A new trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s self-funded epic Megalopolis has been pulled by US studio Lionsgate following claims that the derisive quotes from critics it contained were fakes. The trailer appeared online on Wednesday, but within 24 hours had disappeared from Lionsgate’s website and YouTube channel, though it could still be found on secondary sites. Adam Driver as Cesar in Francis Ford Coppola’s extravagant Megalopolis.
Crafted in response to the negative reviews that have greeted the film since its debut at Cannes in May, the trailer opened with the sonorous voice of Laurence Fishburne, who also appears in and narrates the film itself, saying “true genius is often misunderstood”. To illustrate the point, the screen is then filled with a cascade of quotes from film critics in response to Coppola’s earlier works. From 1972, we have Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice describing The Godfather as a “sloppy self-indulgent movie” and Pauline Kael of The New Yorker saying it is “diminished by its artsiness”.
From 1979, we get Apocalypse Now being dismissed as “a spectacular failure” by John Simon in the National Review , “hollow at the core” by Vincent Canby in The New York Times , and “an epic piece of trash” by Rex Reed in the Daily News . Coppola’s 1992 gothic horror Bram Stoker’s Dracula is judged to be “a triumph of style over substance” by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times , while Rex Reed, again (but now at the New York O.