when the director doesn't give a f**k about historical accuracy

What did you think of Ridley Scott's Napoleon? 🇫🇷 Do you think historical accuracy is essential to biopics? Comment below!💥 Thanks again to Brilliant 🧠 Get a 30-day free trial + the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual subscription ➡ brilliant.org/FilmSpeak/

I'm a purist on this. First of all, Ridley Scott is full of it. He made the Napoleon movie for the same reason all movies get made now: Name Brand recognition. He could have made up a fictional character of that time period and based it on Napoleon (this has been done before, many times), but he wanted to use Napoleon's name because people recognize it. In my opinion, the minute he stamped "Napoleon" on the script, he had to be honest. You want to create fiction, write a fiction. You want to use a person from history or a story/character from a book, you are now limited by that choice. That's my two cents anyway.

Oversimplified made a better Napolean movie than Ridley Scott lol

I once had a classmate in History Class who thought Hitler was killed by assassins in a movie theater. Thanks, Quentin. It's your fault.

The problem with historical inaccuracies like this is how much context is ignored. Yes it’s okay to take SOME historical liberties when making a biopic, but taking as many as Ridley did is, to put it short, too far. Joaquin Phoenix is a great actor and all and it sucks to see his talent wasted

I think getting a British director to make a movie about Napoleon was probably always going to result in some serious historical inaccuracy.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story". Except Ridley forgor the 2nd part

I saw a video about this movie where they interviewed a real professor of French history and he said only 38 minutes of Napoleon was historically accurate.

It's a good argument that a biopic must, by necessity, be true not to the letter of history, but to the spirit. The problem with Ridley Scott's Napoleon is that it is true to neither.

As a Frenchman, I found the Napoleon character in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures more convincing...

The true failing of the film is how poorly it conveys to the audience the state of Europe at any given time, why Europe is that way, why Napoleon represented such a thorn in the side of everyone and the various specifics reasons that led to seemingly unending war and the Congress of Vienna that made a lasting peace at the cost of liberty soon after his final downfall. The film doesn’t fully commit to any aspect of his life and underserved all of them, giving us a hodge-pudge of events that leave us confused to Napoleon’s real character and his psychology. He becomes less facsinating and more confusing as the film proceeds and the events seem more and more trivial as context is never given their full weight. Ridley didn’t succeed with this one. It’s more Exodus: Gods and Kings than Gladiator.

Hard disagree on this, Scott clearly made a hate piece on Napoleon. Kids, don't be afraid to call out your heroes' BS.

I knew Ridley lost his damn mind after he made Alien: Covenant.

You should get a gold medal in gymnastics the way you tried to make this movie seem good

The only conlussion I can get to, after many reviews on this film, is this: Ridley Scott hates Napoleon. Period.

Historical inaccuracy is not the problem, Gladiator is as much inaccurate as Napoleon but is "one of the greatest movies of all time". The problem with Napoleon is more about the editing and writing, how they speed run 30 years of history without context or explanation of why things are happening the way they are and made the protagonist look more like a medium for the story to move forward instead of an active character that build it's own story. That is why for example Bravehart, Gladiator or The Last Samurai are loved by audiences even though they have the same historical accuracy as Star Wars.

The Problem with this movie is that in an attempt to break the myth of Napoleon(Ie the imperial French propaganda of the time), Ridley Scott replaces it with another myth(Ie the British propaganda of the time). He didn't make this movie to show the man, but to shine a light on the British view. That's why the Prussians are basically never mentioned and there's no buildup of Napoleon's skill(Ie the Italian campaign) because the British had no involvement. Instead they put him in a much more powerful position much earlier on because that is when there was British involvement. This isn't a movie about the man, this is a movie about the British propaganda.

What annoys me with Napoleon is not the historical liberties, historical liberties always need to be made, it's his flippant response, much like his response to the last duel, where he blamed short attention spans for the poor box office, and when asked about concerns over historic accuracy he said "Get a Life." Completely dismissing these valid concerns with an insult.

My issue with this film is not with the inaccuracies. My issue is that the inaccuracies and the omission of several key events actively destroys the plot. Like when Napoleon and Josephine get married and then immediately cuts to him in Egypt. No explanation is given to how he got there or what really happened before it, and it leaves the audience confused.

You know director f*cked up when Godzilla movie is more historically accurate than Napoleon movie.