Napoleon: What Makes a Villain Fail?

[@zumis1011]

There's no issue with portraying him as a villian, only that the movie didn't portray what made him truly stand out as a historical figure. Truth is, if we're just talking about his military exploits and the wake of his destruction, he was sort of the Hitler of his time. You could also say Caesar or even Alexander the Great were comparable in that regard, and if we knew the true history, we'd probably all agree they were all pretty evil men.

[@josefavomjaaga6097]

In some aspects I would agree with your assessment. But I feel like it's more complicated than that in Napoleon's case. Because his dictatorship, as far as France was concerned, gave people still more civil rights than they had in the monarchies of Napoleon's enemies. And it's not as if he was always the one who started the wars. Technically, he was the attacked party defending himself in several cases (1805, 1809 - in 1806 it was at least the Prussians who set the ultimatum, and in 1803 it was mostly British hostility that ended the peace of Amiens). There was a reason why every country in Europe had pro-French partisans at the time.

[@kerosam763]

2:46 Small error here but Wellington was a general not an admiral.

[@lifeisabadjoke5750]

He was crying over a woman who didn’t love him or respect him idc how many battles he won. I don’t see napoleon as great as everyone does if your own wife doesn’t respect you enough to be loyal to you how great really are you as a man.

[@thomasgolds4585]

Pretty bad take tbh - this was a messy and troubled movie and it probably would’ve been best to try and avoid it

[@bunk95]

In [philosophy] Simon said stuff to Comte.

[@davidlucey1311]

I know that at about 5 foot seven or 5 foot eight Napoleon was at least the average height for his time. But Joaquin Phoenix? Isn’t he at least 6 feet tall?

[@succulent5145]

he's 5'8, it's a quick google search

[@WisdomFromAshes]

Well done

[@sebber7992]

Due to the Napoleonic Wars, between 3,5M and 7M died, including civilian casualties. What are you talking about "he is something in between"? He was power savvy, as many others. There's no justification to the death and destruction he brought to Europe.

[@mecha-sheep7674]

The "Napoleonic wars" were caused mostly by the British empire which funded the various coalitions bent on crushing the Revolution and its ideals. As soon as a peace treaty was signed, the british were already working at causing the next war. It ended with the "Holy Alliance" after 1815, where Russia, Austria and Prussia established their bloody domination upon the people of Eastern Europe, setting the stage for decades of brutal oppression.

[@grant.5345]

Its narrative history, not critical history. For the sake of the authors argument, Napoleon is whomever he wants to be. Its a serious flaw common in primary education where the student makes everything thematic so there can be a consistent hero or adversity to learn events and facts around. Here in the US, our history classes in primary education makes the USA the main character that history revolves around, so people like Napoleon are not seen as what they are: Power-obsessed men who will do or say whatever they want to control others, to instead distant characters whose actions are simple or sanitized to fit whatever narrative they end up showing up in. The very idea a composer is the basis for historical perception is laughable and more the subjective presentation over a truly objective one.

[@SavorySmegma]

Wtf are you even talking about? He's one of the most easily identified villains in history and didn't do those things for the reasons you listed. He took away rights from women and straight up said that the only reason he brought the Catholic church back to France after the revolution was because religion "keeps the poor from murdering the rich." He didn’t care about ANYTHING besides enhancing his OWN power. Even his rise to prominence only happened because he took the power away from the PEOPLE during the revolution. And the reason he crowned himself (which, as you said, wasn't an impulsive decision and was DEFINITELY previously planned) was to show that he (and, in his plans, his heirs) would always be ABOVE the pope and never have to answer to him the way previous monarchs did. The French people view him more favorably than they should because Napoleon, and the French state itself, spemt YEARS spreading positive propaganda and myths about him (just like the US and its Founding Fathers) and commissioned endless porttaits of him (including the ones you showed) to make him seem like an amazing, heroic figure instead of a man who married an older woman just to elevate his own class and then cheated on her and found a younger woman to marry when he made himself emperor and needed to produce an heir, or someone who abandoned his own soldiers to save himself multiple times. At that time in France, there was a HUGE, cult-like movement to celebrate "martyrs" and "great" men; and Napoleon and his sycophants took advantage of that-even after his death-by continuing to embellish everything he ever did and spreading his memoirs as though they were incontrovertible fact instead of the ramblings of a narcissistic, tyranical scumbag trying to save his own reputation.