Emancipation 123Movies (2024)

FAQs

Why did Emancipation get bad reviews? ›

Although the cinematography was excellent, I felt that the movie relied too heavily on it and it wasn't enough to carry the movie. I feel that it was the script/story that felt too simplified. It felt rushed and edited to pieces....and just not thorough enough.

Film also has what some might feel is gratuitous body horror/violence, even for a film about slavery, which makes it feel like the movie is wallowing in Black pain to an uncomfortable degree under the guise of making a point about slavery's harshness.

At the end of Emancipation, Will Smith's character completes his journey—a hero's odyssey not entirely different from those the actor has taken in many an action film—with a homecoming scene that it is not clear occurred in real life. In fact, it is not known if the man known as Gordon survived the war.

The film is loosely based on the life of a self-emancipated slave, known as either Gordon or "Whipped Peter".

'Emancipation' 'Flop'

However, "Emancipation did not perform well at the box office," Lieberman said. "It was supposed to be his comeback to the big screen after 'Slapgate,' but it was a flop." It's hard to tell how much Smith's actions at the previous Academy Awards affected the release of Emancipation.

Ultimately, however, he and Emancipation were snubbed by the Academy.

This visually stunning film from director Antoine Fuqua suffers from a weak script, poor characterization, and an overly earnest approach to the subject matter. For something so important, a sense of substance seems in short supply.

According to a report by Radar Online, Will Smith is hurt and angry at Emancipation being snubbed by the 2023 Golden Globes. And the feeling has only intensified with the film's very modest box office grossing. So far the slavery drama, which cost $120 million to make, has only earned an average of $3k per screen.

'Emancipation' Gives Peter a Family and a Backstory. Will Smith's Peter is Haitian and speaks Haitian Creole, but in reality, like most people enslaved in Louisiana, Peter's first language was actually French.

Based on the uniforms some of the dead are wearing, it seems the house and its occupants were thrown into the midst of the battle between the Union and Confederate Armies. While it's unclear who started the fire, the casualties are that of war, and no one on the plantation survived it.

What happened to the little girl in Emancipation? ›

He finds a slave girl and tries to carry her to safety, but she is gravely injured and dies after giving him a cross necklace.

In principle, Lincoln approved of emancipation as a war measure, but he postponed executive action against slavery until he believed he had both the legal authority to do so and broader support from the American public. Two pieces of congressional legislation passed on July 17, 1862, provided the desired signal.

Peter ( fl. 1863) (also known as Gordon, or "Whipped Peter", or "Poor Peter") was a self-emancipated, formerly enslaved man who was the subject of photographs documenting the extensive scarring of his back from whippings received in slavery.

13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)

Emancipation is a film directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by William N. Collage and is focused around a photo of a man known as Gordon or Whipped Peter, who escaped from a Louisiana plantation in 1863.

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

It was bad enough that a casual reading of the Proclamation made clear that it did not set the slaves free. It was also clear that neither the Reconstruction amendments nor the legislation and Executive orders of subsequent years had propelled African Americans much closer to real freedom and true equality.

Defenders of slavery argued that if all the slaves were freed, there would be widespread unemployment and chaos. This would lead to uprisings, bloodshed, and anarchy.