The video included several quotes from critics panning Coppola’s previous work — but none of the phrases, attributed to the likes of Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael, could be found in any of their reviews.
Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman was incorrectly cited as calling the 1992 film “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” “a beautiful mess” and highlighting its “absurdity” when he reviewed the film for Entertainment Weekly, where he worked at the time of its release.
“Even if you’re one of those people who don’t like critics, we hardly deserve to have words put in our mouths. Then again, the trivial scandal of all this is that the whole ‘Megalopolis’ trailer is built on a false narrative,” Gleiberman said of the trailer’s falsified quotes. “Critics loved ‘The Godfather.’ And though ‘Apocalypse Now’ was divisive, it received a lot of crucial critical support. As far as me calling ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’ ‘a beautiful mess,’ I only wish I’d said that! Regarding that film, it now sounds kind.”
It’s not clear where most of the quotes featured in the trailer came from — with the exception of Roger Ebert’s comment, “a triumph of style over substance,” which was actually pulled from his 1989 review of “Batman,” and not about “Dracula,” as indicated in the trailer.
You have to suspect that somebody used an AI to cull quotes instead of doing their own research, and… well, you know the rest.