A Truly Confounding Megalopolis Trailer

I’ve been on a bit of an AI kick lately, even more than my normally grumpy attitude toward it, for no particular reason other than stuff just keeps popping up.

This bonkers trailer for the upcoming Francis Ford Coppola film, Megalopolis holds the championship belt right now for biggest WTF when it comes to using AI.

Think of Jeff Goldblum’s line from Jurassic Park: Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Here’s the add in case you haven’t seen it (hopefully it will continue to work):

When I first saw it, I thought it was a cool approach: highlight big-name naysayers from the past thumbs-downing some of the biggest and most beloved films in the history of cinema.

But, for whatever reason (laziness or just letting my guard down), I didn’t wonder “I wonder if these are actually true.” Guess what, dear reader? They weren’t.

Here’s Bilge Ebiri in Vulture doing the basic level of journalism and simply fact-checking the quotes from these supposedly famous negative reviews:

Did the Megalopolis Trailer Make Up All Those Movie-Critic Quotes?

None of those negative quotes from Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Vincent Canby, or Roger Ebert appear in their reviews. What is the intention here?

VultureBilge Ebiri

This is the key paragraph of his brief story on it:

What’s the intention here? Did the people who wrote and cut this trailer just assume that nobody would pay attention to the truthfulness of these quotes, since we live in a made-up digital world where showing any curiosity about anything from the past is seen as a character flaw? Did they do it to see which outlets would just accept these quotes at face value? Or maybe they did it on purpose to prompt us to look back at these past reviews and discover what good criticism can be? If so, then it worked, in my case. I’ve read a lot of Pauline Kael reviews in my life, but I’d never read her review of The Godfather. I encourage you to do so as well.

Like, what was the point? At what level could this have seemed like a good idea? Is someone getting fired today (or yesterday, more likely)? Did a lowly researcher say “I’ll just ask ChatGPT for negative reviews from famous critics, and the bot just did its thing? Or could this have been a more calculated and purposeful screwup? Just why and how, how and why, a million times over.