Megalopolis is due to hit theaters in just over a month, and if there’s one thing that we can count on with regard to this film, it’s that it’s going to hit like an absolute truck.
The question is, how is it going to hit, and in how many ways? Will we feel the weight of Francis Ford Coppola‘s return to the film world and the bull-headed passion and sacrifice that went into making it? Will it cement itself as a timeless masterpiece? Will it instead go down as a colossal failure? Whatever happens, we will probably feel it in the atmosphere.
It is perhaps the most unprecedented poetry, then, that the film’s latest trailer did what it did, because the price that Megalopolis might pay for this is rivaled only by the mileage it might reap.
The trailer (which was officially uploaded on August 21, pulled by Lionsgate the same day and replaced with a very humbled apology, but was kept live by several different outlets, such as IGN’s upload above) begins with snippets of quotes attributed to film critics who gave Coppola’s previous works (such as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula) negative comments. The only problem? Per Variety, almost none of those quotes were actually real, and some of the critics named actually liked the films that they were attributed to criticizing.
During this opening sequence, Laurence Fishburne (who will appear in Megalopolis as a narrating character) can be heard saying “true genius is often misunderstood” and “one filmmaker has always been ahead of his time.” But what appeared to be a controversial, and undeniably bold marketing strategy, now only reads as a profoundly tacky attempt to fight back against the 53 percent Rotten Tomatoes critic approval rating.
And yet, the effectiveness of that sequence in the context of Megalopolis—both as a mythos and as a compartmentalized piece of media—still remains. There’s no denying that this blunder can and should be criticized with impunity, but there is truth to be found in the narrative it was going for; plenty of Coppola’s works, a handful of which are considered landmarks in the medium, were not regarded as such when they first released. Similarly, Adam Driver’s protagonist Cesar seems to be gearing up for a thematically adjacent journey in Megalopolis as a visionary but misunderstood architect who wants to rebuild the Roman Empire in New York City before it’s too late. Exactly what “it’s too late” could entail is a question that should intrigue and perhaps devastate us, especially when one considers the state of the real world in the present moment.
Indeed, Coppola’s films have a history of only being understood long after their time has passed, but what if there’s not enough time that will pass after Megalopolis for that to happen? And if there won’t be, why is that? And why did we not see it before? Can we do so right now?
Maybe Megalopolis will be utter garbage, but the challenge this marketing stunt has posed is too tantalizing to ignore.
Megalopolis hits theaters on Sept. 27.