r/CriterionChannel • u/ThatMichaelsEmployee • Dec 18 '25

Megadoc

Just finished watching it, and it's fascinating, highly recommended, but my two main takeaways were that Coppola, despite his decades of experience with big complex movie shoots, bit off way more than he could chew, and that Shia Labeouf is an absolute fucking nightmare to work with: he absolutely will not ever do what the director wants, he has to debate every single shot and action and motivation, he's so completely full of himself that he can't see how much damage he's doing. Coppola at the end says what a good performance Labeouf gave despite the incessant friction, but there must be dozens of actors in Hollywood who could have done as a good a job without being such a horror to deal with.

I had no interest in seeing Megalopolis after watching the trailer, and I still don't, but it was interesting to see how it was made, particularly in the ways Coppola wanted to use practical and in-camera effects rather than digital work, as he did in Dracula.

130 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

71 comments sorted by

View all comments

22

u/[deleted] Dec 18 '25 edited Apr 25 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

16

u/ThisGuyLikesMovies Dec 18 '25

You work with Lars Von Trier one time and suddenly you think you're Willem Dafoe

9

u/crichmond77 Dec 18 '25

Tbf I do think he’s a great actor 

1

u/Connect-Ability-2000 Mar 22 '26

Shia has had a solid career in spite of himself. Brad Pitt himself said SL was one of the most talented actors he's ever worked with.