"My Review of Ridley Scott's Napoleon" Topic

Two hours and Twenty-eight minutes of my life that I will never get back.

The malfunctioning of the movie should get a standing ovation.

There was a guy named Napoleon but he was nothing like Napoleon.

I never liked popcorn and it is annoying when someone near you is chomping away at it while you are watching a movie. No big deal in this film as there were only four other people in the theater.

I'm pretty sure Sharpe never captured an Eagle at Talavera, so I will never watch Sharpe again. LOL

Sharpe is entertaining and I treat it as a fictional show set during the Napoleonic wars. It is for the most part period correct. At least the chosen men of the 95th do not have scoped rifles. I draw the line at the Sharpe, Waterloo episode which was awful.

Old Contemptible

I keep saying this but I guess we must remember that period-historical films/dramas are made to entertain, not so much to educate. Sadly for us, we have to view period-historical-military films as usually period-historical-military flavoured films, not 100% accurate historically. But some, like Sharpe, even though they are not 100% accurate etc, can still be entertaining. Who knows, they may even influence people into becoming more interested in the Napoleonic period.

I keep saying this but I guess we must remember that period-historical films/dramas are made to entertain, not so much to educate.

I don't see any reason why the two cannot work together. In fact, great art usually is great because it is bounded by certain constraints. In the case of historical figures the constraint is the real events of a person's life. In fact, I think the unwillingness to accept the limits of biography actually makes films like Napoleon worse, not better. Not just for historians or historical minded people but for the general public. In the case of Napoleon (the movie) we have neither a very accurate protrayal of Napoleon or a very entertaining movie. It is awful on both accounts. I wonder why?

Just to add, Ridley Scott abused history in The Kingdom of Heaven and made an inferior film because he ignored the historical reality of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the back half of the 12th century. The real Balian of Ibelin was a fascinating person and a film depicting the true political intrigues of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the 1170s and 80s that led to Hattin would have made great backstory for it. Instead Ridley ignores history and produces a lemon.

i think some attention to historical detail is what can make for also great and entertaining movies especially when there is enough actual drama in the facts alone – it is preferable and refreshing to have a film which doesnt assume you the viewer are just a slack jawed mushhead who will watch any crap if it looks nice.
you dont have to get everything right, there is a good space within which a film can be historical and present its own fictional elements too – like Peter Weir's Gallipoli, or the Duellists even. If scott wants to portray napoleon in a certain way, sure so be it, but really you could have done much much better to depict even just a smidgen of the warfare of the period
- i like how that mini-series Napoleon from 2001 presented austerlitz, -it was condensed and a smaller budget but all in one you got napoleon's energy and his relationship with his marshals, you got the pratzen heights, the french feigning a retreat and fog and eventually rout of the coalition. – just take that series and give it bigger budget and it could be the best thing

Christian Clavier, a French actor who started out in comedy, was brilliant as Napoleon in the 2002 mini-series.

Rod Steiger chewed up the scenery in "Waterloo" with his overacting, but is still my favorite Napoleon.

Although Joaquin Phoenix was very good in films like "Gladiator" and "Joker," he was badly miscast as Napoleon.

Napoleon was one of the most charismatic generals in history. That's why hundreds of thousands of men were willing to follow him to the ends of the Earth. But Phoenix spent way too much time staring blankly, smirking, sighing, brooding and feeling sorry for himself.

Vanessa Kirby is a very talented actress and gave Phoenix everything he needed to work with as a scene partner, but there was no chemistry between the two.

The bloke who played Wellington was awful. In every scene he played I kept waiting for Blackadder and Baldric to show up in their time machine. Or maybe pan the camera slowly to the left to show John Cleese sitting at his desk.

I wanted this film to succeed and there were times when I was amazed, such as Napoleon's coronation scene, but there were too many historical inaccuracies to take it seriously. A modern scope on a Baker rifle? Napoleon takes a pot-shot at a Pyramid? Every time a cannon is fired it results in an explosion or an atomic fireball? The Czar of Russia depicted as a naive teenager? Trenches at Waterloo after it rained all night?

According to legend, Ridley Scott has a four-hour director's cut and wants to release it some day. The bad news is that most of the additional scenes involve Josephine and Napoleon.

I gave the film two beer cans on a scale of four.

I suggested above that the main stylistic influence was other movies, including Didley Scwott's own for the "battle" scenes, but I wonder whether another one was the comic book movie.

I have never knowingly consumed a comic in any form since 1989. When I did (that year's p155poor Batman movie) I resolved never to waste time and money on such tat again. But there have been literally dozens of such movies in recent years. The fact that the plots are plainly stupid and incredible does not put their audience off in the least – they make a lot of money. So I wonder if these are perhaps the underlying influence that explain how bad the film is. All comic movie characters are fundamentally nonsensical, so perhaps Squot thought that the way to sell his movie to that audience was lots of loud bangs and set pieces, and a one-dimensional lead?

You could portray Napoleon as a complicated and charismatic intellectual with a black void in his heart, somehow able to spellbind soldiers into following him, yet capable of abducting political rivals and having them whacked, and unable to see in October 1805 that he had just been strategically beaten. You'd need a different scriptwriter, but it could probably be done.

But the Marvel comic audience would be totally bewildered and bored. If he's a good guy why isn't he wearing his underpants over his kecks? If he's a bad guy, why isn't he wearing black rubber with a big letter N on his chest?

In the same way that dogs can only harbour one emotion at a time, teenage audiences can perhaps only absorb one personality trait at a time. Napoleon's is that he's a moody old lecher who paws the ground when he wants to shag Josephine, lived only to shag Josephine, achieved nothing in his life besides shagging Josephine, and that's why he lost Waterloo.

As a portrait of Napoleon, it's perhaps a little bit superficial.

I guess that's why its called acting.

Sir Ridley – thanking you- Sir Ridley's key error in Kingdom of Heaven, it seemed to me, was casting Orlando Bloom as his lead. (To be fair he was very convincing in 'Blackhawk Down.').

@4thC "Comic book movie." The movie _is_ a comic book movie. Sir Ridley storyboarded the whole fillum himself. It was collected and bound in book form. I'm genuinely surprised it hasn't been reproduced and brought out in time for Christmas.

Sir Ridley – thanking you- Sir Ridley's key error in Kingdom of Heaven, it seemed to me, was casting Orlando Bloom as his lead. (To be fair he was very convincing in 'Blackhawk Down.').

No, the key error was creating an ahistorical backstory to the D'Ibelin family and Balian D'Ibelin specifically. The whole scene of the elder Godfrey D'Ibelin returning to Europe to "rescue" his estranged blacksmith son is ridiculous from top to bottom. And completely unnecessary. Ridley Scott could have chosen to use one of several novels written about this time that fleshed out the history into a riveting story but that would have bound him in a kind of way that he obviously is not interested in. He is a complete joke and really doesn't deserve to be taken seriously anymore as a director. Hopefully Napoleon will end his directing career.

As you wish

It's now officially a box office bomb

Napoleon's $137 USD Million Box Office Bomb Explained

link

It's actually up to $190 USD Million now. Is the concern how much money it makes? Because some historically accurate films have made far less on similar budgets such as The Last Duel.

Thus, do we know that an accurate film on Napoleon wouldve done better at the Box Office?

This article is interesting because it speaks to what actually counts for Apple to have a success with Napoleon.

link

In the hard to please demographic world of historically accurate film fans, are there any that we can point to? And if there are any, how did they do financially?

For instance, the film Waterloo (1970) apparently cost $247 USD million in 2023 adjusted dollars and took in under $10 USD million in the same 2023 adjusted dollars.

link

@ 42flanker – see the 'ignorant mistakes' thread for a link to Didly's legendary storyboards. They are an absolute hoot!

"It's now officially a box office bomb"
Presumably everyone here is very happy. See you for the next one in the 2070s.

Another dismally bad film can't come too late.

Well, it has certainly caused more than one thread to be made here. It must be a record for how many threads running about one topic! Amazing. LOL

Looking at the website REDDIT, the film is not doing so badly at the Box Office? Could it be the anti-Nappers just want it to fail because of the title name? LOL

I think you might want to reread the Reddit report again Gazzola. The claim there is that it isn't quite the bomb that it might have been but by all metrics it still is a bomb. Grossing $200,000,000 USD is still a disaster given that it needs $500 USD-600 million in revenue to break even.

It seems there is much more to it than the quoted production costs. Advertising and promoting the film costs a fortune.

But then, the suggestion is that anything from the theatrical release is just a bonus. The revenue was meant to come from streaming it (or so I am assured, I have no idea) which is still to come with the four hour version. Killers of the etc is far greater concern it seems. Ruinous losses, but all written off against tax.

Well, it has not stopped making money as yet, so who knows what the final result will be, moneywise? And I would not be surprised if the film was around for a very long time, like other inaccurate period films such as Zulu, The Alamo, Gladiator etc. But I'm sure no one attending this website watches such inaccurate movies. The very thought! LOL

I am somewhat late to this party having just watched this movie on Apple TV.

It is a huge project to undertake and understandably much must be omitted for the sake of continuity, brevity and story telling.

I found the ‘feel' of the period to be very much in evidence and Lincoln cathedral made a very ‘David' set piece.

The attention to detail on the uniforms seemed impressive but from a military point of view the battle scenes were near fantasy with little attention to anything from the history books.

The volume of flags, wonderful in Kingdom of Heaven looked particularly silly at Waterloo, that carefully planned ‘trap' apparently.

The idea of Napoleon, historically crippled with ill health, charging the British fortifications in the closing scenes was the final straw.

If Wittman's Tigers had appeared it would have been unsurprising!

A lost opportunity in my opinion.

Chris

Connaught you seem to be under the impression that folks on this forum are under some obligation to like a genuinely terrible film? or be silent about it – and really beyond this obscure site is anything here really going to be received by those who make the films in hollywood

I think a good napoleonic film will come along regardless of how successful or not some other big budget film is – if those who are behind the film are passionate about the subject -clearly Scott once was well enough to make teh Duellists, and it came out in 1977, 7 years after the big supposed bomb of that period, Waterloo

I wouldnt be looking just to hollywood also, i think other european countries like France and Germany will probably bring out some more films set in the period soon enough. I think a french director might be motivated enough by how poor the portrayal of Napoleon by Scott that they will be keen to produce a far better film or series – now seems a good time for it.

I am optimistic that something better will come along soon and also not just napoleon, i think a series or film about Friedrich der Groesse is also well overdue

If it does poorly in revenue no one will try again for a long time. I really hoped it would be a great film but it was garbage in the most part.

Finally watched it on Apple TV+. I suspect it is a distraction to get bogged down on the accuracy question and more important to consider if it's worth watching. And when I say "worth watching," I know that is purely subjective. I'll dive in anyway:

A revealing tidbit is that my wife, who was thoroughly entertained by everything from Black Hawk Down and No Country for Old Men to The Pacific and Shogun, turned off Napoleon after 45 minutes, said "Boring and confusing" and went back to watching The Strain.

I didn't bother trying to change her mind. What I had not heard mentioned much (or I just haven't read enough of the posts) is the thoroughly substandard editing. Really, it is not a movie, it is a series of disjointed vignettes featuring wooden acting and dialog that seems to have come from the 5-cent dialog bubble gum machine over on Hollywood and Vine. I don't even plan to watch any more of it, not because of any accuracy question, but because it is a dreadful, boring movie. Waterworld is better. Predator 2 is better. The last Planet of the Apes movie was better.

So… there's that.

I was so disappointed when I went to see this. I loved Gladiator, and the director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven, and was willing to forgive all sorts of historical inaccuracies for a rattling good yarn. Sadly, it was terrible. I had thought JP would be brilliant as Napoleon – how wrong I was. He looked as if he regretted every moment of having agreed to do this movie, and was more wooden than the Trojan Horse. Some scenes were ravishingly beautiful, where he was copying famous art works, but others were laughable, where he was trying to represent Napoleonic warfare. Wellington would have been more at home in Blackadder. There was only one redeeming feature, the luminous presence of Josephine. Maybe she should have been the eponymous heroine?

In virtually every interview Sir Ridley Scott has emphasized that the central thrust of the film is the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine – the 4+ hour version on Apple is supposed to develop this further.
Unfortunately this has been ignored by almost everyone who has commented on this and other forums – they were all apparently expecting a real-time, 1:1 re-enactment of the entire Napoleonic Wars.

link

When the movie first came out and I first started seeing reviews I asked specifically whether the opinion of the movie would be any different if the movie was supposed to be about the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine rather than just about Napoleon. The response I got ConnaughtRanger was universally "no". This held true whether the person I asked was a history buff or not.

Well, at least we are not all moaning that they don't make period films anymore! LOL

But I've talked with some people who did not have a Napoleonic or military interest and they said they found the film interesting. One or two did say they felt like it didn't know if to be a film about military history or one about the relationship between Napoleon and Josephine. Perhaps that's the problem with the shorter version. The longer one, which they said they would certainly watch, might offer more into their relationship and fill in some of the blank parts missing.

Of course, I did point out that it didn't depict Napoleonic warfare correctly, apart from the Brits forming squares later on and it did remind me of the early westerns that depicted the Native American Indians so badly and how they fought etc. It was certainly an 'outrage' that the film did not include Napoleon's Italian campaign. What were they thinking? LOL And I was also disappointed not see more of Eugene Beauharnais.

But the film did appear to create interest in Napoleon and the period which could be considered a positive effect, albeit not by Military or Napoleonic warfare enthusiasts. Still, good to have a Napoleonic 'flavoured' film and a longer one on the way, rather than none.