Earlier today, Lionsgate unveiled their trailer for By Francis Ford Coppola Megalopolis. In a bold ploy, the trailer opens with negative quotes from film critics’ reviews of past Coppola classics like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. The suggestion: Although Megalopolis It received mixed reviews at its Cannes premiere; those smug, know-it-all critics had panned this genius’s films before, and they were wrong then, too.
There was just one problem: the quotes from film critics panning Coppola’s old films weren’t accurate. They were entirely fabricated and attributed to some of the most respected (and Googleable!) critics in history.
After several journalists began to question the source of these critical quotes (Pauline Kael’s about The Godfatherfor example, it doesn’t appear in their positive review of that film: Lionsgate pulled the trailer entirely. In a statement to Variety they said…
Lionsgate is immediately removing the trailer for ‘Megalopolis.’ We sincerely apologize to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our review process. We made a mistake. We’re sorry.
While the official trailer has been taken down, you can still find and watch other examples online.
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As far as mistakes go, this is a pretty big one. You don’t see trailers taken down too often, and in this case it was for serious factual errors – putting into the critics’ mouths words they apparently never said or wrote. The question is… how did the trailer get this far without anyone doing it? someone Do even a cursory fact check to verify that these quotes were accurate?
You might assume that a trailer of this magnitude—for a film by a major director like Coppola—would go through many different versions, and perhaps even multiple levels of approval, before being finalized. However, it doesn’t seem that way. any of the appointments in the Megalopolis The trailers were accurate. And while a couple of them came close to the spirit of the critics’ reviews (Rex Reed didn’t like it) Apocalypse Noweven if he didn’t call it “an epic piece of trash,” some were completely wrong. How do you take Kael actually calling The Godfather “An epic vision of American corruption” in The New Yorker And turn it into a quote about how the film is “diminished by its artistry”?
The quotes weren’t a secondary detail either. They were the main focus of the first part of the trailer. The point of the trailer was to say: Film critics don’t know what they’re talking about, so don’t let them talk you out of seeing this movie. But the basis of the entire trailer’s hype was wrong, which doesn’t sound good at all.
Yet, Megalopolis It is scheduled to be released in theaters on September 27. Now I can’t wait to read what film critics have to say about it.
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