By Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” has become something of a poster child for how divisive and polarizing a film can be.
On critical aggregate sites, it sits at an approval rating of 51% on Rotten Tomatoes after 146 reviews, and a 56/100 on Metacritic after 57 reviews. Audience scores are similarly varied; on the latter, it’s a literal even spread with 40% positive, 20% mixed and 40% negative – resulting in a 4.9/10.
CinemaScore grades are all about expectations met and the film’s D+ CinemaScore suggests its really baffled quite a few who went and saw it. Other notable films to have earned that particular score include “Punch-Drunk Love,” “Hereditary,” “Closer,” “Haywire,” “The Thirteenth Floor,” “Alexander,” “Battlefield Earth” and “Borderlands”.
Speaking with Forbes about the response, Coppola says the reactions to film mimic the reactions to his 1979 classic “Apocalypse Now” – namely ‘ambivalent confusion’:
“The truth is that I find the experience of Megalopolis existing and being seen by an audience very similar to what it was like when I made Apocalypse Now. When Apocalypse Now came out, people saw it and said, ‘Wow, what the hell is it?’ There was an ambivalent confusion because it was clearly a film not made with any rules.”
He adds that he’s fine with the film not being an immediate hit and expects people will wait and discover it, or rewatch it and get a new appreciation for it:
People don’t expect to see food or drinks that are made without rules. Coca-Cola tastes like Coca-Cola, and they don’t like it if you change it, but movies are also meant to be a certain kind of experience.
With Apocalypse Now, the experience was like, ‘Wow. I have got to see it again.’ People went to see it again because it wasn’t boring; it was unusual, and they’re still seeing it 40 years later.
The same thing has happened with Megalopolis. Because it’s not really boring, they’re willing to see it again. My hunch is that people are going to see it again, and each time they see it, it becomes a different movie because it has a lot in it that is not apparent in the first viewing.”
Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman, Shia LaBeouf, Talia Shire, Grace VanderWaal, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, and Giancarlo Esposito co-star in the film which is in cinemas now.
The post Coppola Talks The “Megalopolis” Reaction appeared first on Dark Horizons.
