The idea, it seems, was to invoke other negative criticisms of Coppola’s previous projects that are now considered masterpieces.
Lionsgate removed the trailer from Megalopolis of Francis Ford Coppola after journalists and social media users discovered fake quotes from critics at the beginning of the video.
Lionsgate is handling the U.S. distribution of the film, which was self-financed by Coppola and his production company American Zoetrope.
The first trailer for Megalopolis, which was released on Wednesday morning, begins with a voiceover from Laurence Fishburne which says: “True genius is often misunderstood”with quotes from legendary critics expressing negative sentiment toward Coppola’s previous projects, including The Godfather, Apocalypse Now and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
What fake quotes say about Megalopolis
Among the quotes: “Diminished by her art”attributed to the late Pauline Kael in a New Yorker review of The Godfather; “He doesn’t know what he wants to be”attributed to the late Andrew Sarris in a Village Voice article about the same film; “Empty at the Core,” attributed to Vincent Canby in a New York Times review of Apocalypse Now; and “A Triumph of Style Over Substance,” attributed to the late Roger Ebert in a Chicago Sun-Times article about Dracula.
Social media users and journalists like Bilge Ebiri and Siddhant Adlakha of Vulture were quick to notice that when comparing those critics’ reviews of those films, the featured quotes were nowhere to be found. A quick perusal of the aforementioned reviews also highlights that some of these critics were largely positive in their assessments of these other Coppola projects: Kael begins her article by stating that “if ever there was a great example of how the best popular films emerge from a fusion of commerce and art, The Godfather is it,” while Ebert wrote in his three-star review that Dracula “is an exercise in feverish excess, and for that, if only slightly more, I enjoyed it.”
The idea, it seems, was to invoke other negative criticisms of previous Coppola projects that are now considered masterpieces.presumably as a way to preemptively defend Megalopolis from the divisive critical reactions that arose following its Cannes premiere.
The film currently has a score of 59/100 on Metacritic and a 53% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it theoretically makes sense to frame the film as a work of genius ahead of its time that critics aren’t yet wise enough to recognize as such.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
