About

Joaquin Phoenix Dressed As Napoleon refers to two photographs of Joker actor Joaquin Phoenix on the set of the 2022 movie Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott. In the photos, Phoenix is dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte in an 18th-century French general's outfit looking posh and serious. After they were posted in March 2022, they were used as reaction images en masse on platforms like Twitter where meme creators gave them humorous captions to compliment Phoenix's expression and outfit.

Origin

On March 9th, 2022, actor Joaquin Phoenix was photographed by the paparazzi agency Click News^[1] wearing a Napoleon Bonaparte costume on the production set of the 2022 film Napoleon directed by Ridley Scott. The images were published on the 10th by Daily Mail^[2] (shown below) and later reshared on Twitter that same day.

On March 10th, 2022, the Twitter^[3] account cravemedia_ posted a tweet that included the two photos, earning roughly 1,000 likes over the course of a day (shown below, left). Then, the larger film-centric Twitter^[4] account FilmUpdates quote retweeted it, captioning it, "Joaquin Phoenix on the set of Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon,’" earing roughly 4,000 likes in the same amount of time (shown below, right).

Spread

Twitter users started to take notice of the images going into the rest of March 2022, recaptioning them in quote retweets and then, eventually, only captioning the primary photo of Phoenix facing to the right but looking over his left shoulder. For instance, Twitter^[5] user darth_erogenous screenshotted FilmUpdate's tweet on March 10th and captioned it, "Who's he playing?" earning roughly 5,000 likes in one day (shown below, left). Also on the 10th, Twitter^[6] user LanceStLaurent captioned just the primary photo with, "TFW I accidentally fart in public and act overly dignified so no one suspects me," earning over 250 likes in one day and being the first to only caption the one photo (shown below, right).

Later on March 10th, Twitter^[7] user lukeisamazing captioned the one photo with, "when i eat a delicious croissant," earning roughly 65,400 likes in one day (shown below, left). Other than Twitter, the photos were shared to platforms like Instagram. For instance, on the 10th, the film-centric Instagram^[8] account filmaesthete posted a side-by-side comparison photo of Phoenix dressed as Napoleon and an actual picture of Napoleon, earning roughly 25,700 likes in one day (shown below, right).

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