Megalopolis.

“When we leap into the unknown, we prove that we’re free.”

Sounds poetic, no? It certainly conveys the thinly veiled yet supremely powerful message that 85-year-old director/producer/writer Francis Ford Coppola wishes to convey with his newest (and potentially final?) film, viz. it’s the end of the world as we know it, and Cesar Elon will save us!

Megalopolisi is set in New Rome (New York) in the current corrupt, Catholic moment, when belief in the future is broken because weak-willed men are burdened with equal parts envy, resentment, and contempt at everyone and everything around them, unable as they are to see a brighter vision of tomorrow. With broad artistic license to blend genres, space, and time, Coppola weaves together decaying urban infrastructure, collapsing statues of virtue, nihilistic debauchery,ii dateless newspapers, corded phones,iii cigarette smoking, and late model Chevy Suburban police vehicles juxtaposed with the protagonist’s achingly cool Citroen DS, to give us… a glimmer of hope? But hope of what? Why, of the seeds of utopia!iv

Featuring a star-studded cast including the likes of Laurence Fishburne,v Shia LaBeouf,vi and Jason Schwartzman, none were more captivating than the protagonist himself – Cesar Catalina played by Adam Driver. Having only been loosely familiar with Driver from his television debut on Girls a decade ago, and having recently avoided his role as Enzo Ferrari in the recent biopic, I had rather low expectations for his performance.vii And boy was I pleasantly surprised!

Quickly enamoured of his Shakespearean and Shawian(!)viii command in the opening scenes of the film (I’m always a sucker for Hamlet and Pygmalion), Cesar’s larger-than-life confidence was courageously manifest in the budding 40-year-old’s oversized frame.ix In the film, his character’s a cocksure mad scientist who can stop time, a superhuman ability that was as self-evidently “real” to Coppola in the 1980s when he developed the script at it is to Stephen Wolfram formalising the same concepts of hyper-computational time dilation in 2024.x I mean, go figure that an artist would presage a scientist in understanding that super-smart people are just plain better than the rest of us. Who could’ve predicted that ubermenschen can see the future more clearly than mere mortals, and that such figures therefore bear disproportionate responsibility in shaping the world to come? Gods on Earth who knew!

Going further, Cesar’s powers extend beyond “mere” time-stopping to include discovery of novel engineering materialsxi and entire architectural worldsxii otherwise inconceivable to the decadent, decaying status quo. For anyone with a pulse who’s seen SpaceX reinvigorate the US Space Programme,xiii Tesla reinvigorate the US automotive sector,xiv X/Twitter undermine the censorious Left’s media empire, StarLink forge forward in US satellite coverage, xAI demonstrate relevancy in the OpenAI-dominated LLM space, Neuralink, etc etc etc, it’s not hard to see the parallels between Cesar Catalina and Elon Musk.xv

Which should make us optimistic! That even though the next 10-20 years will be chaotic, violent,xvi rougher, and more rapaciousxvii than our soft-bellies have become used to, on the other side, by mid-century, will be a Golden Age to make Mad Men blush. The aristocratic Art Deco world can exist again.xviii We needn’t be slaves forever.xix

We need just leap a little deeper into the unknown. Hail Cesar! 

4.75/5 STARS

  1. 2024.
  2. Or to put it more lyrically:

  3. Speaking of corded phones…

  4. Although I’m not sure that Coppola would quite fit into the Machine Worship religion, he’s certainly no Marxist! If you’re not familiar with Rudyard Lynch (whatifalthist), allow him to explain:

    Thanks to Emmy for pointing me in Rudyard’s direction, I’ve been binging the 23-year-olds oeuvre all week!

  5. Morpheus lives! And as powerful as ever.
  6. It’s fun to try to place the other contemporary parallels between characters such as Shia’s Clodio Pulcher… but it’s not so simple! Does Clodio = Trump? No, not quite. Does Cicero = Obama The Lame? Actually now that I think about it, it’s not far off! Does Crassus = Rockefeller? Perhaps!??!
  7. As I’ve long told The Girl, low expectations are the key to happiness!
  8. Oh yes!

  9. Driver is 6’3″ but somehow comes across even larger… such is his presence!
  10. You may recall Wolfram from his contributions to my CryptoPunks Thesis in early 2021.
  11. Marvel movies styles.
  12. Robert Moses styles.
  13. Like seriously wtf is this Asimov shit:

  14. I recently cancelled my Cybertruck pre-order but dear readers needn’t be terribly shocked if I change my mind back in a couple years once production ramps up and availability improves. 
  15. And would you believe that I literally had a dream the night before watching Megalopolis that Elon === Caesar?!! I couldn’t make that up… which manes that my prediction from 6 months ago is only gaining traction in my subconscious. Watch out world!

    For reference, from the esteemed forum in April 2024:

    Pete: Samsung and Intel already positioning towards Japan, away from CHIPS Act and it’s crazy DEI requirements. Really damning

    Jiran: right this is my point. So is TSMC. Big tax breaks atm to get peeps to Japan but also keep in mind in past of top 10 Japan dominated most of the list. So it’s different than most places that they already have most of infra. Just a matter of turning it back on.

    Pete: Not quite… ya see Japan always had it on. Can ramp up or down a little bit, sure, but never off. Unlike… USA, which has a MUCH bigger task to do what it needs to in the next 20 years. Good chance it pulls it off though

    Jiran: Right by on I mean ramp it back up. They still manufacturing just not at the level it used to be

    Pete: Not even close unfortunately. Thankfully Elon, Palmer, etc working to rebuild. Come to think of it, Elon’s droid army marching on DC is best chance for US renaissance. 2030-2035 window.

  16. Thankfully Contravex readers are only-too-prepared: we already know that violence is always the solution.
  17. Megalopolis is a sterling reminder that men are only capitalistic as a means to an end, and that end is either Truth or Pussy, but ideally both!
  18. Goodness knows Tesla’s new Robovan is a spitting image of the optimistic-futuristic-Henry-Dreyfuss-designed New York Central Mercury train, which operated from 1934-1959:

  19. You can bet Coppola’s bottom dollar that he’s not a slave, given that he spent a reported $136 mn on a movie that has thus far only grossed $10 mn in worldwide ticket sales. But hey, that’s showbiz baby! But seriously, that’s the cost of art, and the cost of this incredible gift to humanity.

    I laughed my head off pretty much the whole way through, such was the dazzling brilliance of this cinematic gem. Megalopolis belongs in an art gallery! Goodness knows more people would see it at MoMA. My business colleague and I were the only ones in the 400-seat theatre on a quiet Thursday afternoon and the film had only been out for a week.

5 thoughts on “Megalopolis.

  1. […] let’s see if Elon (Caesar!) pushes Trump to finish the job started 8 years… the markets are certainly pointing that […]

  2. […] a decade of openly despising New Rome New Yawk, I can now tolerate it well enough without much fuss, just so long I don’t make too […]

  3. […] the hotlyi contested US Presidential Election upcoming this week, much is being made on X about Elon’s Caesar’s plans to join Trump’s Catiline’sii incoming Cabinet as head of the […]

  4. […] of Victory, Nightmaring of Peace, Indelicately Caesaring Lost prizes of old […]

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