Budget: $120 million [source]
Opening weekend gross: $4 million
Factoring in marketing costs and the theaters taking their cut of the profits, Megalopolis would need to make at least $300 million to break even. I think it’s safe to say that’s not happening.
It would have been THE worst opening for a $100 million movie ever, had it not been for Pluto Nash’s horriffic opening 22 years ago.
Even The New York Times is reporting near-empty screenings of Megalopolis!
It’s definitely worth watching. I can’t say I fully understood it on one watch, the time stopping ability is clearly a metaphor, but I’m not settled on what for yet.
It started with Caesar, then passed collaboratively to his wife, then their baby.
Edit I’ve been thinking about it tonight and I think I have it…
At the start, the Architect can stop time, as an architect, he has the ability to form a lasting, permanent impression on the world around him. His posterity as it were.
Through the film, he loses that level of influence, and similarly loses the ability to stop time.
When he falls in love, he regains a level of influence over his destiny, and so does she. They can stop time together, but not separately.
The film ends with their baby stopping time, as his permanent impact on the world has been transferred to a new generation. Father and mother are frozen in time as the baby moves forward.
Edit Having now seen it a 2nd time on UHD, yes, I think I had it right.
Bonus - the UHD is not avaiable in the US, but it is region free if you import it from the UK. The Blu Ray that comes with it has the bonus features and it’s region locked, but that’s a solvable problem.
Pretty sad, this was apparently Coppola’s drram movie he always wanted to make
I wonder if it’s any good, all I hear is how little money it made like that means anything to anyone but the producers.
It’s bad. If it was good, the story would have been pretty different.
Obviously some people will still like it. But even those will have to admit it’s an incredible mess, and it shows why no company wanted to invest in it.
https://wikiless.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films?lang=en
Clearly /s
My money is still on it being a masterpiece and people being morons.
wikiless.org is using a TLS cert that expired in February.
I don’t know the project very well but if they’ve been giving cert errors for half a year it might be time to link directly to Wikipedia.
I’m on LibRedirect so I didn’t give it much of a thought.
Apparently ( https://github.com/Metastem/wikiless ) the domain is supposed to be https://wikiless.chaosmos.io
https://wikiless.chaosmos.io/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films?lang=en <- this seems good, I’ll edit the previous link.
What’s wrong with just linking to Wikipedia?
Personally, a healthy habit not to rely on lazy patterns, and it possibly helps people that may be browsing from a place where wikipedia is censored.
But a much less stupid explanation can be found here: https://github.com/whereismybugfix/wikiless#why-i-should-use-wikiless-instead-of-wikipedia
I saw it hoping this was the case, but sadly it’s just not very good. I loved the visuals, the ambition, and his commitment to try and breakout of traditional storytelling methods, but the ham-fisted handling of the subject matter really ruined it for me. By all means see it for yourself and be your own judge but I wouldn’t go in expecting an underrated masterpiece.
The only people I have seen saying good things about it, are the same people who think hating what’s popular is a personality trait.
its annoyingly complex with little payoff. i know watching it a few times will bring it into focus, but thats a weird requirement.
Not with Coppola, Apocalypse Now requires several watches, including the re-releases, directors cut, etc
It’s bad. It’s bad and we’ve been knowing this for months, as it premiered in some festival.
It’s so bad no distributors wanted any piece of the cake (because the necessary costs are astronomical).
AFAIK, the movie received a 10-minute standing ovation at Cannes. It is an art film first and foremost, and probably not for the general audience that flocks to the same old, boring formulaic movies a la Marvel & co.
Every movie at Cannes gets a ten minute standing ovation. That’s normal.
I’m excited to see this though. But I’m not going to go to the theatre for it.
But I’m not going to go to the theatre for it.
Same here, and frankly I will never again think it is surprising that a theatrical release is underperforming. Doesn’t matter which film. Theaters are underperforming because of many factors.
I can buy my own copy of the film for less than it would take for me and one other person to see it together once in a theater.
Which is why for someone like me who always hated theaters for the crowded seats and annoying people and noises, it’s never been better! Subscription to see movies whenever I want, and usually less than 10 people in the theater. It’s great.
Yeah, I can understand that. While I will mourn the death of the theater experience, it has been a very slow death. It has not really been the experience I remember for a long time.
A 10-minute ovation is not a notable statistic at Cannes. The Beaver got a 10-minute ovation. I dare anyone to remember even one thing about The Beaver without looking it up.
Not only that, they would give FFC one at Cannes for his name alone.
Edit: what I remember about “The Beaver” doesn’t fit with Cannes, maybe AVN awards :P
He sexually harassed extras on set. I’m glad this pretentious asshole loses his money.
Not really sad. Coppola is an artist, first and foremost, and he said that he doesn’t care whether the film will be financially successful. It is a passion project financed at least partially from his own money, and to be his magnum opus.
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I have no idea what this movie is about. So I watched the trailer.
Star Wars Episode XIII: Avengers of Ben Hur?
I have no idea what this movie is about.
I also have zero idea what the movie poster is. It looks like Adam Driver is holding a Pizza Hut logo on a stick in front of the world’s most generic mess of golden polygons. I guess that’s some sort of construction tool?
It’s a t square. It’s to get straight lines over a distance
No idea why he’s holding it
Its not a compass and a L square, so you get architect/engineer but not masonic?
Looks like a drafting square to be more specific.
For the old school draftsman working with pencil on a table.
Yup that’s exactly what it is. Which nobody would know even 30+ years ago, much less now.
The poster remembers me of the 1984 Apple commercial, whicht also fits bulding a better future. But that’s totally wrong.
The Rifftracks version of this movie is going to be so fire.
Yes!!!
This is the first time I’m hearing about this movie, likely terrible advertising plan
Really? I’ve been hearing about it for months. It was having trouble finding a distributor for theaters, despite the budget and the star power, which was seen as a bad sign. It’s being marketed as Francis Ford Coppola’s last big budget movie.
Literally never heard this movie was being made except for 2 posts here, both of which happened after the movie opened in theaters. Marketing team obviously wasn’t doing shit.
Considering he had to finance everything himself, there wasn’t a ton of marketing and it’s a very controversial movie (in the sense that no one wanted to help him with financing/releasing it)
I only know about it because Aubrey Plaza has been around the latenight shows
“A Fable”
The pretension
Are these Studios just getting ripped off by marketing? I literally never saw an ad for this. The first time I saw a trailer for this film was in an article about how bad it was bombing. Where was all the marketing money going?
Every second or third post on Lemmy is about privacy or ad-blocking or piracy or pi-holes or bitching about ad injection.
Not that any of that is a bad thing. (The bitching isn’t bad, the things are.)
But you can’t be surprised when you don’t hear about shit. When you reclaim your eye-holes from Madison avenue you need to seek things out.
I’m not sure where on Earth you got the impression that I only consume media through Lemmy.
I’m not sure where on earth you got the impression that I thought that.
On Lemmy.
Where on lemmy did I suggest that?
yeah but this is a movie, not a product. we usually hear about them from people, not necessarily ads. we might not see many ads but other people we talk to and hear from do, and practically no one in my life and media consumption talks about it. compare that to Barbie.
Talking to other people is part of what I mean by seeking things out. If you do all you can to avoid ads, along with the 99% that are useless you also block the 1% that you might actually find useful.
For example; I recently heard about this show from a friend that is right up my alley. When I looked up a trailer it’s the kind of thing that seeing a commercial once would have caught my eye and ensured I watch it. She was surprised I hadn’t heard of it because it’s on a network with a few shows she knows I like and they’ve been pimping it pretty hard for a while. Because I block the bullshit I either have to hope cool stuff comes up in conversation or seek out new stuff elsewhere.
The trailer made it seem like the kind of pretentiously boring mess that the director seemed to think had some profound message that I tend to really dislike.
Or put more simply, “Looks like the director set $120 million on fire to win Oscars, not make something entertaining.”
From what I’m hearing, one of the antagonists is a thinly veiled Rupert Murdoch. Sounds like $120 million to pretentiously explain that Fox News is bad to an audience who figured that out two decades ago.
Thinly veiled Rupert Murdoch?
Bah, 007 did it 27 years ago.
I really wanted Megalopolis to be good, but I never had high hopes for it. I’ll probably still watch it eventually because it has a bunch of actors in it that I love + I’m a sucker for future megacities in movies and games (I’m still not over the fact that they cancelled the Star Wars game that was supposed to take place on the lower levels of Coruscant)
It got a lot of controversial press before its release and I can’t really recall hearing what the movie is about or it being any good.
Something something new Rome something something super powers that are useless something something the end
I still don’t know if it was overly pretentious garbage or an enlightening allegory of the current state of the world. But watching it was definitely an experience. The cast is great, and I found it visually beautiful and interesting.
I think its firmly both. There are a lot of great ideas in the movie, and they come across really well when you discuss it. But its also a mess of a film that cares more about allegory and metaphor than narrative.
But its also a mess of a film that cares more about allegory and metaphor than narrative.
So…a Terrence Malick film?
The Thin Red Line had a pretty straightforward narrative: dudes getting shot and blowed up.
I liked it. It was kind of a mess, but it was interesting, thought provoking, and visually very good. As much as there are improvements that could be made or changes to make it more palatable to a wider audience, I’d prefer the weird way it is, and especially movies like this over the next Disney/Corporate Movie Product TM
The worst part about this movie is you can’t even see the original in search results anymore. Like it never existed.
Are matey, I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, I gottit
I had to add original to get it to come up before 3 pages deep. 😟
Marketing?
Adam Driver?
The one, the only.
Promotional campaign brought to you by the same team that worked on Concord.
No shit, had seen only one weird trailer for this movie before it came out.
And Dredd with Karl Urban (which is a shame, the movie didn’t get the attention it deserved).
