It has been a year since the horrific events of October 7, 2023. What has happened since is best described as a global tragedy. The scale of the immediate suffering is staggering. From the 1,200 Israelis killed by Hamas on October 7 to the over 40,000 Palestinians killed by Israel in the war since, the human toll of the conflict is terrible and growing higher. Though the past year should have discredited the idea that there can be any stability without a solution that satisfies both Israeli and Palestinian national aspirations, a negotiated settlement seems further away than ever. And as the dramatic military escalation of the past few weeks illustrates, the consequences of October 7 are traveling wider and wider. The Middle East is aflame, with Israeli soldiers fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and direct hostilities between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah’s patron. The risk of a full-scale regional war is growing — if we are not already in one. [Image: Israeli shelling hit an area in southern Lebanon, as seen from northern Israel on September 30, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/AP24274763395736.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Zooming even further out, the year since October 7 has seen dire developments for the entire world. America’s disastrous mishandling of the conflict has not only failed to stop the bloodshed, but also done serious damage to its already-frayed credibility as a guarantor of the rules-based international order — weakening global support for Ukraine’s eminently just defensive war against Russia and strengthening China’s attempts to undermine pillars of global stability. The war has also created new forms of global instability. The Houthi militants in Yemen have wreaked havoc on global shipping, demonstrating how a well-positioned terrorist group can pose a serious threat to the global economy using relatively low-cost weapons. A global surge of Islamophobia and antisemitism has further scarred divided Western democracies, and internal divisions between pro-democracy political factions over Gaza have weakened their capacity to stand united against rising anti-democratic forces. To call the past year a global tragedy is not to distract from the most immediate victims, the Israelis and Palestinians killed and immiserated by bullets and bombs. These are the protagonists of any moral story about the past year of war, the people who should be placed first in any accounting of the past year’s events. Rather, it is to put the full range of consequences into view: to show that events that might seem contained to the Middle East have come to hurt people around the world in ways that we may not yet fully understand or even be capable of predicting. This is not a world war, but it is a global tragedy, one whose horrors are not yet done being revealed. A nightmare in Palestine Life for ordinary Gazans was difficult prior to October 7, thanks to a combination of Israeli restrictions on trade and movement and Hamas’s theocratic governance. But since then, Israel’s military response has made it unbearable. Nearly 42,000 Gazans have been killed since October 7, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health. That’s about 2 percent of the Gaza Strip’s entire population, the proportional equivalent of 6.5 million Americans dying in a war. Israeli estimates of Hamas fighters killed — between 17,000 and 18,000 — suggest around 60 percent of the dead are civilians. [Image: Palestinian kids walk over the rubble of a building, which collapsed after Israeli bombardment on a building adjacent to it, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City on September 23, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/GettyImages-2173345769_8cf8df.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Some have called the death data into question on the grounds that Hamas controls the health ministry. However, its numbers have proven accurate in previous conflicts and provide at least a rough approximation of the total death count. In fact, it’s likely an understatement. Official data compiled by Al Jazeera shows at least half of all homes in the Strip are damaged or destroyed; so too are 80 percent of “commercial facilities” and 85 percent of school buildings. In May, a UN agency estimated that there were likely 10,000 Palestinian dead trapped under the rubble and that it might take as long as three years to recover all of the bodies. Israel’s bombs and bullets, together with its intentional disruption of humanitarian aid, has made life in Gaza unbearable. Ninety percent of Gazan residents have been displaced from their homes. Food is so scarce that nearly every Gazan has trouble finding it in adequate amounts, per an international expert report released in June. UN data from around the same time found that 50,000 Gazan children were suffering from acute malnutrition. Gaza’s health infrastructure has collapsed, thanks in part to Israeli bombs destroying a majority of Gaza’s hospitals. Rates of disease are skyrocketing; an April report from Doctors Without Borders found that the number of diarrhea cases had increased by 25 times over the pre-war baseline. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israeli extremists both in and outside of government have used the war in Gaza as a pretext to accelerate their colonization campaign. Since October 7, there have been over 1,000 violent attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers. This is an “all-time high” rate of settler violence, per a report by the International Crisis Group. Yet despite this spiking violence, Israel has arrested a fourth of the number of Jewish suspects in the West Bank as it did in 2022 — the year before the current far-right government took power. [Image: A group of Jewish settlers under the protection of Israeli soldiers raids the Old City area of Hebron, West Bank on September 14, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/GettyImages-2175529158_3d0179.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Some leaders in the current government — like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir — are themselves settler radicals, and they have pursued their goals via policy throughout the war. In 2024, the Israeli government officially seized more than nine square miles of land from Palestinians — the most in any year since the 1990s Oslo Accords gave Palestinians a measure of self-determination in the West Bank. The past year, in short, has been hell for Palestinians. And there is no respite in sight. An insecure and more authoritarian Israel After Hamas fighters slaughtered 1,200 Israelis in cold blood last year, the group was not only expecting an Israeli response, they were counting on it. Any extended Israeli campaign in Gaza would surely come with massive civilian casualties, a level of death that would rally the Palestinian population to Hamas’s side and isolate Israel internationally. Based on classified evidence “described by more than a dozen current and former intelligence and security officials from four Western and Middle Eastern countries,” the Washington Post concluded that Hamas planners aimed to “strike a blow of historic proportions, in the expectation that the group’s actions would compel an overwhelming Israeli response.” Israel fell right into their trap. Since October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly declared his war aim to be destroying Hamas. Nearly everyone credible agrees that this is, in the most literal sense, impossible: Israel does not have the capability to wipe the organization off the earth in any kind of reasonable time frame. So no one knows what Netanyahu means by “destroying” Hamas. He has never really explained it. The result is that, if the war were to end tomorrow, Hamas would still be intact and the dominant power in the Gaza Strip. It will almost certainly be able to reconstitute itself as the governing force in Gaza again, owing in part to rising support among the Palestinian population. Thirty-six percent of Palestinians currently support Hamas, per the authoritative Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) poll — nearly twice as high as the support for their more moderate rival Fatah (21 percent). Prior to the war, Fatah commanded a small plurality in the same poll (26-22 percent). If Israel has bought security through bloodshed in Gaza, it is only a temporary reprieve. The foundations of its security problem — a political status quo in which dispossessed Palestinians turn to terrorist groups as an act of “resistance” — remain intact. [Image: Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli airstrike on a crowded tent camp housing Palestinians displaced by the war in Muwasi, Gaza Strip, on September 10, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/AP24274095052970.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Absent a political solution that gives Palestinians hope for peaceful coexistence, Israelis will always have reason to fear an attack. The war has obliterated any hope of such an agreement in the immediate term, with polls displaying record-low levels of support among Israelis for pursuing one. Even if their opinion shifts after the war, as it likely will when the trauma of October 7 fades, wartime settlement growth and land grabs in the West Bank deepen the logistical barriers in the way of any kind of agreement. More broadly, Israelis are generally hopeless about their government’s ability to manage both the conflict with the Palestinians and their own basic needs. A series of failures, ranging from an inability to support Israelis displaced on October 7 to the failure to return the hostages, has made Israelis question whether their government is up to the most basic tasks of governing. One recent poll found that only 17 percent of Israelis expressed a high degree of trust in their government. At the same time, the long-evident authoritarian tendencies of the Netanyahu government have asserted themselves during the war. In the weeks and months immediately following October 7, there was a crackdown on dissent from the government’s line on the war. Arab Israelis and left-wingers were harassed and even arrested. Ben Gvir’s ministry approved permits for pro-war protests but not anti-war ones as the minister himself called for a full ban on pro-peace demonstrations. This climate has changed as the war went on. Israelis recently staged a massive ceasefire protest, which organizers say was the largest single-day demonstration in the country’s history. [Image: Over 100,000 Israelis demonstrated against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding an immediate hostage deal and ceasefire, in Tel Aviv, Israel on September 21, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/AP24266163119437_ea1646.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] But other problems have arisen. After Israeli authorities arrested soldiers accused of torturing Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman military base, far-right demonstrators stormed the base to try and free them by force. Sitting members of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, actually joined the group who breached the fence. The event, widely described as Israel’s January 6, illustrates just how deep the rot in the country’s democracy runs and how war, as it so often does, is damaging the principles that free government depends on. An unstable Middle East Israel’s recent blitz assault on Hezbollah, including the killing of its longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah and much of its senior leadership, has done serious damage to a group that has been firing rockets at Israel since October 8. It also displaced about 60,000 Israeli citizens from their homes along the northern border. Targeting Hezbollah, which is deeply integrated into the Lebanese population, comes at a high cost in civilian lives. And we’ve seen in many recent wars that tactical victories do not amount to strategic success. Israel’s ultimate goal — breaking the Iran-led “axis of resistance” that includes Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi militias, and the Houthis in Yemen — has not yet been accomplished. It’s possible that, in pursuit of this goal, Israel begins a process of escalation that evolves into a region-wide conflagration. The most obvious catalyst is the current Israeli ground operations inside Lebanon. Were Israel to escalate and send in larger numbers of troops for a Gaza-style invasion, the immediate result would be a very bloody conflict in which large numbers of civilians are sure to die. In the longer term, Israel might get trapped into another long-term occupation of Lebanon. The last one, which stretched from 1982 to 2000, ended in Israeli defeat and the rise of Hezbollah to power inside Lebanon. A more recent war in Lebanon, in 2006, was less bloody but still widely seen as a failure — prompting an official inquiry into why Israel’s military performed so poorly against Hezbollah. Were the current Israeli operation in Lebanon to look too successful, Iran would treat it as a major threat. Hezbollah is Iran’s most important regional proxy, the group’s large rocket arsenal a powerful deterrent against any Israeli attack on Iranian interests. Were Hezbollah to look like it was on the brink of a military rout, Iran might unleash both other proxies and its own military to try and turn the tide. This would mean a full-scale open war between Israel and the Iranian alliance — far greater in scope than this week’s missile barrage on Israel. Such a conflict could lead to any number of disasters. One of the scariest scenarios involves an Iranian dash for a nuclear bomb. The more military success Israel has against Iran’s proxies, the more likely Iran is to believe that its homeland is at risk from an Israeli strike. It is already close to building a nuclear weapon — able to create enough fissile material for one in “one or two weeks,” per Secretary of State Antony Blinken — but seemingly preferred to remain on the nuclear brink rather than crossing it. A wider war with Israel might change that, leading to a development many have feared for decades: a Middle East with two hostile armed nuclear powers. [Image: A hole in the ground near the site of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut’s southern suburbs on September 29, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/AP24273314989972_844bb1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] [Image: Mourners attend a rally commemorating slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Tehran, Iran on September 30, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/AP24274614102725_f98c2c.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] These dire outcomes are not inevitable. It’s possible that Israel steps back from the brink of full war in Lebanon or that Iran has been so cowed by Israel’s extraordinary success in penetrating Hezbollah that it doesn’t respond aggressively. But betting on the best-case scenarios in war is dangerous. The only thing we can say with confidence is that the new Middle East is extraordinarily insecure, brought to the precipice of region-wide catastrophe by post-October 7 developments. Whether it tips over the brink remains to be seen. America weakened and its enemies emboldened The Biden administration has taken a strange and confusing approach to the Gaza war. After initially expressing unconditional support for Israel, the administration has criticized Netanyahu’s approach, becoming suspicious that the prime minister lacks a credible strategy for ending the war. Yet as it has worked for a ceasefire, the US has steadfastly refused to put major pressure on Israel to get it to back down — declining to use its biggest stick, cutting off military assistance, to pressure Jerusalem to end the war. The result is an American policy that is seen by much of the world as doubly hypocritical. The US claims to support peace while providing the weapons to wage war, and it seems to treat war crimes differently based on whether an ally or an enemy is perpetrating them. Whatever sympathy Israel garnered from much of the world after the horrors of October 7 has been erased by the horrors it has perpetrated in Gaza. Polls as well as votes at the UN show an overwhelming global consensus that the war needs to end immediately, with only the United States and a handful of aligned countries supporting the Israeli line. When South Africa filed an International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, many in the West scoffed. Yet the South African litigators enjoyed widespread support among residents of the global South, where elites and mass public alike overwhelmingly see Israel as a violent aggressor and America as its superpower enabler. [Image: South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela, during a hearing of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands on May 16, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/GettyImages-2152786672.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] For years now, global South countries have chafed at what they see as Western hypocrisy when it comes to war and peace. America and its allies trumpet a “rules-based international order,” yet go ahead and invade Iraq without UN authorization because they’ve decided that they want to. In a 2023 speech, former NSC official Fiona Hill warned that this sentiment had become a major problem for American policy in Ukraine: that however correct America might be about Russia’s unjustified war, it had lost the credibility to claim to be standing on behalf of sovereignty and international law. This made many countries wary of joining America’s pro-Ukraine efforts, seeing it less as a defense of a vulnerable country than a means of advancing Western geopolitical interests relative to Russia’s. The US approach to the Gaza war has supercharged this sentiment. How can the US claim to be standing for international law in the Donbas, many ask, when it is enabling its client in Jerusalem to commit atrocities? Research suggests that these allegations of hypocrisy can, in fact, matter, undercutting both domestic and international support for American policies. And as America’s global standing weakens, its competitors — not only Russia, but also China — are trying to take advantage. “With every civilian casualty from an Israeli airstrike, the West’s arguments in defense of a rules-based order ring hollower in the global South,” writes Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Affairs. “If, at some point in the future, Xi [Jinping] makes the fateful decision to invade Taiwan, he will surely hope that his stance on the Gaza war has made it more likely that the global South will line up behind Beijing rather than Washington.” A globe primed for chaos The Gaza war has not only thrown the Middle East into chaos and weakened America’s position relative to authoritarians. It has also given rise to new sources of global chaos, ones that could further destabilize a world order already facing major challenges. The first of these threats is the Houthi campaign on shipping in the Red Sea and Mediterranean. The Yemeni rebel group, part of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” has been launching cheap rockets and drones at ships passing through since last fall — actions it claims are designed to target Israeli shipping and put pressure on Israel to end the war. In actuality, the target selection has been fairly loose. The Houthis’ objective appears to be less opening a new front in the Gaza war than in using it as a pretext to demonstrate their power and capabilities. Their strikes have done comparatively minor damage to shipping, but the threat that they might sink a ship has wreaked havoc on a cornerstone of the global economy. Moreover, there’s a real fear that the Houthis have set a precedent that other militant groups could potentially mimic. “The peril posed by the Houthis is not just that shipping in the Red Sea will continue to be dangerous. Their campaign also sends the message that the global maritime order is crumbling and those violating its rules can do so with impunity,” writes Elisabeth Braw, an expert on maritime security at the Atlantic Council think tank. “If these forms of aggression are not deterred, they will continue to grow in quantity and will be joined by new forms.” [Image: A fighter of the Houthi group looks at the Galaxy Leader cargo ship as he guards it, on the Red Sea coast off Hudaydah, Yemen on May 12, 2024. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/GettyImages-2152895248.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] But aggression in the sea lanes is not the only demon unleashed by the Gaza war globally. It has also led to a rise in hatred and division inside countries across the world. One the most dire manifestations of these internal divisions is rising Islamophobia and antisemitism. In the United States and elsewhere, there has been a spike in hate crimes directed at both Jews and Muslims — including even deadly violence. This is sadly common during times of heightened Israel-Palestine conflict: The passions raised by the issue push unstable, violent people toward action. But given how intense this round of fighting has been, qualitatively different from anything that has come before it, the surge has been more intense. Separately, major divisions have emerged inside global political factions. In the United States, for example, anger over Biden’s war policy has alienated Muslim and Arab American voters — a critical bloc in the swing state of Michigan. This could possibly play a material role in the November election, that tensions over Gaza might lead to the return of Donald Trump, a man who personifies global disorder, to the presidency of what remains the world’s most powerful country. We are, in short, already living in a world fundamentally reshaped by Hamas’s October 7 murder spree and Israel’s bloody reprisal, with no sense on the horizon that what’s broken will be repaired.

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- A look at what's happening around the New York Jets: 1. Party like it's 1996: It was perhaps the ugliest season in Jets history -- 1996, the year they went 1-15 under Rich Kotite. For older fans, it's a haunting memory, best left buried in the recesses of the history books. But, wait! Out of that muck comes this shiny nugget: Despite the losing, the Jets scored three offensive touchdowns in four straight games that season, something they haven't done since (the quarterback was Frank Reich, who would become an NFL head coach). Nearly three decades later, they will try to equal that feat Sunday after scoring three in each of the first three games. By far, the Jets (2-1) own the longest active drought without a four-game streak of three offensive touchdowns, according to ESPN Research. We're talking 18 years longer than the next-closest team -- the Denver Broncos, whom they face at MetLife Stadium in Week 4. Is that mind-boggling or what? Typically, teams average about 2.5 touchdowns per game, so stringing together a few good games doesn't seem that hard. Then again, offense is hard for the Jets, who generated a league-low 18 touchdowns in 2023 and haven't produced a top-10 scoring offense since 2008. The man who presided over last season's mess, offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett, can take some satisfaction in seeing positive results, thanks to a huge boost from a healthy Aaron Rodgers. Hackett downplayed the early results, saying there's plenty of room for improvement. "The expectation is to score touchdowns, and a lot of them," Hackett said. "That's what we're hunting." 2. All on the wrist: Keen observers may have noticed a subtle change in Rodgers' game-day attire. He's wearing a wristband with a play sheet, something he didn't do in his only appearance last season. He used a wristband during his last few seasons with the Green Bay Packers under coach Matt LaFleur, whose system is like Hackett's in that it's very wordy -- common for a West Coast-style offense. The play sheet helps streamline the process. 3. Zach's back: Three quarterbacks drafted by the Jets are on other teams. Two of them, Sam Darnold (Minnesota Vikings) and Geno Smith (Seattle Seahawks), are a combined 6-0. The third is Zach Wilson, who is attempting to reboot his career as the Broncos' QB3 after three disappointing seasons with the Jets. The Jets had nothing but kind things to say about Wilson. The consensus opinion: A talented player who needed to get out of the New York pressure-cooker, giving him a chance to mature in a less stressful environment. "I still stand here and believe that he's going to have a hell of a career," coach Robert Saleh said. Rodgers said he still keeps tabs on Wilson, adding that they communicate "here and there." He considers Wilson a "little brother" even though their relationship was reportedly strained last season. Rodgers said he hopes his former understudy can benefit from a reset in Denver. Wilson, drafted No. 2 overall in 2021, wanted out last season and was traded before the draft. The Jets didn't get much in return -- a sixth-round pick for Wilson and a seventh-rounder. 4. Well-traveled pick: If you're wondering what happened to that draft pick from the Wilson trade (No. 203 overall), well, the Jets used it in a draft-day swap with the Vikings. The Jets gave up that pick, along with the 10th pick, to acquire the 11th pick and two other draft choices. In a way, the Jets helped the Vikings secure what could be their quarterback of the future, J.J. McCarthy, chosen 10th overall. At 11, the Jets happily selected the player they were prepared to take at 10 -- tackle Olu Fashanu, who makes his first start Sunday. 5. Another Brick in the wall? Rodgers said Fashanu reminds him of former Jets tackle D'Brickashaw Ferguson, who retired in 2016. That's quite a compliment, considering Ferguson is a member of the team's Ring of Honor. Size-wise, they're virtually identical: Ferguson, 6-foot-6, 310 pounds; Fashanu, 6-foot-6, 312, based on their scouting-combine measurements. Ferguson was always considered a quiet, consistent worker. Fashanu is developing the same reputation. Ferguson was a Day 1 starter in 2006. Fashanu is replacing right tackle Morgan Moses (knee). It probably will be a two- or three-game gig. One thing to remember about Fashanu: He's new to right tackle, having played left tackle his entire life. His experience at right tackle consists of 42 snaps -- 14 last week, 28 in one preseason game. 6. Undefeated on long rest: Let's face it, Rodgers has produced countless positive trends in his career -- he didn't win four MVPs by accident -- but this one is particularly noteworthy considering the circumstances: He's 13-0 in home games with at least nine days rest, per ESPN Research. His stats in those games: 32 touchdowns, eight interceptions and an average of 295 passing yards. He's facing the Broncos on nine days rest. 7. Reddick fine check: It's another lost game check ($792,000) for holdout Haason Reddick, bringing his four-week total to $3.16 million in lost salary. Additionally, he has accumulated $4.5 million in mandatory fines, plus another $1.4 million in discretionary fines. If the holdout extends beyond the fourth week of the regular season, which is now, the team is allowed to recoup 1/18th of what remains from his pro-rated signing bonus. That occurs each week, maxing out at $2.74 million. He already has sacrificed roughly half the pro-rated bonus because of his holdout. 8. Fixed in a snap: They were some of the toughest days of Joe Tippmann's football life. Early in training camp, out of the blue, he started misfiring with his shotgun snaps. His high snaps made Rodgers seem like he was on a pogo stick. Tippmann credited Rodgers with helping him through the ordeal. His quarterback offered advice and encouragement, even joking that he wanted Tippmann to purposely fire snaps at his feet. That lightened the mood. "I have all the trust in the world with him, especially with him getting me right, getting me on the same page as him," Tippmann said. 9. A Surtain look: Receivers coach Shawn Jefferson, trying to explain Garrett Wilson's intensity, mentioned the tattoo on the receiver's arm: "TTWFO" -- 'Til the wheels fall off. Wilson will need to employ that mindset as he battles through a period in which he's drawing extra attention from defenses. Jefferson said the coaches "have to do a better job of moving him around" the formation, including the slot, to create favorable matchups. On Sunday, he's expected to see a lot of Broncos star cornerback Pat Surtain II. 10. The Last Word: "That's old news ... I honestly haven't thought about it until you just brought it up." Rodgers on whether Sean Payton's derogatory comments last year about Hackett will be a source of motivation Sunday. Rodgers was injured for last season's game against Denver -- aka Hackett-Payton I.

One mortgaged winery, $136 million budget, several allegations of non-consensual kissing, and a crossdressing Shia LaBeouf later, Megalopolis is finally here — and it appears to be a “mega-flopolis.” The film, a perplexing, oversaturated modern riff on the waning days of the Roman Republic — if Rome were New York City by way of Baz Luhrmann and Fellini’s Satyricon — made an astoundingly low $4 million over its opening weekend. Though that might speak primarily to the public appetite for a CGI-laden Shakespearean drama without the benefit of Shakespeare, it’s a number likely assisted by the confusion and division surrounding the film. Even for the notably demanding director Francis Ford Coppola, known for intense sets that lead to masterpieces like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now as well as critically acclaimed flops like The Conversation and his musical One From the Heart, Megalopolis has been accompanied by an unusual degree of chaos and controversy. As Coppola has recounted many times, he’s been trying to make Megalopolis for decades, and ultimately wound up financing it by borrowing against his own fortune — a costly risk that may now never pay off. Yet after all of that hoopla, even the film’s arrival in theaters may not satisfactorily answer the basic question: What even is Megalopolis, anyway? Here’s an attempt to answer that question — though as with all things related to this film, opinions may vary considerably about Megalopolis, what it’s aiming for, and what, if anything, it achieves. Megalopolis is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead with a dash of Inception and a huge helping of theatre camp Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as a futuristic architect named Cesar Catilina. Giancarlo Esposito plays his rival, Cicero, the mayor of New Rome. Cicero’s daughter Julia (Game of Thrones’s Nathalie Emmanuel), who falls for Catilina, waffles between the two (even after Catalina tells the socialite to “go back to the cluuuuub”). She may or may not hold the secret to mastering the “megalon,” a golden glowy element that looks like gold foil but is, we’re told, made of space-time itself. Using megalon, Catilina wants to build a version of New Rome that he dubs an immortal school-city. [Image: This is what it looks like when a mayor is busy in New Rome, apparently. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/asset_6978cf3b-6cee-5feb-9fbe-ec2916a357fe.webp?quality=90&strip=all] His vision ultimately turns out to be just a slightly more sci-fi version of the High Line, but it’s apparently enough to usher in the utopia of his dreams. (It also helps that he’s motivated by the memory of his late wife, whose death he may have hastened with his obsessiveness, a la Inception, despite an official ruling of death by suicide.) Also like Christopher Nolan’s Inception, architecture seems to be a metaphor for movie-making — Catilina as a tortured, misunderstood artist who decides to name his son Francis. Though this basic plot feels swiped from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, in execution the story is full of oddities — Driver can stop time, except when he can’t? — and curiosities; at many showings, a live performer interacts with the screen, lip-syncing along with an off-screen figure. Though the all-star cast is huge, many of the characters seem to have very little to do with the plot. They seem to primarily be window-dressing or an excuse for Coppola to cast many members of his own family, ranging from nephew Jason Schwartzman to several young grandchildren. Like Kevin Costner’s Horizon, another $100 million auteur box office failure, Megalopolis features an odd mix of deliberately elevated language and literary allusions: Driver makes his entrance reciting two-thirds of Hamlet’s soliloquy, apparently purely for drama. Julia and her father battle-slash-communicate using Marcus Aurelius quotes. The story, such as it is, unfolds against a surprisingly lackluster CGI city whose skylines and blurred edges aren’t quite enough to convey the soaring futuristic vision Coppola clearly had in mind. By contrast, the crowded ensemble scenes and orgiastic, wild, decadent party life of the streets (embodied by a woozy Aubrey Plaza sleeping her way to the top) feel so Felliniesque it’s hard to take it as anything but pastiche. Overall, the concept might have worked much better as an anime — it’s less like a fully coherent narrative and more like a fun project for theater kids and their friends who recently got into computer animation. The making of Megalopolis was as over-the-top as the film itself 2024 brought an onslaught of weird Megalopolis news in the long build-up to the film itself. First, in May, there was a deep-dive Guardian investigation into the production. Timed to coincide with the film’s debut at Cannes, where it was debuting without a distributor, the piece depicted a troubled set. Numerous anonymous crew members belittled Coppola’s directorial sensibilities and claimed to be baffled by his inability to work well with CGI; at one point, Coppola reportedly told a crew member, “How can you figure out what Megalopolis looks like when I don’t even know what Megalopolis looks like?” [Image: A magical flower stand in Megalopolis, for some reason. https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/asset_ec03bea1-dcf2-5e28-aebf-b4e5249ac046.webp?quality=90&strip=all] This specific CGI-induced crisis is the kind of thing that many filmmakers angst over (Christopher Nolan again comes to mind), so it isn’t as though the Guardian report alone was enough to cast doubt on the film. However, the report also contained allegations that he behaved inappropriately toward many women on set by making the rounds of the topless women in one elaborate scene and reportedly trying to kiss them. These are allegations Coppola has partially denied, admitting that he kissed the women but denying there was anything untoward — as he was directing, he reportedly announced to the set that “if I come up to you and kiss you, just know it’s solely for my pleasure.” It’s unclear how that statement clarified anything for the actors on set; it doesn’t exactly create the image of a trouble-free production helmed by a focused, clear-sighted director. According to the Guardian, the now-85-year-old auteur would also allegedly smoke weed in his trailer before emerging to announce a brand-new scene to shoot. Shortly after the Guardian story came the film’s polarized reception at Cannes. Though its director received a wild ovation from an enthusiastic audience made up of many people who were directly involved in the movie (another Horizon parallel), this was countered by critics who called the film, generously, “absolute madness” and “a totally bonkers experiment,” or, less generously, “a head-wrecking abomination” consisting of “138 stultifying minutes of ill-conceived themes, half-finished scenes, nails-along-the-blackboard performances, word-salad dialogue and ugly visuals all seemingly in search of a story that isn’t there.” Yikes. Finally, in July, we got the trailer, which immediately drew criticism for using quotes from critics about Coppola’s previous works, not about Megalopolis. While audiences were still debating whether this was some sort of intentional meta-commentary, the trailer was quickly recalled by Lionsgate, which apologized sincerely to Coppola for what was apparently a genuine mistake. All of this led up to the resounding question of what sort of a ride we were in for. Even after the film’s release, that’s still not entirely clear — but it’s definitely anything but boring. What does it all mean?! Coppola has claimed that Megalopolis is an exploration of and a warning about an America on the brink of fascism, but the film, despite its clunky Roman metaphors and heavy-handed satire of the modern media, obfuscates that message in plenty of ways. For starters, Coppola seems to think — and Megalopolis repeatedly seems to imply, however inadvertently — that the greatest risk of fascism comes from the politically correct, insurgent left, rather than from oppressive systems. The film instead seems to view a wealthy upper class as a potentially benevolent force, and Coppola has stated that he deliberately cast “canceled” actors (like LaBeouf) in order to avoid the appearance of being “woke.” LaBeouf plays an opportunistic figure who takes up populist causes for his own manipulative ends, all while intermittently wearing a dress and a rat-tail and cozying up to power; it’s all equal parts boorish and incoherent. Then there’s Cesar Catilina himself, the nephew of a powerful billionaire (Jon Voigt), who despite nominally claiming to work for the people, pursues power and his vision for the masses with pure Randian entitlement. Despite, or more likely because, of his being named Cesar, the film ultimately endorses his righteousness without any self-reflection. The film ends with Catilina winning his battle with the mayor to usher in the city he wants to build — but his former enemy stands by his side, grandfather to his only son, and the family portrait is accompanied by an overtly creepy chant of schoolchildren pledging to build an America dedicated to education and opportunity. Politically, the message is fully muddled. Beyond that flimsy moral, it’s unclear where Megalopolis’s primary claim to genius rests. Lots and lots of movies have been made about a lone hero lost in a dystopian New York. (The Michael Keaton subgenre alone!) The idea that what the city really needs is a new, futuristic architectural vision isn’t new, either; it’s the central theme of Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece Metropolis, as well as the film adaptation of The Fountainhead. The 1927 silent classic East Side, West Side finds the main character, just as in Megalopolis, monologuing to his starstruck girlfriend about erecting immortal skyscrapers. Unlike East Side, West Side, however, Megalopolis wasn’t filmed on location in New York, but rather in Atlanta, where Coppola was apparently so dissatisfied with the accommodations that he bought and renovated an entire motel to house his family during filming. The film’s opening weekend box office might barely cover the cost of that purchase. This contradiction is one of many that makes Megalopolis feel, for all the money and time and clear passion that went into it, like a rough draft of a film that needed several more revisions to find a coherent thesis. Despite a number of head-turning ideas and moments of sheer theatricality, the film gives way more often than not to bloat and incoherence. Is it an interesting sort of incoherence? Well, yes, if you enjoy seeing movies ironically, as many people do. Still, amid all the scandal and CGI, there’s a real sense of sadness here. This may well be Coppola’s last film, so watching it for the lulz probably isn’t what most movie buffs had on their 2024 agenda.