‘Napoleon’ Director Ridley Scott Dismisses Critics: “The French Don’t Even Like Themselves’
Ridley Scott has been typically dismissive of critics taking issue with his forthcoming movie Napoleon, particularly French ones.
While his big-screen epic, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the embattled French emperor with Vanessa Kirby as his wife Josephine, has earned the veteran director plaudits in the UK, French critics have been less gushing, with Le Figaro saying the film could have been called “Barbie and Ken under the Empire,” French GQ calling the film “deeply clumsy, unnatural and unintentionally clumsy” and Le Point magazine quoting biographer Patrice Gueniffey calling the film “very anti-French and pro-British.”
Asked by the BBC to respond, Scott replied with customary swagger:
“The French don’t even like themselves. The audience that I showed it to in Paris, they loved it.”
The film’s world premiere took place in the French capital this week.
Scott added he would say to historians questioning the accuracy of his storytelling:
“Were you there? Oh you weren’t there. Then how do you know?”
Out of everything, it is this response that makes Scott look like an idiot. This is some MAGA-level history reconstruction argumentation.
Seriously what a morom
Idk if you ment mormon or moron and I love that both would fit the context
You kind of have to admire his confidence though.
This empowers the demagogue.
Ridley Scott is a demagogue?
I mean, in a way he kinda is, dude was famously a piece of shit and a pain in the ass to work with. Petulant, arrogant and fastidious. He is ego strolling in two legs. Apparently he's gotten softer and more amiable over time, but Harrison Ford hated his ass after Blade Runner. I love his films, but in interviews you can see that he is a bit full of himself and a crass dictator on set.
hey chatgpt, whats the dictionary definition of movie director?
Trump is (see: MAGA cult).
Admiring misplaced confidence leads to people like Trump rising to power.
Nah. Being confidently and antagonistically wrong is not an admirable trait.
Not at all. Too much confidence tends to make me wary of the person exuding it.
What a dumb response. There's nothing wrong with tweaking history to improve a story, but claiming "It could be true. Who really knows?" is just pretentious puffery. Like the entirety of historical study around Napoleon is equivalent to Ridley Scott's made up stories. What a tool.
😂 That response sounds like moron creationists when you explain evolution to them.
Not sounds like, literally is. That was the crux of Ken Ham's argument when he debated Bill Nye. I'm not sure why he doesn't apply it to his own Bible.
Big "do your own research!" energy.
Ok, but hear me out. What if: aliens?
That’s James Cameron.
Second thing is age. Phoenix is 49. Bonaparte died at 51, after six years exile on Saint Helens. You can say what you want, Phoenix does look the part, but it's easy too old.
Just like Dafoe playing van Gogh it's just not right.
On the other hand, I think a Hollywood actor with the benefit of modern medicine has probably aged better than someone with a particularly stressful job in the 18th/19th century
To a point. But twenty years is quite significant. If any it's more miraculous that Napoleon archieved what he did when he was in his early thirties.
To portray that correctly would be an hommage.
Plus I don't really like the fact that older established actors get all these character roles. I mean I get it, but I don't like it.
Eh, do we really need to pay so much homage to a warmongering autocrat?
It certainly makes for interesting history but we don't need to lick up to them.
Maybe an hommage was too grand a word. I prefer less aggrandizing versions of his story like 'blundering to victory' which make the case that he only prevailed due to the ineptitude of his opponents and insight of his generals (mainly Davout).
However the minuteness of changes he had and the gall necessary to actually realize what he archieved are worthy of a story. It's a definite case of reality being stranger than fiction.
I don't really care about that. If it makes for a good movie, then why should it matter? It's his attitude about it all that's uncalled for.
Fair enough, I just think it's silly and an exemplar of Scott not giving a monkeys about the historical person.
A valid answer from Ridley would be that his adaptation makes for a better story and that's acceptable. But blowing off the historians like that is pretentious.
Exactly
I mean, it's a Hollywood movie telling a story.. if you care about 100% historical accuracy, Hollywood is not who you're getting it from, nor should you expect it at this point. It's entertainment, not education.
I don't expect it, however I do really appreciate it when they make an effort.
Should have gone with Steve Buscemi?
Hah!
This is just pure arrogance. I think everyone understands you can take artistic licence, or even completely disregard history and do pure fiction, but don't go claiming you know the history better than historians.
I'm just afraid, based on the critiques, that he has made it into MTV's Real World Napoleon.
Because the people who were there wrote it down, and now we can read it. Scott's line of reasoning is inherently inconsistent because if followed it would mean we have to evidence of Napoleon Bonaparte existing in the first place. Boy is Ridley Scott going to feel dumb when he realizes he made a biopic of a mythical character combined from the real stories of several French generals after the revolution—if there even was a French Revolution, I mean, we weren't there.
Is there anything more embarrassing than people who think they know better than historians and reject the entire discipline of historiography? It's like being anti-vax but extended to everything you don't personally see.
He made the same arguments about Gladiator back in the day, pretty much word for word.
Thing is, it works for Gladiator. I have no idea how well it works here.
Well gladiator isn't named after one of the most documented people in history, so probably not as well.
Basically all we know about him is that his name is Maximus Decimus Meridius. Father to a murdered child, husband to a murdered wife, and he will have his vengeance; in this life or the next.
Which brings to mind something one of my history teachers taught us about the implausibility of that movie. The main characters name is essentially “Most Tenth Middle”.
Quite the heroic name.
"Maximus" and "Decimus" were both real Roman names, but they wouldn't have been used in that order. It would have been Decimus Meridius Maximus. Or something else in the middle, since I can't find at instances of Romans called Meridius
Hey I didn’t know this - thank you for the information.
Coming next summer in Gladiator 2: The Resurrectioning
Gladiator 2: The Electric Resurrectoloo
I mean... sure, it's not named after him, but Marcus Aurelius is in that movie. They still have a column in his memory in Rome today.
On the minus side, he's in the movie just for a little bit and you can't really prove that he wasn't murdered by Commodus in a fit of jealous rage. On the plus column, Napoleon is already one of the most misrepresented historical figures, so... call it a tie?
I realize I'm in a minority here, but I knew too much about Roman history to enjoy Gladiator. Which is odd, because I love I, Claudius and it's complete nonsense too.
Ok but it seems some of the complaints were that it's anti French. My argument there is that the French were indeed the bad guys in this period in history, and so was Napoleon, so no shit the movie is anti French of the period.
In that period (the Napoleonic Wars), the French were definitely the lesser of the many evils in Europe. Their opponents were the united nobility of Europe, and while Napoleon ultimately failed to end it, he weakened it to a point from which it would never recover. One could also argue that many South American countries were able to gain independence because the French weakened the Spanish and Portugese monarchies.
You're saying that as if Napoleon's plan was to liberate and bring social progress. It wasn't. The things that the Napoleonic wars brought about weren't done by him on purpose, he was just out to conquer and be emperor
Everyone else was also motivated by the lust for power. At least Napoleon was more or less meritocratic, and his actions brought about some progress. Hence 'lesser of the many evils'.
Gladiator was obviously a fiction set in Roman times, and wasn't claiming to be a biopic of a historical figure. For Gladiator the bar was basically that the costumes, weapons and sets looked Roman.
Still missed that mark, famously. The "nobody was there how do you know" quote about Gladiator was specifically about the costumes, if I recall correctly.
Also, absolutely it claimed to depict the lives of historical figures. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus are people who lived. Important people, too. The entire movie is a bit of a alt-history take on the relatively anecdotal detail that Commodus was assassinated by a gladiator and that he used to fight in the arena himself.
Again, haven't seen Napoleon, but I'm gonna say I can see someone fictionalizing the life of a guy who has become shorthand for having an inflated ego and a whole bunch of jokey pop culture anecdotes. Is the bar meant to be different here? There was fictionalized apocrypha about Napoleon (and the rest of the Bonapartes, while we're at it) while they were alive and in charge. I think the statute of limitations is up on that one.
He made the Kingdom of Heaven, also heavily twisted history. I'm seeing a pattern here...
Yeah, the guy is a fan of historical fiction. More Ben-Hur than... eh... I don't know, I'd bring up one of Spielberg's but I'm not sure how much better they are.
Point is, he makes movies and he clearly prefers to dramatize over sticking to historical fact. That's valid.
Dramatization in terms of exaggerating details is valid. Like say, in reality the protagonist fought 2 soldiers but the movie shows them fighting 200 warriors ("300" style) would make sense because you are trying to sell tickets.
But twisting the stories itself and then saying the historians are wrong, is not valid, I think.
It depends on whether the movie says it or it's a thing from an interview, in my book.
As in, if the movie is making a case that something went down a certain way in real life when it didin't (say, JFK) then... yeah, well, that's a bit of an issue, sure.
If the movie is out there being a movie and the director is just saying he liked it more this way and you weren't there to check and get off my hair and watch the movie... well that's not an unreasonable response to people well acksually-ing a movie.
And again, haven't seen the movie. No idea what this is like. All I'm saying is this attitude is not new for the guy and his historical dramas are all heavily stylized and put drama ahead of accuracy for narrative purposes and that's... fine. At worst it's an excuse for people to make nerdy videos about the actual history, which I'm also fine with.
Dude is almost 90, at that age logic goes out the window. He is already one of the most acclaimed directors in Hollywood, he got nothing to lose.
Someone ask Keanu
Anti French? Do the French still deny that they were the bad guys of Europe when Napoleon was in power? Of course they look like the bad guys in this movie. That's like the Germans complaining that they're made to look like the bad guys in ww2 movies.
Of course, we generally deny it.
But some historical perspective first. When the French Revolution happened, everyone in Europe started to fight the new French regime to get the old monarchy back in power, with all privileges for the nobles to be reinstated. The French fought back for years, and Napoleon then came to power and continued the wars. He kinda got carried away. But every time he tried to settle down, the freaking English would start a new alliance against him and his new satellite regimes.
Now where does the assholery start? When defending yourself? No! When counterattacking a bit too much? No! When reinstating absolute power when you were chosen to stop absolutism in the first place? Maybe a bit. When trying to fuck up the English? Certainly not! When trying to rule over all of Europe? No, it was only inertia.
Lol…”He kinda got carried away.”
You know, when you sometimes wake up with the wrong foot, so you just have to march an army into Russia. Ughh, hate it when that happens.
Many such cases!
Just a little whoopsiedaisy.
Man, British propaganda is really, really good. From 'carrots improve night vision' to 'Napoleon was short/the bad guy', it still lives on.
In what ways was Napoleon the bad guy exactly?
Shooting grapeshot artillery against civilians during the French Revolution for starters. And that's even before he took power.
What am ia history book? Go read and educate yourself
Why is Napoleon the bad guy? He was just an acting person. When Napoleon was the bad guy, then someone was the good guy. I don't see any absolute monarch as a good guy.
There is no denying of him being a bad guy, because this idea itself for what happens in history is utterly stupid.
Who told you there's a good guy and a bad guy in real life? In any case, all those soldiers, civilians and regular people who died in the Napoleonic wars weren't monarchs. And to say Napoleon was waring out of some altruistic desire to free the poor from monarchy? Come the fuck on, he made himself a monarch!
Le Figaro and Le Point are two trashy nationalistic and regressives papers anyway, so if they didn't like it that's a good sign.
Telerama says the film is bad too.
It’s fucking wild to make a film and then pretend to take HISTORIANS to task. Not like they know history or any thing like that… that’d be CRAZY!
Top that off with making films that counter normal intuition… I mean that’s just weird. Why would Ridley Scott make a film that counters every strength of Alien with multiple films of seemingly, equally, poor value… ?
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Too bad we never got Kubrick's Napoleon. Knowing him and his obsession with detail and correctness he would've used real cannonballs for Austerlitz.
Was Kubrick slated to make a Napoleon movie? Dang, I'd never heard that. As interested as I am in Scott's Napoleon, a Kubrick period piece would've been fantastic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick%27s_unrealized_projects#Napoleon
At least he didn't blame millennials and their cellphones again.. yet
Napoleon wasn't French though. Lol
Splitting hairs there. He is Corsican... which is French (like it or not).
There's been a real track record of blatant assholes being emprical pricks for a country NOT EVEN BEING BORN IN THEIR BORDERS
Corsica is only as French as french fries are
Well... He's not wrong. The French don't like themselves either... ^^;
oversimplified video still better
Asking a historian if they were there smh lol 😆 😂 🤣 🙃
I don't even need to read the article. A great comment from a great director. Entertaining. Made me laugh heartily. Go king!
I didn't know about this production, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.
That’s really funny and I’m pretty sure the guy who made Alien has the right to be a bit of a cunt to critics if he wants
French are one of the closest cultures in the world
Eh I have found French organizations tend to take themselves too seriously and go out of their way to affect an air of superiority about... pretty much everything. In other words: fuck em.
Imagine making a movie about George Washington, but you cast a French guy and everyone in the movie has a French accent.
That’s not even a weird thought, though. French speakers are allowed to make movies about George Washington and probably have made at least one.
Sure, but when Americans tell the French filmmaker, "You got this wrong. Washington never lived in Boston," the response shouldn't be "how do you know? Were you there?"
Sure, but that’s different from just the language spoken in the movie.
Ngl I'd love to see this. Especially if they got everything else accurate, it'd be kinda hilarious
There's nothing stopping anyone from doing it, do you think it'll make any money?
People all around the world make movies about foreign history using local actors and language all the time.