Trivia / The Last Duel

• Acclaimed Flop: Earned top marks from significant critics across the board (with a whopping 86% on Rotten Tomatoes with 7.5 out of 10 rating on average) but only scooped up $9 million worldwide on its opening weekend on a reported budget of $100 million plus. Stiff competition (Venom: Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die and Halloween Kills), COVID preventing the older crowds (the target audience) from seeing this type of film, Invisible Advertising and the dark subject matter were some of the factors at play here.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $100 million. Box office, $10,853,945 (domestic), $30,204,844 (worldwide).
• California Doubling:
  • While a good portion was filmed in France, several scenes were also shot in Ireland across Meath, Wicklow, Dublin and Cahir Castle in Tipperary. The lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic caused Matt Damon to stay in Ireland for a few months and become extremely popular among the people of Dalkey, Dublin. He loved it so much he's spoken about moving to Ireland permanently.
  • Most of the story happens between Normandy (North-Western France) and Paris. Many of the castles used in the film are actually situated in Dordogne, South-Western France. They're among the best preserved in the country and thus regularly attract filmmakers for their period pieces (Ridley Scott himself chose the area for The Duellists back in the day).
  • No filming took place in either Paris (where the court scenes and duel happened) or Scotland (the military campaign Jean takes part to). Medieval Paris was reconstructed entirely with sets and CGI backgrounds, since there are too few traces of it left.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Originally, Ben Affleck was supposed to play Jacques Le Gris (he even wrote the character's segment of the "Rashomon"-Style story), but scheduling conflicts led him to take the less demanding role of Count Pierre d'Alençon instead.
• Creator-Driven Successor:
  • To Gladiator. Both are Period Piece movies directed by Ridley Scott featuring scenes of graphic violence, and both end with two main characters fighting a Duel to the Death in front of a large audience.
  • It could also be seen as one to another Period Piece and Scott's debut film, The Duellists. Both The Last Duel and The Duellists cover a narrative centered on an ongoing feud between two men, spanning several years, while also going to great lengths to capture the historical settings and intricacies of the titular duel (or duels in the latter's case) in exceptional detail. Both were also filmed in the French department of Dordogne, which is exceptionally well suited for period pieces set in either The Middle Ages or The Cavalier Years with all its preserved castles, medieval towns and forests.
• Creator's Oddball: Nicole Holofcener wrote Marguerite's section of the script, making it her only movie that is not a lighthearted contemporary dramedy.
• Dawson Casting: Alex Lawther (25) plays king Charles VI, who was a teenager at the time the film is set (he was 18 during the events of the ending, in 1386).
• Dear Negative Reader: On WTF with Marc Maron, Ridley Scott claimed that the film failed at the box office because "The millennian [sic] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you’re told it on a cellphone", not accounting for the other reasons mentioned in Acclaimed Flop.
• Fake Nationality: No-one in a major role is French, while all the named characters are French. There were a lot of French extras for the scenes filmed in France, but that's about it.
• Hey, It's That Place!:
  • Parts of the film were shot at the bastide (old fortified medieval town) of Monpazier in Dordogne, France. Ridley Scott filmed The Duellists there over four decades prior, and it was also used for a number of other period pieces such as Le Capitan, The Musketeer or Fanfan la Tulipe.
  • The castle of Beynac (one of the best preserved of its kind in France) in the aforementioned Dordogne was used for, besides the aforementioned Le Capitan and Fanfan la Tulipe, Revenge of the Musketeers, Les Visiteurs II: The Corridors of Time, Ever After, Chocolat, and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. It's used as the castle of Thibouville in the film.
  • The castle of Fénelon was used also, as the castle of Count Pierre d'Alençon. It's familiar to fans of the French series Nicolas Le Floch.
• Invisible Advertising: What marketing there was for the film seems to be very little, and even then, it borders on What Were They Selling Again?, given that it only seems to focus on shilling Scott and Damon and declaring this movie to be the next big cinematic event... but not actually describing the movie in question. This, along with what's described in the YMMV section, led to the movie bombing. Generally speaking, with few exceptions (most notably Free Guy, another Jodie Comer movie, coincidentally), Disney hasn't put much effort into advertising the former 20th Century Fox films they've been contractually obligated to release in theaters after their acquisition of Fox.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Pierre can barely stand Jean, viewing him as a tedious and self-righteous bore, and Jean makes little effort to hide his similar dislike of Pierre. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are well-known as best friends in real life.
• Production Posse:
  • This is Ridley Scott's second film each with Matt Damon (after The Martian) and Marton Csokas (after Kingdom of Heaven), and his fourth film to feature Željko Ivanek. This is also Scott's first collaboration with Adam Driver, who then starred in his next feature House of Gucci.
  • On the production side, composer Harry Gregson Williams, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, production designer Arthur Max, costume designer Janty Yates, and editor Claire Simpson have all worked with Scott in the past.
• Release Date Change: The film's release date was pushed back from December 25, 2020 to October 15, 2021 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic shutting theaters and because of Disney being contractually obligated to give it a theatrical release. This resulted in the film releasing just a little over a month before Scott's next film, House of Gucci.
• Those Two Actors:
  • The film reunites longtime friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck after several other films that had them both in their cast (School Ties, Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, The Third Wheel, Jersey Girl). It's also a kind of Production Posse since they wrote the film's script together just like they did on Good Will Hunting.
  • Adam Driver and Jodie Comer also both previously appeared in The Rise of Skywalker, though they were never onscreen together at the same time.
• Troubled Production: Production began in France in February 2020 and soon found itself coinciding with the COVID-19 outbreak, leading to filming in Ireland being postponed indefinitely immediately after the French shoot wrapped. The Irish shoot would ultimately restart that September and finish a month later.
• Underage Casting: Jacques le Gris and Jean de Carrouges were both reportedly in their mid-to-late fifties in 1386, when the trial and duel took place, while Adam Driver was 36/37 years old and Matt Damon was 49/50 years old during filming. It particularly sticks out due to Marguerite's line about how her fate will not be decided by God but "by which old man tires first". Neither man appears "old" in the film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The film was almost going to be shot in Spain for budget reasons but the spectacle business and film industry folks of the French department of Dordogne did everything they could to get hotels, materials and the like for the crew at reasonable prices, ensuring that filming would happen in France.
  • Vangelis was at one point supposed to score the film before Harry Gregson Williams was brought in.
• Write What You Know: Deliberately enforced, as Damon and Affleck brought on a female writer for Marguerite's story, rather than try to tackle a female point of view on such a politically charged topic themselves. Comer has stated she wouldn't have starred in the film had this not happened.
• Written by Cast Member: Both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck contributed to the script, the first time they've done so since Good Will Hunting.

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