Ridley Scott's Napoleon - "Clumsy, Funny" Critics Torch Scott's Latest

[AndyDursin]

DisneyFox passed and Ridley is onto Itunes while churning out a staggering amount of product for anyone, much less someone in his 80s!

EXCLUSIVE: Apple Studios has committed to finance and produce Kitbag, the Napoleon Bonaparte epic that Ridley Scott will direct, with Oscar-winning Joker star Joaquin Phoenix playing the French emperor and military leader. Production will begin in early 2022 in the UK. Scott and Kevin Walsh will produce for Scott Free.

Deadline last October revealed the aspirations of Scott and Phoenix to re-team on this film, which now has a screenplay by David Scarpa. He wrote the Scott-directed Getty kidnap drama All The Money in the World. Scott Free’s deal with 20th Century Studios obliged him to show it there last fall, but it became free and clear towards year end, and a world rights deal closed within the past two weeks at Apple Studios, where Scott Free has its first look deal for television projects.

It is another big feature commitment for Apple, which under Apple Worldwide Video heads Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht is beginning to show how their slates will factor in the streaming ecosystem. The emphasis will not be on the volume coming from Netflix or Disney+ but that doesn’t mean Apple won’t step up for a fog cutting A list movie package to embellish its growing tastemaker slates for display on theatrical and Apple TV+.

The Kitbag deal is at least on the financial scale of the one Apple Studios made last fall to acquire world rights to Emancipation. That film package with Antoine Fuqua directing Will Smith in a Willam N. Collage-scripted action thriller about the harrowing escape of Peter, a runaway slave forced to outwit cold-blooded hunters and the unforgiving swamps of Louisiana on a tortuous journey North where he joined the Union Army. Apple also stepped up for Greyhound, the WWII drama that Tom Hanks wrote and starred in for director Aaron Schneider, which premiered last July. And Killers of the Flower Moon, the $180 million + adaptation of the David Grann book that Eric Roth scripted and which has Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio set to star.

Beyond Greyhound, Apple has several movies in the awards season hunt now including the Sofia Coppola-directed On The Rocks with Rashida Jones and Bill Murray, the docu Boys State, the animated Wolfwalkers, and the upcoming Cherry, a harrowing drama that is the first film Joe & Anthony Russo directed after Avengers: Endgame. Tom Holland and Ciara Bravo star.

Despite a pandemic that has stunted the progress of many filmmakers, the ever-ambitious Scott has continued to be prolific for the Scott Free banner Walsh runs for him. Scott most recently wrapped The Last Duel, with script by Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, for 20th Century Studios. Scott re-started production after the pandemic shutdown and completed production in Ireland under strict protocols. Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer and Affleck star in the period drama chronicling one of France’s last legally sanctioned duels, when King Charles VI (Affleck) which declared that Knight Jean de Carrouges (Damon) settle his dispute with his squire Jacques LeGris (Driver) over a claim of sexual assault by the knight’s wife (Comer) in 1386.

In March, Scott begins production in Italy on Gucci, the MGM drama that will star Lady Gaga as the murderess Patrizia Reggiani alongside a killer cast including Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Adam Driver, Jared Leto and Jeremy Irons. Scott, Giannina Scott and Walsh are producing. Kitbag will follow.

https://deadline.com/2021/01/napoleon-m ... 234672742/

[Monterey Jack]

Can't wait to stream a new Ridley Scott epic in 15-minute chunks on a smartphone...!

[AndyDursin]

They'll do it as a movie the way he wants to. Apple TV bought the Tom Hanks flick Greyhound already.

Look at it this way, its definitely better than not being made at all. Disney is not going to support making that kind of film.

[Paul MacLean]

Can't wait to stream a new Ridley Scott epic in 15-minute chunks on a smartphone...!

I'm going to watch it on my big screen -- sitting in my nice clean chair, which is not covered with wads of used gum, sticky soda stains and wasn't previously occupied by some unhygienic slob who only changes his briefs once a week.

And if I need to go to the loo, or get more popcorn, I can hit the pause button.

I have to be honest, I don't miss the cinema experience at all. True, there is nothing like watching an epic or cult movie on the big screen with an audience that is engaged -- but such experiences are few and far between. Audiences these days are full of loud, obnoxious kids (who are texting half the time) and most movies from the past 15 years have been very forgettable and not worth the price of admission. And concessions? Five-six bucks for a popcorn? Six bucks for a soda?

For the past decade, the main reason I've gone to the movies at all is because it was the only way to see a new film. It's great to get together with friends for a movie, but we can also just get together in their home or mine to watch a film -- in 4k.

[AndyDursin]

Will hit theaters via Sony before going to Apple+...no timetable provided though.

Apple Original Films announced today that the epic historical drama “Napoleon” from acclaimed director Ridley Scott will first be released exclusively in theaters worldwide, in partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment, on Wednesday, November 22, before streaming globally on Apple TV+.

Directed by Scott from a screenplay by David Scarpa, “Napoleon” stars Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor and military leader. The film is an original and personal look at Napoleon’s origins and his swift, ruthless climb to emperor, viewed through the prism of his addictive and often volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine, played by Vanessa Kirby. The film captures Napoleon’s famous battles, relentless ambition and astounding strategic mind as an extraordinary military leader and war visionary. An Apple Studios production in conjunction with Scott Free Productions, “Napoleon” is produced by Scott, Kevin Walsh, Mark Huffam and Phoenix, with Michael Pruss and Aidan Elliott serving as executive producers.

[Monterey Jack]

I hope by "In theaters", they don't mean "In ten theaters in L.A. and New York for a week for Oscar consideration".

[AndyDursin]

Sounds like it's a legit nationwide theatrical run if Sony is distributing it.

[Monterey Jack]

Sounds like it's a legit nationwide theatrical run if Sony is distributing it.

I hope so. The recent trend of streamers giving certain movies proper theatrical runs (like this weekend's buzzy Amazon film Air) is very encouraging. Too bad Netflix couldn't have done it for Glass Onion...

[AndyDursin]

[mkaroly]

Minor quibble here...but couldn't Scott have found a French speaking actor to play Napoleon? It bothers me that he doesn't sound French...instead it looks and sounds like a British reconstruction of French history (I don't care about France or French history to any significant degree, but if you are going to make a movie about a legendary leader in France I would expect that leader to sound French).

[Paul MacLean]

Minor quibble here...but couldn't Scott have found a French speaking actor to play Napoleon?

Scott should have made this in 1992 with Gerard Depardieu (and Vangelis!) instead of 1492.

And I don't find the trailer very effective. Lots of impressive shots, but it gives me little sense of the tone of the film. That music doesn't help either!

[AndyDursin]

This does not instill confidence. Another fast moving Scott production rolling off the assembly line...

[Paul MacLean]

This does not instill confidence. Another fast moving Scott production rolling off the assembly line...

You have to admire Scott's efficiency as a director -- but I find that movies that are quickly and efficiently made usually lack dramatic tension, and are generally not very immersive experiences for the viewer.

Consider Apocalypse Now or The Abyss, which have many compelling and powerful moments -- and whose productions were rife with delays and on-set tensions (and even brushes with death). Not that I think directors should risk the lives of actors and crews lives to bring us entertainment -- but I think those examples are evidence that production difficulties can be an artistic asset.

[AndyDursin]

New Yorker article on Ridley Scott offers this profoundly stupid statement, as if all elderly people's mental acuteness is the same.

Tom Rothman, the head of Sony’s film division, which will distribute “Napoleon” theatrically, told me, “Ridley Scott is the single best argument for a second term for Joe Biden.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023 ... or-profile

[AndyDursin]

Think I'll be happy waiting this out at home. Or rewatching WATERLOO instead!

‘Napoleon’ Review: Ridley Scott Ricochets Between the Battlefield and Bedroom in Bloated Take on French Despot

A chyron that appears at the end of “Napoleon,” after two and a half hours of turgid spectacle and grime-encrusted showmanship, informs that France’s self-anointed emperor oversaw 61 battles, listing the six that director Ridley Scott opted to stage for our benefit … or for his own glory. The director’s motives are unclear, much like those of Napoleon Bonaparte as played by Joaquin Phoenix, who gives a mumbly and oddly anti-charismatic performance as the figure — short, slender and something of an outsider, owing to his Corsican birth — who came to rule France after the revolution.

Here, from the master of the modern epic, comes an undeniably impressive technical achievement: a bombastic old-school “great man” movie of the sort that dominated Hollywood in the late ’50s and early ’60s. But times are not the same, and though Scott is wise to which way the wind blows (he demonstrated as much in his medieval-reckoning movie “The Last Duel”), he’s less sure about how best to position such a biopic for a moment fed up with power-hungry patriarchs.
Both Scott and Phoenix embrace a touch of camp, portraying the enigma that was Napoleon as a petulant brat-cum-military genius: someone who knew how to get his way on the battlefield, but resorted to food fights at home. As written by David Scarpa, “Napoleon” tilts a great deal of the attention away from its title character and toward the man’s wife, Josephine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby).

Theirs is a great passion, to the extent that Napoleon abandons his mission in Egypt to sail home and confront Josephine when he learns of liaisons she’s been entertaining in his absence. But every time she appears on-screen, it distracts from the film’s main selling point: expansive, cast-of-hundreds combat scenes that prove both Napoleon’s keen military strategy and Scott’s gift for staging such clashes.

From the modern Mogadishu firefight in “Black Hawk Down” to the 12th-century siege of Jerusalem in “Kingdom of Heaven,” Scott has ample experience with plunging audiences into intense immersive warfare. Here, he takes a step back, embracing the widescreen format and filming as Abel Gance (in the three-screen finale of his 1927 silent “Napoleon”) and Sergei Bondarchuk (for his Soviet-era “War and Peace” epic) did: letting an entire battlefield fill the frame, surveyed from on high by Napoleon himself, who stands stoically, communicating his orders with as little as a head nod at times.

Scott tracks Napoleon’s career from his days as a promising young officer who witnessed the guillotining of Marie Antoinette (one of Scarpa’s many poetic licenses) to his exile on the island of St. Helena. Though Josephine died seven years before him, she gets the last word in this telling — not that anyone would mistake this for being her movie. Dense without feeling rushed, then done without ever having really sprung to life, “Napoleon” seems determined to cover a great deal of ground over its not-insignificant running time.

The film opens with a brilliant military victory at Toulon, where the 24-year-old major captured the city’s artillery and turned it against the Spanish and British ships occupying the port. In one shot, Napoleon is charging the city walls when a cannonball strikes his horse’s chest, sending the animal and its rider somersaulting backward. Pinned beneath the beast, the bloody young officer heaves himself to his feet and carries on with the siege. It’s not often that a filmmaker manages to deliver an image of war that audiences haven’t seen before, and this early example sets a high bar.

Whenever the director and his protagonist find themselves on the battlefield, “Napoleon” reminds what a pantheon-level talent Scott is. He orchestrates staggeringly complex scenes in such a way that we can intuit the broad strategy, even as he scars us with horrifying details, like a drummer vaporized by a cannon blast or a massive army sunk to the bottom of a frozen lake at the Battle of Austerlitz. Still, the movie may well send audiences back to their history books for an explanation of something so fundamental as why the French dictator is warmongering at all.

Phoenix is largely accountable for this confusion, as he bends the iconic character to his own brand: that of the insecure, antisocial man-child — which is an unorthodox take on Napoleon, to say the least. Apart from the hat, his silhouette isn’t that of Napoleon. The actor’s soft-spoken approach spares him the indignity of performing with a hammy foreign accent (Scott isn’t falling into that trap again after “House of Gucci”), and yet, Napoleon did speak differently from his peers in the French court, hailing as he did from the island of Corsica — a key detail all but lost in this telling. The movie requires Phoenix to play the character across more than three decades, but he only looks the part toward the end. Early on, he appears more grizzled than commanding officer Paul Barras (Tahar Rahim); later, the passage of time merely makes him look stockier and more unshaved.

While Scott includes moments that recast the popular image of Napoleon — as when he’s shown looking terrified, scrambling down the stairs and into the arms of his troops during the coup d’état that elevated him to First Consul of France — his approach doesn’t feel revisionist so much as incomplete. That’s surprising, since the script takes on far more than audiences have asked for as it is, to the extent that “Napoleon” ultimately suffers from the same problem as its subject: The film’s ambitions are greater than the people demand, as Scott bites off more than he can manage.

If the goal was to reevaluate Napoleon’s career in the context of whatever power Josephine held over him, then surely it could have done with fewer battle scenes and a sharper depiction of the who’s-controlling-whom dynamic between them. In the end, “Napoleon” seems less enamored with its subject than any previous telling of his exploits, referencing the 3 million lives lost under his campaigns. Scott may be skeptical of the man, but he can’t resist the desire to re-create some of history’s most notorious conflicts, and so psychology is sacrificed for the sake of spectacle.

https://variety.com/2023/film/reviews/n ... 235790009/