Nicholas Hoult: Great
On the other hand, we have Nicholas Hoult’s performance as the delightfully terrible Emperor Peter III. Hoult’s Peter is rude, entitled, vengeful, and dimwitted. But (and I almost hate to say it…) he’s also so fun to watch.
This is due in part to the amazing writing that positions Hoult’s Peter as a lost fool. His first appearance onscreen is—I kid you not—a re-contextualized version of one of Michael Scott’s most famous bits from The Office. Much like any great literary allusion, I believe with every fiber of my tv-loving being that this is intentionally meant to show us exactly the kind of person Peter is.
Would he rather be feared or loved? Well, much like Michael Scott, it’s clear he wants people to be afraid how much they love him. He’s someone who longs for love, but is so out of touch with real emotions and compassion that he doesn’t have the faintest clue of how to inspire that kind of love in his own “friends,” let alone an entire country. Hoult’s performance never lets us forget how terrible Peter is, but his expressive eyes and varied intonations also help us understand the vulnerabilities of a leader who’s in way over his head as he tries to replicate his father’s leadership and make people think the emperor could be great again.
If the occasionally true version of history in The Great allows us to see the flaws in Fanning’s Catherine, then it also allows us to see the sad slivers of humanity in Hoult’s Peter. Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t mean Peter is good or worthy of redemption. Rather, the nature of The Great reminds us of the complexity of famous figures both in the past and the present.