Megalopolis imagines what New York could have been. It’s only fair, then, that we return the favor and imagine what New Rome’s residents were up to during their formative college years.

Francis Ford Coppola recently released his last film: Megalopolis. The movie—truly one of the movies of all time—is set in the fictional city of New Rome, a version of New York in which flower shops… materialize out of thin air? Anyway, this prompts the question: if New York exists (in a sense), then doesn’t Columbia? And if Columbia exists, then certainly all the characters in the movie would have attended it. In this article, we will do the arduous—but necessary—task of deciding which Columbia colleges the characters of Megalopolis went to. 

These careful sortings are informed by two viewings of the movie in a single week. Once for fun, once to make sure the film was real and not a fever dream.

Wow Platinum – Barnard

Do you see her name?

Insane, horny journalist played shockingly by Aubrey Plaza. 

Shia “Clodio” LaBeouf – SEAS Dropout

Definitely applied to SEAS to appease his grandfather, the “richest man in the world,” but dropped out because it was too hard. Why did they spell his name that way?

Crassus (richest man in the world) – Columbia College

Applied to CC in like the 1950s because it was in “New Rome” and he liked that it didn’t admit women.

Mayor Cicero – GS

Gives the exact vibes as when you have a morning seminar and there’s some 50-year-old man in it talking with everyone else.

Weird Incest Twins – Barnard

They would have a megabed. Unfortunately. 

Julia Cicero – SEAS

Because Caesar Catalina thinks that she isn’t interested in art or poetry *plus* SEAS people know how to “go back to the cluuub.”

Caesar Catalina (Adam Driver) – Columbia College

He is exactly what Columbia College wants its students to become. Definitely is the most hardcore defender of the Core you’ve ever met. So unbearably pretentious in your Lit Hum class about the white male authors that it makes your ears shrivel. I mean, come on, he literally says in the movie, “I reserve my time for people who can think. About science. And literature, and architecture, and art.”

Vesta Sweetwater – Barnard

The weird Grace Vanderwaal cameo you did not expect. Goes through a Taylor Swift-inspired transformation from performing this fake virginal character to deciding to let loose and not care about what other people think anymore. Definitely parallels the Barnard entering straight leaving gay pipeline.

Megalopolis via Wikimedia Commons