Megalopolis¡¯ First Teaser Gives Us a Glimpse at the Year¡¯s Most Audacious Sci-Fi Movie
¡°Time, stop!¡±

After years of work and watching the city change around him, one of our finest living filmmakers is close to releasing his passion project. Megalopolis is a sprawling, Romanesque sci-fi epic set in a dystopian future written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the director behind The Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation.
Now, we finally have our first look at the self-funded opus, and it reveals inspirations drawn from not only one of the most iconic sci-fi movies but arguably the first sci-fi movie ever. Check out the full teaser below.
The teaser shows Adam Driver as Cesar, an architect looking to rebuild a major city after a disaster. As he climbs down the steep roof of a skyscraper and prepares to step off of it, he yells ¡°Time, stop!¡± and manages to freeze the flow of time itself, the traffic below him halting in place.
It¡¯s only a quick look of what seems to be a broad-ranging movie with dozens of influences, but there¡¯s already something to be gleaned from these few shots. The design of the building Cesar is standing on ¡ª presumedly one he designed himself ¡ª has multiple triangular windows with a stark, art-deco influence.
The Megalopolis first look seems to pay homage to the Art Deco masterpiece Metropolis almost a century later.
The art style and skyscraper imagery pay direct homage to Fritz Lang¡¯s 1927 sci-fi movie Metropolis, often referred to as the first feature-length science-fiction movie. Skyscrapers played a major role in Metropolis, as they were a recently new invention at the time. Now, they¡¯re commonplace, but that doesn¡¯t stop the aesthetics from translating across time.
Francis Ford Coppola has put everything on the line for Megalopolis, self-funding and retaining complete creative control. With this first look, it¡¯s clear that his influences stretch to the very beginning of sci-fi film history itself.
The only question remaining is how Cesar¡¯s time-stopping powers will affect the storyline. Is this entire moment a surreal sequence, or does Adam Driver¡¯s character really have Zack Morris-esque powers to stop the time-space continuum? Regardless of the plot, it¡¯s sure to be a visually beautiful ¡ª and referential ¡ª adventure.