The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. A film by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Grace VanderWaal, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, and Dustin Hoffman.

In an alternate universe, New Rome stands as the world’s greatest city, dominated by elite patrician families. Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), an architect and Chairman of the city’s Design Authority, won the Nobel Prize for inventing a miracle building material called Megalon. He also possesses the ability to control time, though his power is limited to stopping and rewinding it — he cannot move time forward. Curiously, he never uses this ability to advance his work, and his time-controlling power serves almost no purpose in the film’s narrative.

After a night of partying at a club, socialite Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), a brilliant young woman, encounters Cesar as he oversees the demolition of several building complexes. Julia is startled when she witnesses Cesar’s ability to stop time — everything around him freezes, including his team and the collapsing buildings suspended in midair. It appears that Julia possesses some kind of magical powers herself, as Cesar’s ability has no effect on her.

At a televised event, Cesar’s sworn enemy Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) reveals his vision for the city’s future: a casino-driven city. Moments later, Cesar arrives with his own proposal — a city built entirely of Megalon that he calls Megalopolis, promising to create something that will truly inspire people’s dreams.

The film reveals that years before becoming mayor, Cicero served as District Attorney and prosecuted Cesar for the murder of his wife, Sunny Hope, after her mysterious disappearance. Although Cesar was cleared of all charges, Cicero remains convinced that Cesar poisoned Sunny and concealed her body.

TV presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), Cesar’s mistress, declares her love for him and her desire to become his wife. However, Cesar, still pining for Sunny, has no intention of remarrying. Hurt by his rejection, Wow leaves Cesar and instead marries his wealthy uncle Hamilton Crassus III, the CEO of Crassus National Bank.

The next day, Julia confronts Cesar about his cruel and insulting treatment of her father, the mayor. As she’s about to leave, she turns and tells Cesar that she witnessed him manipulating the laws of physics. Intrigued that someone has finally discovered his time-controlling ability, Cesar shows Julia his designs for the futuristic city of Megalopolis. Impressed by his vision, Julia accepts a position as his personal assistant.

At home, Julia searches through her father’s case files and discovers details about Cesar Catilina’s murder trial. She finds news clips revealing that Sunny Catalina’s body was found in a submerged car registered to Cesar, but had mysteriously disappeared from the morgue.

One evening, Cesar asks his driver Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishburne) — who serves as both his assistant and the film’s narrator — to take him to purgatory. Meanwhile, Julia and her friend Balin (AJ Caba) follow Cesar’s car, hoping to uncover his dark secrets. In his limo, Cesar’s jealous cousin Clodio Pulcher, who harbors an unrequited crush on Julia, spots Julia in a car and decides to follow.

Cesar enters a shrine-like bedroom attended by three housekeepers, a nurse, and a harp player. In the center of the room, Sunny (Haley Sims) lies motionless in bed, her body glowing. As Cesar sits beside her and begins braiding her hair, though unconvincingly, Julia manages to slip past the security guard and reaches the bedroom.

There’s literally a laser-based alarm system installed at the building’s entrance, like something straight out of a classic heist film, though its inclusion in the story remains unclear.

Julia finds Cesar sitting beside an empty bed in a vacant room. Looking at the mirror, she is overwhelmed to see Sunny’s reflection lying in the bed, and realizes that Cesar remains trapped in his love for his dead wife.

At Madison Square amphitheater, Cesar and Julia attend the extravagant wedding of Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) and Wow Platinum, where Cesar becomes heavily intoxicated.

Unbeknownst to them, Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) plots to destroy Cesar’s reputation by presenting an altered video that appears to show Cesar engaging in a sexual relation with New Rome’s teenage pop star, Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal), who is known for her virgin persona. The video leads to Cesar’s immediate arrest on charges of unlawful intercourse with a minor.

Crassus remains oblivious to Clodio’s involvement in the faked video, though he expresses suspicion about Clodio’s motives, noting that his nephew has harbored jealousy toward Cesar since childhood. (This plot point strains credibility — there were numerous witnesses in the control room where Clodio forced the staff to play the video. The fact that Crassus is unaware of these obvious circumstances feels so unconvincingly annonying.)

Cesar is quickly cleared of all charges after Julia and Clodia Pulcher (Chloe Fineman) break into the city’s records office and discover documents revealing that Vesta was born in Indonesia and moved to New Rome at age six. The records prove that Vesta is actually 23 years old, not a minor as she had claimed to be.

Written and directed by American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, MEGALOPOLIS is an ambitious film that blends epic science fiction with family drama. The story envisions a utopia inspired by the Roman Republic, but a family feud threatens to destroy everything.

While aesthetically pleasing, the city often feels more surreal and abstract than a grounded futuristic metropolis, instead resembling the kind of conceptual designs one might find on Dezeen or in an architectural firm’s client presentation.

The film’s visual presentation is equally unusual, with the director frequently employing a three-panel split screen — sometimes filled with a montage of moving images, other times oddly showing just one or two visuals while maintaining the triple-panel format.

Despite its grand aspirations, the film fails to deliver either as an decent science fiction tale or a memorable drama, largely due to an incoherent story that juggles too many ideas without bringing any of them to a satisfying conclusion.

MEGALOPOLIS premiered at Festival de Cannes on 16 May 2024 where it was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or. It was theatrically released in the United States on 27 September, by Lionsgate. The film grossed less than $13 million worldwide against its $130 million production budget.