Napoleon, Ridley Scott’s 157-minute epic about (who else) Napoleon Bonaparte, is finally streaming on Apple TV Plus. The two and a half hour film captures Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon, and his rise as a great man, a great general and a great little crazy man. In particular, the film is about how his ruthless climb led him to claim France (and beyond) for himself, while also being continually embodied by his wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais (Vanessa Kirby, aka the new Sue Storm) . He’s never cold, but he’s always, as Polygon’s Joshua Rivera put it in his review, “the most accomplished cuck in history.”
Even after two hours and 38 minutes, Napoleon has to extract a lot of Napoleon to tell his story. Luckily, before the release, Scott promised that there would be one longer cut, the directorial vision he prefers. So when will That version visible on Apple? Well, that’s tricky.
Scott first announced one “fantastic” recording of four and a half hours in September, stating that the longer cut featured even more of Joséphine. In October, Scott went further, telling Total Film Magazine that the four-and-a-half-hour cut was currently in production, stating, “I’m working on it. It was four (hours) and ten (minutes) this morning,” Scott told the magazine at the time. “And so what will happen is that we will show (the theatrical cut) with Sony first, and then it will air, and then the perfect thing will be that (the director’s cut) will go to streaming, and we will have four hours 10 minutes.”
Apple said nothing in response and did not respond to Polygon’s request for comment.
By November, Scott appeared to explain to Sky News that there was no more extended cuts at all, citing the “bum pain factor” of people getting tired in their seats. “I think that’s the director’s cut – the two and a half hours – that’s the truth,” he said. “Because I learned early on, actually from all the films I made, but also from my early years as an advertising maker. Am I communicating and how tight can I be to communicate and say everything I want?
Image: Apple TV Plus
In December, co-writer David Scarpa told IndieWire that the theatrical version was “better.” and “a pretty condensed version” without the stuff left on the cutting room floor. ‘I’ve seen what’s in the longer version. It works better, like most films, in a tighter format. It paid off a lot through the editing,” Scarpa said. “Forget what’s on the cutting room floor, there’s also what’s not there from previous drafts, a lot of things never ended up in front of the camera. There were more battles and from those battles I’m glad I got caught because we would have been stuck.”
Meanwhile, Apple remains silent on whether the film would come to the platform at all.
If it seems confusing if the director’s cut exists, is released, or is even still being championed by Scott, that’s because it is. But also: if there’s anyone who pulls out a valuable director’s cut out of nowhere, it’s Scott. While there may be more high-profile campaigns for a specific director’s cut, Scott has regularly (even quietly) re-released his films with an alternate version of the theatrical version, most notably including Kingdom of heaven, the counselorand of course, Blade Runner (which actually contains quite a few of Scott’s “final” pieces). These all extend the running time and also change the scope of the films. He’s also no stranger to director’s cuts, which he largely rejects Alien or Black Hawk down.
Despite the already long duration, Napoleon It felt to me like just part of the story, like there were conversations just out of earshot, entire scenes cut away to distill the story down to what it is. That makes me so curious about the mythical four-hour version, and all the Joséphine pleasures it brings. Two hours and 38 minutes is a lot of film, but Ridley “Final Cut” Scott knows what to do with an extra hour and a half – if he wants to, that is.
Napoleon is now streaming on Apple TV Plus.