This is a reup of a video I posted a few days ago. The original (link in description) was demonetized for references to the Ridley Scott’s Napoleon’s carnal appetites (probably). I have corrected historical errors I made in the previous video. There is also a new section about Thomas Alexandre Dumas, which you can view at 53:39. What was your favourite part of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon? Mine was when Marshal Morbius flew across the battlefield of Borodino to deliver an urgent message to Napoleon, and upon reaching him, breathlessly exclaimed the famous line: ‘My Emperor, Ney was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.’
Always look forward to your vids, but most of all your coverage of "biopics". Have watched your Cleopatra one 10x and it's still funny. The body positivity Advert breakdown is a criminally underrated masterpiece in your collection. Please keep starting your video essays with history lessons when possible, it's one of the best parts!
My favorite part was when the Death Star fired at Napoleon during the Battle of Waterloo, but Marshal Ney deflected the laser shouting "Long live the Rebellion".
My favorite part was when Napoleon destroyed Alderaan, with his top ranking Moffs present, in their new small moon sized orbital base, to intimidate the Princess, and try to find out the location of the Rebel Alliance.
Sorry, as a bit of a history buff. I know from my studies that both Napoleon and Cleopatra did in fact shoot lazers at the 12 pyramids of giza. My grandmother told me.
My grandmother used to tell me: “I don’t care what they tell you, Napoleon was an emotional, punk bitch.” I always knew my grandmother was the ultimate source of knowledge on history. Thank you, grandma.
My favorite part was at the battle of Waterloo, when Guyladriel, Assoka, and Harry Potter raised their four swords and shouted WAKANDA FOREVA and led a charge with their Klingon volunteers, decimating the French infantry and shifting the fate of the battle. Not even Asterix and Obelix could resist them for too long...
If Gamling just followed the king’s banner down the middle, Napoleon wouldn’t have had to lose the Death Star to Starscream’s attack and Waterloo could have been different.
@@shawklan27 Yes but to so undermine Napoleon undermines Nelson and Wellington by proxy and that just won't do. Also I'm fairly sure Scott hates the history of the British Empire more than he hates the French, being a hollywood lefty and all that.
The memoirs of Bourrienne, Napoleon's wonderfully intelligent and perceptive private secretary, offers a brilliant and insightful biography of the man underneath the myth. Reading his memoirs is strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys great writing as much as contemporaneous historical detail. It is clear that Bourrienne admired Bonaparte enormously but what really shines is Napoleon's charisma, his personal charm, his boundless fascination and endless curiosity and his affection for knowledge, debate, science the Code Civil and the many goals of the enlightenment. In one memorable vignette, Bourrienne relates a moment during the voyage to Egypt where Napoleon at his dinner table invites a debate on whether there could be life on Mars. Bourrienne says that Bonaparte was typically an instigator of such discussions and he was especially fond of any man in his company who could take an unfavourable position in a debate and make a spirited argument all the same. He was a brilliant and extremely complicated man who risked being swallowed by his own ambition and mythology. Ridley Scott's version paints this same incredibly charismatic and inspiring man of history as a sullen, grumpy curmudgeon. It was so bad I lasted no more than twenty minutes before switching it off.
Ridley Scott's response to people criticizing him being ahistorical as "Were you there? No? Then shut up" had me in stitches. Shut down all historical fields except for contemporary history folks.
Funny enough Stanley Kubrick wanted to do this exact concept. However he couldn’t get the film’s script under 8 hours and the budget under 700 million adjusted for inflation. Keep that in mind
Kudos to Kubrick for understanding that the life story of a top 3 all time human historical figure and warlord could not be compressed into a single movie.
@@TheStraightestWhitest Just out of curiosity, can you give us your top 5 of historical figures and warlords? No criticim or anything, just genuenly peeked my interest who the rest of that list it.
@@Kmodal It gets a bit muddy when you start qualifying because you'd have to determine what makes a great leader/warlord, but I'd say Alexander The Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, and Augustus and Julius Caesar. Of course there's plenty of others, like Alexander's many generals (Ptolemy being the best example), or just about any of the Roman Emperors all the way into the Anglo Saxon era like Henry IV, Charlemagne, and Charles VI. But as a whole, I rate these first five greater than the rest based on how far they expanded into the world. Augustus and Julius literally made an empire where the sun never set. Genghis made a dynasty that controlled all of China. Alexander and Napoleon basically possessed all of Europe. These guys were literally continental to multi-continental in their reach and power. That's even more impressive than simply dominating one or a few countries.
"Whatever happened in Italy and Spain was unimportant, I'd rather a Napoleon movie feel like it's almost half dialogue with Josephine," said not a single soul on the planet. Imagine a historically accurate seven-season-long show, each season dedicated to a Coalition War.
They would have to show him abducting pope after pope until they reinstituted the abolished Jesuit order. And the one of his generals breaking into the inquisition and being disgusted at the horrors they found.
As a french we had high hopes for that movie. I walked out really thinking that Ridley being british, just hated Napoleon and trolled us all. This movie isn't good but it made me laugh quite a lot. Espacially the "you think you're special because you have boats" scene. I HAS to be a parody.
Napoleon throwing Food on his wife from the other side of table like a spoiled little child is more than enough to suggest how serious Ridely was about the portrayal of Napoleon while producing this movie.
When a nasty ideology is attacking your country, it doesn't just attack your culture, movies, comix, books etc, it also wants to destroy your real heroes and rewrite your history. The people attacking western culture call themselves progressives. Progressive is the first of many words they have corrupted. There's nothing new about their actions
@@valder8423 I expected a good movie. Ridley produced good movies in the past. I was hopeful that he would produce a very good movie about napoleon and his life after watching the trailer. I was looking forward to watch it despite the fact that I am neither British, French or anywhere from Europe. I am from India and I want to watch real cinema, truly beautiful quality movies with amazing stories. ( Bollywood movies are nothing but romantic musical piece of garbage and completely creatively bankrupt). Some Historical inaccuracies are fine but complete character assassination of napoleon just killed all my interest in the movie. I heard that they will release 4 hours long director's cut. May be that would be interesting to watch.
@@cenationofjnu Hollywood hates the audience, a four hour cut will be twice as aggravating as the original movie. Also, I heard RRR is supposed to be really good, and I've seen some Bollywood movies about the past which are fun, specially the over the top battles. I don't know how historically accurate they are though,
True, but if I'm correct just on "Waterloo". Which was very much a historians dream account. "Dancing Queen" did have some glaring holes regarding, Josephine.
I am so puzzled... they make movies that cost billions, yet don't bother hiring a competent screen writer, a historian to fact check and sb with a militery strategy knowledge to help with the battle scenes... they think people are too dumb to notice and will just care about "how cool it looks"... 🤷♀️
Interesting that you joke about the nationality of the *American* film but not the British accents in the *BBC's* production. Ameriphobia really is as low brow as humor can get 🥱
They should have casted Napoleon with a dwarf to please Peter Dinklege, annoy the French, and turn it into a comedy for the rest of us. Most importantly have the dwarf play it straight but make sure the sound editor gives him a high pitched voice
Napoleon, like Caesar, Alexander, Genghis Khan, and all other career military conquerors, had a life that can't possibly be sufficiently covered in one movie. These dudes fought dozens of battles. You could devote whole seasons to their many campaigns/theatres of operation and literally have the actors portraying them age appropriately as the seasons wore on, from young ambitious upstart to weary and tired general. Just think about it: A 13 season epic about Alexander the Great, each season devoted to a year of his stomping through Asia (with flashbacks to his upbringing and his father peppered throughout). That will never be made. But it would be the most historically accurate and totally awesome television spectacle if it did.
A TV show where scriptwriters, producers and directors would not see historical accuracy as a direct attack to their egos? Where they would understand that history itself is far, far more interesting than anything they may consider the audiences (that they usually consider as being plain stupid) couldn't understand, follow or think would be boring? Might as well wait for pigs to grow wings and fly indeed.
True, but in N1's case, you could make a compelling movie about his rise, and dare I say, fight against the establishment (being a Corsican in France) and up to Marengo. Or, like Waterloo, concentrate on his demise Or, use Borodino and show him at his most arrogant
This is why the Japanese have Taiga dramas. They get a little bogged down in the "drama" aspect, and thus can be a bit tedious ,but they are 80-90% faithful to their subject matter precisely because they actually spend the time to tell the story over multiple episodes, with no detail (even folk/myth stuff) left out. Reality is both more interesting, but harder to dramatize, especially when there's a ton of details that need to be filled in. Most ignorant Western audiences have no time for that
Scott said in some interview that Joaquin didn't feel the original writing had any character. I suspect part of Napoleon's character in this movie comes from Phoenix. I quite liked it as a movie - maybe not a historical one, but I actually really enjoyed Phoenix's performance of a vain, slightly mad, neurotic man.
Of all the film tropes, the one I hate most is "great men throw tantrums and yell sometimes" instead of showing actual complexity and breadth of feeling.
Ridley Scott pretty much shat on Napoleon and covered that pile with Phoenix and his reputation. In one of the recent interviews Phoenix said that he tried to work with Scott on overall understanding of his character, arc and motivation, but got something like “I’ll tell you how to portray him on a scene to scene basis” in response.
I can believe that. Phoenix is one of the most committed actors working today, whereas Ridley Scott’s been all over the place since at least _Prometheus._
It’s funny you say this because I agree, & there were parts where Phoenix seemed bored & detached to the point where I wondered if he were sedated, perhaps on opioids or Xanax. Ofc I hope that’s not the case, but the portrayal was the opposite of how ppl think of napoleon as being a bundle of energy & vitality.
@@scarletsletter4466 i think he were luke skywalkered Ryan R. Style by Scott, even got told from Scene to Scene what He should show. No Character Arc requiered. The Icing on the Cake is the Waiste of such Talent as an Actor. Phoenix surely did know of the Age discrepances, but do not take the Role, who can blame Him for not stepping back.
This video is a triumph.....much like Napoleon's triumph at the battle of Helm's Deep, where his strategic use of the Genesis device allowed him to defeat Thanos and the Death Eaters once and for all. History tells us that he bellowed "BOATS!" as he lead the final charge of the 300 Spartans. I hope that moment makes it into Scott's extended cut of the film.
Just wait for the sequel: Napoleon 2 where Captain Marvel and Barbie finally joined forces to stop Napoleon and Palpatine! The emperors just returned somehow
This movie was all about Josephine, and how she was sooooo important to Napoleon, according to Scott. What's worse is that Ridley wants to make a director's cut that has more Josephine in it. As if we didnt get enough of that in a movie not named after her (might as well have been that way)
Which is funny. Josephine was incredibly important to napoleon, but this movie seems to think that she was incredibly important to his career and the things he did.
The movie was pretty much just a summary of British propaganda of Napoléon. The movie showed 4 battles two wins of napoleons and two loss made no mention of the 60+ battles where he stomped everyone's asses into the ground, then at the end of the movie only listed his defeats with the numbers of dead implying he had a hand in their deaths, conveniently left out a majority of the battles he fought were defensive, had napoleon literally walking on all fours like dog for Josephine, and even put in the mummy scene to take a swipe at his height. movie was hot garbage.
Seeing this description tied with Despot's breakdown, yea it feels like they based it off of British Propaganda, as well as leaning heavily on the psychological idea of the Napoleon Complex to model Napoleon's character, regardless for either's relation to the actual person of Napoleon himself. Napoleon was a force of nature who shaped all of Europe, you don't get there by being an inadequate man trying to overcompensate.
My favorite scene is when Greta Thunberg told Napoleon "How dare you?" After Napoleon had decided to just Napoleon all over the Pyramids in Gaza, I'm really happy he finally checked his white privilage at that moment.
I don't blame Joaquin Pheonix for his portrayal. It's an actors job to bring a directors vision to life. We've seen him act before, I bet he just doing what Ridley Scott wanted him to do.
A good actor knows when to walk out too though. A good example would be Henry Cavill. Otherwise you have the Nicholas Cage/ Dwayne Johnson/ Will Smith effect where you ostracize yourself through your own popularity, becoming not recognized for your work but your notoriety and thus drawing unwanted attention to your flaws and so your legacy as a whole.
henry cavill's case is different. that is a tv series, him leaving after some seasons is different than actor leaving in mid movie. there's no need to fanboy actors like that.@@personwhohasayoutubechannel3
@personwhohasayoutubechannel3 if I have no real connection to the person I'm portraying, why not get that check? Nobody is saying it was a bad movie, it's just a bad portrayal of Napoleon. I personally wouldn't do a bad portrayal of MLK, because I'm african american, but if an african or British actor did it, i can't be mad, he's not one of their heros🤷🏿♂️
@@personwhohasayoutubechannel3 Backing out of a multi-million dollar project half way through production is a easy way to end your career as an actor, and while it may not be that evident currently, henry's career is likely going to decline due to his actions, at least in terms of a series... Historically its rare for a show to survive after a core character goes through an actor swap..it just feels bad for the viewer and the show usually flops afterward...i find it hard to believe that studios wouldn't consider avoiding actors that flake out over creative differences, We fans may appreciate it when an actor stands up for the original story, but believe me , the people spending millions on these productions most certainly don't
“I have a life, that’s how I knew your movie was historically heretical horse shite.” If RS had anything resembling a meaningful life, he would understand the value of accurately portraying the most influential human in western history.
"I don't know if he actually shot the pyramids, I just thought it looked cool" YOURE LITERALLY THE *DIRECTOR* OF A HISTORICAL FILM, ITS YOUR _ONE JOB_ TO LOOK AT WHAT HE DID AND DIDNT DO BEFORE YOU SHOOT A SCENE💀💀💀💀
29:08 Hey! at least Arnold UNDENIABLY was having a blast playing Dr Freeze, he was hamming it up every time he was on screen. I've never seen an actor play a terrible part with such childish joy and happiness.
I was in my edgelord phase when it released, but when I saw it ten years after, if Arnie was on the screen, I was enjoying myself. I'm glad that I came back to it when I had. Moreso later on, after I found out that there was a Rifftrax for it.
I loved that scene when Napoleon was conquering the alien colony on Antarctica where he charged into battle screaming, "Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf**king aliens on this motherf**king continent!!"
The saddest thing about this movie was that it was unwatchably awful. The first 40 minutes or so were entertainingly bad at times, but it became such a slog that my friends and I shut it off before the halfway mark.
To me, the biggest crime of this movie is the desaturated colour palette. They spent so much on those fabulous costumes, and they manage to make them look so drab.
My favorite part was at the battle of Waterloo, when Guyladriel and Assoka raised their three swords and shouted WAKANDA FOREVA and led a charge with their Klingon volunteers, decimating the French infantry and shifting the fate of the battle. Not even Asterix and Obelix could resist them for too long...
@albogypsy2842 lol, I'm amazed they haven't come up with some shit like that in MuhForceIsFemale yet: a pink lightsaber that only cuts through male-identifying beings...
One of the most infuriating things about this movie is that it's in conflict with itself on a metatextual level. The text of the movie is a clear indictment of Napoleon and of the very idea of "Great Men of History"; Napoleon is shown as petty, hapless, petulant, whiny, and all of his political or military genius is glossed over or set aside. The movie reminds you constantly of the losses, and the final scene of the movie is a list of numbers of casualties. The message is clear: "look how awful this guy was, he got all these men killed for his own ego! Also he was a delusional loser with no emotional control who was bad at sex!" But on a metatextual level, Napoleon, Josephine, and the high society of Europe are shown as the ONLY people who matter, because they're the entire focus of the movie and are the only people with any speaking lines! If Scott's hollow championing of the common soldiers whose lives were "thrown away" by Napoleon's ego was sincere, shouldn't have he included even a single scene where some common soldiers had speaking parts? He throws out this empathy bait at the end about all the soldiers who died under Napoleon, but without introducing those soldiers as people to care about in the movie, what connection does the audience have to some numbers on a screen? It would have been the simplest thing in the world to have a scene of some disillusioned fusiliers around a campfire in Russia talking about how Napoleon was losing it. It would have taken 3 minutes. Even Waterloo had some scenes of English soldiers talking among themselves and to Wellington to show they were real people. In Napoleon, I don't think I remember anyone with a social rank below the equivalent of a colonel speaking a line in the entire film. A paean for the common soldier indeed, bravo Scott.
I mean, even the Napoleon miniseries did this, with Napoleon coming across a mother who had lost all her sons to Napoleon's wars during the French campaign, showing the human cost of the wars he led and even giving him a moment of remorse and self-reflection which contributed to his decision to surrender. I guess that would have humanised Bonaparte too much for Scott's liking however.
My favorite part was when the British used their boats to sail around the world collecting all of the infinity stones prior to the battle of Waterloo, allowing them to summon the Na’avi from Avatar, Peter Griffin, and cleopatra to help them beat mecha napoleon and his army of evil cyborg French
You video essays are the best on youtube not only because of your deep analysis of the tangible problems related to production and the content itself but also because you shine a light at the true problem behind it, the "how" and "why", something that many, many, many other critics that share the same reactions as you simply decide to ignore or dance around it. Maybe for fear of being blacklisted or shadowbanned. Another brilliant video. Congratulations.
I wanted to see Napoleon to learn things like the Battle of the Pyramids was only named that because Napoleon saw the pyramids. THAT is the kind of "deconstruction" I like. Instead the French mortard the Pyramid of Giza as if a literal 10 year old wrote the script. "And then the Battle of Pyramids happens and Napoleon shoots the big one with a cannon!" But sir the entire scene is only a minute long. "Yes!"
Maybe, it’s because a a certain sect of people tried to blow up the pyramids in antiquity, as well as fringe groups that destroyed statues of the Buddha…? Hollyweird likes to ‘revision’ or ‘redress’ history, they are propagandists after all.
@@stefthorman8548 They have done a series on Napoleon- think it was a Canadian production but it wasn't great- that one had too much Josephine in it as well.
@@stephenmcdonagh2795where did he suggest it had to be a complete story of his life in every detail? He just said he wanted to learn some actual history, not this bullshit. There are many techniques people have used to write long full lives into films that cover the essentials while getting the stuff they do show accurately and faithfully. You find some way to explain it in the dialogue. You show three main eras of his life and you put the essential details into a text screen between eras to fill the viewer in on what has happened in the years we are now skipping. Otherwise it would be impossible to make a film about any great man and his life unless you made a _Roots_ style series out of it.
The jump from Russia to Elba - skipping the whole of 1813 including the battle that actually brought Napoleon to a most likely decline (Leipzig) - was what infuriated me the most. His rise through his Italy campaign in the 1790ies was not featured... nor were the wars of the 4th and 5th coalition. But to omit the whole 1813 was the real dealbreaker for me. You never get a feel that Napoleon is ever in control of what he is doing/planning... why he became so powerful. He seems to be just stumbling through his years being a passenger of his own feelings towards Josephine and if there is war or peace... who really cares!? That's the impression I could have gotten from that character would I have not known better history. On the contrast to Leipzig Waterloo was shown like 20min - felt like 30 - and for big parts showing Wellington. Napoleon appeared to be passive for most of the battle - until he rode into the masses.
Of course, this film was after all directed by an Englishman, Ridley Scott. English history usually tends to omit the battle of nations in Leipzig, simply because the British didn't fight there, while giving Waterloo much more importance than it actually had, because that's where the British army defeated Napoleon. The fact that Prussia also fought in Waterloo is usually an afterthought, and that the battle at Leipzig was the biggest battle in history up until the 20th century and the actual battle that brought the Napoleonic empire to an end is completely unheard of.
@@onurbschrednei4569 You 100% expressed my thoughts. Same applies for WW2, where the Anglophones tend to believe they defeated NaziGermany alone or at least downplay the Sovietunion (if it is that they are even mentioned)... basically they were fighting the too young and the too old after 5 years of war. Okay, sorry for OT, I just see some similarities.
@@luitpoldwalterstorffer2446 Yep. Waterloo was one of the most overrated and overhyped battles in history. Napoleon was doomed the moment he returned from Elba, even if managed to won at Waterloo nothing changes. First, because entire Europe united against him again (apart from Allies in Belgium even bigger army of Russians & Austrians were marching from the East). Second, Napoleon had hoped for massive mobilization, but he managed to mobilize only ~150.000 troops (and some of them were diverted to Vendee to fight the royalist uprising). Not to mention many French soldiers didn't even have proper uniforms, something that British propaganda never mention... not they mention how Brits bought teeth of fallen soldiers from various European battlefields (including Waterloo!) and even remains and used it as a fertiIizer in Yorkshire (it was cheaper than bird's fertiIizer).
Let's not forget the 1927 movie Napoleon, a film that showed excellent technique in it's ingenuity for the art form of moving pictures, and was probably the most advanced silent film for it's time in terms of camera work. Now whenever you look up' Napoleon film', you get this garbage.
Bohemian Rhapsody was strangled by surviving members of Queen serving as executive producers...ensuring that attention to bandmates was equal and not overly distracted by the most interesting person to perform for the group.
"LIKE A BEAUTIFUL, BLOSSOMING FLOWER, PETALS UNFOLDING AND SPREADING LIKE SOME GREAT ANALOGY OF A BODY PART THAT HUMANITY CAN'T SEEM TO STOP OBSESSING OVER" -Gerogia O'keef, c.1763
Arnold and Uma were the best thing in Batman and Robin. They both gave fun campy performances and ate every scene they were in. I mean honestly does anyone remember what Clooney and everyone else was doing?
Clooney was the worst choice of Batman ever, including Pattinson, of whom I've heard some praise actually (haven't seen it myself yet). I don't generally mind Clooney, I think he's a good actor, but he was totally off as Batman.
It's less about her and how shit the men around her were. They sacrificed her character to make men look bad in effort to try and make her look like a victim, because victims are put on a pedestal today. It's truly bizarre.
@@davidkymdell452 but she _was_ a victim in many ways. she literally died in near poverty after a lifetime of being used and treated like dirt. The issue with the movie was that they erased all her actual suffering and replaced it with easily debunkable ridiculous nonsense
@@Vexaraxyes, the real Marilyn was a victim, but she wasn’t ONLY a victim, which is how Blonde portrayed her. For women in particular I think it was revolting to watch, like misery corn. Certain parts of it were just gratuitously awful, like with JFK, when there is no evidence that he mistreated her (although he shouldnt have been cheating on his wife ofc)
@@scarletsletter4466 yeah even the author of the book it was based on said she made everything up, that she pretty much wanted to tell her own fictional story using Marilyn as a symbol rather than actually telling Marilyn’s story in any way.
When I saw Napoleon a friend asked me what I thought. I told him, “If you know obsoletely nothing about Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars you’ll enjoy it, if you know even a little bit of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars you’ll have an aneurysm.”
Just as it's fashionable in film to insert black characters into every possible human interaction, it is all but forbidden to explain how these people got where they are. There are black Hobbits in Middle Earth; there are black storm troopers in space; there are black courtiers in Regency England. To ask "How did they get there?" is considered insensitive. "Would you ask how white people got into George III's court?" Well, no, I wouldn't typically, but I *could*, and furthermore, I could explain it if I had to. You see, there is such a thing as "migration", and white people ended up in a lot of the places where they were because they moved there over a period of centuries. These areas didn't see a similar migration of black people then, so there were no black people there; that's all there is to it. The dizzying variety of ethnicities in one place we find in supposed historical films would require a degree of mobility that just didn't exist until modern times. Film makers intent upon constructing a fantasy past that tickles their current prejudices are incapable of thinking things through to that extent. They behave as though humans were plants or mushrooms, just spontaneously popping up here and there and sometimes producing inexplicable sports of different colours with no visible antecedents.
@@RevanReborn3950BBYyou could argue that in star wars, at least in the more travelled systems and planets, everyone would have interbred (which happens very quickly anyway) to the point that there wouldn't be distinguishable races and they would all be some kind of beige-coloured human-alien mixture (assuming humans and aliens can interbreed of course).
@@RevanReborn3950BBYI agree. Star Wars is PURE fantasy and doesn't reflect politics or culture of the real world. Black Storm troopers makes MORE sense than a giant slug crime boss in that setting.
Nah in the movie by the time Napolean gets there, Josephine is already dead. It's just explained that communication never got to Napoleon about her death so he got upset.
Given the casting of Joaquin Phoenix, I thought this movie was all about the later life of Emperor Napoleon. You're blowing my mind telling me otherwise and I prefer to believe all the bits about Naporius, AfroQueen, and Dancing Tobey Maguire. Also, on this movie's opening weekend, I overheard a guy on the public bus reviewing it to someone over the phone: "I dunno, man, I thought it was going to be a historical action biography. But it was mostly about Napoleon f***ing and I didn't need to see all that." A+ , that guy should have been a professional critic.
My favorite part was at the battle of Waterloo, when Guyladriel and Assoka raised their three swords and shouted WAKANDA FOREVA and led a charge with their Klingon volunteers, decimating the French infantry and shifting the fate of the battle. Not even Asterix and Obelix could resist them for too long...
It’s DELIBERATELY inaccurate! Weird Al is 6’ tall and Daniel Radcliffe, who plays him in the biopic, is 5’5”. And that’s just the start of the wonderful absurdity. Deliberately making an inaccurate biopic can help result in an amusing one.
@@markiangooley Not only are they very different heights and face structures, but Weird Al's real life quirk is that he's incredibly clean--he doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs, seldom even curses in his songs. Supposedly he also has a pretty healthy upbringing with his parents and he never had a big breakup with his band. So the fact that his biopic is this obviously-comedic of a downfall is perfect because he's one of the few artists that can
Thank you so much for your in-depth wisdom, this character assassination “movie” is as atrocious as those lunatics who vandalized monuments of Empress Josephine in the name of identity politics, I have studied a lot of Emperor Napoleon I, if I existed in during the Napoleonic era I would definitely be a Bonapartist, one cliché I despise about historical dramas is replacing interesting historical facts events with tedious hyper fictionalized scenes/characterization, anything what the studio committee in accurately, think the audience wants.
I still cannot fathom that Scott's response to the terrible historical accuracy was literally "Uh, were you there? Didn't think so. Checkmate!" It stuns me.
I have not watched "Ridley Scott's Napoleon"! And after watching many reviewers take on the film, I get the sense that it is as accurate as Netflix Cleopatra! So I have no regrets not having watched this!
Great video, but I have to disagree with your take on the Ray Charles movie. Jamie Fox's performance is one of his best, and so well done. I've yet to see a biopic with a more true to life performance. Not only the acting, but the singing etc was phenomenal. Maybe it was boring to some, I feel like that's kind of objective though. I can agree with the rest but that one I really think deserves some praise.
The real problem with RSN is that Ridley didn't have the Barry Lyndon candle light camera lens that Kubrick borrowed from NASA. Nor did he have the directorial chops to approach the subject in any manner whatsoever. Doomed to failure.
My favorite part of "Steven Speilberg's Lincoln" (SSL) was when President Abraham Lincoln heard that General Lee was entering Gettysberg, Lincoln looked off into the middle distance and exclaimed.. "IT'S LINCOLN' TIME"
Wait, they didn’t include the Battle of the Pacific Rim where he commanded a recalled Battleship from Pearl Harbor? That means they completely missed how he time traveled there from medieval times where he was searching for himself for a high school book report.
What I want to know, as a photographer (actual, not digital finger-painting), is this: Why is it that the indoor scenes are well-lit and brightly colorful, while the outdoor scenes look like they were shot on rolls of Anscochrome that expired in April 1966 that a guy found in his grandfather's attic after the funeral and sold on ebay cos hipsters love to shoot that stuff in plastic toy cameras? Of course, I know that the only forms of indoor lighting were candles, fireplaces, and whatever came through windows, and fire provides very warm, orange-amber light, whereas outdoor light is white (sunny, mid-day) or blue-tinted (overcast). But even an overcast day is six to eight stops brighter than a candlelit interior. So even accounting for the difference in color temperatures, why do interiors appear to be six stops brighter than the outdoors, which are always overcast, at the smallest difference in brightness to interiors? This is the opposite of both reality and what is rendered on all visual media. I did better than this when I was nine. Therefore, considering that the people involved in the production are not children borrowing their granddads' cameras and working in basements through nothing more than their grandparents' largesse, but are, in fact, adults with access to the most advanced equipment in the world, virtually infinite resources, and the backing of a multi-billion-dollar megacorporation, I can reach no other conclusion than that this was intentional. But I'm buggered if I know why.
Sir, you have my eternal admiration and respect for this material. All-though they are not trying to change history just for cheap throwaway thrills that look cool, the reason why Napoleon is such a mess is in my opinion the result of the interaction between a director that lost his edge a long time ago, and the fucked-up "burn the past" head space of Hollywood. Awesome french btw!
"head space" that a very apt way to put it that I haven't heard in a while. I agree though, wokeism with a general that's over the hill is a bad recipe for a history flick.
The blame should be put fully on Ridley Scott rather than some monolithic desire to destroy history in Hollywood. Just before watching Napoleon I saw Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which maintains its message while simultaneously respecting the historical material. I think its absolutely doable to make a film that is critical of Napoleon without having to make shit up, but Ridley Scott was never interested in making a movie about the actual Napoleon.
@@marbellaotaiza801 I'm just saying it's misleading to think Hollywood is some top-down organization with an agenda. Hollywood is just a term that represents the American film industry. Not everyone in Hollywood has the same ideas about what a historical movie should be and how to make it. I used Scorsese's recent historical film as an example of a director with a different vision from Ridley Scott. I could also bring up Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Instead of blaming the entire American film industry for 'Napoleon', blame Ridley Scott. Disney is also fair game since filmmakers producing films for Disney need to take orders from their executives if they want to keep their job.
@@firebird4491 Hollywood used to be a term to represent the American film industry. Now it's a term to represent the five or four corporations that own all the studios that remain. The corporations happen to be owned in turn by black rock or vanguard or both. Most of the people that work there comes from the same schools and have similar values or lack thereof. It's all very incestuous if you think of it so yeah, even if there's not an organization called "Hollywood" with a president and a top-down hierarchy, maybe you can see how the can still be an agenda and how it can be implemented. On the other hand, I'm not defending RS, but I still haven't seen anyone blaming David Scarpa. You can be a genius director, but your movie is not gonna be much better than the script you got, and Scarpa hasn't written anything good since The Last Castle that I know of...
Yeahhhh, I’m pretty sure Ridley Scott lost the fuckin’ plot at some point. Who tf makes a movie about Napoleon where he spends the entire thing being pathetically obsessed with his cheating ex wife? That could’ve been 10% of the movie, not 80% there might’ve been 2 good scenes total it wasn’t shoehorned into.
1:12:00 when the Despot shows the clip of all those real people comprising the army, you can hear the immensity in their footsteps pounding as they walked. It was super cool! 🤩
The movie wasn't simply character assassination. It used the figure of Napoleon as a symbol of "toxic masculinity" to be unmasked and ridiculed. It's really the only narrative throughline of the movie, and was most certainly a conscientious decision by Scott. It actually kinda bothers me that reviewers don't give this the significance it deserves. They seemingly miss the actual point altogether. For the purposes of this movie, Napoleon's life and accomplishments serve little other purpose than providing vignettes to show his male ego, insecurity, and inadequacy, bookended by cinematic battles to draw in the masses and give it the veneer of spectacle.
@@josefavomjaaga6097Well, that's how subversive propaganda works, and why it's effective, but I would expect reviewers who are conscious of "the message" to recognize it. And Despot does, to some degree, but they spend far more time and effort focusing on the ahistoricality, which was frankly expected from a Ridley Scott film.
Why is it everything with these movies and discussions comes down to the culture war argument? IDK about you but id kinda of like some nuance in some of these criticisms every so often
Having the english infantry squares stand on the wrong side of the hill at the battle of waterloo might be the most easily avoidable historical inaccuracy ever put to film.
“You think you’re so great because you have boats!” is actually a line in the movie? That sounds like terrible dialogue to me, coming from a movie set in the 1800s.
It even worse then he said 'I found the crown of France in a gutter' in his coronation... and then place it on his head... he never said this in his coronation but in some letter, and obviously it was metaphorically. But here, it's portrayed as a real crown (from gutter!).
Very early 1800s. That is totally not correct language for the era. Although you could argue that he ought to be speaking French so anything goes. But by that logic you could have him speaking in contemporary English for the entire film, as long as the general meaning of the words is the same.
I think Scott's point in showing the casualty figures is to depict Napoleon the god of war as a butcher and that all those who make their name in wars are butchers, wars never solve anything. Regardless of how childish and foolishly naive that point actually is. Wars solve a lot arguments in human history, that's why we keep fighting them.
This is part of the propaganda to convince normies that violence won't solve things when time and time again in human history things have been fixed with violence.
When Napoleon shouted: "You think you're so great because you have boats?!!" the song boats and h's from the movie step brothers started playing in my mind for some reason.
I just wanted to mention your point at 1:14 that it's been done better for centuries. One of the biggest points of Henry V was the aftermath of the battle. KING HENRY: Now, herald, are the dead numbered? HERALD: Here is the number of the slaughtered French ... KING HENRY:This note doth tell me of ten thousand French That in the field lie slain .. Where is the number of our English dead? Herald gives him another paper. Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire; None else of name, and of all other men But five and twenty. So despite losing a major character, the King's own brother, it conveys the overwhelming sense of their victory. Despite half the scene being a mere list of names and titles, the scene still had weight.
Cavalry could advance through infantry at times. The lines were organized by brigades, regiments and companies, which could maneuvered seperately. The best trained soldiers were capable of some pretty complex maneuvers. It's not too difficult to leave openings, or open gaps in the line for the calvary to pass though. You just wouldn't do that in close proximity to the enemy. And they wouldn't just pass though the line at random, a specific unit would have to move, or two units move over to create a gap. They also didn't just make one big continuous battle line. When in advancing in line, it would be an overall thin line with the flanks of each brigade relatively close to the one beside them , where the neighboring unit could protect them. But if you were attacking you wild be more likely to have a front of only a few regiments, formed in ranks four deep, with following brigades stacked behind them to add power and depth to the assault. The actual width and depth depended on how many men you had and how concentrated you wanted the attack to be. I would say three brigades in three main lines, with 3-5 regiments in each brigade would be a typical attack, although you could have the bulk of a while division going in if you were very confident. The French also really liked the ultimate in concentrated assault, which is by column, which is the opposite of a line, it's a long, narrow formation 20 men or so wide, but many ranks deep.. It was common to advance in column because it's much easier than keeping a line intact as you travel over ground, but you need will trained troops to separate back into a line when the right drum signal is given. Or you can just stay off column and attack the enemy that way, which the French had great success with. You only have a few men in the front line who can fire, but no matter how many her hit, there are always more of them behind. If they are well disciplined, they can and will march right up and through the thin enemy line which is only a few men deep and 20 wide facing a whole stack of enemy who will keep killing you until your line is broken. Then you move up cavalry to take the broken line from behind and rout them. You take heavy losses doing so, but it was considered impossible to defeat for a while (and strangely enough to modern minds the spaces at the front of the column were actually greatly contested over, as great honor and chance for glory, even though you were pretty likely to get shot or stabbed. . So it wasn't always just a single unbroken line, the cavalry could get through to attack in many places.
Wasn't that pretty much limited to specialised skirmisher units that were intended to operate in dispersed formations most or all of the time? Or am I getting mixed up and it was just regular units that were formed up into skirmishers? (it's a very long time since I did any Napoleonic war gaming!)
I don't know why they keep hiring Joaquin Phoenix for roles in which he is to play royalty. He is inaccurate, his enunciation is poor, and his general posture is one of a slob. He is the last guy I would pick to represent anyone who had their **** together. He makes a great Joker but not an emperor, which by the way he has now played twice, thanks to Scott.
I'm genuinely really disappointed. A film about Napoleon made with a big budget and todays advanced special fx could've been brilliant if done right, i was actually looking forward to seeing this before i heard how bad it really was, plus we've not had a good historical epic for ages now ☹️. It would've cleaned up at the box office worldwide too, what an absolute waste
@@ComicGladiator it was at least an good movie with good writen characters and a good writen story, you at least can have fun watching it. but this here and others of ridleys movies are just plain stupid. and prometheus started the stupid stuff he has done since then. this movie here is i don`t even know how too desripe this horrific nighmare of an movie even. it is like the butchering of luke skywalker and the entire star wars franshise from disney. hollywood is just an shadow of what it once was. a disgrace on all levels.
I am so done with retold of stories with “artist perspective” that just means “I will do whatever I like and not give a fuck about putting any effort, and I will call all who don’t give their firstborn to me Nazi.” Can we just be done with these masturbation sessions?
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
This is a reup of a video I posted a few days ago. The original (link in description) was demonetized for references to the Ridley Scott’s Napoleon’s carnal appetites (probably). I have corrected historical errors I made in the previous video. There is also a new section about Thomas Alexandre Dumas, which you can view at 53:39.
What was your favourite part of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon? Mine was when Marshal Morbius flew across the battlefield of Borodino to deliver an urgent message to Napoleon, and upon reaching him, breathlessly exclaimed the famous line: ‘My Emperor, Ney was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.’
Always look forward to your vids, but most of all your coverage of "biopics". Have watched your Cleopatra one 10x and it's still funny. The body positivity Advert breakdown is a criminally underrated masterpiece in your collection. Please keep starting your video essays with history lessons when possible, it's one of the best parts!
Back and improved! Never let the corrupt media silence you!
My favorite part was when the Death Star fired at Napoleon during the Battle of Waterloo, but Marshal Ney deflected the laser shouting "Long live the Rebellion".
My favorite part was when Napoleon destroyed Alderaan, with his top ranking Moffs present, in their new small moon sized orbital base, to intimidate the Princess, and try to find out the location of the Rebel Alliance.
@@spokajutlandandmetallurgis3404 dude, you went for it too!
Sorry, as a bit of a history buff. I know from my studies that both Napoleon and Cleopatra did in fact shoot lazers at the 12 pyramids of giza.
My grandmother told me.
And Napoleon was a strong bisexual women of color who don't need no man.
I like how Napoleon was like “It’s Napoleon time” the Napoleon’d all over the pyramids.
I don't care what anyone tells you, Napoleon was a black man. (Trust me, I was there.)
@@liamrichardson6830 no, no, no, he was a asian furry, trust me, my mother said that
@@gregerjohn8728 no no no.
That is profoundly incorrect.
Napoleon Wellington was a Welsh borne scotish-swedish national of black descent.
My grandmother used to tell me: “I don’t care what they tell you, Napoleon was an emotional, punk bitch.” I always knew my grandmother was the ultimate source of knowledge on history. Thank you, grandma.
Ha! I get that reference!
This is gold lmao
@@cpcw06 What is the reference?
@@Freshanatha "I don't care what they tell you, Cleopatra was black" by someone's grandmother in Netflix's Cleopatra
@@Freshanatha it is making fun of the ridiculous Cleopatra "documentary " that came out a bit ago. One of their "experts" said something very similar
My favorite part was at the battle of Waterloo, when Guyladriel, Assoka, and Harry Potter raised their four swords and shouted WAKANDA FOREVA and led a charge with their Klingon volunteers, decimating the French infantry and shifting the fate of the battle. Not even Asterix and Obelix could resist them for too long...
If Gamling just followed the king’s banner down the middle, Napoleon wouldn’t have had to lose the Death Star to Starscream’s attack and Waterloo could have been different.
@@chazzitz-wh4ly transformers! I knew I'd left some franchise out...
I don’t think any of that is true…
@@alexmartin3143 You sure??
@@alexmartin3143 I don't think anything that's in the movie is true either...
My theory is that old Scott hates the French because one of them was probably a bit to critic with his wine
I mean he's british tbf 😂
@@shawklan27 Yes but to so undermine Napoleon undermines Nelson and Wellington by proxy and that just won't do. Also I'm fairly sure Scott hates the history of the British Empire more than he hates the French, being a hollywood lefty and all that.
@@shawklan27 He is British, but his last name is Scott. So when OP said "old Scott" he means Ridley Scott, the Brit.
@@The.Usurper Noone thought otherwise...
*critical of
The memoirs of Bourrienne, Napoleon's wonderfully intelligent and perceptive private secretary, offers a brilliant and insightful biography of the man underneath the myth. Reading his memoirs is strongly recommended for anyone who enjoys great writing as much as contemporaneous historical detail.
It is clear that Bourrienne admired Bonaparte enormously but what really shines is Napoleon's charisma, his personal charm, his boundless fascination and endless curiosity and his affection for knowledge, debate, science the Code Civil and the many goals of the enlightenment.
In one memorable vignette, Bourrienne relates a moment during the voyage to Egypt where Napoleon at his dinner table invites a debate on whether there could be life on Mars. Bourrienne says that Bonaparte was typically an instigator of such discussions and he was especially fond of any man in his company who could take an unfavourable position in a debate and make a spirited argument all the same.
He was a brilliant and extremely complicated man who risked being swallowed by his own ambition and mythology. Ridley Scott's version paints this same incredibly charismatic and inspiring man of history as a sullen, grumpy curmudgeon. It was so bad I lasted no more than twenty minutes before switching it off.
This was an awesome read. I’ve been looking for a nice piece of his history to read. Seems like a perfect place
Ridley Scott's response to people criticizing him being ahistorical as "Were you there? No? Then shut up" had me in stitches. Shut down all historical fields except for contemporary history folks.
Specifically only the contemporary historians who were actually present at the events as they were occurring.
Damn, he must be consulting for criticism responses from the 3rd best video gamer of all time, Todd Todgers.
Obviously, Ridley Scott WAS there.
Which apparently means HE was there with that type of retarded question. XD
“The Holocaust was horrible!”
“Were you there? No? Then shut up!”
I loved the ending when Velma shows up and takes off Napoleon's mask, revealing that he was actually Cleopatra the whole time.
How do you not have more likes?
My grandmother always told me that Napoleon was a black woman
And she would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids!
Fucking LoL 🤣
Then Velma twerks on his corpse.
Funny enough Stanley Kubrick wanted to do this exact concept. However he couldn’t get the film’s script under 8 hours and the budget under 700 million adjusted for inflation. Keep that in mind
At least Kubrick realised the sheer scope and scale of the story he was trying to tell.
Kudos to Kubrick for understanding that the life story of a top 3 all time human historical figure and warlord could not be compressed into a single movie.
@@TheStraightestWhitest
Just out of curiosity, can you give us your top 5 of historical figures and warlords? No criticim or anything, just genuenly peeked my interest who the rest of that list it.
@@Kmodal It gets a bit muddy when you start qualifying because you'd have to determine what makes a great leader/warlord, but I'd say Alexander The Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, and Augustus and Julius Caesar. Of course there's plenty of others, like Alexander's many generals (Ptolemy being the best example), or just about any of the Roman Emperors all the way into the Anglo Saxon era like Henry IV, Charlemagne, and Charles VI. But as a whole, I rate these first five greater than the rest based on how far they expanded into the world. Augustus and Julius literally made an empire where the sun never set. Genghis made a dynasty that controlled all of China. Alexander and Napoleon basically possessed all of Europe. These guys were literally continental to multi-continental in their reach and power. That's even more impressive than simply dominating one or a few countries.
@@Kmodal look up "The Nine Worthies", it's a fun rabbit hole for history buffs at least.
"Whatever happened in Italy and Spain was unimportant, I'd rather a Napoleon movie feel like it's almost half dialogue with Josephine," said not a single soul on the planet.
Imagine a historically accurate seven-season-long show, each season dedicated to a Coalition War.
That would be so awesome.
They would have to show him abducting pope after pope until they reinstituted the abolished Jesuit order. And the one of his generals breaking into the inquisition and being disgusted at the horrors they found.
Omitting spain, I can half understand. But the German campaign in 1813 and France in 1814? UNFORGIVABLE
As a french we had high hopes for that movie. I walked out really thinking that Ridley being british, just hated Napoleon and trolled us all. This movie isn't good but it made me laugh quite a lot. Espacially the "you think you're special because you have boats" scene. I HAS to be a parody.
It’s more a libel than a movie.
As a Brit, I would like you and all French people to know that we only accept responsibility for Ridley Scott up to and including Black Hawk Down.
I mean he is British so at least it's understandable why he hates the french
Napoleon throwing Food on his wife from the other side of table like a spoiled little child is more than enough to suggest how serious Ridely was about the portrayal of Napoleon while producing this movie.
When a nasty ideology is attacking your country, it doesn't just attack your culture, movies, comix, books etc, it also wants to destroy your real heroes and rewrite your history.
The people attacking western culture call themselves progressives. Progressive is the first of many words they have corrupted. There's nothing new about their actions
What did you expect? A British movie director making a movie out of French national hero.
@@valder8423 I expected a good movie. Ridley produced good movies in the past. I was hopeful that he would produce a very good movie about napoleon and his life after watching the trailer. I was looking forward to watch it despite the fact that I am neither British, French or anywhere from Europe. I am from India and I want to watch real cinema, truly beautiful quality movies with amazing stories. ( Bollywood movies are nothing but romantic musical piece of garbage and completely creatively bankrupt). Some Historical inaccuracies are fine but complete character assassination of napoleon just killed all my interest in the movie. I heard that they will release 4 hours long director's cut. May be that would be interesting to watch.
"Shut up and eat your tots, you fat lard. Ugh!"
-- Napoleon in this movie, probably
@@cenationofjnu Hollywood hates the audience, a four hour cut will be twice as aggravating as the original movie. Also, I heard RRR is supposed to be really good, and I've seen some Bollywood movies about the past which are fun, specially the over the top battles. I don't know how historically accurate they are though,
Nah you're tripping. The scene where Napoleon conquers Antarctica's army of penguins by firing on the igloos? Masterpiece.
This! I still am heard screaming terrifying "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" while asleep.
You forgot the part where he and his army fought a demented Elder Thing and it's thousand Shoggoths, man. Tekeli‑li! Tekeli‑li!
Nah, that's the plot of the Mario Movie
Napoleon VS Penguins >>> Historical accuracy
It seems like you forgot h only managed it thanks to his loyal henchmen : Trotsky and his local penguins legions.
I think ABBA did a better job of covering Napoleon than Ridley Scott.
Take my like, you hilarious bastard
Bill and Ted Better
@@saminchowdhury2509 something strange is afoot at the circle k.
I learned everything I ever needed to know about Napoleon’s penultimate battle from ABBA.
True, but if I'm correct just on "Waterloo". Which was very much a historians dream account. "Dancing Queen" did have some glaring holes regarding, Josephine.
I am so puzzled... they make movies that cost billions, yet don't bother hiring a competent screen writer, a historian to fact check and sb with a militery strategy knowledge to help with the battle scenes... they think people are too dumb to notice and will just care about "how cool it looks"... 🤷♀️
I swear some movies are just clearly money laundering schemes.
I don't care what the historians say, my grandmother told me that Napoleon was a middle-aged American and that's good enough for me!
Interesting that you joke about the nationality of the *American* film but not the British accents in the *BBC's* production. Ameriphobia really is as low brow as humor can get 🥱
Old people looked older back in the day didn't they? Though he was still only early 50's when he died.
They should have casted Napoleon with a dwarf to please Peter Dinklege, annoy the French, and turn it into a comedy for the rest of us. Most importantly have the dwarf play it straight but make sure the sound editor gives him a high pitched voice
They did call him the little general
Hilarious
Like, the old cartoons! His hat is almost bigger than he was,
and he has to get lifted up to ride his horse!
Marlon Wayans was perfect for the part, he's played little men before.
Please i want to See this Version 😂
Napoleon, like Caesar, Alexander, Genghis Khan, and all other career military conquerors, had a life that can't possibly be sufficiently covered in one movie. These dudes fought dozens of battles. You could devote whole seasons to their many campaigns/theatres of operation and literally have the actors portraying them age appropriately as the seasons wore on, from young ambitious upstart to weary and tired general.
Just think about it: A 13 season epic about Alexander the Great, each season devoted to a year of his stomping through Asia (with flashbacks to his upbringing and his father peppered throughout). That will never be made. But it would be the most historically accurate and totally awesome television spectacle if it did.
A TV show where scriptwriters, producers and directors would not see historical accuracy as a direct attack to their egos? Where they would understand that history itself is far, far more interesting than anything they may consider the audiences (that they usually consider as being plain stupid) couldn't understand, follow or think would be boring? Might as well wait for pigs to grow wings and fly indeed.
and Hannibal (history march made really good videos for history junkies btw ;) )
True, but in N1's case, you could make a compelling movie about his rise, and dare I say, fight against the establishment (being a Corsican in France) and up to Marengo.
Or, like Waterloo, concentrate on his demise
Or, use Borodino and show him at his most arrogant
This is why the Japanese have Taiga dramas.
They get a little bogged down in the "drama" aspect, and thus can be a bit tedious ,but they are 80-90% faithful to their subject matter precisely because they actually spend the time to tell the story over multiple episodes, with no detail (even folk/myth stuff) left out.
Reality is both more interesting, but harder to dramatize, especially when there's a ton of details that need to be filled in.
Most ignorant Western audiences have no time for that
What exactly would be so awesome about seeing the same tedious slaughter every episode?
there are 2 possibilities with joaquin phoenix:
1. he was told to act the way he did
2. he hated having to be in this movie
Very possible. This dude is intoxicated with extremely toxic esg aligned agenda that we could see during Oscars when he got one for Joker role.
Or the buzz from joker got him to think playing an emotional cry baby feel bad for me cuck is the right thing to do in every movie
Scott said in some interview that Joaquin didn't feel the original writing had any character. I suspect part of Napoleon's character in this movie comes from Phoenix. I quite liked it as a movie - maybe not a historical one, but I actually really enjoyed Phoenix's performance of a vain, slightly mad, neurotic man.
Maybe he is overratted
@@stevebuscemi3622 He's a very specific type of actor
Wow. It really does seem like he made this in order to slander Napoleon.
Of all the film tropes, the one I hate most is "great men throw tantrums and yell sometimes" instead of showing actual complexity and breadth of feeling.
Ridley Scott pretty much shat on Napoleon and covered that pile with Phoenix and his reputation.
In one of the recent interviews Phoenix said that he tried to work with Scott on overall understanding of his character, arc and motivation, but got something like “I’ll tell you how to portray him on a scene to scene basis” in response.
I can believe that. Phoenix is one of the most committed actors working today, whereas Ridley Scott’s been all over the place since at least _Prometheus._
"why is Napoleon so bored all the time" was running through my mind the whole movie
It’s funny you say this because I agree, & there were parts where Phoenix seemed bored & detached to the point where I wondered if he were sedated, perhaps on opioids or Xanax. Ofc I hope that’s not the case, but the portrayal was the opposite of how ppl think of napoleon as being a bundle of energy & vitality.
Turns out Nappy was a Millennial.
@@scarletsletter4466 i think he were luke skywalkered Ryan R. Style by Scott, even got told from Scene to Scene what He should show. No Character Arc requiered. The Icing on the Cake is the Waiste of such Talent as an Actor. Phoenix surely did know of the Age discrepances, but do not take the Role, who can blame Him for not stepping back.
bro did not want to be there 😭
Can't be portraying a powerful historical man as a strong, virile, wise, secure leader in the current year! God is this a sad time to be alive.....
This video is a triumph.....much like Napoleon's triumph at the battle of Helm's Deep, where his strategic use of the Genesis device allowed him to defeat Thanos and the Death Eaters once and for all. History tells us that he bellowed "BOATS!" as he lead the final charge of the 300 Spartans.
I hope that moment makes it into Scott's extended cut of the film.
That only happened because the T-800 failed to kill Scott Pilgrim before Goku’s Spirit Bomb was ready.
@@chazzitz-wh4ly Truth!
🤣🤣🤣🤣😭😂👿@@chazzitz-wh4ly
I hate your comment but it made me laugh!
Just wait for the sequel: Napoleon 2
where Captain Marvel and Barbie finally joined forces to stop Napoleon and Palpatine! The emperors just returned somehow
This movie was all about Josephine, and how she was sooooo important to Napoleon, according to Scott. What's worse is that Ridley wants to make a director's cut that has more Josephine in it. As if we didnt get enough of that in a movie not named after her (might as well have been that way)
A movie about the best military genius of all times... is all about some woman 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Which is funny. Josephine was incredibly important to napoleon, but this movie seems to think that she was incredibly important to his career and the things he did.
The movie was pretty much just a summary of British propaganda of Napoléon. The movie showed 4 battles two wins of napoleons and two loss made no mention of the 60+ battles where he stomped everyone's asses into the ground, then at the end of the movie only listed his defeats with the numbers of dead implying he had a hand in their deaths, conveniently left out a majority of the battles he fought were defensive, had napoleon literally walking on all fours like dog for Josephine, and even put in the mummy scene to take a swipe at his height.
movie was hot garbage.
Seeing this description tied with Despot's breakdown, yea it feels like they based it off of British Propaganda, as well as leaning heavily on the psychological idea of the Napoleon Complex to model Napoleon's character, regardless for either's relation to the actual person of Napoleon himself.
Napoleon was a force of nature who shaped all of Europe, you don't get there by being an inadequate man trying to overcompensate.
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was a more historically accurate film than this, change my mind.
Incorrect, they did not have cows during the time of Abraham Lincoln. They had large red dogs named Clifford.
And that movie was actually fun to watch
But it’s true though.
He did hunt vampires.
The movie said so, duh lol
@@popothethird1733
True lol I wonder when they’ll make a movie of JFK hunting aliens or Teddy Roosevelt hunting werewolves.
@@DavidMartinez-ce3lp
False!
They actually had talking train engines, most notably that of Thomas the Train!
My favorite scene is when Greta Thunberg told Napoleon "How dare you?" After Napoleon had decided to just Napoleon all over the Pyramids in Gaza, I'm really happy he finally checked his white privilage at that moment.
After he declared “It’s Napoleon time”
“Ooooh, he Napoleon’d”
Are these Napoleon meme comments common now? I’ve seen them pop up various places seemingly out of nowhere.
@@AlcoholicBoredommy grandma always told me, no matter what they tell you in TH-cam, Cleopatra was Napoleon's empress.
Giza*
I don't blame Joaquin Pheonix for his portrayal. It's an actors job to bring a directors vision to life. We've seen him act before, I bet he just doing what Ridley Scott wanted him to do.
A good actor knows when to walk out too though. A good example would be Henry Cavill. Otherwise you have the Nicholas Cage/ Dwayne Johnson/ Will Smith effect where you ostracize yourself through your own popularity, becoming not recognized for your work but your notoriety and thus drawing unwanted attention to your flaws and so your legacy as a whole.
He was just miscast. Wrong person for the job. Even for the greatest actors, there are roles they are simply not suited for.
henry cavill's case is different. that is a tv series, him leaving after some seasons is different than actor leaving in mid movie. there's no need to fanboy actors like that.@@personwhohasayoutubechannel3
@personwhohasayoutubechannel3 if I have no real connection to the person I'm portraying, why not get that check? Nobody is saying it was a bad movie, it's just a bad portrayal of Napoleon. I personally wouldn't do a bad portrayal of MLK, because I'm african american, but if an african or British actor did it, i can't be mad, he's not one of their heros🤷🏿♂️
@@personwhohasayoutubechannel3 Backing out of a multi-million dollar project half way through production is a easy way to end your career as an actor, and while it may not be that evident currently, henry's career is likely going to decline due to his actions, at least in terms of a series... Historically its rare for a show to survive after a core character goes through an actor swap..it just feels bad for the viewer and the show usually flops afterward...i find it hard to believe that studios wouldn't consider avoiding actors that flake out over creative differences, We fans may appreciate it when an actor stands up for the original story, but believe me , the people spending millions on these productions most certainly don't
“I have a life, that’s how I knew your movie was historically heretical horse shite.”
If RS had anything resembling a meaningful life, he would understand the value of accurately portraying the most influential human in western history.
As a french woman, bless your heart for not calling it the legendary emperor's name, france has been tainted enough as is.
"I don't know if he actually shot the pyramids, I just thought it looked cool"
YOURE LITERALLY THE *DIRECTOR* OF A HISTORICAL FILM, ITS YOUR _ONE JOB_ TO LOOK AT WHAT HE DID AND DIDNT DO BEFORE YOU SHOOT A SCENE💀💀💀💀
He also is a britt and had do depict french hero...
@@piotrkarp9562 If only we had a device that gave us access to the total culmination of all human knowledge...
@@_Devil he's explaining why he was biased i think
29:08 Hey! at least Arnold UNDENIABLY was having a blast playing Dr Freeze, he was hamming it up every time he was on screen. I've never seen an actor play a terrible part with such childish joy and happiness.
I was in my edgelord phase when it released, but when I saw it ten years after, if Arnie was on the screen, I was enjoying myself.
I'm glad that I came back to it when I had. Moreso later on, after I found out that there was a Rifftrax for it.
@@Naedlus congratulations on coming back from the edge.
@@plumbthumbs9584 Took me too many years to find out it was more fun to dabble on the edge, than it was to make it your existence.
Arnold hadn't played a villain since 1984, he was loving it.
I think he still pays a small rental fee to keep the costume at his mansion.
I loved that scene when Napoleon was conquering the alien colony on Antarctica where he charged into battle screaming, "Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherf**king aliens on this motherf**king continent!!"
The saddest thing about this movie was that it was unwatchably awful. The first 40 minutes or so were entertainingly bad at times, but it became such a slog that my friends and I shut it off before the halfway mark.
Of course Napoleon lost Waterloo, he was up against time traveling British soldiers with .50cal BMGs.
To me, the biggest crime of this movie is the desaturated colour palette. They spent so much on those fabulous costumes, and they manage to make them look so drab.
I actually liked this movie! My favorite part was when Pedro won the election.
I love how hollywood seems to think Europe in the past is always damp, cloudy and depressingly blue
@@angryvaultguyFilms about Soviet Union: First time ?
@angryvaultguy tbf it was pretty damp and depressing.
Well, that and the dog mess they had for a script.
Absolutely loved the part where Josephine raised her hand and said: Wakanda Forever!!
So stunning, so brave 😢
My favorite part was at the battle of Waterloo, when Guyladriel and Assoka raised their three swords and shouted WAKANDA FOREVA and led a charge with their Klingon volunteers, decimating the French infantry and shifting the fate of the battle. Not even Asterix and Obelix could resist them for too long...
@@marbellaotaiza801 yes that was absolutely beautiful, truly a masterpiece
@@marbellaotaiza801 .....What a battle!
The best part is when Barbie neutered Napoleon with her pink lightsaber!
@albogypsy2842 lol, I'm amazed they haven't come up with some shit like that in MuhForceIsFemale yet: a pink lightsaber that only cuts through male-identifying beings...
One of the most infuriating things about this movie is that it's in conflict with itself on a metatextual level. The text of the movie is a clear indictment of Napoleon and of the very idea of "Great Men of History"; Napoleon is shown as petty, hapless, petulant, whiny, and all of his political or military genius is glossed over or set aside. The movie reminds you constantly of the losses, and the final scene of the movie is a list of numbers of casualties. The message is clear: "look how awful this guy was, he got all these men killed for his own ego! Also he was a delusional loser with no emotional control who was bad at sex!" But on a metatextual level, Napoleon, Josephine, and the high society of Europe are shown as the ONLY people who matter, because they're the entire focus of the movie and are the only people with any speaking lines! If Scott's hollow championing of the common soldiers whose lives were "thrown away" by Napoleon's ego was sincere, shouldn't have he included even a single scene where some common soldiers had speaking parts? He throws out this empathy bait at the end about all the soldiers who died under Napoleon, but without introducing those soldiers as people to care about in the movie, what connection does the audience have to some numbers on a screen? It would have been the simplest thing in the world to have a scene of some disillusioned fusiliers around a campfire in Russia talking about how Napoleon was losing it. It would have taken 3 minutes. Even Waterloo had some scenes of English soldiers talking among themselves and to Wellington to show they were real people. In Napoleon, I don't think I remember anyone with a social rank below the equivalent of a colonel speaking a line in the entire film. A paean for the common soldier indeed, bravo Scott.
I mean, even the Napoleon miniseries did this, with Napoleon coming across a mother who had lost all her sons to Napoleon's wars during the French campaign, showing the human cost of the wars he led and even giving him a moment of remorse and self-reflection which contributed to his decision to surrender. I guess that would have humanised Bonaparte too much for Scott's liking however.
My favorite part was when the British used their boats to sail around the world collecting all of the infinity stones prior to the battle of Waterloo, allowing them to summon the Na’avi from Avatar, Peter Griffin, and cleopatra to help them beat mecha napoleon and his army of evil cyborg French
You video essays are the best on youtube not only because of your deep analysis of the tangible problems related to production and the content itself but also because you shine a light at the true problem behind it, the "how" and "why", something that many, many, many other critics that share the same reactions as you simply decide to ignore or dance around it. Maybe for fear of being blacklisted or shadowbanned.
Another brilliant video. Congratulations.
"No wonder Ray Charles never watched it".... There are some exceptional moments in your review, well done!!
Blindism is nothing to be scoffed at !!! @Gyrfalcon312
Ray helped Write it. He died after. Uhh the stupidity of your fans is tiresome 😩
You must be fun at parties. It was excellent dark humour, if you take stick out of your back.
I wanted to see Napoleon to learn things like the Battle of the Pyramids was only named that because Napoleon saw the pyramids. THAT is the kind of "deconstruction" I like. Instead the French mortard the Pyramid of Giza as if a literal 10 year old wrote the script. "And then the Battle of Pyramids happens and Napoleon shoots the big one with a cannon!" But sir the entire scene is only a minute long. "Yes!"
Maybe, it’s because a a certain sect of people tried to blow up the pyramids in antiquity, as well as fringe groups that destroyed statues of the Buddha…? Hollyweird likes to ‘revision’ or ‘redress’ history, they are propagandists after all.
You'd need a big jump in cryogenics and seats made of air for people to watch a movie that covers the 18 yrs of Napoleon's life in the public sphere.
@@stephenmcdonagh2795 how about make his life story into several series?
@@stefthorman8548 They have done a series on Napoleon- think it was a Canadian production but it wasn't great- that one had too much Josephine in it as well.
@@stephenmcdonagh2795where did he suggest it had to be a complete story of his life in every detail? He just said he wanted to learn some actual history, not this bullshit. There are many techniques people have used to write long full lives into films that cover the essentials while getting the stuff they do show accurately and faithfully. You find some way to explain it in the dialogue. You show three main eras of his life and you put the essential details into a text screen between eras to fill the viewer in on what has happened in the years we are now skipping. Otherwise it would be impossible to make a film about any great man and his life unless you made a _Roots_ style series out of it.
The jump from Russia to Elba - skipping the whole of 1813 including the battle that actually brought Napoleon to a most likely decline (Leipzig) - was what infuriated me the most.
His rise through his Italy campaign in the 1790ies was not featured... nor were the wars of the 4th and 5th coalition. But to omit the whole 1813 was the real dealbreaker for me.
You never get a feel that Napoleon is ever in control of what he is doing/planning... why he became so powerful. He seems to be just stumbling through his years being a passenger of his own feelings towards Josephine and if there is war or peace... who really cares!?
That's the impression I could have gotten from that character would I have not known better history.
On the contrast to Leipzig Waterloo was shown like 20min - felt like 30 - and for big parts showing Wellington. Napoleon appeared to be passive for most of the battle - until he rode into the masses.
Of course, this film was after all directed by an Englishman, Ridley Scott. English history usually tends to omit the battle of nations in Leipzig, simply because the British didn't fight there, while giving Waterloo much more importance than it actually had, because that's where the British army defeated Napoleon. The fact that Prussia also fought in Waterloo is usually an afterthought, and that the battle at Leipzig was the biggest battle in history up until the 20th century and the actual battle that brought the Napoleonic empire to an end is completely unheard of.
@@onurbschrednei4569 You 100% expressed my thoughts. Same applies for WW2, where the Anglophones tend to believe they defeated NaziGermany alone or at least downplay the Sovietunion (if it is that they are even mentioned)... basically they were fighting the too young and the too old after 5 years of war.
Okay, sorry for OT, I just see some similarities.
@@luitpoldwalterstorffer2446 Yep. Waterloo was one of the most overrated and overhyped battles in history. Napoleon was doomed the moment he returned from Elba, even if managed to won at Waterloo nothing changes.
First, because entire Europe united against him again (apart from Allies in Belgium even bigger army of Russians & Austrians were marching from the East). Second, Napoleon had hoped for massive mobilization, but he managed to mobilize only ~150.000 troops (and some of them were diverted to Vendee to fight the royalist uprising).
Not to mention many French soldiers didn't even have proper uniforms, something that British propaganda never mention... not they mention how Brits bought teeth of fallen soldiers from various European battlefields (including Waterloo!) and even remains and used it as a fertiIizer in Yorkshire (it was cheaper than bird's fertiIizer).
Leipzig? You mean his most famed victory and strategical masterpiece
Couldn't be bangin if this flick was all about war
Let's not forget the 1927 movie Napoleon, a film that showed excellent technique in it's ingenuity for the art form of moving pictures, and was probably the most advanced silent film for it's time in terms of camera work. Now whenever you look up' Napoleon film', you get this garbage.
Bohemian Rhapsody was strangled by surviving members of Queen serving as executive producers...ensuring that attention to bandmates was equal and not overly distracted by the most interesting person to perform for the group.
I think the joke was that they should've titled the movie 'Josephine'. For a supposed Napoleon biopic, she was certainly way too front and center.
Yeah, the real title of this film should've been "Josephine: Her Napoleon Story."
I mean there was a Tragic Love Story in Napoleon's Life. His last word was Josephine and her last word was Napoleon. However it wasn't told right
Barbie 2: Josephine
"LIKE A BEAUTIFUL, BLOSSOMING FLOWER, PETALS UNFOLDING AND SPREADING LIKE SOME GREAT ANALOGY OF A BODY PART THAT HUMANITY CAN'T SEEM TO STOP OBSESSING OVER"
-Gerogia O'keef, c.1763
@@plumbthumbs9584 Even back then, women only told one kind of joke.
I remember my grandfather telling me that Napoleon fought Galadriel to protect the orcs within his army from her genocidal bloodlust.
the most realistic thing in both of these universes
He did, I was there. That was glorious victory. He screams "for Frodo" all the time! He kinda looked like hobbit himself tho, so no wonder.
W@@piotrkarp9562
Ridley Scott has turned into the Zack Snyder for pseudo-cinephiles over 45.
Omg, that is the most accurate description ever.
Zack Snyder has never made a good movie though, so that's at least one difference
That new Bob Marley movie is literally him thinking about his life before he plays. Its insane.
what other movies were shown in this video?
particularly the scenes during the 'historical inaccuracy' block were really gorgeous
Waterloo (1970)
Heroes and Villains: Napoleon
War and Peace (Bondarchuk)
My favorite scene is when Barbie neutered Napoleon with a pink lightsaber. So empowering!
What are you talking about?
Arnold and Uma were the best thing in Batman and Robin. They both gave fun campy performances and ate every scene they were in. I mean honestly does anyone remember what Clooney and everyone else was doing?
Clooney was the worst choice of Batman ever, including Pattinson, of whom I've heard some praise actually (haven't seen it myself yet). I don't generally mind Clooney, I think he's a good actor, but he was totally off as Batman.
@@Thedennati Clooney was headbobbing.
When you said ‘character assassination’ i genuinely felt the same way watching blonde they purposely tried to ‘character assassinate’ Marilyn Monroe
I was thinking the same!
It's less about her and how shit the men around her were. They sacrificed her character to make men look bad in effort to try and make her look like a victim, because victims are put on a pedestal today. It's truly bizarre.
@@davidkymdell452 but she _was_ a victim in many ways. she literally died in near poverty after a lifetime of being used and treated like dirt. The issue with the movie was that they erased all her actual suffering and replaced it with easily debunkable ridiculous nonsense
@@Vexaraxyes, the real Marilyn was a victim, but she wasn’t ONLY a victim, which is how Blonde portrayed her. For women in particular I think it was revolting to watch, like misery corn. Certain parts of it were just gratuitously awful, like with JFK, when there is no evidence that he mistreated her (although he shouldnt have been cheating on his wife ofc)
@@scarletsletter4466 yeah even the author of the book it was based on said she made everything up, that she pretty much wanted to tell her own fictional story using Marilyn as a symbol rather than actually telling Marilyn’s story in any way.
Waterloo looking at RSN: " Look at what they have to do to mimic a fraction of our power"
When I saw Napoleon a friend asked me what I thought. I told him, “If you know obsoletely nothing about Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars you’ll enjoy it, if you know even a little bit of Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars you’ll have an aneurysm.”
Just as it's fashionable in film to insert black characters into every possible human interaction, it is all but forbidden to explain how these people got where they are. There are black Hobbits in Middle Earth; there are black storm troopers in space; there are black courtiers in Regency England. To ask "How did they get there?" is considered insensitive. "Would you ask how white people got into George III's court?" Well, no, I wouldn't typically, but I *could*, and furthermore, I could explain it if I had to. You see, there is such a thing as "migration", and white people ended up in a lot of the places where they were because they moved there over a period of centuries. These areas didn't see a similar migration of black people then, so there were no black people there; that's all there is to it. The dizzying variety of ethnicities in one place we find in supposed historical films would require a degree of mobility that just didn't exist until modern times. Film makers intent upon constructing a fantasy past that tickles their current prejudices are incapable of thinking things through to that extent. They behave as though humans were plants or mushrooms, just spontaneously popping up here and there and sometimes producing inexplicable sports of different colours with no visible antecedents.
Race washing OUR history purely for the sake of pushing nefarious propaganda on all of us.
Star Wars example pretty trash ngl. I agree with the other examples though
@@RevanReborn3950BBYyou could argue that in star wars, at least in the more travelled systems and planets, everyone would have interbred (which happens very quickly anyway) to the point that there wouldn't be distinguishable races and they would all be some kind of beige-coloured human-alien mixture (assuming humans and aliens can interbreed of course).
@@RevanReborn3950BBYI agree. Star Wars is PURE fantasy and doesn't reflect politics or culture of the real world. Black Storm troopers makes MORE sense than a giant slug crime boss in that setting.
@@randomcharacter6501 *science fiction
Apparently, Scott also makes Napoleon escape from Elba to meet again Josephine - who in reality died nine months earlier.
Nah in the movie by the time Napolean gets there, Josephine is already dead. It's just explained that communication never got to Napoleon about her death so he got upset.
@@FailHail-yu8rzthey really be acting as if he escaped from St.Helena and not Elba
I love that his editor is using screenshots from Epic History TV, another great TH-cam channel with a near flawless series on Napoleon.
Given the casting of Joaquin Phoenix, I thought this movie was all about the later life of Emperor Napoleon. You're blowing my mind telling me otherwise and I prefer to believe all the bits about Naporius, AfroQueen, and Dancing Tobey Maguire.
Also, on this movie's opening weekend, I overheard a guy on the public bus reviewing it to someone over the phone: "I dunno, man, I thought it was going to be a historical action biography. But it was mostly about Napoleon f***ing and I didn't need to see all that." A+ , that guy should have been a professional critic.
Don't listen to the haters. The part where the Duke of Wellington Spartan kicked Darth Vader into the Sarlacc pit took my breath away.
My favorite part was at the battle of Waterloo, when Guyladriel and Assoka raised their three swords and shouted WAKANDA FOREVA and led a charge with their Klingon volunteers, decimating the French infantry and shifting the fate of the battle. Not even Asterix and Obelix could resist them for too long...
That’s only because everyone knows for a fact that if Unicron made it on time to France, Darth Vader would never have fallen.
"THIS! IS! BRITAIN!"
@@HermitKing731 You think you're so great because you have galleys?
You forgot to mention the the criminally under discussed biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Movie”. It is pure genius!
It’s DELIBERATELY inaccurate! Weird Al is 6’ tall and Daniel Radcliffe, who plays him in the biopic, is 5’5”. And that’s just the start of the wonderful absurdity.
Deliberately making an inaccurate biopic can help result in an amusing one.
@@markiangooley Not only are they very different heights and face structures, but Weird Al's real life quirk is that he's incredibly clean--he doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs, seldom even curses in his songs. Supposedly he also has a pretty healthy upbringing with his parents and he never had a big breakup with his band. So the fact that his biopic is this obviously-comedic of a downfall is perfect because he's one of the few artists that can
“Reflection of myself” will fucking NEVER get old.
He's pretty reflective.
Thank you so much for your in-depth wisdom, this character assassination “movie” is as atrocious as those lunatics who vandalized monuments of Empress Josephine in the name of identity politics, I have studied a lot of Emperor Napoleon I, if I existed in during the Napoleonic era I would definitely be a Bonapartist, one cliché I despise about historical dramas is replacing interesting historical facts events with tedious hyper fictionalized scenes/characterization, anything what the studio committee in accurately, think the audience wants.
I still cannot fathom that Scott's response to the terrible historical accuracy was literally "Uh, were you there? Didn't think so. Checkmate!" It stuns me.
"You think you're so great because you have books !!! 😤😤😤" -- Ridley Scott
Underrated comment
Knowing the real battle layout beforehand, Austerlitz was PAINFUL to watch. Literally a skirmish over a camp with like 500 guys...
Borodino was even worse, it looked like a battle from Empire Total War ...
I have not watched "Ridley Scott's Napoleon"! And after watching many reviewers take on the film, I get the sense that it is as accurate as Netflix Cleopatra!
So I have no regrets not having watched this!
Great video, but I have to disagree with your take on the Ray Charles movie. Jamie Fox's performance is one of his best, and so well done. I've yet to see a biopic with a more true to life performance. Not only the acting, but the singing etc was phenomenal. Maybe it was boring to some, I feel like that's kind of objective though. I can agree with the rest but that one I really think deserves some praise.
@32:55 never cast Ashton Kutcher as anything but the dopey dumb boyfriend. It's literally the only role he can pull off
The real problem with RSN is that Ridley didn't have the Barry Lyndon candle light camera lens that Kubrick borrowed from NASA. Nor did he have the directorial chops to approach the subject in any manner whatsoever. Doomed to failure.
Napoleon looks like they took his state of mind when he spent his last days on St-Helens island and kept it for his entire life
“'Napoleon' is Everything Wrong With Biopics” is Everything Right With Film Criticism
My favorite scene is when Napoleon goes "Surrender? Do you think I'm some kind of.... Joker?" And then the French slaughter everyone.
I actually liked the scene when he declares himself the emperor and says: "Enough with the formalities! It's time to Bon-a-PARTY!!"
My favorite part of "Steven Speilberg's Lincoln" (SSL) was when President Abraham Lincoln heard that General Lee was entering Gettysberg, Lincoln looked off into the middle distance and exclaimed.. "IT'S LINCOLN' TIME"
You've managed to kill just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target. - James t kirk warth of khan
Wait, they didn’t include the Battle of the Pacific Rim where he commanded a recalled Battleship from Pearl Harbor? That means they completely missed how he time traveled there from medieval times where he was searching for himself for a high school book report.
What I want to know, as a photographer (actual, not digital finger-painting), is this:
Why is it that the indoor scenes are well-lit and brightly colorful, while the outdoor scenes look like they were shot on rolls of Anscochrome that expired in April 1966 that a guy found in his grandfather's attic after the funeral and sold on ebay cos hipsters love to shoot that stuff in plastic toy cameras? Of course, I know that the only forms of indoor lighting were candles, fireplaces, and whatever came through windows, and fire provides very warm, orange-amber light, whereas outdoor light is white (sunny, mid-day) or blue-tinted (overcast). But even an overcast day is six to eight stops brighter than a candlelit interior. So even accounting for the difference in color temperatures, why do interiors appear to be six stops brighter than the outdoors, which are always overcast, at the smallest difference in brightness to interiors? This is the opposite of both reality and what is rendered on all visual media. I did better than this when I was nine. Therefore, considering that the people involved in the production are not children borrowing their granddads' cameras and working in basements through nothing more than their grandparents' largesse, but are, in fact, adults with access to the most advanced equipment in the world, virtually infinite resources, and the backing of a multi-billion-dollar megacorporation, I can reach no other conclusion than that this was intentional. But I'm buggered if I know why.
I love Napoleon especially when he said "it's Napoleonin' time and Napoleoned all over the place." 🗣🥶🥶🔥🔥🔥💯💯
Sir, you have my eternal admiration and respect for this material. All-though they are not trying to change history just for cheap throwaway thrills that look cool, the reason why Napoleon is such a mess is in my opinion the result of the interaction between a director that lost his edge a long time ago, and the fucked-up "burn the past" head space of Hollywood. Awesome french btw!
"head space" that a very apt way to put it that I haven't heard in a while. I agree though, wokeism with a general that's over the hill is a bad recipe for a history flick.
The blame should be put fully on Ridley Scott rather than some monolithic desire to destroy history in Hollywood. Just before watching Napoleon I saw Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, which maintains its message while simultaneously respecting the historical material. I think its absolutely doable to make a film that is critical of Napoleon without having to make shit up, but Ridley Scott was never interested in making a movie about the actual Napoleon.
@@firebird4491 why are you defending Hollywood of all things?
@@marbellaotaiza801 I'm just saying it's misleading to think Hollywood is some top-down organization with an agenda. Hollywood is just a term that represents the American film industry. Not everyone in Hollywood has the same ideas about what a historical movie should be and how to make it. I used Scorsese's recent historical film as an example of a director with a different vision from Ridley Scott. I could also bring up Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Instead of blaming the entire American film industry for 'Napoleon', blame Ridley Scott. Disney is also fair game since filmmakers producing films for Disney need to take orders from their executives if they want to keep their job.
@@firebird4491 Hollywood used to be a term to represent the American film industry. Now it's a term to represent the five or four corporations that own all the studios that remain. The corporations happen to be owned in turn by black rock or vanguard or both.
Most of the people that work there comes from the same schools and have similar values or lack thereof.
It's all very incestuous if you think of it so yeah, even if there's not an organization called "Hollywood" with a president and a top-down hierarchy, maybe you can see how the can still be an agenda and how it can be implemented.
On the other hand, I'm not defending RS, but I still haven't seen anyone blaming David Scarpa. You can be a genius director, but your movie is not gonna be much better than the script you got, and Scarpa hasn't written anything good since The Last Castle that I know of...
Yeahhhh, I’m pretty sure Ridley Scott lost the fuckin’ plot at some point. Who tf makes a movie about Napoleon where he spends the entire thing being pathetically obsessed with his cheating ex wife? That could’ve been 10% of the movie, not 80% there might’ve been 2 good scenes total it wasn’t shoehorned into.
The director's guilty pleasure unconciously portrayed in the movie.
1:12:00 when the Despot shows the clip of all those real people comprising the army, you can hear the immensity in their footsteps pounding as they walked. It was super cool! 🤩
That's something I noticed watching it, modern CGI feels weightless and bland; there's no comparison.
The movie wasn't simply character assassination. It used the figure of Napoleon as a symbol of "toxic masculinity" to be unmasked and ridiculed.
It's really the only narrative throughline of the movie, and was most certainly a conscientious decision by Scott. It actually kinda bothers me that reviewers don't give this the significance it deserves. They seemingly miss the actual point altogether.
For the purposes of this movie, Napoleon's life and accomplishments serve little other purpose than providing vignettes to show his male ego, insecurity, and inadequacy, bookended by cinematic battles to draw in the masses and give it the veneer of spectacle.
If most reviewers did not get the most significant point ("toxic masculinity", as you say), the movie cannot have made its point very clear?
@@josefavomjaaga6097Well, that's how subversive propaganda works, and why it's effective, but I would expect reviewers who are conscious of "the message" to recognize it. And Despot does, to some degree, but they spend far more time and effort focusing on the ahistoricality, which was frankly expected from a Ridley Scott film.
Why is it everything with these movies and discussions comes down to the culture war argument? IDK about you but id kinda of like some nuance in some of these criticisms every so often
Having the english infantry squares stand on the wrong side of the hill at the battle of waterloo might be the most easily avoidable historical inaccuracy ever put to film.
and watching it again
Me too!
Ditto 👍
Same
What’s different this time
Word frfr
"I had Napoleon destroy the pyramids to show that he conquered Egypt" - Ridley Scott. THEN SAY YOU"RE MAKING A FANTASY AND NOT A HISTORICAL BIOPIC
“You think you’re so great because you have boats!” is actually a line in the movie? That sounds like terrible dialogue to me, coming from a movie set in the 1800s.
I agree, I just think it could’ve been worded better.
It even worse then he said 'I found the crown of France in a gutter' in his coronation... and then place it on his head... he never said this in his coronation but in some letter, and obviously it was metaphorically. But here, it's portrayed as a real crown (from gutter!).
Very early 1800s. That is totally not correct language for the era. Although you could argue that he ought to be speaking French so anything goes. But by that logic you could have him speaking in contemporary English for the entire film, as long as the general meaning of the words is the same.
The fact that the hour long Toulon episode is better than the entirety of RSN is bonkers. Ridley really screwed this one up.
They also got his birthday wrong. He was born on August 15th making him a Leo. They had him born between the end of January- beginning of February.
I think Scott's point in showing the casualty figures is to depict Napoleon the god of war as a butcher and that all those who make their name in wars are butchers, wars never solve anything. Regardless of how childish and foolishly naive that point actually is. Wars solve a lot arguments in human history, that's why we keep fighting them.
This is part of the propaganda to convince normies that violence won't solve things when time and time again in human history things have been fixed with violence.
I don't care what they say. My grandmother told me, Napoliean was black.
When Napoleon shouted: "You think you're so great because you have boats?!!" the song boats and h's from the movie step brothers started playing in my mind for some reason.
Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo
When I think of this movie, I think of poo...
Boats and Hoe's
I just wanted to mention your point at 1:14 that it's been done better for centuries. One of the biggest points of Henry V was the aftermath of the battle.
KING HENRY: Now, herald, are the dead numbered?
HERALD: Here is the number of the slaughtered French
...
KING HENRY:This note doth tell me of ten thousand French
That in the field lie slain
..
Where is the number of our English dead?
Herald gives him another paper.
Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,
Sir Richard Ketly, Davy Gam, esquire;
None else of name, and of all other men
But five and twenty.
So despite losing a major character, the King's own brother, it conveys the overwhelming sense of their victory. Despite half the scene being a mere list of names and titles, the scene still had weight.
Cavalry could advance through infantry at times. The lines were organized by brigades, regiments and companies, which could maneuvered seperately. The best trained soldiers were capable of some pretty complex maneuvers. It's not too difficult to leave openings, or open gaps in the line for the calvary to pass though. You just wouldn't do that in close proximity to the enemy. And they wouldn't just pass though the line at random, a specific unit would have to move, or two units move over to create a gap. They also didn't just make one big continuous battle line. When in advancing in line, it would be an overall thin line with the flanks of each brigade relatively close to the one beside them , where the neighboring unit could protect them. But if you were attacking you wild be more likely to have a front of only a few regiments, formed in ranks four deep, with following brigades stacked behind them to add power and depth to the assault. The actual width and depth depended on how many men you had and how concentrated you wanted the attack to be. I would say three brigades in three main lines, with 3-5 regiments in each brigade would be a typical attack, although you could have the bulk of a while division going in if you were very confident. The French also really liked the ultimate in concentrated assault, which is by column, which is the opposite of a line, it's a long, narrow formation 20 men or so wide, but many ranks deep.. It was common to advance in column because it's much easier than keeping a line intact as you travel over ground, but you need will trained troops to separate back into a line when the right drum signal is given. Or you can just stay off column and attack the enemy that way, which the French had great success with. You only have a few men in the front line who can fire, but no matter how many her hit, there are always more of them behind. If they are well disciplined, they can and will march right up and through the thin enemy line which is only a few men deep and 20 wide facing a whole stack of enemy who will keep killing you until your line is broken. Then you move up cavalry to take the broken line from behind and rout them. You take heavy losses doing so, but it was considered impossible to defeat for a while (and strangely enough to modern minds the spaces at the front of the column were actually greatly contested over, as great honor and chance for glory, even though you were pretty likely to get shot or stabbed. . So it wasn't always just a single unbroken line, the cavalry could get through to attack in many places.
Wasn't that pretty much limited to specialised skirmisher units that were intended to operate in dispersed formations most or all of the time? Or am I getting mixed up and it was just regular units that were formed up into skirmishers? (it's a very long time since I did any Napoleonic war gaming!)
I don't know why they keep hiring Joaquin Phoenix for roles in which he is to play royalty. He is inaccurate, his enunciation is poor, and his general posture is one of a slob. He is the last guy I would pick to represent anyone who had their **** together. He makes a great Joker but not an emperor, which by the way he has now played twice, thanks to Scott.
In the Gladiator it worked considering what kind of character he played.
I'd hire him to play freaks and social jetsam, that's what he shines at.
I'm genuinely really disappointed. A film about Napoleon made with a big budget and todays advanced special fx could've been brilliant if done right, i was actually looking forward to seeing this before i heard how bad it really was, plus we've not had a good historical epic for ages now ☹️. It would've cleaned up at the box office worldwide too, what an absolute waste
*I
We've known that Ridley Scott is a fool at least since Prometheus.
Robin Hood was 2 years earlier, and is an abomination.
@@ComicGladiator it was at least an good movie with good writen characters and a good writen story, you at least can have fun watching it.
but this here and others of ridleys movies are just plain stupid. and prometheus started the stupid stuff he has done since then.
this movie here is i don`t even know how too desripe this horrific nighmare of an movie even.
it is like the butchering of luke skywalker and the entire star wars franshise from disney. hollywood is just an shadow of what it once was. a disgrace on all levels.
I am so done with retold of stories with “artist perspective” that just means “I will do whatever I like and not give a fuck about putting any effort, and I will call all who don’t give their firstborn to me Nazi.”
Can we just be done with these masturbation sessions?
McGuire and Smith dancing to Pet Sounds is absolutely brilliant.
Thank you. You're the first commentor to recognize the greatness of that bit.