Megalopolis

I just saw Megalopolis this week - a masterpiece by Francis Ford Copolla, the director of the Godfather.

The film is described as:

A conflict between Cesar, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare.

Megalopolis came from Coppola's desire to make a film drawing parallels between the fall of Rome and the future of the United States by setting the events of the Catilinarian conspiracy in modern New York City

The film has many parallels I’d say to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, among other works by Rand.

Although the movie was at times pretty conceptual, dramatic, high brow, and even psychedelic, with a lot of humour going over my head, I enjoyed the experience.

The main character is driven by a desire to create a better world, a utopia, and is singularity focused on advancing humanity, calling out the decline of Western Civilization.

I find something like this not just as inspiring, but almost like an espresso shot to feed off of as a young creative. It’s nice to have some of my own ideology reflected back to me like this, to internalize further and appreciate.

However, I couldn’t help but think - motivation and the pure ideology of something like this could also be quite dangerous in the hands of the dangerously powerful few. It’s just a risk of the current era we’re in, particularly from an AI safety perspective … I don’t think I would have put a caveat like this even 5 years ago. The road to hell has always been paved with good intentions.