Ridley Scott's Napoleon (Nov 2023)

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, on War and Peace:

At the time he made it, Bondarchuk (who also stars as one of the main protagonists, Pierre) commanded something like the 5th largest military force in the world! -- namely over 120,000 Soviet troops busy not invading Europe. ;) So the Nappy war scenes are very, very decent (which was experience he went on to put to good use for Waterloo).

The rest of the film is a more-or-less faithful 4-part nearly 7-hour abridgement of War and Peace, mostly faithful to the original material where kept, minus any of Tolstoy's more specifically Christian thoughts (as you'd expect from a Soviet production) though keeping some of his more ideologically harmless spiritualistic musings, so.... y'know, all the pros and cons of W&P.  It was released to be shown all on one 10-hour day, much like screening the extended versions of LotR all on one day.

Several years ago I bought the best available version new here https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/5489003219

This set is an official reconstruction which patches together footage from several Russian and international releases, as well as repairing (so far as possible) the crappy color film which had been recently created by Soviet scientists to be the best color film evar  , to recreate as closely as possible the original release. This results in rather spotty and inconsistent visual quality, but there's not much can be done about it anymore. Similarly, the audio is sometimes the original Russian with subtitles, sometimes an English dub, sometimes a French dub with English subtitles!

You will probably come out of the film despising everyone in it except maybe Napoleon (in his occasional cameos) and the peasants, which is probably what Tolstoy intended, so... faithful adaptation! 

[Grim.Reaper]

another trailer released...looking forward to this even if not the most accurate or not...

[JasonPratt]

Not bad! -- A Ridley movie can typically be trusted to look and sound good, so mission accomplished there!

I was admittedly hoping against hope that Scott was aiming to recreate and finish out Gance's crazy-detailed six-film biopic plan back in the silent era! Probably wouldn't be economically feasible today, but the first film still survives (I have it but haven't gotten around to watching it yet) in a six-hour cut from Nappy's boyhood through his 1797 invasion of Italy. 

[SirAndrewD]

Looks good to me. 

Only concerns are, wow they're shoving a ton of history into this.   It's going to be super hard to cover this in a traditional run time but I'm sure Ridley Scott in his "I DGAF" phase of his filmmaking will probably stretch that time out.

Second.  Phoenix is one heck of an actor buy he's 48 going on 65. He's already older than Napoleon was at Waterloo, let alone at Toulon and boy he looks it.  He will need to make up for it with a tour de force but the trailer didn't show off a ton.

Very much looking forward to it.  We're in a golden age of Napoleon films now with Spielberg looking to adapt Kubrick's script into a streaming miniseries. 

Can someone finally get off their butt and make a Horatio Nelson biopic now?

[Gusington]

Great trailer. Maybe even great enough to get me to go out to a theater.

[Grim.Reaper]

I see places say movie length around 3 hours and 10 minutes so plenty of time to cram things in:)

[Gusington]

In addition Spielberg and Kubrick and Tarantino, Scott is one of my favorite directors.

[Sir Slash]

I'm with SirAnrew, too much story to cram-in to too little film. But anything with cavalry charges...I'm in!

[al_infierno]

...... did Napoleon really shoot the Pyramids with cannons?   

[Tripoli]

...... did Napoleon really shoot the Pyramids with cannons?   

I don't think there is any damage from cannon balls on the pyramids, so probably not.    See https://www.polygon.com/23789626/napoleon-trailer-ridley-scott-joaquin-phoenix-pyramids
for a similar opinion. 

[Gusington]

Damn I was hoping it was true.

[JasonPratt]

It was generally understood, however, up through WW1, that Nappy's forces had used the face of the Sphinx for cannon target practice. No idea if that has been debunked.

Update: sketches of the Sphinx shortly before Nappy's arrival show the nose already gone, so also not true.

[ArizonaTank]

It looks like Scott may be over-dramatizing some history, and that is sad, but also typical Hollywood (and Scott for that matter).

The Pyramid scene is an example. But also the trailer seems to show an incident at Austerlitz. The trailer makes it look like the French artillery firing at the Russians on a frozen lake during the battle was devastating. Napoleon certainly presented it that way. But sober analysis, and archeology have shown that while the incident did happen, casualties were probably low, and the effect on the battle was mostly hyperbole.

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/07/11/did-napoleon-fire-cannons-at-the-pyramids-and-trap-enemies-on-a-frozen-lake/

Scott has never been shy about twisting history to tell a good story (exhibit one: "Kingdom of Heaven"), so its not surprising that we may see the same thing with "Napoleon."

But as a movie I still liked "Kingdom of Heaven" despite its sins against 'history.' So I will go see "Napoleon" for the visuals alone and will burden my poor wife with explanations on how the story differs from real history.

[Gusington]

^Are you not entertained?

I am with you - I love Scott's movies. But I do not go to him to be a history professor.

Same with games. The old arguments about historical authenticity just get me down.

Just make me giggle with delight, please. And if things are not precisely, 100% historically accurate, let me discover for myself.

[JasonPratt]

Nowadays, we can at least look forward to thorough historical analysis on Youtube sometime after release. The "Real Crusades History" channel has an excellent discussion, as long as the extended cut of the movie, of the things "Kingdom of Heaven" got right and (mostly) wrong -- and they're still rather fans of the film.