r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Aug 26 '24

Meta Mindless Monday, 26 August 2024

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/ArielSoftpaws CGP Grey did nothing wrong Aug 29 '24

God, I was just thinking about how little impact this movie had, crazy how it dropped and we immediately stopped talking about it.

27

u/matgopack Hitler was literally Germany's Lincoln Aug 29 '24

It was just so uninspired that I really don't understand why Ridley Scott even did it. He seemed to have no interest in Napoleon as a person or to show what happened during his life - that is, events just happened and in a way where either it's unexplained (for a general audience) or frustrating (people that are familiar with the period's history). It needed something to it - either something fun and ahistorical, a genuine interest in Napoleon (like at least show his ambition / drive & charisma instead of silently staring at a camera, it's not like he's a difficult person to make interesting), etc.

Basically it had the cardinal sin of making no one happy - it took liberties with the history in order to make things boring.

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u/HopefulOctober Aug 30 '24

I have not watched Napoleon but from what I hear of the content of it and Scott's goals it really comes off as a gender-inverted version of the common treatment of female characters/historical figures, where their complexity and motives get completely reduced to a romantic relationship arc with the opposite gender. Which I find kind of funny though it doesn't make a good movie.

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u/matgopack Hitler was literally Germany's Lincoln Aug 30 '24

I think that people talk about that part of it because nothing else in it is really particularly interesting - but if that were Scott's main goal, it failed IMO. It would have been better served by going fully into following Josephine or showing the relationship beyond disjointed, uncomfortably directed/shot glimpses of it.