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Napoleon (starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Ridley Scott) - Official Trailer #2


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4 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

Are you saying you're like the Joker and Travis Bickle and stuff? That's not a good thing - I can't tell is this supposed to be like a good thing to be like violent anti-heroes in fiction at best? Sociopaths at worst? I'd be worried if I was relating to these characters in any sort of literal as opposed to metaphorical way.

no no no

only Ryan Gosling

you only get 1 literally me

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Be Clear Joe Biden GIF by The Democrats

 

But for real tho, I am just having fun. Ryan Gosling isn't literally me :(.

 

The whole meme is generally identifying as a social reject. Not the mental illness or violent tendencies, tho for plenty that is what they are going for, but just the depressed lonely guy stuff.

 

Like, you'll often see this image or one like it

raf,360x360,075,t,fafafa:ca443f4786.jpg

when the is something like a cute girl who is "unobtainable" or when you see an attractive couple having everything you want. This image isn't you being angry at the girl or the couple, but an expression of pain from your unobtainable desire, the pain of never having what the couple has.

 

I see that image paired with such things like

VbVNEpH.gif

 

There is one more video I was going to post but I can't find it.

 

Yeah, I don't get wanting to be Homelander or Joker or Christian Bale

But Ryan Gosling from Drive and Blade Runner

Yeah, he's literally me (not really, still joking)

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53 minutes ago, Bacon said:

But for real tho, I am just having fun. Ryan Gosling isn't literally me :(.

 

The whole meme is generally identifying as a social reject. Not the mental illness or violent tendencies, tho for plenty that is what they are going for, but just the depressed lonely guy stuff.

 

Like, you'll often see this image or one like it

 

when the is something like a cute girl who is "unobtainable" or when you see an attractive couple having everything you want. This image isn't you being angry at the girl or the couple, but an expression of pain from your unobtainable desire, the pain of never having what the couple has.

 

I see that image paired with such things like

 

This actually helped a lot, thank you for explaining things, makes more sense now. A lot of depressed lonely guys out there if its become a meme I suppose.

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On 11/27/2023 at 1:33 PM, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

Of all this film's historical flubs (and believe me, there are MANY), the one that elicited an outright chuckle from me was when the film referenced Waterloo as being located in Belgium (which it is).

 

However, the Battle of Waterloo took place in 1815 while the political/national entity known as "Belgium" didn't exist until 1830 :lol:


did they at least refer to Belgium after 1830 or did they call it Belgium when the movie was supposedly in 1815? 

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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon could have examined this paradox. To tell the story of the Age of Revolution, one must engage with its contradictions in one way or another. But Scott is not really interested in history. While fascinated by the great march of the past into the present, he is also relentlessly incurious about the historical causes and effects driving and sustaining that march. Ultimately what we learn in Napoleon says far more about Scott than it does about Napoleon.

 

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Unfortunately, Napoleon is not Gladiator—or even on the level of Scott’s other historical films like Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, and The Last Duel. Far from helping make a more entertaining movie, Scott’s dismissal of the historical facts only makes it a slog. The lack of context, the absence of historical insight and understanding, means the viewer is given very little explanation for why things are happening. Events seem to follow in succession not because characters and events propel the action forward but because that’s what happens next. Why is Napoleon in Egypt? Why does he fight the Battle of Austerlitz? Why does he invade Russia? Because that’s what happens next. Nothing more is ever said about the wider political or military context. Nor—with one notable exception—are Napoleon’s own personal motivations and calculations mentioned. The advances and setbacks of his career are rendered dull and inert. There is no reason for the plot to follow the course it does other than the fact that it does. Scott simply takes the audience from one historical diorama to the next without bothering to bind them together with compelling narrative tissue.

 

 

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Part of the problem is that, despite his film’s being stacked with great actors, his two leads do not add any energy or vitality to their roles. Joaquin Phoenix plays Napoleon as a fixed character who undergoes no growth, change, or transformation. The Napoleon we meet in 1789 is the same Napoleon we bid adieu in 1821. It is not just that 49-year-old Phoenix plays the whole course of Napoleon’s life with identical bearing and tone: He is taciturn, grouchy, and squirming with repression. It’s that nothing that happens in the movie seems to impact him in the slightest. His counterpart Josephine fares little better. Vanessa Kirby’s beguiling performance can’t avoid the fact that she too is stuck in a role without room for growth. When we meet Josephine, she is a scandalous libertine who needs the marriage to Napoleon to secure her position in society. This holds true for the rest of the film. For all that happens in the movie, the main characters remain unchanged.

 

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The lack of meaningful interactions with other characters leaves the film emotionally empty. Napoleon’s marshals demanding that their beloved emperor abdicate at Fontainebleau would have hit hard had the audience ever been told who these marshals were. Napoleon’s dramatic reunion with the Fifth Regiment during the Hundred Days might have stirred tears had the bond between Napoleon and his common soldiers been established earlier in the film. The Duke of Wellington’s speech before the Battle of Waterloo might have had real dramatic weight had the scene not doubled as Wellington’s very first appearance in the movie. Despite his “get a life” attitude, we find Scott not all that interested in the actual lives of this subjects.

 

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So what does that leave us? Unfortunately, not a lot. As a movie, Napoleon suffers from a lifeless plot, wooden characters, and thin worldbuilding. As an exploration of the life and times of a great historical figure, Napoleon suffers from Scott’s scorn for history. What’s the point of making a movie about a historical figure when every single fact has been replaced by fiction?

 

No arguments from me, Mr. Duncan.  None whatsoever!

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  • 2 months later...

I kinda get that Ridley Scott was probably going for a deconstruction of the tired "Great Man" theory of history surrounding Napoleon and wanted to cut his historical reputation down to size a bit (pun fully intended), but the problem was that the film simply didn't commit to the bit hard enough to effectively pull it off.

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