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Must admit, I'm really looking forward to this.
Interestingly, you might be better off watching via a streaming service as the theatrical version is heavily cut to prevent "aching butt syndrome".lol
The full version is around 4 hours apparently.
Big action movie, good historical plot, a few not so true parts, but who cares as its a big action movie. Whats not to like.
4 hours though, bloody hell. Think I'll wait till its out on dvd and i can pause it for toilet/coffee/food breaks. Im hoping to have a wall mounted 65" samsung tv soonish, so i'll get to see it in some splendor.
A fun fact that a documentary i saw started was true:
Napoleon never declared war on another country preemptively, not once. All the other countries he fought picked a fight with him. Monarchies in particular weren't too keen on his very existence.
"Napoleon never declared war on another country preemptively, not once."
I thought marching the Grand Armee into Russia in 1812 was a bit of a declaration of war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia
Russia and France were allied, don't blame Napoleon for those pesky Russians getting all cosied up with the dastardly British, the British having declared war on France first.
Yeah I'm up for this and Ridley Scott is 85 years old - which is quite astonishing.
Made a trip to see Flowers of the Killer moon for a special event at the cinema. Glad I did
Cinema version of Napoleon is not 4hrs ?
Cinema version of Napoleon is not 4hrs ?
Apparently not, it's 2 hours+ I believe? Either way, it's considerably shorter than what Ridley wanted apparently but the full length version should be what is eventually available when it hits the streaming services.
Cinema version of Napoleon is not 4hrs ?
2hrs 38mins, so no worse than many of those seemingly endless MCU films as far as that goes.
the full length version should be what is eventually available when it hits the streaming services
Hopefully there'll be the option of the cinema release version.
Saw the trailer for the first time yesterday and I wasn't completely convinced, it could either way tbh
OP
Via a Streaming Service!!!!
Are you nuts?
This is a film that screams..BIG SCREEN
Slow down the death of cinema and have a night out.
👍 😉 😜 😆 🤣
So cinemas are still heightists…if they are only showing the shorter version…I’d hoped we’d moved on from this
I'm confused. I always thought Napoleon was a small guy. Have they changed that as well?
Need to see this at the cinema so will be looking at a date soon.
Slow down the death of cinema and have a night out.
Given the latest epics are funded by streaming services - the direction is set unfortunately .
In fact, they're mostly released in the cinemas to qualify for the Awards really.
Actually Flowers felt much much less hefty than its 3.5hr run-time even though I wasn't totally blown away - it was at least absorbing.
It's in streaming services interest to extend running times - keeps viewers around longer but exactly the opposite for cinema - less screenings per day.
And streaming services are much more hands off with Director's demands - hence the Irishman and Flowers both in my opinion being worse for bloat because Scorsese was simply allowed to do what he wanted with 200mill.
Make the film as long as you need to but a lot of these movies are bloated.
I’m confused. I always thought Napoleon was a small guy. Have they changed that as well?
I believe he was actually pretty average, height wise, for the period. <br /><br />Not sure I’ll see it, prefer historical programmes for this type of thing, or even Sharpe 😂
Did anyone catch the BBC interview with Ridley Scott? Absolutely brilliant! I hope he’s not planning any holidays in France
Informed that the French were up in arms about the historical accuracy, his answer was “yeah, well the French hate everything, including themselves” 😂
It’s a definite big screen one, this, so we’re planning on seeing it next week
He was about 5'7" which at the time would have been above average height. The old French pre-metric measurements would have put him at about 5'2" The reputation of being small was mainly through an old English cartoonist.
Given the latest epics are funded by streaming services – the direction is set unfortunately .
I know,it breaks my heart.
Who needs big screens,VR headsets for all 😉🤣
As a big fan of Ridley, I am pretty impatient to see it.
Drac
Full Member
Need to see this at the cinema so will be looking at a date soon.
Hold on, you need a date to go see it with?
Tinder is your friend.
I know it's a film, not a historical documentary and a certain amount of latitude is needed to make it flow properly and fit into the running time.
But I was surprised that Bill and Ted weren't even mentioned.
Albatross!
Who needs big screens
I do. Buying a 65" samsung tomorrow. 😀 So I can watch these epics in full cinema style.
I was just thinking about Napoleon pockets this morning strangely.
I wonder if pockets will feature heavily in the film seeing as he invented the ones in that location?
Makes you think (about pockets)
I believe he wore a waterproof jacket specifically designed for him with a chest pocket. At Waterloo he was distracted by damp inside the material and was arguing with his adjutant about whether it was a leak or condensation.
The rest is history
Has anyone actually seen it yet?
(I don't go to see films to get history lessons. Why the media outrage - only 36 mins is true screamed one outlet. FFS.)
Who cares - it's a dramatic interpretation of something that happened.
Go read a book if you want that.
It’s a tricky one - it’s a film, it’s meant to be entertaining, not a documentary. Just like the Churchill film with Gary Oldman - some bits that are reflecting history, others that are there for cinematic effect.
And that other, really silly, one about Dunkirk - that can just go in the sea.
Saw it last night. Spoiler Alert - I didn't like it.
Honestly thought it was awful. Looks great, but the story was seriously dull - I considered leaving early. It was a lot of snapshot scenes across his life. There was no peril, or even ambition to him. Didn't seem like he really needed Josephine, and definitely didn't seem like she needed him. Didn't seem to have any overriding goal or desire. Everything came to him on a plate, until it didn't, and he didn't seem very bothered about being defeated either. Waterloo scene was visually decent but again, no drama. Maybe I went with the wrong mindset, but I did want to be entertained. To my mind, it should have had a much tighter story rather than an overview of his whole life. All IMO of course!
Could maybe now use the props to remake Sharpe?!
I went last night, with my history student daughter. We came out and were both more than a little confused about it. First, it looks gorgeous. It's Ridley Scott, of course it does. Though, the retreat from Moscow scenes could have been taken directly from The Duellists, and that film showed the retreat in a better way. Second, it has a pretty poor script, with too much explaining of what is happening by characters who would have know what was happening. Third, Napoleon is a problem...
I have no idea what he was meant to be. A hero, antihero, flawed, a lovely but misguided man, miswritten by the history book? Who knows, because the scriptwriters certainly didn't. For a character who is on screen for so long and is THE eponymous character, he is weirdly peripheral to Josephine, who is not exactly well written herself.
I came out wondering why I'd seen the last stand of the Old Guard in a trailer but it didn't appear in the film, probably because of the edit mentioned above - I wasn't aware of that until reading this thread. That's maybe why the film is a mess. It needs to be watched in a cinema, for the battle scenes, and I'm not sure I've got the patience to sit through it a second time just to see if it's a better film in it's full length. Even at 2 1/2 hours you can see that it's pretty poorly written, so the writing isn't going to improve in those extra 90 minutes.
Disappointed.
We watched it yesterday, wife loved it, I thought it was ok but no Oscar winner....
First half I thought was ok and was mainly character development of him and Josephine (about until the Moscow bit) then it felt rushed with far too much to get through in too little time. He also didn't seem to age at all throughout the film....
It's watchable but not a great epic....
A good friend was an extra on it, appearing in all the battle scenes, said the boot camp they were put through was pretty tough, bloody cold and they weren't even fed well, he met up with a group of guys he met that had all been on the boot camp to see it at Odeon Leicester Square, and said that he was pretty disappointed by it, he feels the longer version should have a lot more footage of the battle scenes, as they shot a great deal more.
He also didn’t seem to age at all throughout the film….
No, he didn't. The film makers didn't use any techniques on Phoenix to make him appear younger, so he looked every inch his age for the whole film. Currently JP is 49, and not a young looking 49, certainly not in the film. Napoleon died when he was 51 and had been in exile for 6 years by that time. By contrast, Vanessa Kirby, the actress who played Josephine, is currently 35, but looks younger in the film, which may be one reason that so much of the film didn't feel right. It was almost an old man pursuing a young woman, which it would not have been in real life- she was older than him iirc.
This is a film that screams..BIG SCREEN
I agree. Get closer to your telly and/or get a bigger telly and your field of view will be the same as at the movies.
And you can easily get better sound.
And you don't get people eating snacks next to you.
And you can pause it or watch it in 2 episodes.
Not many reviews on page 1 really. Just (surprise surprise) a bit of "I know more about history than you!"
Went last night and I liked the film, it was pretty quirky, which suited me. The final Waterloo battle was great.
Joaquin was brilliant as always. (re: the aging - his hair thinned slightly! 😀 )
For such a visual experience, was a shame the screen in the Vue cinema was damaged in some way, but I've sent a complaint.
Saw it recently and like @IdleJohn, I left wondering what the point of it was supposed to be. I mean, yes it's historically all over the place as everyone says, but in a way that's completely slap-dash and pointless, from dresses to the battles, to the locations, to CGI haystacks, from one moment telling us every-one is starving and there's a famine, and in the very next shot, folks throwing food at Marie-Antoinette as she's lead to the guillotine, It's like they set out to do it deliberately, it's so weird
Then there's the plot...Tell us something interesting that we didn't know about him? Like why is a Corsican suddenly "The most Frenchman in the Room" (TM) not this stolid plod through an "imagined" life.
Really, watch the duellists, it's a better Napoleon film than this is.
Ouch - another disappointing Ridley Scott film. (That said I did enjoy house of Gucci and All the money in the world.)
Maybe I will just wait for the 4hr jobby.
Enthusiasm does seem to have ebbed away.
Didn’t love it, a lot of it is quite tedious, battle’s are, as you might expect from Ridley, really well done.
That said, I’m pleased I’ve seen it, but I wouldn’t want to sit through it again, unlike Gladiator, which I saw three times at the cinema and numerous times since on telly!
battle’s are, as you might expect from Ridley, really well done.
Cinematically, they look well done but historically, they are appallingly bad. Napoleonic infantry advances didn't look like mobs of people rushing the riot police. Cannonballs didn't explode. Cavalry didn't charge through their own infantry formations on the way to the enemy. Musket smoke would have been so thick across the battlefield that seeing any distance would have been problematic...
If the rest of the film had been good I wouldn't be so irritated by this and my pedantry wouldn't have been so inflamed! 😀
but historically, they are appallingly bad.
And not just that, but all sorts of checkable details are just so terrible. At the coronation there's a conductor for the orchestra - no such thing in the 18thC. Most of the time Josephine is only half dressed, They've obviously seen the portrait of Josephine - that was created as a sort of soft porn image for one person's eyes only; a sort of 18thC sexting, and figured - that's how she dressed all the time. Its really weird.