Ridley Scott's Napoleon Movie with Joaquin Phoenix

He may just dwarf his other iconic performances.

I'm just glad somebody is doing anything French Revolution-related that ISN'T Marie Antoinette.

I am soooo here for this. I love a good historical epic drama.

Napoleon was 5'6" tall

Joaquin Phoenix is 5'8" tall

Joaquin is to tall for the part.

Meh…I’ll pass.

It looks like the kind of movie that I will seek out a torrent to watch.

Joaquín is too old for young Napoleon but perfect for fat Napoleon with stomach cancer. But they will probably digitally make him younger.

I'm sure Joaquin will be excellent as always and Ridley Scott knows how to make great visuals.

OP AI was Kubrick's idea but reached out to Spielberg for collaboration (money?) and then he died.

AI, R9 ?

There's so much to him, I really wish they could go for a series. But still, this should be good and I will watch eventually, probably on streaming.

Josephine was 6 years older than Nappy.

Joaquin is 14 years older than Vanessa Kirby.

What gives, Hollywood?

The Austrians will be trashed, as usual. And Leipzig and Blücher ignored.

He seems wildly miscast

R10, the movie, OP, from 2001, directed by Spielberg.

I love a period piece, but after "House Of Gucci", I'm not exactly running to the theater to see this.

Interesting, R15, didn’t know that. And had completely forgotten about that movie ;)

[quote] I'm just glad somebody is doing anything French Revolution-related that ISN'T Marie Antoinette.

Look at the trailer again. The film will showcase Napoleon present at the execution of Marie Antoinette (she's the frightened woman with the wild hair led in the tumbril to the guillotine).

Honestly I feel like I was either sleeping or cutting class when my teachers taught about Napoleon, but I've always been curious, and with Joaquin, I will definitely check it out.

Plus I love love love Vanessa Kirby..

Why do these films that portray French history always feel so British?

The director, Sir Ridley Scott, is British, r20, as is Vanessa Kirby, who will Josephine.

Is Joaquin a junkie? He has junkie vibes.

That's fine r18. I assumed that was her. A cameo is fine. And I get that the tragic, doomed, romantic but trivial Queen makes for ideal Hollywood, but damn, there was a little more going on there.

Josephine herself came very close to the guillotine, and I assume they'll get into that at least a little. Supposedly, and I'm not sure this is strictly accurate, but supposedly there were these little Red Ribbon Balls. People who'd been arrested and awaiting execution before the fall of Robespierre would wear little red ribbons around their necks to symbolize how close they come. The balls would have a sort of giddy, manic quality for these survivors.

R23, they probably never happened, but it’s a great idea.

R20, this film was shot mostly in Britain. It works for an American audience; to us the past is always British.

Looks boring.

Who's that queen Rupert Everett playing? The Duke of Wellington?

[quote] to us the past is always British.

And certainly all aristocrats, going back to the Roman Empire. (Okay, some lower class Brits also, just to let us know we're dealing with Plebeians.)

Napoleon was short, yes, but he did not have a harelip.

Is Meryl in this?

Joaquin Phoenix was born with a cleft lip and palate, but he does not have them now. His parents had them repaired when he was very small.

All that he has now is a scar... get the fuck over it.

Will it be one of those godforsaken 3 hour long snoozefests?

The Bugs Bunny cartoon hinted at the Joker-like mania that percolated beneath the facade of the famous French emperor.

Napoleon would be better served by a full mini-series. Or even better by a several-season series (a la The Crown) that would take him from his childhood in Ajaccio to his time in the French army to the Protectorate to his conquest of Europe to his exile at Elba to the Hundred Days to his exile at St. Helena.

R22 way to stout to be a junkie. The only paunchy vegan I know. I wonder what he eats.

[quote]supposedly there were these little Red Ribbon Balls.

It looks like she's wearing a ribbon when she meets him in the trailer.

A cast of thousands... CGI soldiers.

This sounds like a complete piece of SHIT!

Why cast this harelipped yank Oscar winner as a French tyrant? Hollywood always has to go for bankability over story. It’s why they cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan, and Yul Brynner as the King of Siam.

He doesn’t LOOK like Napoleon. He doesn’t SPEAK like Napoleon. He can probably barely even SPELL Napoleon without his agent’s help. But he draws fraus to the cineplex, so he’s cast anyway.

What a fucking abortion. I hope it wins Razzies.

Do we really need another Napoleon flick? Has anyone seen the Steiger/Brando attempts. Rod is always one step closer to chewing up all the furniture, and he s does it to the tilt in his outing. Brando, who you'd think could never give a shitty performance is laughingly just awful as the Frog

I will see this but Joaquin seems slightly miscast and I am a Joaquin fan.

Ridley Scott makes films for like 1950s audiences when any non-American character, regardless of nationality, just had a British dialect. It just doesn’t work in these days.

Aging is vexing!

Fantastique French accents!

I've been thinking about Joaquin playing Napoleon ever since I saw him in Gladiator. His head is very Napoleonic. I know there's always dramatic license when doing a true story, especially historical events. But I looked at the cast list and there was no mention of the character of Jean Baptiste Bernadotte. He was one of Napoleon's best field marshals, and he walked away from Napoleon and became the King of Sweden. He had to face Napoleon on the battle field when he joined the allies to defeat him at Waterloo. His line still exists in Sweden.

Well, the Oscar race is shaping up nicely: Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, and now Napoleon. Take that Tom Cruise! You're not the only one who can "Save Hollywood! "

I'm with R15 on this. Scott's films are wildly uneven these days. All The Money In The World was good but that Gucci film was absurdly cast.

I looooooove his scar, I think it makes his already manly face even more sexy, can’t help it. And he is a superb actor so I don’t understand all the bitching on casting.

[quote] I am soooo here for this.

Is it a vibe? Is it GOALS? Are you feeling it?

I wonder what River would look like at 53.

Jonah Hill would have been a much better choice for Napoleon. Or Beanie even.

[quote]Finally a movie I want to watch.

Um, okay.

Have you never watched a single movie until now? Hyperbole much?

R46 I love it too. He has a manly but unique face, it's so interesting, even in this trailer where he's kind of stout and looks older.

"Joaquín is too old for young Napoleon but perfect for fat Napoleon with stomach cancer."

That's my big quibble with this movie, by Phoenix's age, Napoleon was a twice-defeated exile who only had a couple of years to live. He's the guy you cast as Napoleon looking back on his life from exile, while a younger look-alike actor plays the baby-faced Napoleon rising to power!

Because this is how Napoleon looked at his coronation, when he was 35 and had officially cemented his power. When he was actually *rising* to power, his portraits look ridiculously boyish! L

Here's now Napoleon looked while he was rising to power, this is supposedly from his time as First Consul of France.

Does he look 48 and haggard? He does not!

R53 you can't go by portraits and paintings that are done to flatter the subject. Napoleon like most people of that time probably aged prematurely. The life expectancy for people in France back then was between 30-40 years of age.

[quote]Why cast this harelipped yank Oscar winner as a French tyrant?

No worse than some prissy Brit.

[quote] He doesn’t SPEAK like Napoleon.

You’re betraying your age, dear.

Review

Napoleon heralds the return of the man’s movie

What’s arguably even more interesting about Napoleon than explosions and portentous-yet-barbed dialogue is the fact that it represents a return to a genre that appeared to be dead and buried in Hollywood but has returned this year with a vengeance: the man’s movie. Such pictures as Oppenheimer, The Killer, Killers of the Flower Moon and even the recent Mission: Impossible and Indiana Jones films are all aimed squarely at a male audience that would once have been regularly entertained at cinemas, but now find themselves largely cast adrift.

Not all that long ago, this was very different. Such battle-oriented epics as Master and Commander and Gladiator — to say nothing of films that didn’t star Russell Crowe — were rich in violent action and scenes of male camaraderie. If the female roles were either thin or non-existent, this did not prove too much of an issue when it came to box office receipts. Men have traditionally enjoyed films about fighting and honor and with painstaking recreations of historical scenes from ancient Rome to the Napoleonic wars. They were also critically acclaimed, often winning vast numbers of awards in the process. Then the commercial failures of the likes of Alexander and, recently, Scott’s The Last Duel seemed to suggest that audiences had tired of male-oriented pictures. Instead, in came four-quadrant superhero films, carefully aimed to appeal to wide audiences, and with their violence and essential manliness toned right down.

The return of such maestros as David Fincher, Martin Scorsese and Scott to cinemas is welcome — even if all their pictures had to be funded by streaming services — but it is also a reminder of how few younger filmmakers are emerging with this kind of picture.

We shall see whether Napoleon is another Scott classic, or a disappointment, but its early marketing suggests that the now eighty-five-year-old director has returned with a big, manly epic, full of swagger and panache. When it emerges this Thanksgiving, cinemas will be awash with viscera and blood — metaphorically speaking — and if it proves a critical and commercial hit (Scorsese’s picture has already won rave reviews at Cannes) then we can tentatively look forward to a renaissance in male-oriented pictures.

R54, the early drawings are probably too flattering, but they are consistent with written descriptions of him: he was gaunt and had long hair. The later, imperial portraits don’t disguise his ordinary features, or the fact that he had packed on the pounds.

R54, when an average age of death is that low, that usually means a high infant and child mortality rate is bringing the average down, and with the occasional war, or plague of epidemic disease or guillotines thrown in. Through most of human history, a person who lived to adulthood had a good chance of living to 70, given adequate housing and nutrition, and luck with the plagues and guillotines. A low average age of death does NOT mean that people were old at forty, or were dropping dead in mid-life.

Now I have no doubt that by the time Napoleon got back from Russia he looked even more haggard than Phoenix does now, but that doesn't mean that the real Napoleon looked old at 35. All the portraits show him as smooth-faced, and unless they're methheads or frying their faces in the Arizona sun, most well-fed men of 35 are and were smooth-faced.

I saw one of Napoleon's death masks at an exhibit. Quite big head. And I swear it was haunted.

Joachin's not a bad likeness.