The city of New Rome is on the brink of societal collapse.
Sure, the city’s elite have plenty—plenty of money, plenty of real estate, plenty of sex, drugs, alcohol, you name it. But the one thing they don’t seem to have plenty of—at least in their own heads—is power.
When Cesar Catilina suggests using his newly discovered element, Megalon, to build a utopia right in the center of New Rome, Mayor Cicero and the rest of New Rome’s high and mighty are terrified.
They all certainly like the idea of a flawless society. But they aren’t so interested in sharing it with the rest of New Rome’s plebians.
Unfortunately for them, that’s exactly what Cesar is suggesting. He believes that the newly built Megalopolis will foster a better future for all people, not just those who can afford it. Citizens of Megalopolis will work in tandem to provide long lives, education and liberty not just for themselves but for the whole world.
Cicero doesn’t believe it will work. In fact, he’s pretty much convinced that Cesar is an evil megalomaniac who’s just trying to seize power for himself. And well … Cicero is scared that the changes Cesar intends will bring about the very downfall he’s trying to prevent.
Cicero’s daughter, Julia, doesn’t agree. She believes that Cesar is a genius, and that Megalopolis will save New Rome from the same fate as its namesake.
But if Julia and Cesar are unable to convince New Rome’s elite to give up their power, then the utopia they dream of just may well transform into a dystopia.
The film tells audiences that we should strive to build a better future for the next generation. It encourages people to act generously and to spread love. And it upholds marriage as an institution that should be preserved.
Cesar discovered Megalon, a mysterious substance that grants him the power to control time and space, as he searched for a way to create a utopian society. And it only seems to work as long as Cesar’s vision for Megalopolis is clear. (He briefly loses his powers when he begins to lose hope.) By aligning her hopes and beliefs for a utopia with Cesar’s, Julia also gains the ability to control time and space.
Also worth noting, it seems that Megalon causes both Cesar and Julia to hallucinate at times.
Cesar believes that gods (and by extension, God) are nothing more than the creations of the human mind. And he thinks humans should harness that energy instead, channeling it toward creating a better future. No surprise, really that someone calls Megalopolis “Cesar’s Garden of Eden.”
There is a direct reference to Vesta (Roman goddess of the hearth) and the Vestal Virgins, priestesses who took vows of chastity while they served Vesta and Rome. Julia draws devil’s horns on a picture of Cesar. Characters discuss evolution, and a silhouette depicts apes evolving into humans. People celebrate Christmas, Hannukah and other religious holidays. There’s a reference to “Mother Earth” and other gods.
People speculate that three siblings we see in the film (Clodio, Claudette and Claudine) are all sleeping together. They are sensual, even kissing each other, throughout the film. Clodio dresses as a woman for a party, dancing provocatively with both his sisters and another man. Their other sister, Clodia, is similarly sensual with Julia, even kissing her a couple of times. (She expresses an interest in her cousin, Cesar, too.) Clodio also tries to get close to Julia, kissing her exposed leg (nonconsensually) in one scene and stalking her in others.
A female character named Wow Platinum, a TV reporter, is secretly dating Cesar at the beginning of the film. After learning that Cesar will never marry her, she leaves him for his grandfather, Crassus, the richest man in New Rome. From there, she seduces Crassus’s other grandson, Clodio. (Although Wow is not related to Clodio by blood, she insists he call her “Auntie Wow” as they have sex.) However, she still holds a torch for Cesar and continues to try seducing him even after he marries another woman.
Vesta, a teenage pop star, pledges to remain a virgin until marriage. She and several other teen girls represent the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome. New Rome’s richest citizens participate in a disturbing auction to fund Vesta’s efforts, with the winner seemingly purchasing the right to marry Vesta once she comes of age. Some of the bidders are children themselves, but most are old men, several of whom anger their wives by bidding.
The auction is halted when a video showing Vesta in bed with Cesar is broadcast in New Rome’s coliseum. Shocked audience members (including children) are outraged that Vesta broke her vows of chastity. And Cesar is arrested for statutory rape. However, it’s later revealed that Vesta is 23, not 16. It’s also ascertained that the video was doctored. That said, we still see nudity as the fake Vesta and Cesar try to hide their bodies with bedsheets. (Thereafter, Vesta begins singing songs about sex, adopts an edgier image and has a music video set in a hellscape.)
We see some brief nudity when couples have sex, which happens quite frequently. Women dress scantily throughout the film (including the Vestal Virgins), baring plenty of skin. Many outfits are sheer or reveal more than even swimsuits would, leaving nothing to the imagination. Vesta wears a dress made from Megalon that essentially turns her body invisible. Julia’s father is furious after seeing a picture of her in a tabloid with no clothes on (a black bar covers her breasts).
Julia and Cesar begin dating, much to Mayor Cicero’s chagrin. When Julia becomes pregnant, Cesar asks her to marry him. However, she initially declines since she knows he’s still in love with his late wife and since he’s married to his work. But later on, after their daughter is born, they do wed.
Characters dance provocatively in party scenes throughout the film. In these scenes, female characters frequently kiss and grind their bodies together performatively. There are crass remarks about sex and crude terms for male and female anatomy. Cars drive past sex workers on the street.
We see a woman’s unclothed corpse several times.
Cesar is accused of murdering his wife, but he’s acquitted. Later, it’s revealed that his wife took her own life, driving her vehicle off a bridge. Cesar blames his own “moods and mania” for her actions. She was pregnant with twins at the time, and Cesar (who witnessed it) tried to save her. However, the prosecutor on the case hated Cesar, so he stole her body and accused Cesar of poisoning her.
A man’s goons murder one of his political opponents. Later, they hire a 12-year-old kid to shoot Cesar in the face. (Cesar survives because Julia grafts Megalon onto his face to heal him.) A woman’s husband shoots her in the chest with an arrow. The man then shoots his wife’s lover in the rear end twice (though he survives).
A satellite that was abandoned in space crashes down into New Rome, reportedly killing thousands of people.
A number of scenes depict police officers using batons as they make arrests. In one scene, citizens storm New Rome’s coliseum (and its imagery is clearly meant to evoke the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol).
We see riots and other violence. Two politicians are chased, beaten and strung upside down by angry citizens. People get into several fistfights. We see Cesar’s face covered in cuts and bruises after one such encounter. Threats are issued frequently.
Cesar leans out over the edge of a roof. He nearly falls to his death but uses his Megalon powers to freeze time and space long enough to regain his balance. A trapeze artist seemingly falls without a safety net, but he catches a rope at the last second, revealing the fall to be a practiced stunt.
There are more than 20 uses of the f-word and about seven of the s-word. We also hear a few uses each of “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–nit,” “h—” and “p-ss.” God’s name is abused five times (once paired with “d–n”), and Christ’s name is also abused once. We hear several profane terms for male and female anatomy and some unkind words describing women.
Much of Megalopolis serves as a giant party scene. As such, characters are frequently seen drinking, smoking cigarettes and marijuana, popping pills and snorting powdered drugs. Julia smokes marijuana, blowing the smoke into her best friend’s mouth. A few characters appear to have substance abuse problems.
New Rome’s elite only seem to be concerned with themselves. When Cesar proposes his plan to create Megalopolis, Mayor Cicero resists, purporting that the people need education and sanitation, not wild dreams of the future. However, this seems to be ingenuine, since he was planning to build a casino on the plot of land.
An immigrant neighborhood is destroyed to make way for Megalopolis. New Rome’s elite speak poorly of the people who lived there, calling them “mongrels” and “human garbage.” Clodio uses this to his advantage, running for office on the premise that he’ll fight for New Rome’s downtrodden citizens and return power to them. (There are clear similarities to real world political parties here. One of his supporters carves a swastika into a tree trunk.)
Cesar’s mother doesn’t like her son. Her words toward him and about him are harsh. And she compares him to his father, whom she also didn’t like.
When Julia spies on Cesar, her friend calls it unethical. Characters lie. When a man is called a “womanizer” a woman defends him, blaming his victims. Mayor Cicero attempts to destroy evidence that would exonerate Cesar of a crime he didn’t commit.
Wow seemingly hypnotizes her husband and attempts to do the same to Cesar. She’s manipulative and cunning, taking over her husband’s bank and cutting off his relatives so they’ll do as she wills.
Prior to the premiere of Megalopolis at the New York Film Festival, Francis Ford Coppola (the film’s director) participated in a panel discussion with actor Robert de Niro and director Spike Lee, to discuss his creation process.
Although Coppola is perhaps best known for his work on the Godfather franchise (which de Niro starred in) and Apocalypse Now (which Lee credits as the film that made him want to be a director), Coppola said those films weren’t really his style. So, he began to write Megalopolis in an attempt to figure out what his style was. He envisioned a story that paints modern America as the Roman Republic right on the cusp of becoming the Roman Empire.
If you know your Roman history, the similarities between Coppola’s movie and ancient Rome are quite clear. However, messages get a bit mixed when he tries to draw parallels to the present.
For starters, Coppola began working on Megalopolis almost 50 years ago—and certainly, the United States has changed quite a bit since then. But the film seems to be set in the 1920s with heavy Roman influences and a just sprinkling of modern science and political imagery.
Megalopolis challenges audiences to build a better future for the next generation. In fact, that seems to be Coppola’s primary message. Unfortunately, it gets lost in translation, since much of the plot instead serves as subtext for not so subtly deconstructing today’s political landscape. (Which culminates in a slide at the film’s end rewriting the Pledge of Allegiance.)
Coppola’s message is further mired by graphic sexual scenes, nudity, foul language and heavy drug and alcohol use by the film’s characters.
But what really struck me about Megalopolis—besides the fact that the film doesn’t really seem to know where it’s going or what it wants to say—is how hopeless it feels.
God has no presence in this film. In fact, Cesar’s whole push for his utopia is based on the belief that humans fabricated gods in their minds and that we should instead harness that creativity toward bettering the world. He suggests that we simply should stop being selfish and start acting more generously. In effect, the story wants us to achieve the fruit of the Spirit without actually embodying the Holy Spirit. And in so doing, Megalopolis forgets—or perhaps denies—entirely the reality that humans are flawed, sinful creatures in desperate need of a Savior.
And, man, that’s a pretty bleak outlook in an already convoluted film.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!
