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 after 146 reviews, and a 56/100 on 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 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.
