One thing I always ask myself when I sit down to review a movie is, “Is everyone who worked on this okay?” The last thing I want is to see the actors, crew members, directors, and writers have their time wasted on a project that just didn’t come together.
And so, while I can’t say I enjoyed Megalopolis, I can’t fault it too hard. It doesn’t seem like it took too long to throw together, so hopefully everyone involved can just collect a paycheck and move on. It’s important to judge movies on a scale, and when you have an indie B-movie that was clearly rushed through production, you have to give it a little more leeway than you would something that took years upon years and over a hundred million dollars to develop.
The movie, written and directed by some journeyman named Francis Copperfield, takes place in a futuristic world that draws most of its inspiration from Blade Runner and Gladiator. Adam Driver plays Cesar, a character named after the protagonist of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Cesar is an architect who can stop time, an obvious nod to X-Men: Days of Future Past, and he wants to use his power to build a utopian city. Copperfield is definitely drawing inspiration from Bioshock, here.
Note that Copperfield is cobbling together a lot of ideas from popular films and video games from the last thirty or so years, so it’s safe to say he’s pretty green to this whole screenwriting thing, and most likely, he was under a lot of pressure to get this thing up on its feet in a very short amount of time. It’s not like he put decades of thought, preparation, and his own money into it. He’s trying his best, guys. Let’s give the kid a chance.
But again, I’m glad he didn’t spend too much time working on this silly project, and I hope the money and exposure he gets from this project gives him the power to work on something he really cares about. I mean, hey! He got to work with Adam Driver! That’s gonna look great on his resume! This movie might not be a critical darling, but I’m sure Copperfield won’t mind once he gets to work on his real dream project.
Megalopolis is in theaters now.
