Francis Ford Coppola’sMegalopolis, the latest film from the legendary director, has landed another dismal score on Rotten Tomatoes, this time from audiences.Megalopolisis a passion project by Coppola, as he told his famous wine vineyard to finance the $120 million film that features an all-star cast that includes Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Nathalie Emmanuel, Laurence Fishburne, Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf, Dustin Hoffman, and Kathryn Hunter.Megalopolishad a divisive premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. While Lionsgate did agree to distribute the movie, it has had a terrible promotional period, including a trailer thatfeatured AI-generated negative reviews of Coppola’s previous filmsthat had to be pulled.
WithMegalopolisopening in theaters, audiences have now seen it. For once, they are in complete agreement with critics. According toRotten Tomatoes, the movie has a 49% critic score based on 194 reviews, while the audience score fares even worse with 39% based on 250+ audience reviews. While it is slightly better onMetacritic, with 56% from critics and 5.0 from audiences, it is clearMegalopolisis a divisive film generating some strong feelings from many who saw it, both positively and negatively.
Megalopolis
The news only gets worse forMegalopolis,as audiences polled by CinemaScore who saw the film on opening night gave it a dismal D+ rating. Worth noting is that the score comes from an opening night audience, likely the ones who rushed out to see Francis Ford Coppola’s new project, i.e. the audience that would likely have been the most open to embrace it. The film likely won’t get positive word of mouth from audiences to help it rebound after adisappointing opening weekend.
To make matters worse,Megalopolisstands in sharp contrast to the other major movie opening in theaters, DreamWorks Animation’sThe Wild Robot, which has received near-universal acclaim from critics and audiences as it has 98% approval from critics and audiences on Rotten Tomatoes and an A on CinemaScore.
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While it’s hardly news that there’s often a divide between critics and audiences,Megalopolisprovides an interesting moment of examination. This doesn’t seem to be an instance where people attempt to weaponize the audience score to make a movie look bad by review-bombing it, and it’s not the typical case of some mainstream popcorn blockbuster likeFast & Furious18that fans love but critics hate. No, in this case, Francis Ford Coppola created a movie that has united everyone in its division.
