The rocky American premiere of Megalopolis is a melancholy event for any number of reasons. Mainly because it marks the drastic decline of Francis Ford Coppola’s powers as a filmmaker, and it may turn out to be the failed work that ends his long career. But also because the critical commentary surrounding the film, whether positive or negative, is in general hugely depressing. The few positive reviews tend to urge upon audiences the necessity of feeling grateful for this film, or any other film that’s not a superhero movie or a sequel in a franchise or some tired reboot of a decades-old hit, because human expressivity in cinema is so clearly doomed.

But a film isn’t good because it’s the cinematic equivalent of the last dodo, a species going extinct that must be honored as it passes out of existence. Even if Megalopolis were somehow the Last True Film, it would still be a silly spectacle, a puerile mess with some pretty imagery, an ideologically rancid bore, a dud.

Megalopolis is doing very poorly with the moviegoing public and getting buried in mostly bad reviews, but it’s remarkable how carefully and kindly some critics are couching their reactions to the overblown sci-fi epic. Mindful of Coppola’s legendary film career and aware that this largely self-financed film spectacle may very well be the eighty-five-year-old director’s swan song, Manohla Dargis of the New York Times writes, “In the end, what matters is the movie, a brash, often beautiful, sometimes clotted, nakedly personal testament. It’s a little nuts, but our movies could use more craziness, more passion, feeling and nerve.”