Ouch.Francis Ford Coppola’sMegalopolisis well on its way to becoming one of the biggest box office bombs in the history of cinema, following an opening weekend that can best be described as underwhelming, but at worst, dead on arrival.The $120 million-budgeted filmgrossed a disastrous $4 million from 1,854 theaters in its opening weekend — international numbers have not been made available at the time of writing.
Megalopoliscurrently holds a “rotten” 49% critics score on the aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, while its audience response stands at a similarly underwhelming 41%. The movie starsAdam Driver,Forest Whitaker,Nathalie Emmanuel,Jon Voight,Laurence Fishburne,Aubrey Plaza,Shia LaBeouf,Jason Schwartzman,Grace VanderWaal,Kathryn Hunter,Talia Shire,Dustin Hoffman,D.B. Sweeney, andGiancarlo Esposito,
Is ‘Megalopolis’ Worth Seeing?
Honestly, a movie with such a divisive score is probably worth seeing to make your own judgments. But in terms of audience appeal? It doesn’t look good. Not only is it underperforming commercially, but it’s also tanking with audiences, who’veawarded it a tragically low D+CinemaScore. Sometimes, that can be a good thing. It gets attention from people who might think “It’s so bad, it’s good.” But that is not something that seems to be happening.
In his review, Collider’sChase Hutchinsonlikened the film to “a Rorschach test where everything is a stretch and nothing has any substance to it," but did concede the film was watchable. He wrote:
“With all this being said,the film is watchable. In fact, the competency of the whole thing ends up cutting both ways. On the one hand, you’re often watching fairly standard scenes play out with a handful of actors who’ve done great work before while attempting to do so here. You’re not watching the film come apart as much as it is just carrying on in a repetitive register. On the other hand, there is something that feels more stodgy than subversive the longer it goes on. This is a film that could have been alienating and challenging, pushing us either on a formal or thematic level. Instead, it doesn’t come close to doing either.
Much like the city being built in the film, it’s all more interesting in theory than it ever is in actuality. Now that we will all have the chance to take it in for ourselves, thegreatest revelation is that there just isn’t that much to see.”
Megalopolisis currently playing in theaters now.
Megalopolis
An architect wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster.
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