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Napoleon By Ridley Scott

Madonis

Member
Bad representation of the French and the fact that napolean brought scholars with them and they discovered much of what people first learned of ancient Egypt. Ridley Scott is better than this.

Certainly. Napoleon was a complicated character with plenty of virtues and vices, but having him randomly fire at the Pyramids doesn't inspire confidence in the rest of the movie's accuracy. I get that he wanted a quick way to show the campaign without spending too much time, but that's a bad idea. That said, it might still be pretty good as a work of entertainment. Just...not something you should use in order to actually learn about history.
 
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IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Bad representation of the French and the fact that napolean brought scholars with them and they discovered much of what people first learned of ancient Egypt. Ridley Scott is better than this.

Ridley Scott unfortunately doesn't give a shit about historical accuracy. In a recent interview with BBC the subject of historical accuracy was brought up. His response:

"Were you there? Oh you weren't there. Then how do you know?"

 

jason10mm

Gold Member
It's kinda sad that Scott would so aggressively cheer for ignoring historical record. While I think a wild ahistorical romp about Napolean in the vein of Inglorious Basterds could be a lot of fun, for a serious drama, which Napolean seems to be, I'd think he would realize that the core audience is gonna want attention to detail and historical accuracy, at least in spirit, as much as possible. If he wanted another Gladiator with its loose version of history, he should have manufactured someone AROUND Napolean to give an unreliable narrator perspective, or something like Bernard Cornwall did with the Last Kingdom series, or just do Flashman for fucks sake. ESPECIALLY if he is buying into the colonizer narrative for european campaigns outside of Europe, fuck that noise.
 
You don't understand, guys. Napoleon was aware that the pyramids were just landing pots for the Goa'uld ships. That's why he shot them.
star trek GIF
 

Wildebeest

Member
You don't understand, guys. Napoleon was aware that the pyramids were just landing pots for the Goa'uld ships. That's why he shot them.
You say that like it wouldn't just be standard practice for Ridley Scott to sneak his belief in ancient aliens into a film.
 
Fools complaining about historical accuracy while the man's entire career has been about historically inaccurate kino.

1492 is as historically accurate as the Star Wars prequels and yet this scene perfectly conveys the modern idea of how monumental discovering America surely was:



And that's exactly what Napoopan does in its Egypt or Austerlitz scenes. We always shared tall tales about great people. Some of the reactions here are hilarious - people who can't escape literal thinking and can't identify metonymy when the fucking director spells it out for them...
 
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Oberstein

Member


A video of Joaquin Phoenix and Ridley Scott in the Musée de l'Armée in France (which has an impressive number of Napoleon's accessories, not fakes, contrary to what Joaquin says).

Funnily enough, Joaquin looks like the average tourist who doesn't give a damn, but hey, he looks tired. In fact, he leaves at one point.

Ridley Scott discovers historical anecdotes on the spot, which is worrying for the film's historicity.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member


A video of Joaquin Phoenix and Ridley Scott in the Musée de l'Armée in France (which has an impressive number of Napoleon's accessories, not fakes, contrary to what Joaquin says).

Funnily enough, Joaquin looks like the average tourist who doesn't give a damn, but hey, he looks tired. In fact, he leaves at one point.

Ridley Scott discovers historical anecdotes on the spot, which is worrying for the film's historicity.

They never even spoke about the character with each other? Sounds very low effort all around.

Contrast with Oppenheimer. Nolan knows all of the details regarding the historical events, and crafts a narrative that stays true to history while making it his own. It takes a lot of effort to execute a project with that kind of depth and precision.
 

Gp1

Member
The last good Scott movie imo

Did you watched Kingdom Heaven directors cut?
Imho it's one of his best movies. On par with his classics.

And even after that he did American Gangster (great), Body of Lies (great) plus a bunch of "good" movies in 10's and 20's.
 
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Chuck Berry

Gold Member
Did you watched Kingdom Heaven directors cut?
Imho it's one of his best movies. On par with his classics.

And even after that he did American Gangster (great), Body of Lies (great) plus a bunch of "good" movies in 10's and 20's.

Not to me.

Never liked Kingdom of Heaven because I cant stand Orlando Bloom and think hes a terrible actor. American Gangster was alright. Body of Lies was meh but Im glad it introduced me to "If The World" by GnR.

All of those dont hold a candle to Black Hawk imo
 
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Oberstein

Member
They never even spoke about the character with each other? Sounds very low effort all around.

Contrast with Oppenheimer. Nolan knows all of the details regarding the historical events, and crafts a narrative that stays true to history while making it his own. It takes a lot of effort to execute a project with that kind of depth and precision.

Yeah, clearly, it surprised me too.
Ridley doesn't give a shit about the historical aspect, as he's shown with his recent comments.
Like, for example, shooting the pyramids, which is really the opposite of what Napoleon did... but well, we'll see with the rest of the film.

If only Kubrick had lived longer...
 
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DaciaJC

Gold Member


Not surprised in the slightest this film is a monumental hack job


Pretty much exactly what I suspected after the first trailer. How disappointing.

Did you watched Kingdom Heaven directors cut?
Imho it's one of his best movies. On par with his classics.

It's an entertaining film, but it misrepresents almost every major featured historical figure and religious attitudes of the time. Unfortunately there aren't all that many films directly centered around the Crusades, so it's probably still one of the better ones.
 
Fools complaining about historical accuracy while the man's entire career has been about historically inaccurate kino.

1492 is as historically accurate as the Star Wars prequels and yet this scene perfectly conveys the modern idea of how monumental discovering America surely was:



And that's exactly what Napoopan does in its Egypt or Austerlitz scenes. We always shared tall tales about great people. Some of the reactions here are hilarious - people who can't escape literal thinking and can't identify metonymy when the fucking director spells it out for them...

I agree that Scott and Vangelis were masters of exactly that: conveying the idea behind a thing rather than trying to spin it into literal truth.

Saying that... he lost a lot of his finesse over the years and this sounds more like he's going for a purely visual thing. The no fucks given-attitude only works if you still have the skills to back it up.
 

Wildebeest

Member
Oh boy, I sure hope there are no well researched and well realised scenes about Napoleon's famous military victories in this biopic about Napoleon. That would be too boring and obvious.
 

Alx

Member


A video of Joaquin Phoenix and Ridley Scott in the Musée de l'Armée in France (which has an impressive number of Napoleon's accessories, not fakes, contrary to what Joaquin says).

Funnily enough, Joaquin looks like the average tourist who doesn't give a damn, but hey, he looks tired. In fact, he leaves at one point.

Ridley Scott discovers historical anecdotes on the spot, which is worrying for the film's historicity.

Weird that Scott only discovers that museum after he's shot the movie. I mean if you're making a movie about Napoleon, one would expect you'd at least go to the places that have most of the memorabilia from that time ("what's this ? - oh nothing, just the stuff he used to plan his battles, but I don't think it's relevant for your movie...").
Also funny how Phoenix is typical of people from the American continent having no idea of the amount of historical content in European Museums. Sur I guess he's more used to places where everything is a replica in papier-mache, but our museums actually have much more legit content than they can expose. Just the Musée de l'Armée has storage rooms filled with authentic medieval armors standing shoulder to shoulder. They have Napoleon's favourite horse stuffed in a window, ffs.
 
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Weird that Scott only discovers that museum after he's shot the movie. I mean if you're making a movie about Napoleon, one would expect you'd at least go to the places that have most of the memorabilia from that time ("what's this ? - oh nothing, just the stuff he used to plan his battles, but I don't think it's relevant for your movie...").
I think the guy whose first movie 50 years ago was about two Napoleonic officers and lived in France for many years actually knows a thing or two about Napoleon.
This is just a marketing material put together in haste when the actor's strike ended. Phoenix was obviously dragged kicking and screaming from his bed on another continent to shoot this bullshit.
 

qbxwhi

Member
movie is great.
honestly top tier film making. I dont care if its accurate or not or whatever. it was entertaining and well made.
 
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