Joaquin Phoenix is one of those actors whose screen presence is so strong and so compelling that whether he’s playing a goofy side-character in Signs or a lunatic in Joker or an emperor in Gladiator you just can’t look away.
At times magnetic, at times almost grotesque, at times charming, always crackling and vulnerable in one form or another, Phoenix is riveting, inviting audiences to dance along the dark paths he walks.
The Johnny Cash actor now takes on his most epic role yet as French tyrant and military genius, Napoleon Bonaparte in Ridley Scott’s upcoming Apple TV film, Napoleon. Of course, the last time Scott and Phoenix worked together it was on Gladiator, where Phoenix played the cruel and mercurial Emperor Commodus.
I’ll have to rewatch that movie before I go see Napoleon, which—although it will come to Apple TV streaming at some point—looks like the type of movie you really ought to see in a theater on the biggest possible screen. Behold, the epic second trailer:
This looks great. That scene where he crowns himself is peak Joaquin Phoenix. The relationship between Napoleon and his wife, Empress Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby) looks particularly fascinating. And the battle scenes look every bit as epic as I’d hoped.
I will make one quibble with the otherwise great trailer: Why Black Sabbath? Why have War Pigs play over a historical epic? That song belongs in a Call Of Duty trailer, not a movie about one of the greatest despots in European history. What a terrible call. Why sully such an epic trailer with Ozzy bloody Osbourne and electric guitars?
Sigh. Let’s just hope it’s only in the trailer and not in the movie—if this wasn’t a Ridley Scott film I might actually be worried!
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