Napoleon

I watched this in a theater where the air conditioning was set to "Siberian Tundra," and by the time the French army reached the retreat from Moscow, I wasn't just watching the movie—I was living it. I found myself huddling into my hoodie, wondering if I, too, would have to eat my popcorn bag for sustenance just to survive the third act.

When Ridley Scott announced he was making a Napoleon biopic, everyone expected a stiff, marble-statue-and-military-strategy affair. We thought we were getting Gladiator in a bicorne hat. Instead, Scott gave us something much weirder, much funnier, and arguably more contemporary: a $165 million portrait of a powerful man who is, at his core, a total weirdo. It’s a movie that feels less like a history lecture and more like a very expensive, very long episode of 90 Day Fiancé: First French Empire.

The Petulant Emperor

In an era where we are constantly deconstructing the "Great Man" theory of history, Scott and Joaquin Phoenix decided to take a hammer to the pedestal. Phoenix plays Napoleon Bonaparte not as a stoic genius, but as a petulant, socially awkward climber who seems to be perpetually smelling a bad egg. He’s brilliant on the battlefield and a disaster in the parlor.

There’s a specific energy Phoenix brings—a sort of "I can’t believe I have to deal with these people" sigh—that makes Napoleon feel strangely relatable to anyone who has ever been stuck in a Zoom meeting that should have been an email. Whether he’s literally scurrying under a table to avoid an argument or telling the British ambassador that he has "boats," this isn't the Napoleon of the oil paintings. It’s a bold choice that has already started to garner a cult-like appreciation for its unintentional (or perhaps very intentional) comedy. While some critics cried foul over the historical inaccuracies, I found the choice to make him a loser with a lot of cannons incredibly refreshing.

The Josephine Factor

The movie’s secret weapon isn't the French artillery; it’s Vanessa Kirby. As Josephine, she is the only person on screen who seems to see Napoleon for exactly who he is. Their relationship is the spine of the film—a volatile, co-dependent, and deeply toxic romance that grounds the epic scale in something uncomfortably human.

Kirby brings a sharp, survivor’s intelligence to the role. She’s the anchor in a movie that otherwise threatens to fly off into a dozen different directions. Every time the film leaves her side to focus on Austrian diplomacy or Russian maneuvering, I found myself waiting for the next letter Napoleon would narrate to her. Napoleon’s tactical genius is balanced out by his total lack of rizz, and watching him navigate his obsession with Josephine is far more captivating than watching him navigate a map.

Blood, Ice, and Ridley Scott’s Grudge

Even at 85, Ridley Scott knows how to stage a fight better than almost anyone in the game. The Battle of Austerlitz is the film’s high-water mark—a sequence of ice, blood, and cannonballs that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. It’s the kind of practical-feeling spectacle that we’re losing in the age of "The Volume" and weightless CGI.

However, we have to talk about the "Streaming Era" elephant in the room. Napoleon was released by Apple Studios with the looming promise of a four-hour "Director’s Cut" for Apple TV+. This puts the theatrical version in a weird spot. At 158 minutes, it feels both too long and too short. Characters like Paul Rhys’s Talleyrand or Rupert Everett’s Duke of Wellington pop in and out so quickly you barely have time to register their wigs. It’s a common frustration in modern cinema—the feeling that we’re watching a very long trailer for a masterpiece that will be released on an app six months later.

The Stuff You Didn't Notice

Despite the heavy subject matter, the production was full of the kind of chaos that makes for great dinner party stories:

When historians complained about Napoleon shooting at the pyramids (which never happened), Ridley Scott’s response was a legendary: "Get a life." Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby agreed before filming to "shock" each other to keep the scenes feeling alive; this resulted in an unscripted slap during the divorce scene that left the crew stunned. Because the film was produced by Apple, the budget was massive, but Scott shot it in a record-breaking 62 days by using up to 11 cameras at once. The real Josephine was six years older than Napoleon; in the film, Vanessa Kirby is 14 years younger than Joaquin Phoenix, a choice that sparked significant social media discourse about Hollywood's "age gap" problem. * The costume designers had to create over 4,000 uniforms, and yet Napoleon’s hat—the most famous prop—had to be perfectly weathered to look like it had seen the inside of a hundred tents.

Ultimately, Napoleon is a fascinator of a film. It’s a military epic that wants to be a domestic dark comedy, and while those two halves don't always shake hands, the result is never boring. It’s a movie made by a director who is clearly bored with traditional heroism and an actor who specializes in the "pathetic alpha." It might not be the history you read in school, but it’s a bizarre, beautiful, and frequently hilarious look at what happens when a man conquers the world because he doesn't know what else to do with his hands. Go for the cannons, stay for the weirdly aggressive breakfast scenes.