Ridley Scott pairs-up with Joaquin Phoenix in this big sweeping production. The story looks like it starts from the French revolution and goes up to Battle of Borodino and possibly Waterloo; the battle squares always bring out the Waterloo response.

Hard to believe there's only a few movies covering the French icon, we'll see how this goes and if Scott can pull one out, the guy is 85 now.

Phoenix is one of the best actors working today and Scott is excellent. The two reunite after over 20 years (Gladiator) so expectations are high.

I'm going to wait for some reviews of this first. Ridley Scott is a legend, but he hasn't been hitting it out of the park recently.

We saw this last weekend... It wasn't what I expected - the SO liked it more than I did - I will say that the battle scenes and the burning of Moscow were impressive.

So is it worth seeing? I'd like to check it out on theaters.

Tony.

Yes, the visuals are worth seeing in the theater. I just found myself getting bored at certain points in the story - I feel like they crammed too much of a time frame into this - starting from when Napoleon was an Artillery Captain all the way to his exile on St. Helena - and they focused on some elements of the story that IMO should have been left out of this particular retelling. It will help if you know the general background/story of Napoleon as a lot of details are skipped.

Everything I'm seeing and reading says it sucks, that it's all about Josephine and the trailer shows all the battles you are getting.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Everything I'm seeing and reading says it sucks, that it's all about Josephine and the trailer shows all the battles you are getting.

^^^
What little I've read agrees with this.

https://epoch.daily.theepochti...5c62db5822366860aca9

'Napoleon': Why You Should Wait for the 4-Hour Version

Visually sumptuous but disjointed and lacking power because Ridley Scott had to cut his 4-hour version down to 2 hours.

Ridley Scott is one of the cinematic kings of visual spectacle, and in that sense, his biopic “Napoleon” is on par with anything he’s ever made.

However, he’s apparently got a four-hour director’s cut of “Napoleon” coming out on Apple TV+ in the next few months. And so my recommendation—unless you’re a diehard Napoleon fan with miniature Napoleonic battlefields in your basement and secretly enjoy wearing a replica of Emperor Bonaparte's black felt bicorn hat (the one that just sold for $2.1 million at an auction in France last Sunday)—is that you stay away from the current 2.5-hour theatrical version.

Why? It’s a crashing bore. It’s a chronically under-lit, funereal-toned, dour-performances-packed nonhistory lesson. I mean, there’s a scene where Napoleon blows the top off Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza with a cannonball. And then opens up some golden sarcophagus (Pharoah Khufu, was it?) and sniffs the mummy, and pokes old Khufu in his parched face. Yeah, sure, that happened.

Actual History Comes Last

As Mr. Scott said recently in regard to historical accuracy, “There’s a lot of imagination in history books. When I have issues with historians, I ask: ‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut … up then.’”

cont...

quote:

Originally posted by 6guns:
'Napoleon': Why You Should Wait for the 4-Hour Version

Visually sumptuous but disjointed and lacking power because Ridley Scott had to cut his 4-hour version down to 2 hours.

That sounds familiar.

Ridley Scott's 'Kingdom of Heaven' was also butchered into a disjointed and less coherent theatrical cut that was merely okay, whereas his full length director's cut that was eventually released is fantastic. Seriously, if you haven't seen the Director's Cut and thought the film was just middling, you owe it to yourself to watch the "real" version.

See also Scott's 'Blade Runner', which is kind of the poster child for this phenomenon!

(Gladiator also benefitted from its eventual Director's Cut, but the difference being that even the theatrical version was still excellent. The Director's Cut mainly just underlines how depraved Commodus was while further exploring the twisted relationship with his sister.)


I'm currently debating whether to go see the theatrical version in IMAX while that's still an option, or just wait for the Director's Cut and watch it at home.

Well that's disappointing. I guess I'll just hold out until it releases on Apple.

In the meantime, I'll gear up for The Three Musketeers (the French version with Eva Green), due to be released in the US this December.

The reviews are not good, and I think I wouldn't be able to imagine Joaquin Phoenix as anything but Joaquin Phoenix.

Wife and I saw it opening day.

I agree, while it didn't suck, it did feel like it should have been much longer to explain more of the history. They covered a LOT of time in under 3 hours.

I think the acting, the costumes, set, production was actually really good, but there was missing substance and continuity, which is infuriating.

I DO want to see the director's cut.

Wife and i saw it over the weekend with a couple observations.

The cinematography was really good. The soundtrack very good.

The Sphinx had its nose in Napoleon’s time (it was used for target practice by Germany in WWII)

Pretty sure Napoleon used more than three sentences to get the 5th army to follow him after his return from exile.

As my wife notes; no character development to show why the 5th decided to follow him and, she didn’t care if he stayed in exile or died at Waterloo…

On the big plus side, Scott did a great job showing tactics used by Wellington at Waterloo and how Napoleon retook the fort and wiped the English fleet.

You are in error about the Sphinx's nose -

https://www.historyhit.com/who...-giant-sphinxs-nose/

Ridley Scott's first feature film as a director was the Duelists (1977). It was based on a short story by Joseph Conrad about two French Hussar officers who fought a series of duels over the length of the Napoleonic Wars (supposedly, based on a true story). Starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel, it was visually incredible. As a student of the Napoleonic Era, it quickly became one of my favorite films of all time. Here we are 45 years later and Ridley Scott is back in the Napoleonic Era. All of the qualities that I found appealing in the Duelists are here in Napoleon. It is visually arresting and there is fine acting by both leads. Given that the film took place between 1789 and 1821, they had to compress 30 plus years into 180 minutes. As a result it is sort of a greatest hits version of Napoleonic history. In some cases the film and history don't agree, but unless you are deeply involved in the history, you will never know. One other thing both films had in common -- there were two main characters. Anyone else is simply window dressing. Not really a criticism, but sort of interesting. While I love the Duelists and its portrayal of the era, I simply liked Napoleon, but it is worth seeing.

They didn't mention or include his time in San Dimas at all either...

quote:

Originally posted by ChuckFinley:
They didn't mention or include his time in San Dimas at all either...

Nor did they cover his insane fascination with ice cream, which is pig like.

quote:

Originally posted by marksman41:
You are in error about the Sphinx's nose -

https://www.historyhit.com/who...-giant-sphinxs-nose/

I stand corrected, thank you and, good to know the historical accuracy of Scott’s directing

It's a movie not a documentary, generally there is some license on accuracy when putting together something for entertainment.

No way you can put in everything in a 3 hour movie, and audiences really don't want to sit for much longer, generally less time is desired. So leaving some things out is a balance between hitting the mark on production time, content and final film length, you just end up having to decide what gets in and what does not.

Look forward to seeing it myself, will have to hit a weekend matinee