Napoleon | Sony/Apple | November 22, 2023 | Joaquin Phoenix is Napoleon | Ridley Scott

[Issac Newton]

 

 

[Issac Newton]

Audiences not entirely over the moon about the movie with 72% positive on PostTrak, a 46% recommend and guys still outpacing women, 65% to 35%. Best grades for the movie come from the 18-24 set (80%, but only 17% of the crowd) and men under 25 (77%, 15% of ticketholders). Close to half of the audience was between 18-34, with 25-34 being the biggest demo at close to a third. Diversity mix was 57% Caucasian, 21% Latino and Hispanic, 9% Black and 12% Asian/other.  

[KC7]

Variety:

Joaquin Phoenix’s One-Man Cult of Depressive Method-Acting Vanity

He can be a great actor, but he needs to stop sinking into the mopey wacked song of himself.

[Issac Newton]

[SpiderByte]

I glanced at the RT for this and the audience score is in the pits and...how? Does something ludicrous happen? Because going from the promo it's just a big budget Napoleon biopic

Edited November 26, 2023 by SpiderByte

[emoviefan]

1 hour ago, SpiderByte said:

I glanced at the RT for this and the audience score is in the pits and...how? Does something ludicrous happen? Because going from the promo it's just a big budget Napoleon biopic

Have not seen it yet. Plan to next weekend.  But From what it sounds like you hit on it   the movie being sold is not the movie it actually is in some ways.  That very rarely  goes well for getting good WOM. 

[4815162342]

3 hours ago, SpiderByte said:

I glanced at the RT for this and the audience score is in the pits and...how? Does something ludicrous happen? Because going from the promo it's just a big budget Napoleon biopic

 

It's a film that has a very particular take on Napoleon and history 

[Dominic Draper]

This movie was unexpectedly pretty funny and had a tone closer to House of Gucci Than The Last Duel.

 

It was pretty mediocre overall.

 

6/10

 

Edited November 27, 2023 by Dominic Draper

[Dominic Draper]

On 11/15/2023 at 2:18 PM, dudalb said:

As someone who thought not a expert,knows a little about the Napoleonic era, I can tell you point blank 2 and half hours is not enough time to really tell the story of the rise of Napoleon, let alone his entire career.

I understand the film ends with Austeritz, his greatest victory and the height of his career, and makes no atttempt to carry the story through the end..Waterloo. it toook Gance 4 hours just to cover the rise of Napoleon.

I know I  might look like a hypocrite with my generally negative opinion to judging a movie by it's running time before it opens, but Napoleon is a special case.

And yeah, I see a four hour director's cut in the future.

This isn't true.

[Boxx93]

This movie felt rushed and incomplete.

Spoiler

Napoleon goes from a simple soldier to emperor in the span of 15 minutes and I left wondering what the heck happened inbetween.

 

 

 

 I'm not a fan of how the french speak like british people. I can forgive that kind of stuff for older movies but in a world where we have big budget Mel Gibson movies like Passion Of Christ and Apocalypto (Or more recently Thirteen Lives) where the characters speak their native languages during the whole movie, and long segments like that with Inglorious Basterds, having a movie set in france where they all speak english rubs me as lazy and not trusting your audience enough.

 

Also, Im not a big fan how they make Napoleon a pathetic little man. I love Joaquin Phoenix but the more I think about it the more I'm convinced he was not the right fit for the role, though he clearly tried his best. 

 

Maybe they should have split the movie in two parts a la Kill Bill, but I'm not sure If a 4 hour cut will fix the problems I have with this movie.

 

But to be fair, those battle sequences are truly glorious to behold and worth the price of a movie ticket. 

 

This movie could have been better, but it had its moments. 6/10

Edited November 27, 2023 by Boxx93

[CoolioD1]

boring. vanessa kirby was good.

[dudalb]

On 11/26/2023 at 1:49 PM, 4815162342 said:

 

It's a film that has a very particular take on Napoleon and history 

Not really. It's tak eis pretty much the standard oopinion of Napoleon; After Austerlitz he got hubris and it destroyed him.

ANd the comic side of Napoleon has really been blown out of proportion. 

Edited November 28, 2023 by dudalb

[dudalb]

i overall liked it, but God, it felt incomplete. No doubt we will get a much,much longer director cut.

The point someone made that it never showed  how Napoleon rose from Captain of Aritllery to commander of France's army  is well taken. I was shocked they did not show Napoleon't first Italian campaign, which is where he really showed himself to be a great military genius. I am betting that is one of the things we will get in the Director's cut.

 

Ridley Scott takes some liberties...for one thing, Napoleon  fell out of love with Josephine by the time he divorced her .nd it makes it look like she had one affair as a fling..in reality, she had a steady stream of lovers..which is one reason Napoleon divorced her.

But one area where Scott was 100% accurate was the physical production, costumes, sets,  tne the big battle scenes are 100% accurate.

He also used a lot of period music for the score. Using actual songs from the French Revolution for the Revlutionary sequences was a brilliant move.There was not that much original music in the score...Ridley  borrowed from Kurbrick here.

Both Phoenix and Kirby are veyr good, of the other only Rupert Evrette as Wellington at Waterloo makes an impression.

And Scott borrows from his first film "The Duellist" in the Retreat From Moscow. A few shots he lifted from the Russian sequence in that film. Surprised it took this long for Ridley to return to the Napoleonic era, he has a obvioius  fascination for it.

Edited November 28, 2023 by dudalb

[dudalb]

On 11/26/2023 at 10:14 PM, Dominic Draper said:

This isn't true.

I was wrong. But everything I had reaa bout hte movie seemd to indicate it would only cover the rise of Bonaparte. Trailers certaily never indicated ti would cover his complete career.

[Avatree]

I just watched this and knew nothing about Napoleon other than that he was a French leader.

 

I would say I enjoyed it for the most part. It was surprisingly silly and funny, but I struggle to believe this was an accurate portrayal. If Napoleon did have autism then this film must be exaggerating to fuck. The dialogue was ridiculous. Moments where he is just screaming and making noises, was just hard to believe. Though if he really was like this then fair enough I suppose.

 

i found the time jumps difficult to follow, and the changing of general/counsel/emperor was confusing. 

 

the battle sequences were cool.

[4815162342]

1 hour ago, dudalb said:

Not really. 

ANd the comic side of Napoleon has really been blown out of proportion. 

 

You must have watched a different film. At times the movie displays an outright disinterest in much of his career other than as a cliffs notes

[dudalb]

1 hour ago, Avatree said:

I just watched this and knew nothing about Napoleon other than that he was a French leader.

 

I would say I enjoyed it for the most part. It was surprisingly silly and funny, but I struggle to believe this was an accurate portrayal. If Napoleon did have autism then this film must be exaggerating to fuck. The dialogue was ridiculous. Moments where he is just screaming and making noises, was just hard to believe. Though if he really was like this then fair enough I suppose.

 

i found the time jumps difficult to follow, and the changing of general/counsel/emperor was confusing. 

 

the battle sequences were cool.

Whihc says something sad about how history is taugh nowdays.

[Barnack]

On 11/28/2023 at 6:17 PM, Avatree said:

I just watched this and knew nothing about Napoleon other than that he was a French leader.

 

One important aspect of Napoleon (is name Napoleone Bonaparte being a clue, Corsica was conquered like a month before he was born) was that he was not French, he was born in a place that has bullets holes in French sign to this day and kept a big accent when speaking French a language that he started to speak a bit late and apparently he could not write it much. He and maybe influenced how much France saw itself as an ideal universal empire a bit more than a local nation for a little while.

 

Both Charlemagne (Karl der Große) and Napoleon being not really French must be a bit of a controversy and downplayed in France.

 

 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Barnack

[TomThomas]

Ridley is known for releasing alternative cuts of his films, and this movie is no exception. Did you guys know pretty early on that you’d be releasing a longer version of this story on Apple TV+?

 

That’s not official yet. The cut that is in theaters is the cut that’s going to stream on Apple. Downfield, there might be another thing to look at, and we have multiple longer cuts of the movie that are beautiful. But the movie that people see in the theater is the movie that’s going to stream on Apple in January.

 

 

 

 

Producer Kevin Walsh denied streaming release of extended cut, at least for now.

[TheDude391]

37 minutes ago, TomThomas said:

Ridley is known for releasing alternative cuts of his films, and this movie is no exception. Did you guys know pretty early on that you’d be releasing a longer version of this story on Apple TV+?

 

That’s not official yet. The cut that is in theaters is the cut that’s going to stream on Apple. Downfield, there might be another thing to look at, and we have multiple longer cuts of the movie that are beautiful. But the movie that people see in the theater is the movie that’s going to stream on Apple in January.

 

 

 

 

Producer Kevin Walsh denied streaming release of extended cut, at least for now.

Ridley said he edited a 4 hour cut though? If they don't release it soon imma be pissed lol.