There has not been a film rollout quite like Megalopolis' since—well, ever. The unique set of circumstances surrounding Francis Ford Coppola's sprawling, confounding epic could only occur in the here and now (though of course, we cannot let the now destroy the forever): Coppola had to spend decades toiling on the story and years self-financing to get this cast and court these specific controversies. If the film had come out even five years earlier, we would never have gotten a (probably) artificial intelligence-infected Megalopolis trailer, and that's just one of the many, many head-scratching moments from the Megalopolis moment.
There's a new trailer now, free of those bogus quotes from critics who supposedly trashed Coppola's past films. It turns out not only that those quotes weren't real, but many of the critics quoted actually praised the films in question. The prevailing theory is that those quotes were generated from Chat-GPT, and though Lionsgate did not confirm the use of AI, the studio did pull the trailer and apologized for the "inexcusable error in our vetting process," in addition to parting ways with the marketing consultant behind the original trailer.
There are some new glimpses at the fantastical architecture of New Rome in the recut trailer, but the new version is largely pretty similar to the previous one. Coppola is still painted as an iconoclast in narration by Lawrence Fishburne. (Fishburne was unaware of funny business with the trailer the first time around, but did find the situation "weird.") Adam Driver is still stopping time and fighting for the soul of society. And thank heavens, Aubrey Plaza's Wow Platinum is still here reciting her show-stopping line, "One two three, yippy yee." The lack of negative critic reviews doesn't diminish the intended point, that Coppola is a mad visionary "ahead of his time." Audiences will be able to judge for themselves when the film debuts in theaters everywhere September 27.
