Forget Napoleon, Alexander the Great is prime OP wish fulfillment main character material.
If they were Fictional
- Thread starter Marco Incognito
- Start date
Forget Napoleon, Alexander the Great is prime OP wish fulfillment main character material.
Go for it. Though there is a Silent Epic film about him but this could be something different.
Alexander the Great does sound like someone's OC conquering the world and being cool in every way. similar to I am Skantarios.
Given the War of the Roses was the inspiration for A Song of Ice and Fire, it's a safe bet Roses and Crowns is a book and then a TV show. The ending would be a bit less disappointing since Henry Tudor takes the throne. Also the breakout character Richard York, in addition to being a hunchback instead of a dwarf, would fall off the moral Event Horizon and become a villain.
Imo, Alexander at least had some cool moments for its main character. (And while it's not my thing personally, the yaoi fangirls love the shipping between various members of the court of Macedon).
Now Hernan Cortes, that was a character I just couldn't get behind. The writers made this guy luckier than most isekai protagonists, and crazy overpowered too.
I can't exactly claim credit since its from the Bible, but thanks!
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Alexander has one of the best speeches in all of fictional and the Movie Adaptation did it justice. Hernan Cortes on the other hand...yeah. I was routing for the Aztecs. At least he doesn't have a misaimed fandom like the "Hitler did Nothing Wrong", or the people who wear the Confederate Flag unironically.
It's still a good title.
Deleted member 96212
Actually, funny you mention that because one of the first movies made about Nanking could be considered a "violent trashy exploitation" film. I mean, just look at the (NSFW) movie poster:
All the good ones have already been mentioned, but here are some that I could think of:
1) Unleashed Tiger: A television series about a Mexican dictator who, despite improving his own country at the cost of social inequality, is kicked out by his own people. Among many rebel leaders, at least four stand out who wish to remake Mexico in their own image and occasionally form alliances with each other. Eventually, all major leaders turn against each other until one is left standing. The successors of the victors consolidate their own power years after the rebellion and the series ends with the audience realizing that instead of a one-man dictatorship ruling Mexico again, it is a one-party dictatorship.
2) October Crisis: A movie about two superpowers who try to go to war over a bunch of weapons being given to one of their allies. (In the original ending, which has only been recently added to later DVD releases, the war succeeds in occurring and kills off most of the human population on Earth. Test audiences hated it and demanded a change to the ending. The new ending showed both superpowers backing off and peace occurring, in exchange for some backroom deals)
3) Magnanimous: A television series about an Emperor who, for weak reasons, abdicates his throne, abolishes the monarchy, and allows his nation to become a democratic republic. The audience is shocked to find out that the new nation descends into a military dictatorship and political instability that continues to this day; the exact opposite when it was an empire.
1) Unleashed Tiger: A television series about a Mexican dictator who, despite improving his own country at the cost of social inequality, is kicked out by his own people. Among many rebel leaders, at least four stand out who wish to remake Mexico in their own image and occasionally form alliances with each other. Eventually, all major leaders turn against each other until one is left standing. The successors of the victors consolidate their own power years after the rebellion and the series ends with the audience realizing that instead of a one-man dictatorship ruling Mexico again, it is a one-party dictatorship.
2) October Crisis: A movie about two superpowers who try to go to war over a bunch of weapons being given to one of their allies. (In the original ending, which has only been recently added to later DVD releases, the war succeeds in occurring and kills off most of the human population on Earth. Test audiences hated it and demanded a change to the ending. The new ending showed both superpowers backing off and peace occurring, in exchange for some backroom deals)
3) Magnanimous: A television series about an Emperor who, for weak reasons, abdicates his throne, abolishes the monarchy, and allows his nation to become a democratic republic. The audience is shocked to find out that the new nation descends into a military dictatorship and political instability that continues to this day; the exact opposite when it was an empire.
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Sounds about right.
here's another idea:
Children of the Guillotine, sequel trilogy to the bestselling National Assembly trilogy (which had a prequel written later, called A Crisis of Corruption). It was poorly received by many of the people who loved the political thriller that was the National Assembly storyline - a lot of beloved characters got rather pointlessly killed, Robespierre went from principled idealist to insane "a god am I" territory (though there are people in the fandom who still defend him), and of course, it was just a hell of a lot more bloody and brutal, less about politics and more about mindless slaughter. And the show-trials got repetitive after awhile too.
Though the TV miniseries adaptation was well regarded for how they handled the brutality of the September Massacres and the Guillotine executions themselves.
EDIT: of course, then the author's son wrote the Napoleon Series as a follow on, and damn if that isn't a divisive installment.
I don't know. That series is still popular in France. The Brits loved the character of Horatio Nelson so much he's one of the few fictional characters to get a statue. Though to be fair he did have a series of novels called the Horatio series. Ironic given the Napoleon series literally gives away how he dies.
True, but the Horatio books completely change his presentation. I mean, he's a good guy in that series, whereas the Napoleon books paint him as a honorable man, true, but ultimately a bad person fighting for an evil cause. Plus, the Horatio books painted the British self-appointed "policeman of Europe" ideology as good, whereas the Napoleon books decried it as hypocrisy and frankly brutality - a lot of French fans argue that most of the casualties in Napoleon's wars post 1803 were basically entirely Britain's fault.
Honestly, World War I is actually a more personal conflict than World War II.
Alternate tagline for World War Two: "A dying plutocrat, an imperialist desperate to save his empire, and a stone cold killer - and they're the good guys?"
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Winston Churchill and FDR are probably really likeable so you overlook some of the darker things they do. Churchill with his quips and FDR with his "badassness." Stalin and Hitler are most assuredly portrayed as evil and creepy, but teaming up with Stalin is a necessary evil. Of course many were hoping for the franchise to become a trilogy but it never came. All we got was Cold War, where Stalin dies relatively early.
I have a feeling Stalin would sort of be a Negan type character.
Stalin has a lot of moments that would make great creepy scenes. Such as the Death of Stalin seen in which Stalin asks for a copy of the concert he was listening to but since they didn't, everyone is so terrified they get people to recreate the sounds of the concert as faithfully as possible. There's also laughing at his son's failed suicide and joking how he was so incompetent he couldn't even shoot straight.
It's funny to think about, but the US ending the war with a super-science weapon seems like something out of a million comic book stories.
The story of Wojtek the Bear sounds like a badass Disney film.