Determined to find a new sailing route to India, Christopher Columbus (Gérard Depardieu) convinces Spanish Queen Isabella (Sigourney Weaver) to finance an expedition. Setting sail with three ships, Columbus quells potential mutinies until the men arrive in North America. After his triumphant return home, Columbus is appointed governor of the new territory, but his dream of a peaceful new world does not fit with nobleman Don Adrian de Moxica’s (Michael Wincott) visions of conquest.
Ridley Scott’s “1492: Conquest of Paradise” sees Christopher Columbus as more complex and humane than in the other screen treatments of the character. His Columbus is an enlightened revision of the traditional figure, treating Indians the same as Spanish noblemen and seeming content with the notion that nature, not the Catholic God, is their deity. – Roger Ebert
Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Sigourney Weaver, Michael Wincott, Armand Assante.