As Napoleon gets a surprise 3.5 hour director’s cut, Ridley Scott says people may prefer it, "I think I do"

The Battle of Marengo featured in Napoleon: The Director's Cut.

Beyoncé eat your heart out, there’s a new shadowdrop champ in town. Not content with releasing one historical epic this year, Ridley Scott has been secretly beavering away on a second, with Napoleon: The Director’s Cut now available to stream on Apple TV+.

Adding 48 minutes of new footage – taking the total runtime to a whopping 205 minutes – Napoleon’s new cut significantly expands the presence of Vanessa Kirby’s Josephine, adds the brief but beautiful Battle of Marengo, a thrilling assassination attempt and a harrowing new sequence during the invasion of Russia, enriching an already terrific picture. A film we called ‘one of Ridley Scott's best films in almost two decades’ in our review is now unquestionably his best since, well, the Director’s Cut of Kingdom of Heaven.