Fascinating Failures and Megalopolis

What the hell is this thing about

As Patrick H. Willems once said, “All movies are about something (except Ghostbusters).” There is a core theme, or idea, at the center of the movie, even one as simple as “man vs nature” in Jaws. When a movie works, the plot and the story (which are different things) are used to express that theme. Let’s look at themes and stories in some of our other Big Bombs for examples.

Babylon

The Theme: assimilation and its costs, both to those who try to fit in to a more confined society and those who cannot or will not, and trying to hold back mortality by becoming part of something grander that will outlast you.

Plot: A movie star, a rising ingenue, a day labourer-turned-producer, and a horn player try to navigate the changing landscape of Hollywood at the end of the Silent Era.

Story: The dawn of sound is insignificant compared to the creeping rise of conservatism as William Randolph Hearst and his cronies take over. The parties get tamer, the sets more controlled, the industry way less diverse. Nellie LaRoy’s free-wheeling party girl nature stops being her draw and becomes a liability; Manuel Torres becomes “Manny” because “Manny from Spain” can be a movie producer but Manuel from Mexico can’t; black jazz musician Sidney Palmer must ask if he even wants to be part of a system that makes extreme demands of him to cater to the segregated South. Society becomes more rigid and those who can’t fit into it are pushed aside and into the shadows.

Babylon is actually really good, you guys, it’s a trip but it’s good.

Cats

The Theme: as Lord Andy said…

Sums it up

“Hal, it’s about cats.”

The Plot: It’s the Jellicle Ball, in which one Jellicle Cat will become the Jellicle Choice and be whisked off to the Heaviside Layer to die and be born again in a new life, no several of those words aren’t words but that’s not my fault. Evil cat Macavity wants to be the Jellicle Choice and tries to take his competition off the board. If we’re being honest the movie tried a little too hard to give this a clear plot.

The Story: former house cat Victoria is ushered into Jellicle Cat society, guided by would-be paramour Mr. Mistoffelees and all-purpose narrator Munkustrap. She meets some cats and stuff happens and I guess she is a Jellicle Cat which… is good? Maybe? It’s hard to know. Judi Dench sings right into the camera about how cats are not dogs, this goes on for like five minutes and it’s uncomfortable.

Cats is a train wreck, you guys, absolute train wreck.

So see if you can guess which one Megalopolis is closer to in terms of carrying out its themes.

Those themes? How empires fall, and how they can be saved, from a filmmaker who thinks America is on the verge of being ruled by an emperor.

The very start of the movie informs us this is a fable, an allegory, an examination of issues divorced from the world as we know it, a disclaimer that does about as much to smooth over narrative questions as Doctor Who saying “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey” or TV’s The Flash saying “He used the Speed Force, that’s how that’s possible,” but fine. It mostly means we’re not asking (or they’re not answering) any questions about the world building, about why the Roman Empire exists in what very much seems like modern day New York. Or, in this case, New Rome.

The center of the fable is the conflict between architect and dreamer Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), Chairman of the Design Authority, and unpopular mayor of New Rome Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), a rivalry aided, manipulated, and/or exploited by other power players in New Rome society. Cicero is just trying to slap bandaids on the problems of the city and fix his plummeting poll numbers, while Catalina (the fact that he’s named Cesar isn’t nearly as portentous as you’d think) has invented a new material called Megalon, a “bio-adaptive” building material that can do whatever miracle thing the movie needs it to, it’s not really clear.

“It’s not really clear” will be a recurring phrase here.

Cicero’s party-girl daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) decides to abandon the club lifestyle to work alongside her father’s rival when she sees Catalina has the ability to stop time–oh did I not mention Catalina can stop time–and Catalina brings her into his inner circle when he finds out that said power doesn’t affect her, which means… something, I guess, it’s not really clear. I feel like the time-freezing is an allegorical flourish and not a narrative element.

Anyhoo a whole bunch of stuff happens while Catalina tries to evade character assassination and actual assassination to build his utopia, the nature of which is not really clear (save for Megalon being able to build some neat looking sci-fi buildings), but that feels intentional this time? Catalina, and through him the movie, rejects the idea that a utopia is a set idea, insisting they must evolve over time, spelling out (sometimes to a literal member of the audience you are in) that utopias are found in asking questions and having debates. A very nice idea that is sadly drenched in the aggressive centrism at the heart of this whole project, a movie so determined to be apolitical the creator boasts of casting “cancelled” actors to avoid being on a side.

But anyway there’s our core idea. Empires fall not through one cataclysmic moment, but a dozen smaller cuts, but it all begins when people stop believing in the idea of the society. When people stop believing in Rome, Rome falls. And so a Utopia must be flexible, changeable, an idea that can adapt. Which is an intriguing notion worth exploring, but…

Okay so we’re gonna need a new page because once we get into the actual story of this thing the brakes come right off the train.

(The themes of Flash and Madame Web were “you can’t outrun your trauma but you can learn to let it go” and “we gotta do more spider-nonsense you guys, we gotta”)

Next Page: the hell is even happening

Author: danny_g

Danny G, your humble host and blogger, has been working in community theatre since 1996, travelling the globe on and off since 1980, and caring more about nerd stuff than he should since before he can remember. And now he shares all of that with you.

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