Erin and I did not enjoy Megalopolis.

A couple of weeks back, Erin and I went to the cinema to see Megalopolis. It is very fair to say that it did not go well. You can watch our discussion of the film here. It contains both spoilers and foul language.

Want to read a transcript instead?

Ross Floate: So, Erin.

Erin Margrethe: Ross.

Ross Floate: How much did you love Megalopolis?

Erin Margrethe: I don't usually have strong opinions about movies one way or the other.

Ross Floate: Oh, okay.

Erin Margrethe: And I fucking hated it. Really? Am I allowed to swear?

Ross Floate: You can swear. I can't believe you hated it. Why did you hate that film?

Ross Floate: It's just the simple story of a man who has the ability to stop time and creates. A magical do everything substance that's named after a transformer.

Erin Margrethe: Was Megalon a transformer?

Ross Floate: No, Megalon, but it sounds like it should be a transformer. Uh, and then he uses this godlike power to make moving sidewalks. I think that's, I can absolutely see why Francis Ford Coppola would sell all of his wineries to make that.

Erin Margrethe: Do you remember in like [00:01:00] the eighties when we were kids?

Ross Floate: Yes. Yes.

Erin Margrethe: Teenagers as well. Um, there would be an episode of TV of a series.

Ross Floate: Like a very special episode?

Erin Margrethe: Not a very special episode, but like an episode where, like someone had a dream sequence or, or something and they ended up like, like going back to the 1940s or going back to the 18.

Ross Floate: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ross Floate: So, um, Star Trek The Next Generation always had people going to the holodeck. Yes.

Erin Margrethe: I, I had thought of Star Trek The Next Generation, but I almost, I didn't want to compare it to that because. It was good.

Ross Floate: Do you know what it reminded me of? Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy on crack.

Erin Margrethe: I kept thinking about Bugsy Malone.

Erin Margrethe: Oh

Ross Floate: yes!

Erin Margrethe: Because, because Bugsy Malone, you can see the kids acting.

Ross Floate: But they needed the glitch guns.

Erin Margrethe: You could see the kids acting. And so, [00:02:00] like, the first thing that popped in my head was, with Megalopolis, was, this, this is like a dream sequence in an episode of Dynasty performed by Community Theatre. Ha

Ross Floate: ha ha.

Ross Floate: And that's

Erin Margrethe: not good.

Ross Floate: No. No. There's, but there's, there's a lot going on in the film. There's heaps going on.

Erin Margrethe: There's too much going on. None of it was good. Absolutely none of it was good.

Ross Floate: I don't think there's anything going on.

Ross Floate: The thing is about this film, I can't stop thinking about it. Right? And I, and I, I'm thinking about it now in the way that I think about lockdown.

Ross Floate: Right? And that. You know, a couple of years later we come out of lockdown and you're like, holy shit, we really did that. We really, we really did that for a long time. And now that I'm like a couple of weeks down the road from having seen Megalopolis, or a week and a half down the road from seeing Megalopolis, I'm like, fuck, we did that.

Ross Floate: We did that together.

Erin Margrethe: [00:03:00] Imagine how the people who worked on that film feel.

Ross Floate: Yeah, fucking hell.

Erin Margrethe: Like, you think we have PTSD.

Ross Floate: Yeah, it must have, it must have been incredible. You reckon there was any, any No, there weren't any studio notes. There was no one telling Francis Ford Coppola, Hey, dial it back a bit.

Erin Margrethe: No, no, no. This, this was, this was like This was just nothing but privileged old man hubris.

Ross Floate: Really?

Erin Margrethe: Yeah. It was like, I mean, I'm absolutely not the only person who has said this, but you know, it was, it was, it was simultaneously like when a kid tells you a story and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and you're thinking, all right, Junior, wrap it up.

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Old person with absolutely no filter is telling you, [00:04:00] reminiscing about something or something like that. And you're like, politely going, uh huh, uh huh, let's get you to bed, granddad.

Ross Floate: Just waiting for the point of, oh, that's too racist.

Erin Margrethe: I'm so careful about what I go and see at the cinema because I do not enjoy the cinema experience.

Erin Margrethe: You don't really like

Ross Floate: people.

Erin Margrethe: No, I think that we have evolved beyond sitting in a room with strangers watching a movie while listening to each other chew.

Ross Floate: I It's part of the communal experience.

Erin Margrethe: I don't like being

Ross Floate: We're all sitting around a campfire in a cave.

Erin Margrethe: No. No, not when you have your own cave and your own campfire

Ross Floate: that you

Erin Margrethe: can pause the campfire so you can go pee.

Ross Floate: Fair enough.

Erin Margrethe: So I don't love the cinema experience. I don't have strong opinions about movies. Generally. I'm generally like, eh, that was good. Or, you know, eh, like, but I'm very careful about what I go and see at the cinema because [00:05:00] otherwise I, if I get bored or I can't follow the plot or I feel trapped, I feel absolutely trapped.

Erin Margrethe: And so over the last several years, I've been really careful about what, what I'm willing to go and see.

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: And I agree to go and see this with you.

Erin Margrethe: I didn't know a lot about it. You said you, you were like, you were like, I think it's going to be bad like Jupiter Ascending bad.

Ross Floate: Yeah, Jupiter Ascending is a great bad film.

Erin Margrethe: It is. It's a fun, it's a, it's a, it's a film that you tell people like, Oh my God, do you like dumb shit?

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Do you like dumb shit that's fun to look at?

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Do you like Chatham Tanning as a, as a Chatham

Ross Floate: Tanning. Chatham Tanning.

Erin Margrethe: Oh! Ha ha ha ha! Challenging! Ha

Ross Floate: ha ha ha! Love challenging! Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha

Erin Margrethe: ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! Um, yeah. Him, as, like, a weird dog person who hovers skateboards.

Ross Floate: Mmm.

Erin Margrethe: Like, that is a fun, dumb movie and it was pretty to look at.

Ross Floate: Yes.

Erin Margrethe: This was none of [00:06:00] those things.

Erin Margrethe: This, like, the, the sets, I couldn't tell if they were real sets or if they were, like, CGI. It was

Ross Floate: real, real bad. And it was also It

Erin Margrethe: was also, like, an 80s It was an 80s version of what It's what we thought the future was going to look like in like 1985.

Ross Floate: Yeah. And this is why I keep going back to Dick Tracy.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah. And then with all like the weird, like, you know, 1940s, like, you know, can see, like, you know, the big flashbulb cameras, like,

Ross Floate: yes, but magical spark, sparkly, uh, travelators.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah.

Ross Floate: Um,

Erin Margrethe: and what, what the fuck was Megalon We never knew. We never knew it's this, it's this magical material and, and it fixes his face when he gets shot in the face and he builds.

Erin Margrethe: This drippy looking utopia out of it and it fixes like the wife's dog's broken leg like yeah And and like the whole time I was thinking so this is like flubber.

Ross Floate: Yeah I was hoping it was gonna be like some kind of pet cemetery version of flubber That that that you would put it on the dog and the dog would be [00:07:00] fine And then it would come back and be like, holy shit The dog's gone all fucking Megalon and then weird shit would start happening, but nothing happens the dog gets fixed.

Ross Floate: Oh, okay, then I guess we don't need hospitals anymore, and we don't need We don't need anything anymore. We just have

Erin Margrethe: Megalon. I can't remember one line of dialogue from that movie except for, Go back to the club.

Ross Floate: Go back to the club. I

Erin Margrethe: can't remember one line of dialogue from that movie because it was so

Erin Margrethe: I

Ross Floate: can remember impressions. I can remember impressions of dialogue, so I don't remember what he said.

Erin Margrethe: But there

Ross Floate: was a moment when John Voight was just like, check out my boner.

Erin Margrethe: Oh yeah, that was, that was funny. I don't

Ross Floate: know what he actually said. That

Erin Margrethe: was funny. And

Ross Floate: then, and then, and then he kills people with his little boner.

Erin Margrethe: The good part about seeing it in the cinema was looking around at other people to validate. Your own Confusion. [00:08:00] I mean, it's like,

Ross Floate: Is everyone else seeing this?

Erin Margrethe: I felt like I could see like cartoon question marks over everybody's heads or parts where people would start laughing uncomfortably and like kind of looking around to be like, Oh God, am I the only person laughing?

Erin Margrethe: Am I not supposed to laugh at this? Like

Ross Floate: in, um, like, like in the boys when black noir sees the Muppets and nobody else sees them, it's like, is anybody else seeing this shit?

Erin Margrethe: Yeah, but it was, I mean, I mean, the whole. The whole everything about that movie was so confusing that people were like, I don't know how to react.

Erin Margrethe: And I'm looking at every, I'm looking at, even though it's, you know, in a dark cinema, I'm, I'm, I'm looking like I would, I would kind of start giggle, snorting and try to suppress it. And then the guy next to me would like, would start, I could, I could feel the guy next to me shaking. Cause he would, he would, he would be like, and, and as soon as people realized more than a few people were laughing at something, they were like, Oh my God, Okay, other people think this is like, weird, funny,

Ross Floate: and

Erin Margrethe: strange too.

Erin Margrethe: I don't even remember when, that [00:09:00] bizarre part where the, where the, where the, where the person came out to ask Adam Driver questions on the screen. I don't remember one word of dialogue about that. I mean, that was like, Excuse

Ross Floate: me, Adam Driver, what kind of vape do you use?

Erin Margrethe: It was like, It was like, I just hear like, like Charlie Brown's teachers.

Erin Margrethe: Womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. Because, because the, the dialogue in my head is just going, What the fuck is happening?

Ross Floate: Yeah, there was a lot of, what, it was mercifully short. I really thought it was going to be like three hours plus. Oh

Erin Margrethe: no, I checked. I would not have gone with you if it was three hours plus.

Erin Margrethe: You know that.

Ross Floate: Yeah, I did. I will admit to, like, I think that people shouldn't have their watches on in the cinema. And like, I have an Apple watch that lights up. But I was, every 15 minutes, just going, fucking, alright, so I reckon I can get through another 15 minutes. How long can 15 minutes be?

Erin Margrethe: It's

Ross Floate: about the amount of time it takes to get a filling.

Ross Floate: I reckon I could put up with a filling.

Erin Margrethe: If we had been sitting on an end seat,

Ross Floate: Oh, you would have been gone.

Erin Margrethe: I think, I think we would have been, I think we would have [00:10:00] bailed, but, but I'm, I'm, I'm, Um, I, I never want to, I never want to inconvenience other people.

Ross Floate: You would have been saving them. It would have been like, you know when everyone is standing at a pedestrian intersection and the the flashy person is red And everyone's like, whoa, there's no fucking traffic coming.

Ross Floate: I want to go and it takes one brave soul to walk against the red light and then everyone's like fuck this, I'm out!

Erin Margrethe: You think of one person, if one person laughed, it would have been a mass walkout. Yeah, yeah,

Ross Floate: it would have just been the sound of

Erin Margrethe: The same with the laughing, like one person starts laughing and the rest of people are like, okay, we can laugh, like

Ross Floate: Yeah, it would have been exactly like that.

Ross Floate: I

Erin Margrethe: think, I think, so you know, there's like It

Ross Floate: would have created a vortex sound around that exit door. So you know,

Erin Margrethe: people's trauma responses are like, fight, flight, freeze. I think we were all frozen.

Ross Floate: I

Erin Margrethe: think we were all frozen. I think we were waiting for it to make sense. We were waiting for it to [00:11:00] make sense at some point.

Ross Floate: It just refused.

Erin Margrethe: No.

Ross Floate: It refused to make sense.

Erin Margrethe: So there's like been three types of reviews. There's the reviews that are, are very validating. People like us being like, What the hell, I'm questioning, I'm questioning the entire point of cinema as a medium.

Ross Floate: Yeah, if I had a time machine I wouldn't go back and kill baby Hitler, Lumiere brothers.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah, yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Um, and then there's the glowing reviews like this is a masterpiece and those people are just cooked. Like, those, they're, they're, they're contrarians, it's Emperor's New Clothes bullshit. It's like, Coppola's not going to put you in his will, you suck up. And then there's the reviews that are trying to cherry pick anything good out of it that are like, oh, but there was this reference to this classic film and this reference.

Erin Margrethe: Those reviews read like someone making an excuse. for their abusive spouse. Oh, but you know, he's really stressed. He's been [00:12:00] having a really hard time at work. He didn't mean it. You had to sell all these

Ross Floate: wineries.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah. Yeah. Like those reviews are like, those are, those are the ones that piss me off. The people trying to find something.

Erin Margrethe: Oh, but, but this, but that, but nothing, but nothing. It was a hot steaming turd.

Ross Floate: Yeah. There's a lot of, Oh, it really makes you think it's like, yeah, it really made me think it was a piece of shit. Oh my God. Oh

Erin Margrethe: yeah. Like. I've been talking to, I've been telling my clients at the salon this week, like, about it.

Erin Margrethe: So I'm like, chances are you're not going to see it and you don't know anyone else who's seen it. No. So I'm going to give it to you. So I've been talking about it all week and I, you know, and I've said to them, you know, movies that are so bad that you're like, Oh God, it's, it's like when you smell something really bad, you're like, Oh my God, smell this.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah.

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah. I'm like, don't, don't, don't put yourself through it. Don't even.

Ross Floate: I think we should get a parade for having seen it.

Erin Margrethe: I think we should, like, hazard pay.

Ross Floate: It should be something. We shouldn't ever have to buy popcorn again at a cinema. Yeah,

Erin Margrethe: can we sue IMAX for, like, emotional distress? There's gotta

Ross Floate: be [00:13:00] something that we can do because that was just Literally a crime.

Ross Floate: I

Erin Margrethe: mean, you love going to the cinema.

Ross Floate: And I love bad movies. I mean, I love

Erin Margrethe: I don't. I don't. I

Ross Floate: love the M. Night Shyamalan film, Old, which is objectively a terrible film.

Erin Margrethe: That was hysterical, though. Yes, really.

Ross Floate: Very, very, very funny.

Erin Margrethe: But it made sense. It was dumb as shit, but it made sense. Like, like, you know I

Ross Floate: mean, kind of.

Ross Floate: He,

Erin Margrethe: I mean, he created the film. This is his thing he, he created and this is a beach and you go to the beach and you grow old and you

Ross Floate: meet midsize sedan.

Erin Margrethe: Yes. And like,

Ross Floate: and a woman turns into a kind of a spider thing.

Erin Margrethe: It was completely bonkers. But you know, if with suspension and I actually have, I have amazing suspension of disbelief for films.

Erin Margrethe: Do you know? Yeah, I do. Because, which is, which is why I generally don't have strong opinions about most films one way or the other. Because I'm just like, okay, that's a thing that happened. [00:14:00]

Ross Floate: Okay.

Erin Margrethe: As long as the plot progresses.

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: But this was like, Oh, he can stop time. And then.

Ross Floate: He doesn't.

Erin Margrethe: And then

Ross Floate: Oh my god, you caught me, you caught me stopping time.

Ross Floate: This is going to be a really, really big issue.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah, and they were just, you know, Shia LaBeouf is suddenly like this, he's this Trump figure, and then, and this, and then, and then they have a baby and then everything's okay, like, what, fucking what?

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Like, I'm willing to, Surrender myself to whatever bonkers shit.

Ross Floate: Yeah

Erin Margrethe: You know a movie wants to throw at me as long as I can like follow it

Ross Floate: Yeah,

Erin Margrethe: like I don't sit there going. Well, that would never happen in real life. It's not real life. It's a movie. It's but this is like You're not giving me You're not [00:15:00] giving me a cohesive argument for your own weird little world you created like like The logistics of it pissed me off.

Ross Floate: Hey. What? New Rome. New Rome.

Erin Margrethe: Fucking old Rome should sue. Should sue that movie.

Ross Floate: What did you think about, uh, What did you think about John Voight?

Ross Floate: The Voightmaster.

Erin Margrethe: He seemed like he was having a great time. He seemed

Ross Floate: like he was having the best time of anybody in the movie. He

Erin Margrethe: did. He seemed like he was having a good time.

Ross Floate: Yep. Yep.

Erin Margrethe: Aubrey Plaza seemed like she was having fun. Yeah. I think she was just like, fuck it, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna be this weird bonkers character.

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Um, Adam Driver seemed like he was maybe being held hostage.

Ross Floate: Jackson Swartzman looked like he was happy to get a paycheck.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah. Dustin Hoffman, I didn't even realize was in the film until like two days [00:16:00] ago.

Ross Floate: Yeah, right. Finally, finally back together again after all this time, after Midnight Cowboy.

Erin Margrethe: Um, the chick from Game of Thrones.

Ross Floate: Oh, is that who she was? Oh, yeah.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I noticed her eyebrows were like, extremely perfectly laminated at one point.

Ross Floate: Were they?

Erin Margrethe: Yeah, that's the only thing I can

Ross Floate: Maybe that was done with Megalore. Did you ever think of that?

Erin Margrethe: I did not.

Ross Floate: Yeah.

Erin Margrethe: I wasn't doing a lot of thinking I don't think

Ross Floate: you've thought about the possibilities of Megalore.

Ross Floate: I wasn't

Erin Margrethe: doing a lot of thinking during that movie, aside from, what the fuck is this shit that I'm watching? Like, and I'm sorry, I have to, I have to, I have to swear, er, a lot in order to make my feelings known about this film. I, I, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm angry that I've, I'm angry that we're sitting here talking about it.

Ross Floate: Yep.

Erin Margrethe: I'm, I'm so

Ross Floate: happy that we're sitting here talking about it.

Erin Margrethe: I'm angry that, that it's like preyed on my [00:17:00] mind. , I'm angry. I'm angry that people let this happen.

Ross Floate: Where were the cultural guardrails?

Ross Floate: What just and merciful God would allow this to take place? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Erin Margrethe: Yeah.

Ross Floate: Well, Erin, thank you for sharing your opinions with me.

Erin Margrethe: You're welcome, Ross. It'll be a long time before you trick me into going to the cinema again. I guarantee that.