Who agreed to this
An interesting cast isn’t necessarily an ingredient of a fascinating failure, but it sure adds flavour. Babylon’s main lead was a relative unknown to English-speaking audiences, but also had a star-studded ensemble. Cats blended non-famous singers and dancers with big names who like musicals and were promised they’d only have to be on set for like three days. The Flash managed to reassemble two-thirds of the Snyder Justice League, got Michael Keaton back into the Bat-cowl, and brought the DCEU full circle with the return of Michael Shannon as General Zod.
Madame Web did what Sony spider-movies do and went after minor stars who’d like to be a lead in a blockbuster but don’t know the difference between the SPUMC and the actual MCU.
Megalopolis was a passion project from one of the 20th century’s most celebrated auteurs so it was able to attract a pretty spectacular cast… with two unfortunate exceptions. As I mentioned, Coppola was so determined to be righteously centrist, apolitical, that he went cancel-blind in his casting, leading to him including Jon Voight and Shia LeBeouf. But that’s not… that isn’t building a Big Tent for your message movie, that’s not saying “Both sides, actually.” Shia, who I used to like, has some credible assault accusations, plural, against him. Voigt is so deep down the MAGA rabbit hole that he acted in both An American Carol and the recent white-washed Reagan biopic, he endorsed Trump and Trump’s Big Lie conspiracy… whatever centrists like to think that’s not a level of hard-right nuttery that can be met halfway. And there’s probably a reason his kids won’t talk to him.
And it ultimately doesn’t even help. Jon Voigt’s basically just there, doing nothing special. Hot take, however, Shia’s actually good as the unhinged hedonist schemer Clodio, maybe really good… just not so good that you’d say “He had to cast Shia, no one else could do this role this well.” Especially since Jason Schwartzman and Dustin freaking Hoffman are both here but have been given nothing to do. Schwartzman is just standing behind Giancarlo Esposito nudging him about his schedule, and Dustin Hoffman gets written out somewhere near the halfway point right when his character might have impacted the story. In an attempt to play to some imaginary middle audience that isn’t limited to Ken Bone, Coppola gives way too much screentime to the wrong Midnight Cowboy star and sidelines one of our great Weird Little Guy actors. How much of the public resistance to the movie could you have removed by giving Shia and Voigt’s roles to Schwartzman and Hoffman, then having, I don’t know, fucking anybody play the personal assistant and political fixer with a dozen lines between them?
The rest of the cast, certainly fun. Clearly the word from Coppola was “big choices,” and they live up to that. Natalie Emmanuel keeps it grounded as Julia, our main audience surrogate, and Laurence Fishburne is Cesar’s assistant and our narrator so sort of has to keep it low-key as an observer, rather than participant. Adam Driver, however, is swinging for the fences in every scene, and his delivery of “Go back to the cluuuub” is already getting memed. Giancarlo’s reliably good as Cicero, playing both the showman and the father trying not to lose his daughter to his rival. Aubrey Plaza is having a blast as a character I must remind you is literally named Wow Platinum. And it’s neat seeing Talia Shire back as Cesar’s mother, Kathryn Hunter from Andor and Poor Things as Mrs. Cicero, Black Lightning’s James Remar as… some architect or other… it is a stacked cast making big choices that are fascinating to watch.
But a good cast didn’t get Babylon to the Oscars and it didn’t save Cats. Although to be honest there, one James Corden kind of undoes the good will of as many as three Judis Dench.
So let’s get to another angle.
How does it look?
Film is a visual medium, as I remind myself every time I think “I can watch this movie on Prime and do geography quizzes on Sporcle to shut my brain up,” so I’m always going to care how a movie looks. The main nice thing I have to say about Black Adam is “The fight scenes look super cool,” and the first criticism is that “the rest of the editing is rough.” Even if Catwoman had been honest and admitted it was a non-DC movie about an original character, what I’ve seen of the editing and camerawork render it almost unwatchable.
Babylon looks great (which didn’t save it), and from what I can tell Madame Web’s cinematography is never better or worse than mediocre, but bad visuals helped sink two of our Big Flops. Cats is famously ill-conceived, ugly, and unfinished, as the CG teams were rushed and still trying to finish effects days before the premiere, if not later. The Jellicles fell directly into the uncanny valley and gives what could be camp fun a sheen of terror. The Flash, likewise, is known for some very stodgy CG.
Look I still think the baby shower scene is a fun beat that really shows off how Barry’s speed works, but the CG babies seem to have been lifted right out of Ally McBeal and that doesn’t help. The Chrono-bowl, our visualization of Speed Force time travel, is filled with Scorpion Kings from The Mummy Returns. And they used CG (and possibly AI) to squeeze in ghoulish digital cameos by Christopher Reeve, Helen Slater, Nicholas Cage, George Reeves, and Adam West instead of, I don’t know, cameos by actual humans Brandon Routh and Melissa Benoist as alternate Superman and Supergirl, or better yet Grant Gustin, John Wesley Shipp, and Michael Rosenbaum, actors who previously played the Flash, you know, the guy the movie’s about.
Somewhere between Flash and Babylon is Megalopolis. I’d be lying if I said Megalopolis’ visuals are what you’d call consistent. Some scenes are utterly gorgeous. Cesar’s clocktower rooftop is, to my eyes, a spectacular looking set and backdrop to leads to some gorgeous looking scenes. Giant shadows of bodies being cast on the buildings as that satellite hurls itself towards New Rome look great. Vesta’s performance is pretty cool as long as you don’t try to think about what’s happening.
On the other hand if I do rewatch this movie I might use Cesar’s weird time-skipping drug trip, where it seems Coppola has extended twenty seconds of footage into a five minute nightmare, to get another drink or check that TikTok I was just sent by my friend determined to indoctrinate me into pro wrestling one Tok at a time. Just… rough. Rough filmmaking there, and it’s about the character actively avoiding being in the current plot beat.
Still, much like the performances, this isn’t about consistency, it’s about big swings. And some of them certainly hit, so there are times I kinda have to respect the camera work.
And sometimes it’s weird.
Next page: the weird stuff