the other hand, he certainly expects viewers to understand the glut of allusions he weaves into the storyline. However, most—bar a lengthy Shakespeare monologue and the obvious references to Julius Caesar and Cicero in his characters’ names—are incredibly obscure, paying tribute to the Roman Republic in the 50s B.C.E., a time period which few people are familiar with. 

Somehow, on top of all of these allusions and symbols, Coppola manages to fit in an astounding number of tropes, including an accidental pregnancy (after which the baby is promptly forgotten), a fake-out death (in which Cesar is shot in the face by a twelve-year-old and inexplicably saved by Megalon), and more dead wife montages than are even used in parodies of the dead wife trope itself (she is introduced with no context when the Mayor jarringly accuses Caesar of killing her and turning her into Megalon). 

Though not featured at our screening, Megalopolis is also meant to incorporate a staged “audience interaction” segment where a theater employee asks Cesar scripted questions in a poorly-executed mock interview. If any employees have actually taken part in this, they deserve a serious raise.

While certainly a confusing film to watch, it was still entertaining. Our unironic favorite part was the score, which lent a touch of genuine emotion to a film that made us want to laugh and cry all at once. It also had a generous amount of harp, which one of us is very partial to. 

Overall, we would rate this film with a massive question mark. Some things break the numerical rating scale.