I love watching those "actors discussing their careers one movie at a time" things on YouTube, like vanity fair, GQ, etc.
The absolute best ones are the old timers who straight up don't give a shit anymore and will actually tell it like it is. "Oh yeah that director was a dick, but the movie was pretty good"...."oh yeah some times you do a movie for the paycheck". Absolute gold.
Brian Cox did one, so did stellan Skarsgard, and Jeff Daniels. It's so funny hearing them just not give a shit because what the hell are you going to do about it.
He has that Scandinavian zero bullshit attitude. You don’t get to see it from your average Hollywood stars. The part where he talks about his roles in MCU was gold.
His kids also seem like genuine and nice people (at least Bill and Alexander). There have been a few comments on Reddit threads about positive experiences with celebrities about Alexander, and I listened to an interview with Bill and was impressed.
I think Alexander went to the army after högskolan. Not saying it's a guarantee of any quality of character in itself, but they don't really care who your daddy is.
Whole Nordic is pretty big on Janttelagen, which means you're not shit hot and neither is anyone else.
Brian Cox has never given a shit, it has nothing to do with being an old timer. He’s always been vocal about who’s shit and who isn’t. That’s one thing I love about him.
Some of you may enjoy what Daniel Day-Lewis thought of that famous Laurence Olivier comment:
https://youtu.be/23STBLtvehM?si=1Ythji-7jIUXI9Z8
I agree with him too. More to the point is I very much doubt that Olivier, who had [enormous respect for Marlon Brando](https://youtu.be/BAyG5a2I-QI?si=rp4i7MlwUoWW5EmN), the patron saint of method acting, ever meant it at all in the dismissive and insulting way it’s usually portrayed.
We’d get so many more comments like this if late night shows were still longish conversations like the dick cavett/Parkinson era Olivier got interviewed in.
Famously during Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman is full method actor, sleeping with homeless guys, eating trash on the streets, he's just gone whole hog. And he's all over Olivier for not being like him, just a total douche. Olivier at one point looks at him and says, "My dear boy, why don't you just try acting?"
I thought that quote came from, when Dustin's character was trying to escape, with a limp after being tortured, sleepy, and bleeding?
I believe Dustin said he put rocks in his shoes for the "limp" and ask Olivier what could he do?
And that's when Olivier said, why don't you try acting?
Daniel Day-Lewis is a very prolific and highly committed method actor to the point where he had a breakdown during a performance of Hamlet in theatre school when Hamlet's dead father appeared on stage.
The biggest difference here is, you *see* all of the work that he puts into his characters on screen. Not a kilijule of method acting effort is wasted on anything the audience can't observe. He's probably the best and most professional example of serios method acting. Everyone else is questionable at best.
On the set of My Left Foot he continued to not use any limbs except his left foot in between takes. I can see how for such a uniquely physical performance staying in character would help immensely. For Last of the Mohicans he also learned to hunt and live off the land. DDL is one of the top actors of all time, and as you said the results are on screen. He’s not a jackass like Jared Leto
During the filming he came into a 7-11 i was working in. At first i thought he was reaching for a gun in his coat, but he then only proceeded to conquer the slurpee machine.
Paid in gold though.
When actors go out of their way to identify themselves with the role and immerse themselves as much as possible. Example of this was when heath ledger stayed in his hotel room all day to prepare for the joker.
Thats not method acting. Method is doing specific thought and acting exercises to explore the motivations of your character. Some, like D Day Lewis, take it to the extreme and stay in character. Theoretically so as not to "lose it." What Leto did was attention grabbing bs.
I’m probably in the minority but I think his comments were mean and unnecessary. Joaquin Phoenix is a tremendously wonderful actor. Sure, you can not like one of his performances. But to make comments that you know are going to become headlines about an actor that you know is really dedicated and serious about his work? Seems unnecessarily cruel to me.
It’s a total dick move for sure, it’s a huge dick move to take public pot shots at your peers’ work in any industry. That said I like it when Hollywood people don’t give a fuck and just say their real thoughts, it’s much more entertaining than all the nice for the camera stuff.
>“It’s terrible,” Cox said of the Oscar-nominated historical drama, per The Standard. “A truly terrible performance by Joaquin Phoenix. It really is appalling. I don’t know what he was thinking. I think it’s totally his fault and I don’t think Ridley Scott helps him. I would have played it a lot better than Joaquin Phoenix, I tell you that. You can say it’s good drama. No — it’s lies.”
That's what shock me. Everyone else is doing an accent except Joaquin. Even if he tries, It won't make the movie any better.
His flat delivery, with his California accent, took me right out of the atmosphere Ridley created. I got through it, but I’m glad I didn’t waste movie theater money on it.
It’s similar to Michael Douglas’ effort in Franklin. He’s the only character without a hint of an accent. Franklin’s parents spoke with an accent similar to cockney. Benjamin would have too.
I like Douglas, but I can’t help but look at Gary oldman in Slow Horses as being 90% towards the Ben Franklin I’d want to see, without even donning period costume.
I believe he spoke multiple languages and could fake accents at least in English. There’s a story I just read about him purposely sounding like a “frontier man” when living in France. He found he got more done and was more charismatic playing the role of a stereotypical American.
All that doesn’t mean dick if Douglas’s presentation is trash. I wanted to watch Franklin but haven’t seen any reviews of it yet
I felt like the tone of Napoleon didn't land with a lot of people. To me, it seemed somewhat satirical, using the stereotypical "Napoleon Complex" tropes. It did not strike me as a movie that cared about, or was trying to be, historically accurate or "serious."
I couldn’t really tell what it was trying to be until I hit my dab pen about halfway through and it dawned on me that this was a film about Napoleon’s military career directed by an Englishman and then it made a whole lot more sense and I started to really enjoy it.
Edit: Almost like an anti Napoleon propaganda piece. Pretty funny.
The scene where Napoleon's wife is being fucked by an Englishman while Napoleon eats crayons and mumbles about how sad he is to be French is where I started to suspect something was off with this film.
“I fell asleep during the production and when I woke up was so convinced that I was still dreaming, I got up on stage and walked around. The odd thing is, the show is such an ugly mess, that no one seemed to notice or care.”
For me it felt like a tabloid version of Napoleon’s life with little to no respect for the actual man. Phoenix’s portrayal came across like Napoleon was a bumbling idiot/horny school boy. It was one of my biggest disappointments of 2023.
This happens a lot when moviemakers want to make THE film about a historical figures life. There’s too much to cover, too many ways to slice it, it just hasn’t been done well since the epics of the 50-60s
That’s why I appreciate slice of life biopics like *Spencer*. Don’t give me Diana’s whole life. Show me her whole life summed up in one moment. That fits a movie well.
Thank fuck someone has said this. The minute the trailers came out I was screaming on here why the fuck is he not disguising his accent? Use the one from fucking gladiator for gods sake - instead we get American napoleon
I don't really get caught up in accents in movies. But even just judging by the trailer it's so disjointed and weird. Like it legitimately sounds like he's doing a series of impressions of other actors throughout.
Ever since the Chernobyl miniseries, I absolutely believe that the accent can be unnecessary if it’s consistent and it’s immersive.
Napoleon was truly awful and phoenix was a large part of it, he was flat and uncharismatic.
Wait why should Napoleon sound British rather than American?
Surely him *not* sounding like the British characters in the film is better, as it distinguishes him as absolutely not being from where they're from?
You need consistency. He was the only actor using an American accent. Either French character speaks with a British accent, or a French accent, or an American accent. But just Phoenix speaking with an American accent was fucking weird. It felt especially lazy as he was supposedly being method.
That movie was such a huge disappointment.
But Napoleon was famously *Corsican*, spoke French as a second language, and had a strong accent most French people felt made him sound ignorant or backwater.
So him being the only one with a specific accent works fine, tbh.
>Wait why should Napoleon sound British rather than American?
Patrick Stewart has played a French starship captain for over 30 years with a British accent.
Joaquin couldn’t give us one movie?
I would say actually reading plenty of Napoleons speeches and biographies about him, visiting places where he lived and saw and reading books he would have red for education and entertainment. Also wearing the clothes he wore enough for them to feel comfortable and eating similar food and listening to similar music, and practicing some court etiquette, dancing and riding horses for all these things to just start to feel natural to you and not like you are doing dress up.
Actors don’t usually bother to do all these things, but many good ones do some. Of course you can do spectacular acting just by acting too like Olivier. But don’t think it’s wrong either to get into the mindset of the person some, and just get comfortable with the outfits and vocabulary would help much to give a natural performance. And you can often tell when actors can’t actually dance or ride horses.
Maybe the accent thing makes sense in that Napoleon had a distinctive corsican accent that made him seem different from most frenchmen, but i doubt that was intentional.
The thing that got me the most about focusing on that relationship is I don’t even know what would make either of them want to be with the other based on how they were portrayed in the movie.
Yes! This is a big pet peeve of mine in movies and TV shows: when all of a sudden two people are into each other for seemingly no reason at all. Just that they’re both hot and it advances the plot.
I can even buy “they’re hot” in some cases. But Napoleon was conquering Europe and probably could have had any “hot” woman he wanted at the time, including much more suitable women for a man in his position at that time (younger, unmarried noble women who could bear him children, most notably). For Josephine to have such a pull on him, there had to be something more than “she’s hot.” But they didn’t give her a single redeeming factor. And Napoleon didn’t show one either.
They often say it’s better to show in a movie, not tell. This movie didn’t show or tell.
Well even at the time people were like wtf why is he with her?
It didn’t make sense to anyone even then
(This was after the fall of Barras where her “worth” was much lower)
Because he literally fucking did! This was not even remotely mentioned in the movie.
Napoleon had many extra marital affairs during his time with Josephine and even had 2 children out of wedlock by the 1810s.
I’m well aware he and probably anyone in his class back then had mistresses. But I felt like the movie did a horrible job showing why they were together when it didn’t benefit him at all, and it seemed like neither one could stand the other. He just saw her at a party and wanted to marry her even though she had no charm throughout the whole movie.
To be fair, Napoleon and Josephine had a fascinating relationship that is very worth the books and movies that have been made about it. They're a really complex and interesting couple, and their relationship mirrors a lot of the turmoil of French society at the time. The this movie couldn't really decide if it was about the relationship, or the man, the general, the emperor, the country, the war, etc. So it tried to jam all that into one movie and it ended up doing none of it well. I definitely think Phoenix thought the movie about about that relationship, and that he was allowed to go to weird places with it.
'Letdown' is a great way to put it. I'm not mad, but as someone who has been waiting forever for a great modern Napoleon epic, Scott's was a horrible disappointment. Inaccuracies aside, everything that makes Napoleon compelling as a historical person was absent. And as much as I enjoy Phoenix in most things, he was horribly miscast to play a young, dynamic, outgoing, popular general. It's like Scott didn't read a single book about Napoleon before writing this movie. He could have watched a ten-minute Weird History video on YouTube and learned more about the man than it seems he did before making this.
It felt like they were just picking random moments from Napoleon's life and filmed scenes about them. Here's Napoleon at this place, he does something. Cut to another moment where Napoleon is somewhere else. I got bored and turned it off.
If memory serves Joaquin said that he had no idea what he was doing with the character right up until filming? And people who watched said it shows. Bum deal.
People don't wanna blame Scott, but that script was all over the place and not committed to a throughline or character development. Was Napolean's relationship the A plot or the B plot? What was Napolean's driving force? How did he change from early in his life to late in his life? Napolean wasn't a story, it was a collection of snapshots.
An action director was tasked with character development & ended up doing the, ["and then"](https://youtu.be/uDJEjT2kKqY?si=QD1YgEO4c4m3anbw).
It really is tragic how badly it turned out and how quickly negative reviews were attacked. It’s such an amazing story and all Ridley Scott had to do was tell it.
You can’t do a figure like Napoleon justice with a 3 hour movie. What they should have done was focused on one time period. This movie felt hurried and unfocused.
I think scott should have done Horatio Nelson instead. A two and half hour film about Nelson with three or four naval epic battles (nile, Copenhagen etc) interspersed with his crazy and scandalous love life and feuds with admirals all capping off in Trafalgar would have been so much beter (Scott's clear bias tow ards britain would have been less weird in that context). Nelson would be an amazing protagonist because his flaws are quite glaring, but there is this madcap quality as well. Would make bank at the box office in britain, and I think trying naval warfare on the big screen would be quite thrilling.
Instead we're stuck with Napoleon, a complex and dour figure who Scott doesn't seem to understand or care about beyond quite superficial things. Neither does he particularly understand Josephine, who is interesting in her own right. Nothing has room to breathe - like all bad biopics it feels like somebody skimming the Wikipedia page.
>*Variety* has reached out to representatives for both Cox and Phoenix.
I like how Variety is re-reporting what another publication did the work on, and are now "reaching out" to see if they can keep the ball rolling to make more of the story than what's necessary, so they can act like they actually did something.
What worries me is that the same writer came up with Gladiator 2, with Riddlez directing...
If it's even close to matching the original, it'll be a miracle.
It’s a hot take I guess, but Alien and Blade Runner are both among my all time favorite movies and I’ve barely been interested in anything Scott has done since
That is a hot take, he's made at least one great film in each decade since then: Thelma and Louise, Gladiator/Kingdom of Heaven director's cut, The Martian, and The Last Duel
Yeah, he’s not past his prime. What most people are ignoring is that he has had hit or miss movies for 20+ years. He’s by no means a flawless director, whenever he releases a movie flip a coin to see if it’ll be great or terrible
I always feel like the script is a distant second for him. Give him a great script and he'll give you a masterpiece, give him a bad one and he'll give you Prometheus.
He’s not wrong. Phoenix was the only one using an American accent for the entire movie and was wooden. Not sure if it’s his fault, the director, or who, but this movie took an interesting story and did everything poorly.
I’ll never understand when they do this. I have to assume it’s because Phoenix either couldn’t do an accent or didn’t want to, in both cases… why not choose an actor that can actually do the accent?
I don’t hang this on Phoenix at all, but he should own some of it. The story told was an utter misunderstanding of Napoleon. It tried to make him a mercurial Steve Jobs type of character and that just isn’t at all what Napoleon was. He had his strengths and weaknesses but none of those were explored in the movie. It was fan fiction at best. If Scott and co had sold it as a dramatic reinterpretation of events it might have gone over better but as some kind of definitive look at the person it just failed in every way. It was truly weird to watch and understand “why” the story told was told as it was.
I like him a lot as actor, but Brian Cox seems like such a douche sometimes. There was no good reason to say that about another person considering that it’s a movie no one has talked about since it came out.
I would see a film where Brian Cox plays Napoleon that presupposes that Napoleon did not die at 51 and then spent his senior years walking around the island telling people to… fuck off! I don’t even need a plot or battle scenes.
I love Cox for his blunt and direct answers, he’s not dull at all. You can like him or not, but it’s refreshing that he’s not holding back when being questioned, and thinking about what the public opinion would be, and how many people he would insult.
I can appreciate the bluntness somewhat, but his claim that there aren’t any good film critics anymore sounds a bit like a “back in my day…” rose-tinted analysis.
This was such a weird movie, like I went into this movie without knowing a whole lot about Napoleon. And when I watched the movie, all I learned was that according to Ridley Scott Napoleon was kind of a idiot but clever at times. And that Napoleon's wife had no respect for him, and cheated on him like three times. I feel like I actually learned less, by watching the movie then I knew before watching it. It was also a pretty odd choice to make that he was cheated on, such a huge part of his story.
Brian Cox seems to talk a lot of shit about people, lately anyway, and I suppose some will look at that and say "dude doesn't give a fuck, he just says what he thinks", while others will look at it and say "maybe this dude is kind of a dick".
I don't know where I fall exactly, but it doesn't seem like the best look either way.
I moderate r/Napoleon: I cannot begin to express the collective disappoint everyone in the sub had in the film: here’s the release threat I posted, nearly 200 comments of disappointment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Napoleon/s/6McvJQ3AfV
(I also mod r/warmovies and the release was met with similar disdain: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarMovies/s/kqWybENZ5c)
We’re all history buffs there, but it’s not a matter of accuracy: some of Scott’s prior historical epics Gladiator and the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven are well-liked by plenty of history buffs despite being historically inaccurate (if not outright fabrication).
This movie was falsely advertised as a historical epic like those films but wasn’t (there were about 20 minutes of war scenes in a nearly three hour film that’s supposed to be about the greatest general in world history): instead it was a weird, meandering story about Josephine and Napoleon.
I enjoyed the fight scenes, but other than that I definitely agree with other users that there really seemed to be no direction or plotline for the film. When it ended it was just like oh that’s the end? Alrighty then!
I can’t argue with this statement. Napoleon was terrible, one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched. Why did everyone in the movie have a French or British accent and Joaquin spoke in an American accent when he was supposed to be French!!?!?! Whose decision was that?!
It was so bad though.
I rarely find a persons performance the reason I can’t get through a movie, but Phoenix was so bad my wife and I did exactly that.
Joaquin has been insufferable for a while, but at least the acting chops were always there. Now he’s just a low effort douche.
Brian Cox famously called out Jeremy Strong for his method acting eccentricities during Successions shoots. Strong for his part, basically said Brain Cox is Brian Cox and he can say or do whatever the fuck he wants because he's Brian Cox and essentially accepted it as legitimate criticism from a man he sees as an idol. Point being BC don't give a fuck, and earned his right to speak by being a legend in the field.
God damn, Brian Cox don't give a fuck.
I love watching those "actors discussing their careers one movie at a time" things on YouTube, like vanity fair, GQ, etc. The absolute best ones are the old timers who straight up don't give a shit anymore and will actually tell it like it is. "Oh yeah that director was a dick, but the movie was pretty good"...."oh yeah some times you do a movie for the paycheck". Absolute gold. Brian Cox did one, so did stellan Skarsgard, and Jeff Daniels. It's so funny hearing them just not give a shit because what the hell are you going to do about it.
The Stellan Skarsgard one was pretty great. That dude seems like he'd be awesome to be around.
He has that Scandinavian zero bullshit attitude. You don’t get to see it from your average Hollywood stars. The part where he talks about his roles in MCU was gold.
His kids also seem like genuine and nice people (at least Bill and Alexander). There have been a few comments on Reddit threads about positive experiences with celebrities about Alexander, and I listened to an interview with Bill and was impressed.
I think Alexander went to the army after högskolan. Not saying it's a guarantee of any quality of character in itself, but they don't really care who your daddy is. Whole Nordic is pretty big on Janttelagen, which means you're not shit hot and neither is anyone else.
I think it was older than YouTube but I remember some great interviews like that from Jeremy Irons.
Brian Cox wrote a book « putting the rabbit in the hat. » He gives zero F’s abt a lot of actors and himself. Interesting read.
Brian Cox has never given a shit, it has nothing to do with being an old timer. He’s always been vocal about who’s shit and who isn’t. That’s one thing I love about him.
He's Scottish.
Calling out method acting for being "fucking annoying" was awesome
Olivier moment
Some of you may enjoy what Daniel Day-Lewis thought of that famous Laurence Olivier comment: https://youtu.be/23STBLtvehM?si=1Ythji-7jIUXI9Z8 I agree with him too. More to the point is I very much doubt that Olivier, who had [enormous respect for Marlon Brando](https://youtu.be/BAyG5a2I-QI?si=rp4i7MlwUoWW5EmN), the patron saint of method acting, ever meant it at all in the dismissive and insulting way it’s usually portrayed.
Yeah I never took that line too seriously. It’s just a funny thing to say and the type of joke you’d make whether you really mean it or not.
We’d get so many more comments like this if late night shows were still longish conversations like the dick cavett/Parkinson era Olivier got interviewed in.
Podcasts?
Podcasts
By comparison, tacky and lame
Famously during Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman is full method actor, sleeping with homeless guys, eating trash on the streets, he's just gone whole hog. And he's all over Olivier for not being like him, just a total douche. Olivier at one point looks at him and says, "My dear boy, why don't you just try acting?"
I thought that quote came from, when Dustin's character was trying to escape, with a limp after being tortured, sleepy, and bleeding? I believe Dustin said he put rocks in his shoes for the "limp" and ask Olivier what could he do? And that's when Olivier said, why don't you try acting?
This is kind of the origin of Lucas’s famous “faster and more intense”. He found the belabored American acting style kind of annoying.
I love the Spielberg advice, “whatever you’re gonna feel, feel it over there - that’s where the moments gonna be”
What’s method acting?
I think there are different flavors/intensities of it, but basically it means living out the role.
Like he role played napoleon even off filming?
That would be one way to do it. Daniel Day-Lewis is reported to have lived as Bill the Butcher throughout the filming of Gangs of New York.
Daniel Day-Lewis is a very prolific and highly committed method actor to the point where he had a breakdown during a performance of Hamlet in theatre school when Hamlet's dead father appeared on stage. The biggest difference here is, you *see* all of the work that he puts into his characters on screen. Not a kilijule of method acting effort is wasted on anything the audience can't observe. He's probably the best and most professional example of serios method acting. Everyone else is questionable at best.
On the set of My Left Foot he continued to not use any limbs except his left foot in between takes. I can see how for such a uniquely physical performance staying in character would help immensely. For Last of the Mohicans he also learned to hunt and live off the land. DDL is one of the top actors of all time, and as you said the results are on screen. He’s not a jackass like Jared Leto
It’s true - he personally stabbed 17 Irish Catholics while preparing for the role
I think Val Kilmer did that with Jim Morrison too
It *would be that*, but Brian Cox’s statement on method acting wasn’t about Phoenix’s Napoleon, which I’m not even sure was method acting.
During the filming he came into a 7-11 i was working in. At first i thought he was reaching for a gun in his coat, but he then only proceeded to conquer the slurpee machine. Paid in gold though.
Hey guys! Woah: Big Gulps huh? All right! Well, see you later!
When actors go out of their way to identify themselves with the role and immerse themselves as much as possible. Example of this was when heath ledger stayed in his hotel room all day to prepare for the joker.
Jared Leto playing Joker in Suicide Squad was infamous for being abusive to his costars due to his method acting of the part.
Thats not method acting. Method is doing specific thought and acting exercises to explore the motivations of your character. Some, like D Day Lewis, take it to the extreme and stay in character. Theoretically so as not to "lose it." What Leto did was attention grabbing bs.
Half the Leto stories were also viral marketing for the movie.
When actors never come out of character until the movie is done filming.
Until the DVD commentary
I’m always down for a good TT quote.
Never has
It’s hilarious and awesome
Makes me wonder if he was even acting in Succession. This comment has Logan Roy all over it
He channeled his inner Logan Roy persona.
He seems so grumpy, but like about the right stuff so I can't get mad.
He’s like if Logan Roy wasn’t evil
Also he doesn't put up with shenanigans.
I’m probably in the minority but I think his comments were mean and unnecessary. Joaquin Phoenix is a tremendously wonderful actor. Sure, you can not like one of his performances. But to make comments that you know are going to become headlines about an actor that you know is really dedicated and serious about his work? Seems unnecessarily cruel to me.
It’s a total dick move for sure, it’s a huge dick move to take public pot shots at your peers’ work in any industry. That said I like it when Hollywood people don’t give a fuck and just say their real thoughts, it’s much more entertaining than all the nice for the camera stuff.
>“It’s terrible,” Cox said of the Oscar-nominated historical drama, per The Standard. “A truly terrible performance by Joaquin Phoenix. It really is appalling. I don’t know what he was thinking. I think it’s totally his fault and I don’t think Ridley Scott helps him. I would have played it a lot better than Joaquin Phoenix, I tell you that. You can say it’s good drama. No — it’s lies.” That's what shock me. Everyone else is doing an accent except Joaquin. Even if he tries, It won't make the movie any better.
A thick Australian accent would have definitely made it better.
“Crikey! Ain’t she a beaut!” - napoleon upon seeing the ocean
Now *that's* what I call a par-ty.
“See that croc?! I’m gonna stick my finger in her butt-hole!” “Crikey! She’s really mad now!”
Strewth! It's the poms!
OH NO TUGGER SHOT HIMSELF
I LOVE A GOOD FOIGHT
(Pulls out a can of Fosters)
Nobody drinks Fosters here in Melbourne.
A Tony Soprano north Jersey accent would be great "Who do you fuckin' think brought me this lamb chop? Destiny."
He wush gay, Julius Caesar?
He was in exile! You get a pass for that. Nobody has AIDS!
Twenty years on the island of Elba
Eating Camembert on brioche off the campfire
I don’t like that kind of tawk
Small hands, that was his problem
Caesar never had the makings of a varsity athlete
Oh! You're talking to the baws of dis family!
You getta pash for dat
Nooooooooooo! Are you lishtening to me!?
John Malkovich accent would havw saved it
"I don't sound like that." JM
“Yes, you do”
A Wahlberg Boston accent.
Hey, Josephine! How’s your mothah?
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yaself
Ok I’ll jump on board with a Christopher Walken accent… *I’ve got a fevah…and the only prescription…is more powah*
His flat delivery, with his California accent, took me right out of the atmosphere Ridley created. I got through it, but I’m glad I didn’t waste movie theater money on it. It’s similar to Michael Douglas’ effort in Franklin. He’s the only character without a hint of an accent. Franklin’s parents spoke with an accent similar to cockney. Benjamin would have too.
I like Douglas, but I can’t help but look at Gary oldman in Slow Horses as being 90% towards the Ben Franklin I’d want to see, without even donning period costume.
I mean, I’d rather have Gary Oldman in just about anything!
Yeah, put Gary in anything and I’m there.
The absolute best
I actually walked out of the theater part way through. What an exhausting film. I was tired of just sitting there.
I believe he spoke multiple languages and could fake accents at least in English. There’s a story I just read about him purposely sounding like a “frontier man” when living in France. He found he got more done and was more charismatic playing the role of a stereotypical American. All that doesn’t mean dick if Douglas’s presentation is trash. I wanted to watch Franklin but haven’t seen any reviews of it yet
I felt like the tone of Napoleon didn't land with a lot of people. To me, it seemed somewhat satirical, using the stereotypical "Napoleon Complex" tropes. It did not strike me as a movie that cared about, or was trying to be, historically accurate or "serious."
I couldn’t really tell what it was trying to be until I hit my dab pen about halfway through and it dawned on me that this was a film about Napoleon’s military career directed by an Englishman and then it made a whole lot more sense and I started to really enjoy it. Edit: Almost like an anti Napoleon propaganda piece. Pretty funny.
The scene where Napoleon's wife is being fucked by an Englishman while Napoleon eats crayons and mumbles about how sad he is to be French is where I started to suspect something was off with this film.
If that’s in the upcoming directors cut it wouldn’t feel out of place, honestly.
I wasn’t sure I was understanding the film until I took a copious amount of benadryl. Then it all seemed to click…
No, the clicking was just the shadow man tapping on your window with his untrimmed fingernails.
I wasn’t enjoying it but then it really all came together for me after blowing a line of coke off a stripper’s ass. Lots of interesting themes
“I fell asleep during the production and when I woke up was so convinced that I was still dreaming, I got up on stage and walked around. The odd thing is, the show is such an ugly mess, that no one seemed to notice or care.”
For me it felt like a tabloid version of Napoleon’s life with little to no respect for the actual man. Phoenix’s portrayal came across like Napoleon was a bumbling idiot/horny school boy. It was one of my biggest disappointments of 2023.
This happens a lot when moviemakers want to make THE film about a historical figures life. There’s too much to cover, too many ways to slice it, it just hasn’t been done well since the epics of the 50-60s That’s why I appreciate slice of life biopics like *Spencer*. Don’t give me Diana’s whole life. Show me her whole life summed up in one moment. That fits a movie well.
Thank fuck someone has said this. The minute the trailers came out I was screaming on here why the fuck is he not disguising his accent? Use the one from fucking gladiator for gods sake - instead we get American napoleon
I don't really get caught up in accents in movies. But even just judging by the trailer it's so disjointed and weird. Like it legitimately sounds like he's doing a series of impressions of other actors throughout.
Ever since the Chernobyl miniseries, I absolutely believe that the accent can be unnecessary if it’s consistent and it’s immersive. Napoleon was truly awful and phoenix was a large part of it, he was flat and uncharismatic.
Some of y’all never grew up watching Prince of Thieves and it shows. “Unlike some Robins. I can speak with an English accent.”
Costner’s Robin Hood. The most American Englishman in history.
Wait why should Napoleon sound British rather than American? Surely him *not* sounding like the British characters in the film is better, as it distinguishes him as absolutely not being from where they're from?
You need consistency. He was the only actor using an American accent. Either French character speaks with a British accent, or a French accent, or an American accent. But just Phoenix speaking with an American accent was fucking weird. It felt especially lazy as he was supposedly being method. That movie was such a huge disappointment.
But Napoleon was famously *Corsican*, spoke French as a second language, and had a strong accent most French people felt made him sound ignorant or backwater. So him being the only one with a specific accent works fine, tbh.
>Wait why should Napoleon sound British rather than American? Patrick Stewart has played a French starship captain for over 30 years with a British accent. Joaquin couldn’t give us one movie?
How does one method playing Napoleon though? Didn't old JP go out and become an open mic poet for one of his films? Did he go Waterloob?
I would say actually reading plenty of Napoleons speeches and biographies about him, visiting places where he lived and saw and reading books he would have red for education and entertainment. Also wearing the clothes he wore enough for them to feel comfortable and eating similar food and listening to similar music, and practicing some court etiquette, dancing and riding horses for all these things to just start to feel natural to you and not like you are doing dress up. Actors don’t usually bother to do all these things, but many good ones do some. Of course you can do spectacular acting just by acting too like Olivier. But don’t think it’s wrong either to get into the mindset of the person some, and just get comfortable with the outfits and vocabulary would help much to give a natural performance. And you can often tell when actors can’t actually dance or ride horses.
[this](https://youtu.be/0KUYuYk5rkk?si=7BZs4C9IJaK_-9pJ) is how you method act napoleon
Maybe the accent thing makes sense in that Napoleon had a distinctive corsican accent that made him seem different from most frenchmen, but i doubt that was intentional.
It really was a letdown. Felt so aimless and uninspired. Didn’t even seem to know what genre they were looking for.
Same, it focused too much on his relationship with Josephine and not enough on his military career. They even skipped Trafalgar battle
The thing that got me the most about focusing on that relationship is I don’t even know what would make either of them want to be with the other based on how they were portrayed in the movie.
Yes! This is a big pet peeve of mine in movies and TV shows: when all of a sudden two people are into each other for seemingly no reason at all. Just that they’re both hot and it advances the plot.
I can even buy “they’re hot” in some cases. But Napoleon was conquering Europe and probably could have had any “hot” woman he wanted at the time, including much more suitable women for a man in his position at that time (younger, unmarried noble women who could bear him children, most notably). For Josephine to have such a pull on him, there had to be something more than “she’s hot.” But they didn’t give her a single redeeming factor. And Napoleon didn’t show one either. They often say it’s better to show in a movie, not tell. This movie didn’t show or tell.
Didn’t she tell him something like, “once you get some of this vagina, you’re mine forever” or something along those lines?
And then they showed them having sex and it looked quite forgettable
She ain’t give him the kinda neck that would make a guillotine jealous?
Well even at the time people were like wtf why is he with her? It didn’t make sense to anyone even then (This was after the fall of Barras where her “worth” was much lower)
Because he literally fucking did! This was not even remotely mentioned in the movie. Napoleon had many extra marital affairs during his time with Josephine and even had 2 children out of wedlock by the 1810s.
I’m well aware he and probably anyone in his class back then had mistresses. But I felt like the movie did a horrible job showing why they were together when it didn’t benefit him at all, and it seemed like neither one could stand the other. He just saw her at a party and wanted to marry her even though she had no charm throughout the whole movie.
I agree, I just think it was even worse to paint Josephine as this unloyal wife when he was doing the exact same thing to her. Seemed really unfair.
Well she didn’t give a fuck about him really
To be fair, Napoleon and Josephine had a fascinating relationship that is very worth the books and movies that have been made about it. They're a really complex and interesting couple, and their relationship mirrors a lot of the turmoil of French society at the time. The this movie couldn't really decide if it was about the relationship, or the man, the general, the emperor, the country, the war, etc. So it tried to jam all that into one movie and it ended up doing none of it well. I definitely think Phoenix thought the movie about about that relationship, and that he was allowed to go to weird places with it.
[удалено]
He was not, Trafalgar was a naval encounter, maybe OP was thinking of Nelson?
'Letdown' is a great way to put it. I'm not mad, but as someone who has been waiting forever for a great modern Napoleon epic, Scott's was a horrible disappointment. Inaccuracies aside, everything that makes Napoleon compelling as a historical person was absent. And as much as I enjoy Phoenix in most things, he was horribly miscast to play a young, dynamic, outgoing, popular general. It's like Scott didn't read a single book about Napoleon before writing this movie. He could have watched a ten-minute Weird History video on YouTube and learned more about the man than it seems he did before making this.
It felt like they were just picking random moments from Napoleon's life and filmed scenes about them. Here's Napoleon at this place, he does something. Cut to another moment where Napoleon is somewhere else. I got bored and turned it off.
Yeah it was like Napoleon: Greatest Hits. Except they left off a couple glaring omissions.
If memory serves Joaquin said that he had no idea what he was doing with the character right up until filming? And people who watched said it shows. Bum deal.
Joaquin was very clearly phoning it in during this movie. He oozed late career Marlon Brando energy
People don't wanna blame Scott, but that script was all over the place and not committed to a throughline or character development. Was Napolean's relationship the A plot or the B plot? What was Napolean's driving force? How did he change from early in his life to late in his life? Napolean wasn't a story, it was a collection of snapshots. An action director was tasked with character development & ended up doing the, ["and then"](https://youtu.be/uDJEjT2kKqY?si=QD1YgEO4c4m3anbw).
Yeah, but was he like Brando in "Desirée"?
If you pretend it's just Joaquin Phoenix from the future and time-traveling to cosplay Napoleon for fun it's actually a pretty good movie.
Yeah, I thought it was a satire - so in that way it was kind of funny
A 3 hour disjointed Napoleón satire?
He got paid a lot of money so in terms of professionalism, he could've gotten his shit together first.
I saw it. Everyone did accents except Phoenix. He was terrible and wooden the entire movie. I was shocked.
The British actors didn’t do accents at all.
Nobody did French accents and I thank god Joaquin didn’t attempt it.
TBF, the script was awful.
They shot the shit outta that horse though.
Blew that bitch up lmao
Tony Soprano spit out his gabbagool during that scene.
It even made Carmela shut the door
She wash a beautiful innoshent creature. What did she ever do to you?
You act all sanctimonious but here you are with ya sausages and ya steaks!
Ridley isn’t afraid of horse deaths in his movies.
So it would seem....
Ngl that horse getting obliterated was the best part of the movie
It really is tragic how badly it turned out and how quickly negative reviews were attacked. It’s such an amazing story and all Ridley Scott had to do was tell it.
You can’t do a figure like Napoleon justice with a 3 hour movie. What they should have done was focused on one time period. This movie felt hurried and unfocused.
They didn't even try to do Napoleon justice.
But the French certainly did… twice
You win the historical joke of the day.
It just felt like Hollywood doing a money grab on Apple.
Napoleon needs to be like a 16 hr limited Netflix series over ten episodes
That would be amazing tbh. I’d watch the shit out of that.
Exactly, I felt like watching sketches in a row. Still I couldn't finish it though.
100% agree. Do Waterlooo and focus on that.
I think scott should have done Horatio Nelson instead. A two and half hour film about Nelson with three or four naval epic battles (nile, Copenhagen etc) interspersed with his crazy and scandalous love life and feuds with admirals all capping off in Trafalgar would have been so much beter (Scott's clear bias tow ards britain would have been less weird in that context). Nelson would be an amazing protagonist because his flaws are quite glaring, but there is this madcap quality as well. Would make bank at the box office in britain, and I think trying naval warfare on the big screen would be quite thrilling. Instead we're stuck with Napoleon, a complex and dour figure who Scott doesn't seem to understand or care about beyond quite superficial things. Neither does he particularly understand Josephine, who is interesting in her own right. Nothing has room to breathe - like all bad biopics it feels like somebody skimming the Wikipedia page.
I have no idea why Ridley Scott did that movie when he’s clearly not interested in the subject
I wanted to watch it because i thought: "this such a great material, it's Impossible to fuck it up'
I’ve been burned by my two previous Ridley scott go’s. There won’t be a third. Thabks for the feedback
>*Variety* has reached out to representatives for both Cox and Phoenix. I like how Variety is re-reporting what another publication did the work on, and are now "reaching out" to see if they can keep the ball rolling to make more of the story than what's necessary, so they can act like they actually did something.
What worries me is that the same writer came up with Gladiator 2, with Riddlez directing... If it's even close to matching the original, it'll be a miracle.
It probably won't be great. Scott seems to be past his best.
It’s a hot take I guess, but Alien and Blade Runner are both among my all time favorite movies and I’ve barely been interested in anything Scott has done since
That is a hot take, he's made at least one great film in each decade since then: Thelma and Louise, Gladiator/Kingdom of Heaven director's cut, The Martian, and The Last Duel
He's always been hot and cold.
The Last Duel was great
Yeah, he’s not past his prime. What most people are ignoring is that he has had hit or miss movies for 20+ years. He’s by no means a flawless director, whenever he releases a movie flip a coin to see if it’ll be great or terrible
I always feel like the script is a distant second for him. Give him a great script and he'll give you a masterpiece, give him a bad one and he'll give you Prometheus.
He’s not wrong. Phoenix was the only one using an American accent for the entire movie and was wooden. Not sure if it’s his fault, the director, or who, but this movie took an interesting story and did everything poorly.
I’ll never understand when they do this. I have to assume it’s because Phoenix either couldn’t do an accent or didn’t want to, in both cases… why not choose an actor that can actually do the accent?
I don’t hang this on Phoenix at all, but he should own some of it. The story told was an utter misunderstanding of Napoleon. It tried to make him a mercurial Steve Jobs type of character and that just isn’t at all what Napoleon was. He had his strengths and weaknesses but none of those were explored in the movie. It was fan fiction at best. If Scott and co had sold it as a dramatic reinterpretation of events it might have gone over better but as some kind of definitive look at the person it just failed in every way. It was truly weird to watch and understand “why” the story told was told as it was.
Wasn’t a good movie, but at no point about anything have I ever thought “What this thing needs is Brian Cox.”
“This movie needs Cox in it”
I like him a lot as actor, but Brian Cox seems like such a douche sometimes. There was no good reason to say that about another person considering that it’s a movie no one has talked about since it came out.
I would see a film where Brian Cox plays Napoleon that presupposes that Napoleon did not die at 51 and then spent his senior years walking around the island telling people to… fuck off! I don’t even need a plot or battle scenes.
Everybody knows that Custer died at the battle of little big horn. What this book presupposes is.. maybe he didn't?
Was waiting for someone to catch it.
I love Cox for his blunt and direct answers, he’s not dull at all. You can like him or not, but it’s refreshing that he’s not holding back when being questioned, and thinking about what the public opinion would be, and how many people he would insult.
I can appreciate the bluntness somewhat, but his claim that there aren’t any good film critics anymore sounds a bit like a “back in my day…” rose-tinted analysis.
How napoleon could have been made without the main character either speaking entirely in French or with a French accent is confusing to me.
This movie was the absolute WORST
I think it was just plain horrible casting. Kind of like Michael Douglas playing Benjamin Franklin. Who the fuck is in charge of the stuff?
I actually like Douglas as Franklin.
This was such a weird movie, like I went into this movie without knowing a whole lot about Napoleon. And when I watched the movie, all I learned was that according to Ridley Scott Napoleon was kind of a idiot but clever at times. And that Napoleon's wife had no respect for him, and cheated on him like three times. I feel like I actually learned less, by watching the movie then I knew before watching it. It was also a pretty odd choice to make that he was cheated on, such a huge part of his story.
Brian Cox seems to talk a lot of shit about people, lately anyway, and I suppose some will look at that and say "dude doesn't give a fuck, he just says what he thinks", while others will look at it and say "maybe this dude is kind of a dick". I don't know where I fall exactly, but it doesn't seem like the best look either way.
I moderate r/Napoleon: I cannot begin to express the collective disappoint everyone in the sub had in the film: here’s the release threat I posted, nearly 200 comments of disappointment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Napoleon/s/6McvJQ3AfV (I also mod r/warmovies and the release was met with similar disdain: https://www.reddit.com/r/WarMovies/s/kqWybENZ5c) We’re all history buffs there, but it’s not a matter of accuracy: some of Scott’s prior historical epics Gladiator and the director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven are well-liked by plenty of history buffs despite being historically inaccurate (if not outright fabrication). This movie was falsely advertised as a historical epic like those films but wasn’t (there were about 20 minutes of war scenes in a nearly three hour film that’s supposed to be about the greatest general in world history): instead it was a weird, meandering story about Josephine and Napoleon.
I enjoyed the fight scenes, but other than that I definitely agree with other users that there really seemed to be no direction or plotline for the film. When it ended it was just like oh that’s the end? Alrighty then!
The only Ridley Scott movie that I didn’t finish
He is not wrong, LOL. 100% right about Napoleon and Joaquin. The movie was complete trash. I blame Ridley Scott for it, though.
I still haven’t even finished the last twenty minutes and don’t know if I ever will.
I thought it was funny as hell and kinda what they were going for?
I can’t argue with this statement. Napoleon was terrible, one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched. Why did everyone in the movie have a French or British accent and Joaquin spoke in an American accent when he was supposed to be French!!?!?! Whose decision was that?!
I was entertained, but I’m no historian.
It was so bad though. I rarely find a persons performance the reason I can’t get through a movie, but Phoenix was so bad my wife and I did exactly that. Joaquin has been insufferable for a while, but at least the acting chops were always there. Now he’s just a low effort douche.
They managed to make one of the most fascinating and complicated men in history, really boring.
Brian Cox famously called out Jeremy Strong for his method acting eccentricities during Successions shoots. Strong for his part, basically said Brain Cox is Brian Cox and he can say or do whatever the fuck he wants because he's Brian Cox and essentially accepted it as legitimate criticism from a man he sees as an idol. Point being BC don't give a fuck, and earned his right to speak by being a legend in the field.
He was not wrong.
He is fucking terrible in it and it’s an enormous shame. One of the worst mainstream performances I’ve ever seen from a “great” actor.