[Barrin92]

>Coppola is 85. How many octogenarians are still creatively significant?

Can they even be in the eyes of the audience? I saw Megalopolis a few days ago and I think it's more creatively ambitious, weirder and interesting than a lot of the stuff he's made. But people even in principle won't grant this because of the narrative you describe.

People don't judge output by old artists on their own merits, they always project their age and biography on it regardless of the content. The reverse is also true, a lot of "young genius" work often isn't what it's made out to be, but the fact alone that some Wunderkind made it convinces the audience. David Foster Wallace I think is someone who heavily benefited from this. If a young artist made Megalopolis today as their first film I think it'd be framed very differently, but because of how much legacy Coppola and the movie have it's just not going to be treated the same way.