Yet what’s arguably even more interesting about Napoleon than explosions and portentous-yet-barbed dialogue is the fact that it represents a return to a genre that appeared to be dead and buried in Hollywood but has returned this year with a vengeance: the man’s movie. Such pictures as Oppenheimer, The Killer, Killers of the Flower Moon and even the recent Mission: Impossible and Indiana Jones films are all aimed squarely at a male audience that would once have been regularly entertained at cinemas, but now find themselves largely cast adrift. …

The return of such maestros as David Fincher, Martin Scorsese and Scott to cinemas is welcome — even if all their pictures had to be funded by streaming services — but it is also a reminder of how few younger filmmakers are emerging with this kind of picture.