Fake Quotes Controversy Shows Broken System

This week, Lionsgate released — and then promptly recalled — an audacious trailer for “Megalopolis,” an ugly yet undeniably ambitious late-career monstrosity from Francis Ford Coppola.

Normally, trailers come padded with hyperbolic quotes from less-than-credible critics — “quote whores,” we call them — plucked out of context and punched up with exclamation marks (a form of punctuation seldom if ever used by critics in print, but ubiquitous in movie advertising).

“An edge-of-your-seat thrill ride!” (“Any Given Sunday”)

“The best Western since ‘Unforgiven’!” (“3:10 to Yuma,” “Hostiles” or “Bone Tomahawk,” depending on who you ask)

“Two Thumbs Way Up!” (professional enthusiasts Siskel and Ebert on more movies than you can count)

In the case of “Megalopolis,” the marketing team tried a different strategy. Instead of quoting reviews out of the Cannes Film Festival (where the critics were across-the-board disappointed, with a few charitable exceptions, who contorted themselves into pretzels, trying to find something positive to say about the movie), Lionsgate lied.

Whoever oversaw that trailer seemed to be working on the assumption that you’ve already heard that “Megalopolis” is a disaster, so they set out to discredit the critics … by making up negative reviews of past Coppola triumphs. The trailer quotes Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael sniping “The Godfather,” and references pans of “Apocalypse Now” by John Simon and Rex Reed, en route to making the argument that The Critics Were Wrong on those films.

“One filmmaker has always been ahead of his time,” intones a voice that sounds like Laurence Fishburne’s.

There’s just one problem: Those critics didn’t write the nasty words featured in the trailer — which is not to say they weren’t tough on those films. Rex Reed tore “Apocalypse Now” a new one, calling it “a gumbo of pretentious…