Culture news Coppola’s Megalopolis was supposed to be revolutionary: this technology would have made the film interactive!
Published on 09/17/2024 at 9:35 p.m.
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Megalopolis is already a huge and visionary work in its own right, but its director, Coppola, would have liked to take it even further. The film could have been interactive.
Yes, you read that right: a genuine interactive film, shown in a cinema, without it being a video game (Heavy Rain) or a streaming work like Black Mirror Bandersnatch. This is the ambition that Francis Ford Coppola had for his latest feature film, Megalopolis. As reported by the Telegraph : The director wanted the audience to address (directly) the main character, Cesar (played by Adam Driver), in the middle of the session. The latter would then have responded using a pre-recorded sequence! Unfortunately, the idea fell through: the technology was being developed at Amazon based on the Alexa voice recognition software, but in 2022, the tech giant suffered huge losses in this area, precipitating the end of Coppola’s dream.
“Imagine a little”
“Imagine,” Coppola tells the British media. “You could see Megalopolis five times (…) and it would be different each time, it would be the future of cinema and ancient theater united in a single entity.” Bringing together the future and antiquity is one of the director’s goals with his film.. The plot takes place here in New Rome, an allegory of New York. A city where 2 visions oppose each other: that of Cesar, a visionary architect, and Franklyn Cicero, the conservative mayor of the city. Which of these two approaches will prevail, while the megalopolis has been ravaged by a catastrophe?
A dream not quite dead
The famous interaction imagined by Coppola would have, moreover, taken place after the fall of a satellite – without further details. However, this fantasy of interaction is not completely dead. At some festivals (and cinemas in the UK) it is not the audience who asks Cesar the question, but a technician on site.. The tape then reveals the pre-recorded answer… Even if we won’t be entitled to this kind of fantasy in France, we will be able to discover the filmmaker’s crazy project in our dark rooms. Megalopolis will be released in France on September 25.
