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Napoleon
2023 · Film · 158 min
Directed by Ridley Scott
An epic that details the checkered rise and fall of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and his relentless journey to power through the prism of his addictive, volatile relationship with his wife, Josephine.
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28 comments on Hacker News
> Modern taste is more about more neutral-colored foundations with color accents. Don't paint a whole room green -- have a gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background. Don't paint a whole wall orange -- have a beautiful orange-hued piece of art on the wall. It's just more tasteful to use color as one element, along with size, shape, texture, and so forth.
I don't consider this to be a be-all, end-all of design, but I appreciate that designs following this approach can be stunningly beautiful. That said, this is not the problem. The problem is, what happens these days, someone films your room with that "gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background" and... color grades the shit out of color, making it near pitch-black on non-HDR TVs (and most computer screens) and merely grey with tiny amounts of trace color on HDR TVs.
This is the problem - or at least its TV aspect. That Napoleon example was spot on - most movies these days look like the right half, whereas anything remotely approaching realism would make it look like the left half. And TFA correctly notices the same washing out of colors is happening to products and spaces in general (which means double trouble when that's filmed and then color-graded some more).
They take Napoleon, as recent film with bleak colors.
I will take latest matrix. The movie was awful, of course, but I was in awe of its bright, vivid, wonderful color work. If only plot was better.
Imagine a movie like Napoleon, but instead of needing 100 million and thousands of extras, you just need 5 actors and maybe a budget of 50k.
You could get something much more creative or historically accurate than whatever Hollywood deems marketable.
I think about AI like any other tool. For example I make music using various software.
Are drum machines cheating? Is electronic music computer sloop compared to playing each instrument.
Is using a Mac and a 1k mic over a 30k studio cheating ?
Maybe not the best source considering his own hubris got him killed.
To paraphrase another 2023 film: "That Russian a-hole is going down. What's he gonna do, snow on me?" -- Napoleon
You're right. He had a vision for not just a movie, but something of a massive scale. That wasn't really the norm for a historical epic like this anymore. You're right that there are a bunch of films about Napoleon (https://www.vulture.com/article/napoleon-movies-history.html) but nothing attempting the scale. The latest Napoleon was the first to attempt that scale ($200m).
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9671018
> Slated for production immediately following the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey , Kubrick’s "Napoleon" was to be at once a character study and a sweeping epic, replete with grandiose battle scenes featuring thousands of extras. To write his original screenplay, Kubrick embarked on two years of intensive research; with the help of dozens of assistants and an Oxford Napoleon specialist, he amassed an unparalleled trove of research and preproduction material , including approximately 15,000 location scouting photographs and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. No stone was left unturned in Kubrick's nearly-obsessive quest to uncover every piece of information history had to offer about Napoleon. But alas, Kubrick’s movie was not destined to the film studios, first M.G.M. and then United Artists, decided such an undertaking was too risky at a time when historical epics were out of fashion.
He also backed off on AI because the scale/requirements.
In my opinion he had the vision, but the tech and audiences just weren't ready. But maybe the same things might have been said about 2001.
So far ahead of his time.
He really wanted to make a film on Napoleon. Though not officially related to his work, one got made last year to mixed reviews. And he started production on the movie "AI - Artificial Intelligence" after a short story from 1969. He handed it off to Steven Spielberg.
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Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9671018
I thought it was pretty bad. It made Napoleon out to be uncharismatic and a total "simp" as the kids would say towards Josephine. He just comes off as a war monger Dictator who is ruining Europe for his single-minded vision of personal grandeur.
That's not the read I get on the man from my reading, so I found it very disappointing from a historical perspective.
From the "is it fun to watch" point of view... it was middling for me. Some of the battle scenes were cool, and there were some funny lines throughout that made me laugh, but overall as a story I found it pretty uninspired. Like, Gladiator had tons of historical inaccuracies as well, but it stood on its own as a really fun movie to watch and I can't put Napoleon in that category.
I agree there is a difference in misrepresenting events that have lots of evidence to support them and things that would likely have poor record keeping. I had assumed a movie called Napoleon might be about the personal motivations/interactions rather than more verifiable events.
I doubt the OP refers to who decided what and when. That part does get rewritten by the winners.
It's more about historical inaccuracy overall. I think Napoleon in particular has an analysis on A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry [1].
[1] It's not a proper analysis like he's done for other movies, but here it is: https://acoup.blog/2023/11/17/fireside-friday-november-17-2023/
Was it any good? I haven't seen a movie in years but this one seemed interesting as a history buff. Getting Napoleon right and that whole era is incredibly challenging - even after reading several books about the guy and those times, I'm still confused.
Most polarizing for me are the dramatized history movies like Napoleon. Most of the public will not be aware of what parts are true, and what parts are fiction. History will be remember as portrayed by these movies. They're basically committing falsification of history. It will be hard for the public to learn from history, if history is portrayed incorrectly in these movies.
The view of the director or the screenwriter is very strange. There are so many things to film about, for loving or hating Napoleon, yet the film makers chose to show the well debunked hoaxes on Napoleon. Also, Napoleon shattered the world with his military might and his politics. So many people were inspired by him, followed him, fought for him, and died for him. We can hate him for his doings, but in the director's eyes, he was a f&@$ simp? All the historical moments were merely happenstances because Napoleon was stalking Josephine? And why did the movie list out the death tolls on Napoleon's side only? As if the Quadruple Alliance didn't launch wars and didn't kill people? What kind of twisted view was that? And what kind of leaders could possibly inspire his people with that bitter and hysterical face as depicted by Joaquin?
You forgot "Napoleon", one of the worst movies of the year.
There is a case to be made for a feature film titled "Napoleon and Josephine", and Ridley Scott would be the last director out there you'd want directing it. He doesn't really direct actors, he's too busy arranging the extras. If an actor performs well in a Ridley Scott film, it is independent of any influence by Ridley himself.
Ridley, however, is handily the most experienced director of epic battle scenes currently working. And so you expect epic battle sequences, and you would expect epic battle sequences from the point of view of a master strategist named Napoleon.
Unfortunately the battles were borderline incoherent. Every second shot had 3 dozen extras going "rabble rabble rabble", but it meant little. The $200 million dollar budget mostly made it onto the screen, but it didn't come together as a drama, or a spectacle, or an engaging characterization of an historical figure. It's certainly not the film high school history teachers will be showing their students.
If you're going to see the film and are naive to the events of Napoleon's life, read at least the wiki before you go in, because Ridley doesn't do a whole lot to explain or contextualize anything for you.
The one upside to having seen the film is that I'm now more curious about Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars, it's an area of history I've only glanced over in the past.
No the movie really just was bad. I’m not even sure what the goal of the movie was. To make Napoleon look bad? To show his human side with his relationship with Josefine? Honestly afterwards I just have no idea. Really it was just a weird speed run through history. They just jumped from random event to random event over the course of like 25 years. Contrast this with the movie Lincoln which portrayed him during a relatively short period of his life. Ignoring everything else (there are many reasons why the Lincoln film is much better), the fact that the Napoleon film tries to cover so much really is an odd choice.
I personally would have walked out of the movie, but I was seeing it with a group of people and didn’t want to be too overly negative. (Afterwards I found out that most felt the same.)
Is that the only thing to hate about it? That's it's ahistorical?
If someone was capable of separating the Napoleon they read about in books from the Napoleon on the screen and was interested in watching a movie with some good cavalry charges glued together by a story about some undeserving wuss finally getting his comeuppance, would you recommend it in that case?
I read andrew roberts napoleon front and back three times and I still love the new movie. must be the odd one out.
then again I love gladiator and walked into that one knowing it's not gonna be a real representation of historical accuracy. i am always curious what other folks interpretation of Napoleon (and other rome emperors for that matter) and it's very interesting to see this is what Ridley thinks of him. Definitely a new perspective worth dinner table chat.
Watched it yesterday and hated it. I was looking forward to it too based on the trailers but it turned out to be a big hit ahistorical hit piece.
For example, no matter what you think of the guy, Napoleon was a bonafide military genius. In the movie, they made him seem like just one more of the bunch. Napoleon was famous for never being bothered by the gore of battle and the buzzing of billets, in the same vein as general Grant. In the movie they made him seem like a scaredy cat
In “Waterloo” you could see why French soldiers joined his cause in droves. Extreme charisma
By the way, if anyone likes history flicks, I won’t recommend watching the new Napoleon, unless it’s a pirated hate watch.
The classic “Waterloo” remains undefeated
I am not a fan of the essay nor of its style, but I credit the author with good topic selection and nice details.
I like Ridley Scott movies. I think of Scott like Dickens. A straight-ahead, topical but not actually edgy (in subject) cinematic allegorist, and a great master of the business of telling stories.
As a moviegoer, I am entertained by his movies, in the moment. As a filmmaker, he is sufficiently deep in his treatments to give me something to return to from time to time to consider and relate to real experience.
I still make every niece, and nephew watch The Martian when they are in middle-school and Bladerunner in high school. Some of Scott's work is, in a manner, canonical.
Scott has made some bad films, and he abuses some stories in service to the business of movies. Let's see Napoleon and talk again.
I like Bret Devereaux's acoup but I think he misinterpreted "get a life" as a denial of a-historicity. I really do think Scott just meant he doesn't care. His claims to historical accuracy are layman not expert level, promotional. It's puff.
0ne of my grandfathers was a military historian and walked out of the 1970s charge of the light brigade film because the wrong cavalry carbine and snaffle bit was being used. I get pedantry in these cases, but it's still an entertaining film (and like Napoleon a stellar cast)
What's the timeline on that sort of thing?
Like I'm sure that some relative of Elvis Presley was paid for the Elvis movie that was recently released, but is anyone going to get paid for those new Napoleon movie/miniseries?
Had this CEO shared the data they claimed to have reviewed, we'd be talking about that and not empty appeals to authority.
Should Napoleon have invaded Russia? I say no, but then again nobody's making a movie about me starring Joaquin Phoenix.
> He then published his edition of Shakespeare, which he finished only because his publishers had received payments from subscribers, so it had to be done.
Thank god for deadlines and obligations, they’ve generated so much creative work for the world.
You see a lot of successful people generate a lot less, especially older people with a wide open timeline.
For ex Stanley Kubrick spent 10yrs working on a Napoleon film he never released and only published when he perfected his films. Which is good and bad.
I also read Schoolboy Q recently made 3 albums and deleted them all because he wasn’t happy. The luxury of being successful without deadlines.
beyond the technical aspects of what was going to be done with kubrick's napoleon, it seems as though lot of the same ideas from this film were encoded, in reverse, into barry lyndon.
the more i read about napoleon, and what could have existed had it been allowed to be made, the more i come to appreciate what was actually accomplished with barry lyndon.
More broadly I would think that the negative attitude towards Orientalism is a little xenocentric, because it suggests somehow only Orientalists were a problem of that type during that era. I'd argue it was probably a common 'ism' in the world given one cultures view of another, and frankly demure compared to most past activity. At least Napoleon brought 'scientists' who'd be keenly trying to study something. That's already miles beyond what most entities would do.
Side note: Napoleon is weirdly unreferenced entity in North America, I think due to the fact he was French and not part of the Anglosphere directly. So much fodder for pop culture there, It'd be great to see a decent film about his foray into Egypt, or rather, a film in which that was the setting. Or even a cheesy netflix 'game of thrones' type thing that went through the revolution, his rise and demise. So many actual crazy stories there, they don't even need to wait for the author to write it ...
If anyone else was wondering, the film they're talking about in the beginning of the interview, Napoleon, was never made:
> Napoleon was eventually canceled due to the prohibitive cost of location filming, the Western release of Sergei Bondarchuk's epic film version of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace (1968), and the commercial failure of Bondarchuk's Napoleon-themed film Waterloo (1970). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick%27s_unrealized_projects#Napoleon)
Well, you can't say he was working at the same pace then as he was in earlier years. His attempt to make a film about Napoleon involved a lot more work, yet occupied a much smaller gap between successful film releases. My point is that if Kubrick were to die due to not taking retirement well, a decade long period of writing and exploring ideas seems closer to retirement than his typical hands-on approach to post-production and release.