OPINION: My $120 million movie only made $4 million this weekend. What now?

This weekend marked the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” an almost half-centurion effort to write, fund, film and distribute. Coppola, throughout the production, described his movie as a fable, a transcendental, epic piece of storytelling too obtuse for the studio system, too visionary for the current film environment. It could only be done by Coppola, who sold parts of his winery business to fund production.

After a mixed premiere at Cannes, “Megalopolis,” the $120 million auteur-driven fable, is now in the hands of the theatergoing public and was rewarded with $4 million on opening weekend. Better luck next time.

“Megalopolis,” despite the grand setting of New Rome as an allegory for the Roman Empire and modern New York City, isn’t a timeless fable but an abrasive, incoherent and misguided movie.

The most bizarre part of “Megalopolis,” is how unrealized it is despite the film gestating for well over half of Coppola’s life. The first half of the film feels underdeveloped, undershot and with a spontaneity in direction which could only come from missing pieces in the puzzle box.

The cast clashes with each other in their methods, Adam Driver’s dramatic stage background doesn’t mesh well with Aubrey Plaza’s improv and comedy background or Shia LaBeouf’s manic cartoon style.

For a movie marketing itself on the preservation of a director’s creative vision, perhaps the vision should actually be complete.

Coppola is no stranger to creative excess. The two extra versions of “Apocalypse Now,” in 2001 with “Redux” and in 2019 with “Final Cut,” show a man tinkering with a creative work long after its original release.

“Redux” choosing to add 50 extra minutes of footage was originally to accommodate new developments in digital effects which could be added to previously unusable footage. The “Final Cut” somewhat reverses this decision by removing 20 minutes from “Redux.”

Any mention of the production of “Apocalypse Now” brings troubled stories of how Coppola began principal photography without any clue of what the ending would be. Typhoons destroying sets, Martin Sheen hiding his near-fatal heart attack on set and real human corpses purchased by a grave-robber show a horrific production.

It’s easy to see why Coppola has strived to include footage which was unable to be released in 1979, a legendary bootleg assembly cut runs for almost five hours. The original premiere of “Apocalypse Now” at Cannes was as an unfinished work-in-progress, an unprecedented move for the festival which still awarded the film the Palme d’Or.

During production of “Redux,” cinematographer Vittorio Storaro returned to develop new transfers of the film. He had wanted to use a specific dye-transfer method to create deeper colors, but it would have forced him to cut the original negative of “Apocalypse Now,” effectively destroying the original cut of the film. Coppola convinced Storaro to do it, saying “Redux” would be the only version of the movie remembered.

An extra cut later and now physical copies of “Apocalypse Now” have the task of juggling three different versions of the same film. An idea of a definitive version goes out the window at this point. The unfinished edit which received awards at Cannes will never be available again.

The point of all of this is how film, by design, is the capture of a moment, a performance. One man in front of the camera, one man behind.

Film is one of the most heavily collaborative mediums in art and media, and the idea that one man is responsible for all of a movie is simply wrong.

Coppola is rightfully under fire as well for his on-set behavior, including the firing of the “Megalopolis” art department in an effort to save his investments and the alleged sexual harassment of extras during the filming of a party scene. Abuse of power in this way can not be written off as the work of a tortured artist.

In the end, ironically, a work like “Megalopolis” can only be viewed as if it was a product of a single man. Coppola’s name being attached so heavily to the project will undoubtedly change how an industry views the “Godfather” director, even more so than his string of flops in the latter half of his career.

If “Megalopolis” were to be exceptional, what would happen then? Would it, similar to “Apocalypse Now,” be subject to edits and changes until it hardly resembles itself decades down the line? Would it rocket Coppola back to the heights of his career in the ‘70s? Would this movie change everything?

As an artistic endeavor, “Megalopolis” succeeds. The vision has now been filmed, released and received. What does it all mean now? As a movie, “Megalopolis” still fails by deliberately alienating its audience. The person the movie seems made for is Coppola himself. Financial recuperation be damned, this movie was made for Coppola by Coppola, which is arguably the most fascinating analysis of the movie by far.

As long as you ignore the reality of moviemaking, then perhaps “Megalopolis” as an art piece is truly exceptional. But, from an audience perspective, the movie doesn’t matter to me as much as it does to its creator, which, in a world where the financials of production often override artistic vision, is damning.