Happy Megalopolis teaser day to all who celebrate

If you saw a bacchanal of film connoisseurs and terminally online people running through the streets and shouting “We’re so back!” this morning, there’s a good reason for it. After 40-odd years, a couple of vineyard sales, a lot of behind-the-scenes chaos, reports of difficulty finding a buyer, and some extremely awesome character name reveals, the first real teaser for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is finally out in the world, and—if this writer has anything to say about it—we are, indeed, so back.

This teaser is big. Unlike the short, focused clip of Adam Driver and his terrible haircut we got earlier this month, the new trailer is a dizzying tour through Coppola’s Roman/New York empire and what’s been brewing in the legendary director’s brain for the past four decades.

And it looks… awesome? The story still seems like a bit of a mess—in a recent statement, Coppola said it was inspired by the New York financial crisis of 1990 but also the Catiline Conspiracy but also Studio 54 but also 9/11 but also Hitchcock but also all the prophets but also etc., etc., etc. You get the picture.

Still, the visuals on display here are as stunning as you’d expect from the mind that gave us Apocalypse Now. This seems to be shot like a modern sci-fi epic and classic gladiator film at once. There are chariots racing through Madison Square Garden, trippy lights and giant eyes, and some undeniably cool shots of people reflected on a skyscraper in missile light and giant monuments slouching in despair.

The genre clash makes sense based on what little we do know of the film’s plot. Megalopolis—which Coppola described as “the best work I’ve ever had the privilege to preside over” in the video’s description—follows Cesar Catilina (Driver), an idealist architect with the power to control time, as he attempts to rebuild his New York-adjacent metropolis after a catastrophic event. His main opposition is Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants things to remain the same. The mayor’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) is torn between them.

Those central characters are supported by a truly insane cast, which includes Aubrey Plaza (as the perfectly named “Wow Platinum”), Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Grace VanderWaal, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, Chloe Fineman, James Remar, and D. B. Sweeney, and more. While this thing still feels a bit like a big beautiful mystery, we’ll know a lot more when it finally premieres at Cannes later this week.