"Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" ..." Topic

Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" …

YouTube link

Damn…beat me to it. It doesn't show a lot about the movie but lots of action sequences. If you know about Waterloo, you'll recognize some of what' going on.

Aside from the opening sequence of Napoleon paddling in the sea, everything was a clip from the films Waterloo and The Duellists. December is clearly NOT 2022.

Yep, the summary also says it includes film from "Exile". ; )

A bit of a disappointment. As has been said, a mash up from other films, albeit good ones. I thought the Ridley Scott film was about Napoleon's rise to power from commander in Italy to First Consul and not his whole life? Either way, it looks like we still have to wait a bit.

I am looking forward to seeing this movie, but the clips shown are many, many years old, apart from Napoleon on the beach.

I think it will be best seen on a large screen.

Bleh. Movies have gotten this far before without ever being finished. If "Exile" provided the wading scenes, every bit of film in that trailer was from another movie. They're talking about "six major battle sequences" but I can't find any reference to any of them actually being filmed, or what they used or planned to use for soldiers.

End of next year, maybe? More likely, someone pulls the plug, we get a few leaked scenes--probably from the coronation--and endless years of TMP posts telling us how great it would have been. Think Orson Welles' last years.

You still can't beat Abel Gance's Napoleon for the early life. I was at the premiere in Leicester square for the reconstructed film in the early 1980's. Live orchestra conducted by Carl Davis.
Sat two rows in front of the entire Monty Python team amongst loads of film and tv people.

I have problems with this: I didn't see any people of color.

Why would you even say that, Elmo?

Because it's 2022, advocate. Remember the carping over Dunkirk?

In this instance Josephine, being a creole, must be played by a person of color who identifies as a woman, General Dumas must be present in every headquarters scene--and must always be right--and all battle sequences must include either the Pioniers Noire or whatever number infantry regiment they were in Neapolitan service.

Did I miss anything?

Mr Elmo spot on!

I realise that Robert P is speaking in jest (Mr Elmo too I suspect) but, of course, as far as Josephine is concerned, 'Creole' is used in the sense of being a French settler in the West Indies, not a person of colour or of mixed race. An understandable mistake, perhaps.

"Mamelooks. Thousands of them!"

There were a couple of scenes from the Duel as well. Many of the battle scenes appear very similar to Waterloo as well.

You guys realize this isn't an official trailer right? That the film is still in production? This is just some YouTuber stringing together old clips in order to get views and likes.

I think l'enfant perdu or les enfants perdus has it right, but that's probably enough French grammar for today.

Josephine, being a creole, must be played by a person of color

I will be hoping for Zendaya💕. Angela Bassett did voodoo quite well in AHS

creole is someone born in the caribbean of european heritage, or latterly of mixed heritge European and African, so colour isnt an issue a good actress is

End British squares and French cavalry looks to be from Waterloo movie, just watched it this summer.

As a wargamer I am hoping for the best. Media and film often influence the imagination of kids. We need a good film to rekindle a younger crowd.

Ridley Scott makes good historical dramas, but his most recent ones haven't done well.

Thanks, Enfants. How do I tell an official trailer, by the way?

But yes, I understand at least some of the subtleties of "creole." (I also understand some of the racial games played. See for instance Hannibal and Cleopatra, who were every bit as African as any Boer farmer.)

But there's an old song called "Josephine" playing on that ambiguity. Anyone else remember? Only the third time Youtube has failed me. Female singer, I think black. Something about "undulating hips?"

The obvious way is to see if the YT channel is either the studio's or an industry site like Rotten Tomatoes, KinoCheck, etc. Also, look for "official trailer"; there are legal consequences for misrepresenting that.

In the trailer itself, the lack of an MPAA rating thingy is usually a giveaway, as are the title cards for the five to ten different production companies involved in the film.

In this specific case, the alarm bells should have been that Ridley Scott (or any serious director) would never, ever, ever, ever, ever use footage from someone else's movie. Ever. The days of war movies reusing stock footage and archival combat footage died with disco.

Disco's dead? Why don't people tell me these things?

The "serious director" thing is also unfamiliar. The more I see of modern movie-making, the more I think they're all kidding.

"HEART 70s" permanently on the car audio – Disco's not dead in this house.
Scott always makes great looking films but he'll never please (at least) half the people on this forum. I can forgive him almost anything for "The Duellists".

I enjoyed The Duellists, and I was impressed by Blade Runner. But I find myself remembering that "when old directors die, they become cameramen."

Remember Barry Lyndon? Nice source of clips, but not a movie. If we get a Scott Napoleon--no bets--that's about what I'd expect.

And you can't threaten a man with the death of disco who is still mourning the breakup of the Kingston Trio and the Limeliters.

1. Your interpretations of "died with disco" are too literal. Of course people still enjoy it. My point (remember the context) is that, just as the music industry essentially stopped producing disco records in '79, so too did war movies stop reusing footage.

2. I think The Duellists is overrated, mainly due to Keitel and Carradine being mediocre actors at best. I would recommend checking out another early work by Scott, called Alien.

3. Barry Lyndon is a masterpiece, and I don't even like Kubrick that much.

Very disappointing.

@ enfants perdus "Your interpretations of "died with disco" are too literal"

Actually, I think it's possible that your interpretation of his interpretations of "died with disco" were too literal. Actually.

"Keitel and Carradine being mediocre actors at best." Unfortunately, for a "British" film to get funding, you need American "stars" – even if they couldn't act their way out of a paper bag.

"Did I miss anything?"

Napoleon dining with his Time Bandits generals. That alone checks off quite a few "diversity" boxes… ;-)

Apparently, Ridley Scott wanted Micheal York and Oliver Reed for the leads in the Duellists. I still think that it is a great film as is but that casting would have added a lot more.

"I have problems with this: I didn't see any people of color"

Why does everything have to be political?

Artilleryman

Micheal York and Oliver Reed. Nah! Would have been far too stereotyped. LOL

It is a great Napoleonic/historical film as it stands. But that's just my opinion, of course.

With you there Gazzola.

I am everywhere Artilleryman, everywhere! LOL

I have to say that speaking as a former fan of Sir Didley Squott, I'm not optimistic.

Didley's first half-dozen movies were stupendous. The Duellists was a great riff on a Joseph Conrad story and I loooooove Joseph Conrad. Alien is simply unsurpassed. Blade Runner took a mediocre PKD novel, blurred it with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and produced a rumination on whether there is a defining characteristic of humanity. Blade Runner could not be remade in any other idiom than sci-fi. You can reshoot samurai movies as westerns, and you can remake 633 Squadron in space, but you could never have a non-sci-fi version of Blade Runner.

Someone To Watch Over Me was basically Ridley Scott Does Interiors, in which as always he made his leading lady look fabulous (see also Sean Young resembling a doll in BR). Black Rain was also superb: katana-wielding yakuza on motorbikes. What's not to like?

It was already starting to go a bit wobbly though. I have no idea what he was thinking when he made Legend. 1492 looked and sounded beautiful but was a stinker with some severe miscasting. White Squall and GI Jane were unwatchable stinkers. The real disaster was Gladiator, which was rubbish from frame one when you saw the height of the corn, planted equally spaced in parallel rows by a seed drill. By the time we get to Prometheus he's vandalising his own work.

In hindsight it is clear Didley doesn't really understand his films. He gets how to make them look great, but they are frequently idiotic, and some of the early masterpieces only narrowly avoided being completely undermined by his ridiculous ideas. In Alien, for example, he originally wanted to have a Martian crewman on board, with blue macaroni hair. At the end, he wanted the Alien to imitate Ripley's voice and fly the shuttle. He eventually wrecked the entire franchise by making the alien a human creation, so that the title Alien is retrospectively inaccurate; there's nothing alien about this alien at all, the universe isn't vast and terrifyingly strange, it's just a little local problem. The joy of Blade Runner was the ambiguity in whether Deckard himself might be a replicant. Didley's Final Cut removed the ambiguity entirely and made it clear that he is.

He's packed them in and made a lot of money but any film about Napoleon from this man is going to be an utter, utter stinker.

the main problem with such movie as usual will be that is French history or anything French by the prismus and good care of the anglo-saxons authors movie makers etc, it is something like Israël seen by the Arab World or Papua or African tribes by first victorian explorers, it can be sure that you will have a good 15 to 18/20 on the déjà-vu Inspector Clouseau's Scale-oh-là-là-c'est-magnifique-c'est-la-vie-champagne-baguette-croissant-Paris-Riviera-Normandy-voulez-vous-coucher-avec-moi measuring the degree of nonsense xenophobia lack of knowledge and others clichés about this country…

"Sacré bleu" is the way Americans usually pretend they speak French.

Something Ive never heard any Francophone say, ever.

Srtilleryman

Did you edit your post because I though you originally wrote 'Where you there Gazzola?' If you did not edit your post then ignore my reply post as I obviously must have misread it. LOL!

Sacré bleu! [sakray] it is not a cuss word, meaning only a "hell of blue", a surprise caused by an amazing painting color, bruise or cheese, France national Rugby or Football team player
but indeed it will be quite hard to hear the outdated oath sacrebleu, in one word [sakr], given it is something more literary than used in modern everyday language, rather a chance with Lestat de Lioncourt and Louis de Pointe du Lac in the Paris and La Nouvelle Orléans of the 18th 19th century by Anne Rice or Victor Hugo with Diantre Bigre Palsambleu Fichtre Tudieu and others devalued curse words in the benchmark french-speaking oaths & daily swear words stock market index but the real or so-called word of Cambronne is still very popular and timelesse among the Top 3

I didn't see any people of color.

You need to get some rose-colored glasses. It solves color blindness.

Wolfhag

As noted earlier, the OP link is to a junk channel re-hashing old movie clips. Unfortunately… here is a quote of Scott from early 2021:

"He came out of nowhere to rule everything – but all the while he was waging a romantic war with his adulterous wife Josephine. He conquered the world to try to win her love, and when he couldn't, he conquered it to destroy her and destroyed himself in the process."

Sounds like a bad start to me. I'm preparing myself to be satisfied if all of the officers are wearing their bicornes upright and not pushed onto the back of their heads.