Ability over Appearance: No effort was made to conceal Joaquin Phoenix's cleft lip, resulting in Napoléon having one, but Phoenix's acting talents is something no one contests.
Box Office Bomb: Needed to gross $500–600 million worldwide in order to break even given its $200 million budget, grossed $216 million in the end. Opinions vary wildly about the profitability of the post-theatrical life of the film:
Journalists like Rebecca Rubin of Variety argue that it can hinge on subscribers driven to Apple TV+ and on-demand rentals and other revenue streams that wouldn't have been possible by going directly to streaming.
Others like Stephen Galloway (dean of Chapman University's film school), doubt of the above theory. "Apple making a $200 million movie is like you buying a cup of coffee and spilling it, but it's not making their brand look good if films like Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon underperform at the box office."
The film's composer, Martin Phipps, worked on 2016's War and Peace before. He even recycled parts of the soundtrack for Napoleon's 1812 campaign in Russia.
Dawson Casting: The usual problem with biopics covering all of/most of Napoleon's life without resorting to Time-Shifted Actor. Joaquin Phoenix, then 48, played Napoléon Bonaparte from age 24 in 1793 to age 51 in 1821. This casting has caused some controversy among Napoleonic buffs on social media due to his looking (supposedly) older than the historical person in various scenes, such as his December 1804 coronation, where the real Napoleon was considerably younger. Others have countered this argument by pointing out that people both aged much faster and had significantly shorter lifespans 2 centuries ago, especially a battle hardened soldier and military leader like Napoleon. He is much closer in age to the man in the final 1815-1821 scenes in any case.
Speaking to The New Yorker, Ridley Scott defended his historical artistic license in the film; as a response to TV historian Dan Snow's criticism of inaccuracies, Scott simply said, "Get a life" (even though, as a historian, knowing about history is his life). Likewise, Joaquin Phoenix noted that the film, while doing its due in research, was always going to be filtered through Scott's filmmaking perspective.
Scott also had negative reactions to people disparaging his film in general, and especially the French critics, saying of the French that "The French don't even like themselves." He further responded to criticism of the historical inaccuracies by saying, "Were you there? Oh you weren’t there. Then how do you know?"
Deleted Role: Ludivine Sagnier as Thérésa Tallien has been cut from the theatrical version. She still receives an onscreen credit.
Out of all the actors playing French people, only Ludivine Sagnier (Thérésa Tallien) and Tahar Rahim (Paul Barras) are French. And the latter is French-Algerian while Barras was not Algerian.
The Bonaparte family had Italian-Corsican origins, something that can't be said for Joaquin Phoenix.
British actor Tim Faulkner as the Prussian Gebhard von Blücher.
Édouard Philipponnat as Tsar Alexander I. He was 23 (born in 1999) at most when the film was shot, while Alexander was 30 when the Treaties of Tilsit were signed. Then Alexander is next seen coming at Joséphine in 1814 (when he was 37 historically). Napoleon was 8 years older than Alexander, while Joaquin Phoenix is 25 years older than Philipponnat.
Vanessa Kirby is 13 years younger than Joaquin Phoenix, when her character was six years older than Napoleon in Real Life.
Stanley Kubrick tried to make his own Epic Movie about Napoléon back in 1969-1970, but didn't manage to take it off the ground.note He was beaten to the punch by Waterloo (1970), which got such a bad reception at the time that producers weren't willing to invest in another Napoleon movie for a long time afterwards. Kubrick's later film Barry Lyndon is set in part of the same time period and is probably the closest he ever got into making it. Decades later, Ridley Scott took on the challenge of making one, with screenwriter David Scarpa using Kubrick's script as inspiration.
Jodie Comer was going to play Josephine before production was pushed back. This would have made the Underage Casting even more obvious, since she is six years younger than Vanessa Kirby, who is already 13 years younger than Phoenix. This would have made the age gap between Josephine and Napoleon a huge nineteen years, when Josephine was in fact older than Napoleon.
Working Title: For a long time, the project was referred to as "Kitbag".
Miscellaneous:
Ludivine Sagnier (Thérésa Tallien) had a role in the 2002 Napoléon miniseries over two decades prior to this film, as Hortense de Beauharnais (Joséphine's daughter).
. Meanwhile, screenwriter David Scarpa described his research as merely reading Stanley Kubrick's script and one short biography of Napoleon
