MEGALOPOLIS

Name: MEGALOPOLIS
Item: MEGALOPOLIS
Author: Review

"Naïve Marxist Utopia"

Family Content: -4 Intentional blasphemy, evil, gross immorality, and/or worldview problems. (To be avoided)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

MEGALOPOLIS is GODFATHER director Francis Ford Coppola’s satirical fantasy of American society. The movie reimagines New York City as a corrupt, modern New Rome. Adam Driver plays Ceasar, a visionary architect trying to craft his own Utopia for the peoples of Earth to emulate. The mayor, Cicero, hates Ceasar’s vision. He’s rather build a casino. When Caesar falls in love with the Mayor’s daughter, Julia, he raises the Mayor’s ire. He also creates jealousy in his cousin and in a jilted mistress, who’s seduced Caesar’s wealthy uncle, and the cousin’s grandfather, into marrying her.

MEGALOPOLIS sometimes descends into silly melodrama. For example, Caesar’s rich uncle suddenly pulls out a little bow and arrow and murders a deceitful relative. MEGALOPOLIS also has a strong humanist, godless worldview and a dark view of American society. Eventually, it envisions a vague, secular Marxist utopia that’s incredibly naïve. Also, however, the two jealous young villains in MEGALOPOLIS are destroyed by their incestuous relationship, which is defined by lust, greed, jealousy, and revenge. MEGALOPOLIS also has lots of strong foul language and a lewd incest scene.

Content:

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Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong humanist worldview promotes a one-world Marxist, communist, technocrat utopia, with two or so positive references to evolution with some moral, redemptive latitudes and two or three vague references to God (the main character is a technocrat and at one point holds up a glowing T-square that looks like a cross, thus he’s partly a humanist messianic figure in the movie), but set in a Roman pagan civilization with two or so references to “the gods,” the movie halfway mocks America but in a way that seems intended to lean toward the humanist utopia promoted at the end (a shot at the end displays a pledge of allegiance to a vague one-world utopia where the pledge is patterned after the American Pledge of Allegiance but says “one earth, indivisible” while leaving out the phrase “under God,” plus the movie seems to have a Romantic philosophy about architecture and art that promotes one’s characters personal vision and there are some lesbian and cross-dressing homosexual elements;

Foul Language:

About 33 obscenities (about 21 or 22 “f” words), two profanities using the name of Jesus, one GD profanity, and about seven light profanities such as OMG, OG and “for G’s sake”;

Violence:

A character is shot dead in the heart with an arrow, another character is shot in the back and buttocks with two or three arrows but survives, a man is shot in the head but is rushed to the hospital where a surgeon uses new medical DNA technology to save his life and restore his face, man shot in head (while still healing) has a bandage over his wound and screams in pain in one scene whole taking to another person, some fight and beating people up scenes, an old nuclear-powered Soviet satellite falls to Earth in fiery pieces over New York City and destroys some buildings and areas;

Sex:

Lengthy, extreme sex scene with no nudity but with partially depicted, incestuous oral sex and partially depicted incestuous fornication between grandson and his elderly grandfather’s young wife, implied fornication between the main character and the mayor’s daughter (they have a baby together, but no marriage ceremony is shown), younger woman marries the main character’s rich and powerful elderly uncle (she’s in love with the main character, but he rejects her in favor of the mayor’s daughter, and she plots her revenge), the main character’s younger cousin often dresses in drag during the movie’s first part (there are some implications he’s “bisexual” but he ends up having an affair and (apparently – it’s unclear) marrying his elderly grandfather’s devious young wife, two young women are seen kissing one another in some scenes and are often seen together, it’s said in the movie that the public thinks that the young people in the super wealthy family in the movie engages in incest, and young woman lies about her age to pose as a “Vestal Virgin” to receive social perks but she’s exposed and disgraced;

Nudity:

Upper female nudity during faked fornication scene created by young villain to scandalize his older cousin, a slightly older rival in their powerful family, upper female nudity during morgue scene as a woman’s body is slid out of a morgue drawer, and images of upper male nudity and female cleavage (in one scene a young woman is scantily dressed when a man comes to see her; it’s implied they’ve been having an affair);

Alcohol Use:

Some alcohol use and the main character gets drunk in one scene (he also is shown snorting cocaine);

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Some cigarette smoking, and the main character goes on a binge where he’s shown snorting cocaine at least twice (he also gets drunk), plus the main character is haunted by his wife’s overdose death (her body disappears, and he was charged with her murder, but he was acquitted before, so a question is whether or not he murdered her – they apparently had some kind of disagreement); and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Man admits to taking and destroying a dead body, young woman manipulates her elderly husband to gain control of his fortune and do fraudulent things with it, revenge, jealousy, and young man uses artificial intelligence to falsely frame his cousin, the main character (whom he hates), but the truth is quickly uncovered and the cousin survives the fraudulent sex scandal.

More Detail:

MEGALOPOLIS is GODFATHER director Francis Ford Coppola’s satirical fantasy of American society, where New York City is reimagined as a corrupt, modern New Rome where a visionary architect is trying to craft his own Utopia for the peoples of Earth to emulate. MEGALOPOLIS sometimes descends into silly melodrama and has a strong humanist, godless worldview and a dark view of American society that envisions a vague, secular Marxist utopia that’s incredibly naïve, but where the movie’s two young villains are destroyed by their incestuous relationship defined by lust, greed, jealousy, and revenge.

The character names in MEGALOPOLIS are taken from a relatively minor political skirmish in Ancient Rome in 63 BC. However, that’s pretty much all that the movie takes from the historical incident, which involved the Roman political leader, statesman and philosopher Cicero.

Adam Driver of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS and HOUSE OF GUCCI plays the central character, Caesar Catilina, a visionary architect in charge of the City of New Rome’s Design Authority. Fairly quickly, Caesar clashes with the city’s mayor, Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito of BREAKING BAD and BETTER CALL SAUL. Caesar wants to build a utopian housing development with shops and parks, but Mayor Cicero wants to build a big casino instead. Caesar publicly angers the older Cicero by calling him a slumlord.

Meanwhile, during the major demolition of some old apartments, Mayor Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), witnesses Caesar actually stopping time while the buildings are wracked by explosions. Intrigued by her father’s rival, Julia goes to work for Cicero and becomes enamored with his genius. At the same time, Caesar becomes enamored with her own creative talents, even though he was skeptical at first.

Their relationship becomes more romantic. This creates jealousy in Caesar’s former mistress, a flashy TV reporter calling herself Wow Platinum, played by Aubrey Plaza. It also creates jealousy with Caesar’s cousin, Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), who hates Caeser and is attracted to Julia. Clodio is a prima donna and iconoclast who likes to wear Roman-style dresses. Clodio’s the grandson of Caesar’s super wealthy uncle, Hamilton Crassus III, played by Jon Voight.

Clodio becomes intent on destroying his cousin. Meanwhile, Wow Platinum seduces Clodio’s elderly grandfather and Caesar’s uncle, Hamilton, into marrying her.

The stage is set for a five-sided romantic conflict, but the story just becomes a power struggle between Caesar and Mayor Cicero and between Caesar and Clodio. Happily, in the movie’s second half, Clodio forgoes the dresses and becomes more of an upstart political rival on the rise.

Eventually, though, Clodio teams up with his grandfather’s ambitious young wife. Ultimately, they are destroyed by their incestuous relationship, which is defined by lust, greed, jealousy, and revenge.

Overall, MEGALOPOLIS is Francis Ford Coppola’s dark, abhorrent Neo-Marxist vision of current American society, including its free enterprise system. He depicts the society in New Rome as run by greed and corruption. Strangely, Caesar’s younger rival, Clodio, tries to gather support by appealing to the people displaced by Caesar’s utopian vision. “Power to the people,” he shouts to the people who’ve lost their homes. Some pundits have compared Clodio to Donald Trump, but it’s actually Caesar who more closely resembles Donald Trump because he’s a visionary architect trying to build new things. (The movie suggests that Caesar gets money from his wealthy uncle to follow his architectural dreams.) As such, Caesar also resembles the architect in Ayn Rand’s novel THE FOUNTAINHEAD, but Caesar has an altruistic motive for building Megalopolis. He wants to create a utopia for everyone.

Be that as it may, Coppola’s movie, MEGALOPOLIS, ultimately envisions a vague, secular Marxist utopia. Coppola even invents a Marxist pledge of allegiance, an inversion of the American Pledge of Allegiance. In the movie’s Marxist pledge, people pledge allegiance to a one-world communist utopia, “one earth, indivisible, with justice, “education” and equality for all. This vision is incredibly naïve. It suggests a Marxist, Romantic view of human nature. Also, it fails to take into account the biblical truth in Genesis 8:21 that “the intent of man’s heart is evil from, his youth.” Notice also, that Coppola omits the words “under God” in his little utopian pledge to a united earth. Without God, can there really be true peace and love, not to mention justice?

MEGALOPOLIS sometimes descends into silly melodrama. At one point, for instance, a wounded Caesar moans loudly, “No, no, no, no!” In another, his rich uncle suddenly pulls out a little bow and arrow and murders a deceitful relative. There’s also a lengthy, incestuous sex scene between the grandson and his grandfather’s young wife. The movie also includes a smattering of “f” words and a few strong profanities.