Why don't they make Napoleonic movies anymore ?

[Pijlie]

You beat me to it 😊

[rumacara]

The Pride and the Passion - Hollywood film with the story in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars.

European - Wellingtons Lines - about the Lines of Torres Vedras passed in Portugal

European - Legend of the Soldier - passed in Spain after the battle of El-Bruc.

[Cherno]

Kinda OT, but:

Michael Bay "Bwaaaap"

This is actually originated in Inception.

[MaleGriffin]

The majority of the American public couldn't tell you what the Napoleonic Wars were, who was involved or when they occurred. 

I'm a U.S. National Park Ranger and the majority of our citizens don't know their own history let alone European history. I like to think of it as job security. 

All they would know is that they weren't involved so it can't have been important :~}

You might want to look into the 'War of 1812."

for example, from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812

Historians in the United States and Canada see it as a war in its own right, but Europeans sometimes see it as a minor theatre of the Napoleonic Wars, as it was caused by related issues to that war (especially the Continental System). By the war's end in 1815 most issues had been resolved and there were no boundary changes.

It wasn't until college, and then only because I was a 19th Century major, that I learned about how the War of 1812 fit into the rest of the Napoleonic Wars.

History, at least in the U.S. is taught in sound bites and rarely are the connections explained.

Yeah, they teach us the U.S. beat the British for the second time in the War if 1812, but they don't always teach us about the burning of Washington and how close the British came to winning in spite of the fact they were in the throes of the Napoleonic wars with France.

[LawnRanger]

The BBC has just done a very good job of War and Peace .. 

MaleGriffin : not sure I would  say that the United states won the war.

The plain fact is the U.S.A TRIED to invade Canada 4 times and take it from British rule and Failed .Britain never wanted to take any land from the U.S.A
Just because Britian did not take any land  in the treaty does not mean they lost the war.

Would you  say Germany won the Battle of Britain in 1940  or even they war  as the allies did not claim any land from germany after the war..?! No we dont .Britian stopped  the attackers and won  in the end!

I think if you ask any Canadian they will tell you they won the war and i would agree with them..

 LR

[Maichus]

Would you  say Germany won the Battle of Britain in 1940  or even they war  as the allies did not claim any land from germany after the war..?! No we dont .Britian stopped  the attackers and won  in the end!

You might want to check your sources on that one. 

[FramFramson]

I think if you ask any Canadian they will tell you they won the war and i would agree with them...

Bit of a stalemate or tradeoff if we're being honest, but certainly if you ask most of us, we won, given we got to burn down the white house and who else can say that?   I mean sure, they also burned down Toronto, but it was brand new and barely a small town at the time.  



A name I've used for various gaming accounts elsewhere has been "General Robert Ross", if that's any indication of my sentiments (It's really fun to kill American players in FPS games under that username  ).

The thing is, the notion of an invasion coming off was absurd. All that ballyhoo about the annexation of Canada being "little more than a matter of marching" meant the Americans committed minimal forces (where have I seen that story before...). Meanwhile, much of English Canada was only a generation removed from having fled the US Colonies in the first place due to their position as Loyalists to the crown, and for a variety of reasons (mostly due to the religious protections they'd been granted) Quebec was far more sanguine about continued rule by England than in becoming another US state, so American troops found they were extremely unwelcome by the locals almost everywhere they went (again, where have I seen that story before...).

On the other hand, Canada, even with the moderate number of British forces available, was in no position to truly threaten the US militarily. What we managed might well have been close to a best-case scenario.

So in theory the fact that we managed to avoid annexation would be counted as a victory in much the same manner as Vietnam might be counted as a victory, but in retrospect a pointless war where everything just went right back to the status quo after the fight was done, however silly it might seem, was by far the most likely outcome.

[Westfalia Chris]

*cough cough* Politics *cough cough*.

[HerbyF]

I have been seeing a lot of trailers for "War & Peace & Zombies" lately. That will get the attention of the American public. 

[jon_1066]

*cough cough* Politics *cough cough*.

The War of 1812? Too soon? 

[sukhe_bator]

I agree it is largely down to ignorance of their own history, but then again look at the mess the american film industry made of any adaptation of the Alamo, and pretty much any ACW film.
Even Hollywood historical epics that did take the trouble to get the look right failed badly. Did anyone realise the sad gits with cloaks on horses armed with toothpicks in Taras Bulba were supposed to be Polish and Lithuanian winged hussars!? The 'historical advisor' saw woodcut illustrations of the troops and thought the truncated lances were supposed to be that short!
I tend to find the better rendered battle scenes are those peripheral to the main story - like the TYW sequence in the Gerard D Cyrano De Bergerac.

[Westfalia Chris]

The War of 1812? Too soon? 

No, that is okay, but I'd like to ask everybody to avoid drawing parallels to current events so I don't have to act all fascist overseer-y.

[sukhe_bator]

If you take any historical period the historiography is coloured by contemporary events.
Alexander the Great has been treated by historians as a world unifier (1920s-30s League of Nations happy clappy era), a sadistic conqueror (post Hitler, Stalin and WWII) and a narcissistic mother's boy out to win approval from his father (1960s-70s psychobabble). The same goes for film making. Hollywood history is writ large with stories of Directors trying to stamp their particular visions/political agenda on film but almost always at odds with the executive producers and backers.
Despite the obvious appeal to people like us of the Napoleonic period, outside this forum, let alone outside Europe, I don't think it is that popular. I have to admit I am aware of the War of 1812 but woefully ignorant of events. I'd love to see a film made of it, but I know the treatment would end up with it being s***e even with the best of intentions.
Similarly the Wars of Liberation in South America in the post Napoleonic period is the stuff of epic story telling with colourful characters like Bernardo O'Higgins, Alexander Cochrane, San Martin et al. You just know though that while visually the film may look the part, the treatment would wind up being just as fictional as the latest Star Wars, with only the main character names being accurate.

[carlos marighela]

Indeedy.

Last year I watched  the first series of Narcos, Netflix's take on the Pablo Escobar story. Enjoyable television, well cast, well acted, nicely shot but it takes some considerable liberties with the known facts and this in a multi-hour, big budget production. It's an epic tale, with larger than life characters but it's only 20 years or so ago that the protagonist met his denouement and there's both a ready supply of eyewitnesses plus multiple written accounts, including one or two decent books on the subject.

I am reasonably familiar with Sr Escobar's story, I've even visited a few of the spots where the action takes place. I found it enjoyable television but would hardly consider it some form of historical record.

Your best hope for anything Napoleonic is a BBC serial. Of course it won't have the budget that goes with Hollywood, or HBO or even Netflix.

Personally, I'm waiting for a Bollywood or better still, Nollywood, Napoleonic costume drama.

[Conquistador]

Patience, this goes from Los Angeles to DC via Shanghai but it has a point.

If my history degree taught me anything it was that most European style Wars (I include USA wars as such in many ways) ended up with the results being quo ante bellum or hardly any change after all the blood and money were spent.  Yes there were wars where great (sometimes lasting) changes occurred but even then one can question the cost in many cases.  World War 2 is probably the one most notable in our/our parents lifetime where relatively lasting changes occurred and significant changes did occur after 1918.  For many war gamers and the non-war gaming world it is more spectacle, entertainment, and being away from the more frustrating aspects of reality that drives movie attendance and war gaming.  

Movies are usually a poor vehicle for teaching history for most people.

Had not considered Bollywood but dancing hordes would actually keep me away.  

Hang in there.

A co-worker - active in theatre for many years -converted to Islam to marry an East Indian woman he met acting in a play here in Midwest America (conversion was a necessary saving face moment for the family after the East Indian first husband had turned out to be a drunkard and other worse things.). He frequently watches Bollywood movies in her native language which he does not speak - the things we do for love - but he has mentioned at teaching history as opposed to cultural stories about history they might fail the fact checker approach. But he admits, under torture, that there are some very entertaining movies despite the language barrier.

Coming to the point.

But it might be a starting point for a hidden history conversation.  Once I got my wife to understand that despite her otherwise excellent Roman Catholic private school 1st through 6th grade education there were other, frequently more interesting, things that happened in History she actually started enjoying the history museum in the city.  So a good historically based but entertaining movie would be welcome.

The hard part would be selling the movie to a mass market.