“I enjoy food! Destiny has brought me this lamb chop”: time to savour ridley scott's NAPOLEON

i haven't seen it yet, i just like the lamb chop quote

I don't care what anyone says about Ridley Scott, this seems historically accurate to me pic.twitter.com/2ZRl0ydjpK

— Sixo (@SixoTF) November 20, 2023

Little things hitting each other. THAT'S WHAT I LIKE!

Napoleon's career lends itself perfectly to the sweeping-epic-orange fireball-spectacular-action genre and Scott's storytelling methods. It's bound to be overwrought and entertaining nonsense.

was on the fence but read an interview with RS who seems like a total asshole and loser so will skip

it won't be as good as The Duelists and tbh I don't even rate that too highly these days!

when the cannonball hits the sphinx's face it should v briefly look like a xenomorph, like when homer turned into nixon in the high-grav machine

prometheus expanded universe hours

Don't they do a lot of market research before they green light a $200 million movie about Napoleon? Who wants this? It's bad enough we keep getting Elvis movies.

Did way better than expected this weekend.

People in my work are all talking about it, the last time that happened was Barbenheimer.

I thought it a pretty goddamn stupid movie but never dull aka a Ridley Scott joint.

i am so fucking ready tho i wish the theatrical cut were four hours long aka a ridley scott joint

I was ready to think the Napoleon-Josephine romance was as/more interesting than his military prowess or whatever, but it unfurled as a diluted Phantom Thread dynamic. And I liked Joaquin-as-Commodus once already.

Every director earns the right to a director's cut or three, but this fool thinking that every joint is misunderstood because he can't release the four-hour thing he wants b/c of the perfidy of studio politics is hilarious.

he’s trying to tell a big story. how fucking long is the other napoleon movie again

Tony would have done it better.

he’s trying to tell a big story. how fucking long is the other napoleon movie again

― ivy.,

This thing is more than two hours and he turns into a pretty feeble story.

Tony would def have known how to stage the lambchop scene.

idk i still haven’t seen it! editing four hours of material to 2.5 does brutal things to a movie is all im saying

will be going tuesday

also have to say i’ve been very pro-ridley since alien covenant and the last duel. maybe crucially i skipped house of gucci

Nothing he does offends me; he's a good storyteller!

"You think you're so great because you have votes!" for next US Poltics thread title

I don't think Ridley is a particularly good storyteller (even if the long tail of "White Squall" does lead all the way directly to QAnon), but he does have a way of elevating stories that are not particularly good. And that doesn't always make the movie good, either, but at least he's trying. For a guy whose radically diverse filmography screams work for hire hack, little or none of his stuff feels like a generic journeyman work for hire job to me. Ridley somehow even managed to go his entire career without adapting a Michael Crichton novel, which surprises me.

Often he runs stories that aren't particularly good into the ground.

maybe more than often, lol. He's a weird contradiction, someone who clearly knows how to make a good movie but doesn't necessarily know what makes a good movie.

he is an excellent image maker and grandiose stager of action who lives and dies by his scripts, tho occasionally his craft exceeds them

except for the excellent lambchop line this was overwrought yet underpowered nonsense, almost never entertaining: the little man moping and mumbling his way across europe

also good: josephine's punk rock haircut when we v first encounter her
further disappointments: just one scene in CGI plymouth, no recognisable landmarks from a resident's perspective

will check out the EXTENDED CUT in the next few days, hoping for more lambchop dialogue, more CGI plymouth, the establishment at length of the CODE NAPOLÉON, plus proper detailed explanation* of how he was tall! not like everybody says… like short! … but tall!! and he wants respect!!

*the french inch was longer than the english inch at that time is literally the reason this fake fact became embedded in the mythology (adding: the entire french revolution happened bcz of the insane variety of differently calibrated measure in the different regions of france, and all the expensive toll-houses this required to unravel)

I totally missed the announcement of the new cut!