Joaquin Phoenix gives the absolute worst performance of his career as Napoleon Buonaparte, choosing to portray one of history’s most famously charismatic leaders, as a wooden cutout. No movie these days would be complete without Reddit/Marvel-tier quipped dialogue, and this screenplay provides it in spades. Many of the events that would naturally adapt to the big screen are skipped in favor of shots of Phoenix crawling under tables like some fucked up dog. No mention is made of Italy, and Spain and Haiti are skipped over as to avoid portraying the subject in any kind of negative light. Irresponsible and reactionary filmmaking shines through in a script that truly feels like it was written by chatgpt. The film concludes with him suddenly dying in a part that reminded me of the poochy “my planet needs me” bit. Do not waste your time. I was expecting a cheesy Hollywood retelling and it didn’t even do that, despite having more than enough source material to do so.
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Englishman Filmaker Ridley Scott ancestors telling him to make napoleon look as wooden and lame as possible
im still going to watch that trash
At least do whatever you can to avoid paying for it. Heed my warning. Learn from my folly, or meet my same fate.
more like napoleon bonerfart
First French Empire in absolute shambles.
gottem
so i guess we’re not getting a historical epic revival any time soon, huh
Unfortunately it looks like the History Extended Universe is going to have to wait a bit.
Oppenheimer was pretty good I thought, even though it was such a Christopher Nolan movie
I knew it was gonna be dog-shit when I saw Ridley Scott’s name attached to it lol. It does make me want to rewatch Barry Lyndon, which is actually a good movie unlike Napoleon.
edit: I was too harsh on Ridley. I didn’t know he directed The Last Duel, which is one of my favorite films of the 2020s so far. Defo not washed up.
I like Ridley as a cinematographer, his movies always tend to -look- gorgeous, but he’s a shit story teller. So overall I think the wrong Scott brother died.
He generally doesn’t write the movies he directors
VOTE FOR PEDRO.
The perfect Napoleon movie exists and it’s free
It’s called watching War and Peace (1966) following by Waterloo (1970)
you can add in Toussaint Louverture (2012) as additional content
The poster in Hexbear dot net are not happy with the Napoleon movie
That’s okay, I will still watch that garbage
Waterloo is a way better movie. All real extras. All from the actual Soviet army.
War and Peace is better and has the same director (and also has Napoleon!).
Gotta check that out, thanks.
That movie is so damn good. Nothing can replace the era when Hollywood was throwing money at tens of thousands of people for battle scenes.
The soundtrack is good too.
Remember when they paid 300,000 people to show up for the Gandhi movie?
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is also a way better Napoleon movie.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Rod Steiger was so good in his portrayal of Napoleon that I think he could play a good Mussolini
and he did apparently
Did not know that. Gotta check it out later. Gotta be way better than George C Scott.
The only factor that matters when casting a character is if the actor has a similar nose and similar eyes. Everything else is secondary.
And a hat to tie it all together
well of course it is, it’s late era Ridley Scott
Hey he made The Last Duel just 2 years ago and that movie slaps
Exactly, he made a good movie too recently for this one to be anything but trash
No movie these days would be complete without Reddit/Marvel-tier quipped dialogue, and this screenplay provides it in spades.
I want to imagine Napoleon Bonaparte played as Napoleon Dynamite.
There’s a part where Napoleon is treating with a British envoy and as he’s storming off, he turns around and petulantly quips, seemingly on the verge of tears, “YOU THINK YOU’RE SO GREAT JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE BOATS!” And I could absolutely see Napoleon dynamite delivering that line to one of his classmates.
I love the part where Napoleon said “It’s Napoleo time” and then Napoleo’d all over the British
And then the british were like “He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
They have grapeshot now?
Uh, yeah they have grapeshot now
If Napoleon Bonaparte is history on horseback, Napoleon Dynamite is history riding a llama.
I imagine Blucher and his Prussians arriving on Napoleon’s flank at Waterloo by stepping out of Avengers portals.
That would have been better. Instead they appear off-camera and you get a shot of a geriatric Wellington going “thank god they’re here” and you never really see them.
>tfw I’m a better film maker than Ridley Scot
Too late because I already bought tickets. Luckily I don’t have great taste in movies.
I lost all interest in the movie when Ridley Scott trashed historians for suggesting he might try to study history for his historical biopic. He had Napoleon shoot the Sphinx because it “was a quick way to show he conquered Egypt”.
Fucking idiotIt’s even worse than that - they shoot the pyramids.
This part almost makes me want to see the movie ngl
I lost all interest when Ridley Scott decided to cut the part where Napoleon falsely tries to convert to the true faith of the prophet Mohammed which led to his downfall in waterloo
A movie just on Napoleon in Egypt would have been more interesting. Its a less explored topic than say the battle of Waterloo.
Seriously, reading Andrew Roberts’ biography of him, I came away thinking Napoleon had genuinely lost his mind when I read his writings from the period. It’s been a while, but I recall that he harbored fevered fantasies of going rogue and installing himself as some kind of latter day pharoah or caliph in Egypt and creating some grand new society in his image. A movie about the Egyptian campaign would be entertaining as fuck.
Great concept. That is a movie I’d watch. One man’s descent into megalomania, maybe foreshadowing his eventual seizing of power and turning his laurel crown into an imperial one.
Right? There’s so much untapped entertainment value with Napoleon, but all that anyone seems to want to do is Waterloo, Russia, and Austerlitz
like Aguirre, Wrath of God by Werner Herzog
the proof of concept is there
But think of an alt history film where he actually does it and it goes to shit
We need more counterfactual history movies in this world, and I’d watch the hell out of that one
or napoleon in italy. poor, badly equipped soldiers, little plucky nobody napoleon betting big AND ACTUALLY PULLING IT OFF.
and it’s not fucking waterloo. who cares. most covered part of the whole thing, because the english were in it.
The Italian campaign would be AMAZING. Give us his speech to the Army of Italy dammit
Has this guy in fact been coasting off of the reputation of the two good movies he made for like 40 years?
It’s incredible how much momentum he got out of those.
I lost all interest in the movie when Ridley Scott had Napoleon get infected by the magic black goo which turned him into a zombie.
That would make me watch, I enjoyed the vampire hunting Abe Lincoln movie
“Auteur” theory is fucking bullshit and it’s ruinous.
Well it did give us Reds. So what I’m saying is it’s ok when we do it. Most of the time it just gives us dumb bullshit from long-past-relevant prehistoric filmmakers trying to relive their glory days by making shitty mobster films and casting their prehistoric actor buddies and deaging them so they look like an affront-to-god experimental lab creature that looks 35 but acts 100.
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nooo deaged grandpa deniro dont toe me death! careful, you might lose your balance, fall, break your hip, and slowly decline. nooo, grandpa denirooooo
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Some people are very good at specific things, and yes that includes being very good at directing movies, or acting in them, or writing them, or the like. What I say is bullshit is the “this visionary genius who has the most prominent name on this movie you like is implied to have singlehandedly made that movie and therefore unfettered control over an upcoming movie will surely be at least as good” belief that almost never goes as promised.
What I say is bullshit is the “this visionary genius who has the most prominent name on this movie you like is implied to have singlehandedly made that movie and therefore unfettered control over an upcoming movie will surely be at least as good” belief that almost never goes as promised.
so like Nolan?
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Oppenheimer’s pacing was so weird that I fast fowarded the movie on some part
This movie and Oppenheimer had a lot in common, although this made Oppenheimer look like a masterpiece. Both films suffer because they’re both so obsessed with their subjects that they claustrophobically center the entire movie on them instead of exploring the interesting worlds they inhabit.
“THIS IS NOLAN THAT MEANS THIS IS AN ADULT MOVIE FOR GROWN-ASS ADULTS. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT YOU ONLY LIKE MOVIES FOR BABIES, BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM” takes are all too common regarding Nolan and yes I count those as Auteur Theory
Disclaimer for readers: yes yes it is okay to enjoy the BWAAAAAAAAAAMS but please stop pompously assuming anyone not BWAAAAAAAAMING with you is some sort of barbarian, child, or barbarian child.
That sucks. Joaquin Phoenix is a good actor. I’ve heard lots of bad things about this one
The performance is more Joker than jacobin. He’s a whiney, mumbly weirdo the entire film. No rousing speeches, no galvanizing orders of the day, just Phoenix moaning his way through Nickelodeon - level dialogue.
