Ridley Scott's Napoleon - Murray, when you bring me out can you introduce me as le petit caporal?

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I just saw it, not a bad movie, not great, and I'm sure there's going to be a directors cut that's an extra hour long in the future. Nice to see the Brits doing what they do with ease and bitchslapping the French. Waterloo was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
 
I thought it was horrible. I'm no history buff, but making the movie completely centered around Napoleon's relationship with Josephine felt like a mistake. Entire campaigns are skipped over to get back to Josephine. Joaquin Phoenix had zero charisma as Napoleon. Repeatedly throughout the movie we're told that people love Napoleon, but we're never shown this. Instead, Napoleon is portrayed as a detached autist who would've been a school shooter had he been born at the turn of the century. Ridley Scott has fallen off.
 
CaptainAutism69 dijo:
I just saw it, not a bad movie, not great, and I'm sure there's going to be a directors cut that's an extra hour long in the future. Nice to see the Brits doing what they do with ease and bitchslapping the French. Waterloo was a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
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Sergei Bondarchuk's "Waterloo" is not as good as his "War and Peace" series. Even the Napoleon in "War and Peace" looks more like the real deal.
 
I posted in the other thread too, but actually stopped watching this film halfway through and got a refund, it's the first time I've ever received a refund for a movie.
 
If I went to see it by myself I'd have walked out. The entire film was dedicated to making Napoleon look as foolish and pathetic as possible. The title really should've been Josephine since Scott seemed determined to transform her into a strange anti-hero figure and the actual source of Napoleon's power. It all came across as very 'yaaassss slay empress' to me.

Pheonix's portrayal of Napoleon was completely uninspired and has to be the worst performance of his career. He flip-flopped between a bland stoicism and a bratty childishness ending in embarrassing tantrums.

Napoleon was never once portrayed as ambitious, driven, confident, charismatic or even intelligent. His immense knowledge of military history, his innate understanding of topography, his natural talent as a commander, his renowned bravery, his ability to inspire his men and so on and so forth were ignored; the portrayal was entirely negative. Scott views Napoleon as a 'brute' and nothing more.

The film was just an incoherent mess overall. If you never knew anything about Napoleon prior to watching it you'd be constantly asking yourself why this strange little perverted man was able to accrue so much power.

Even the battles were generic schlock. In fact, even calling them generic is too much praise. I've never seen fewer people die in battle scenes in my life. Budget restraints were obvious and the CGI looked completely out of place; I've seen TV shows do better.

The most hilarious comparison is between the abdication scenes in Waterloo (1970) and Napoleon (2023). There isn't a link to Scott's one but if you do go to see the film, or have seen it, please watch this and keep it in mind:

 
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Chris_Stuckmann dijo:
I thought it was horrible. I'm no history buff, but making the movie completely centered around Napoleon's relationship with Josephine felt like a mistake. Entire campaigns are skipped over to get back to Josephine. Joaquin Phoenix had zero charisma as Napoleon. Repeatedly throughout the movie we're told that people love Napoleon, but we're never shown this. Instead, Napoleon is portrayed as a detached autist who would've been a school shooter had he been born at the turn of the century. Ridley Scott has fallen off.
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Movies are mostly made to appeal to women, as they are the dominant force in the entertainment market. Women have no interest in seeing loads of men dying, they want a soap opera with fancy clothes on. This is that soap opera.

Have you not noticed that so many shows and movies that basically become soap operas? even when it doesn't make sense. Sons of Anarchy springs to mind, its a soap opera about outlaw bikers. Walking dead, yep, it quickly pivoted to a soap opera about relationships and shit.

Anyone expecting a proper historical epic is being silly, those days are behind us for now. This is the soap opera time.
 
Why did Ridley Scott choose to do this film in such a way that it's almost completely fabricated rather just just dramatized?
For those that have actually seen it how does Phoenix do in the lead role? Especially given the subpar, seeming, material he has to work with?
 
ChaosReignsOnSomeSaturday dijo:
Why did Ridley Scott choose to do this film in such a way that it's almost completely fabricated rather just just dramatized?
For those that have actually seen it how does Phoenix do in the lead role? Especially given the subpar, seeming, material he has to work with?
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Phoenix is a good actor, he slightly resembles a younger Napoleon. You can see that he's trying with with he's got, but it just comes off as "Joaquin Phoenix playing a French guy", and there is absolutely no sense of charisma or presence that is commonly attributed to Bonaparte. At no point did I really feel like I was watching Napoleon the same way I would, say, in a scene like this:


Now, there is a certain amount of criticism that can leveled against Waterloo, as it falls into the same hokey writing and corniness common in many pieces from the 1960s, but it allowed for much more time for the viewer to "soak up" the gravitas of the scene, making it more effective. I don't blame Phoenix personally for the film, but then again I rarely blame actors for crappy movies, as 9/10 times the fault usually falls on the director or producers.

The battle scenes, at least the ones I saw, were lackluster as well. They tried to have the effects and fluidity of, say, the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films, but lack any of their precise charm. To be really honest, the violence in each of these scenes really falls flat as well. I just watched Saving Private Ryan in theaters, a flick made in 1998, and that manages to have grander and more effective war scenes than this movie 25 years it's junior.
 
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I should have listened to all of you and avoided this dud. Just to add my few gripes that I don't think have been mentioned yet:

The film almost completely omits Napoleon's brothers and companions, and I don't think a single one of his marshals is mentioned by name, much less gets a speaking role. Some of the most interesting drama of the period is rooted in his friendships, intrigues, and falling-outs with his marshals and his siblings.

Film color is very desaturated. All the gilded eagles, silk flags, and ornate uniforms dripping with gold braid are so visually iconic of the Napoleonic era. Why desaturate everything in every scene? I thought they were going to do something neat with revealing the famous sun of Austerlitz, maybe upping the color saturation at least for a bit, but the entire battle sequence is the same flat desaturated tones.

Almost none of the iconic martial music from the era is worked into the film. Ok, so they throw in "Ca ira" and "La Carmagnole" but none of the iconic tunes that the Grand Army marched and died to. No Marseillaise, Chant du depart, Victoire est a nous, Marche de la garde imperiale, nothing. It's the soundtrack of the era, and it's missing in its entirety.



And to repeat some gripes that have already been mentioned:

It's sorely disappointing how small of a scale many of the grand battle scenes are. They try but fail to trick your sense of scale by having every tenth extra on screen carry a flag (regimental standard), because you're accustomed to seeing in these historical movies 1 flag per ~100 extras, whereas they've got 1 flag for every 10 extras. The battlefields seem so empty and so small of a scale.

I know Sergei Bondarchuk had the good fortune of having the Soviet Army at his disposal for "Waterloo" and "War and Peace", but surely modern filmmakers could find a way of matching that real sense of scale with cleverly used CGI.

And it's so strange, the film omits any depiction of Napoleon's charismatic hold over the rank-and-file of the Grand Army, and especially the Guard.
 
For anyone that saw it, did Iam Holm in Time Bandits do a better job at Napoleon? He's my go-to for the portrayal.
 
Random5678 dijo:
If I went to see it by myself I'd have walked out. The entire film was dedicated to making Napoleon look as foolish and pathetic as possible. The title really should've been Josephine since Scott seemed determined to transform her into a strange anti-hero figure and the actual source of Napoleon's power. It all came across as very 'yaaassss slay empress' to me.
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I mean, it's a film by a Britbong, a Lefty and one that happens to be Ridley Scott.

All 3 things put together, can anybody honestly say they were duped?
 
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