It’s around here that a normal review would subtly transition to a summary of the plot. Unfortunately, Megalopolis is such a rambling, boring slog, I’m not sure I grasped the story writer and director Francis Ford Coppola actually had in mind.

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Inaccessible to the point of satire, Megalopolis also tarnishes Coppola’s legacy. This is no Godfather. It is not The Rainmaker. It’s not even Jack. It is, however, among the worst big-budget productions ever made — a late-career echo of Heaven’s Gate, the sprawling vanity project by The Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino that was so monumentally awful it ruined Hollywood’s trust in auteur directors for decades.

With mostly his own money at stake, Coppola’s latest may not have as big an effect on the future of film. But navel-gazey to the point of irresponsibility, sanctimonious to the point of insulting, Megalopolis is still a cautionary tale — though not about the entropic nature of empires and civilization. It’s a warning about what too much money, too much self-seriousness and too little editing can do to an artist.