How Ridley Scott Twisted Napoleon's History

I am not a movie critic... I gladly leave that shit up to the Lights, Camera, Barstool guys.

However, I am an amateur historian, so when a blockbuster is about to drop that chronicles one of history's most famous figures, I feel compelled to chime in.

Ridley Scott's Napoleon hits theatres this week, and the studio dropped a captivating trailer months ago leading up to its release...

I finally watched the trailer in preparation for seeing the flick and I couldn't help but ask…  

How important is the historical accuracy of a movie?

My answer is normally, "Not very important at all."  Shit, I loved that people were shocked when they left Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Googled Sharon Tate, and then were absolutely horrified to learn what really happened to that poor girl.

SPOILER ALERT- Leonardo Dicaprio did not kill her would-be assassins with a blowtorch.

And I am even more tickled that there are inevitably some morons out there who still believe that Hitler burnt to death in a movie theatre that was booby-trapped by a young Jewish girl…

(lol)

Meanwhile, the rest of the civilized world knows Adolf is living comfortably somewhere in South America.

Universal History Archive. Getty Images.

("Aloha and auf Wiedersehen, bitches!")

What I am trying to say is that I don't clutch my pearls when a movie (even one that claims to be based on historical events) falls short of portraying those events accurately.  

In the case of the Napoleon movie, I fully expect Ridley Scott to take some artistic license in his storytelling.  My hope is that the audience is aware of that, as well.  And if they like the story that's told, then maybe they will take a deeper dive into what really happened back in the 1800s.

And maybe that search for truth will even lead them to my podcast- Twisted History.

But Ridley Scott doesn't see it that way, and told reporters that historians picking apart the film for its historical inaccuracies should "get a life."  And I believe Ridley Scott can go fuck himself if he thinks he can make a historical biopic and have the people who actually know the correct history behind his interpretation stay silent.  

And just to fuck with Ridley, I am going to pick his trailer apart for the aforementioned inaccuracies.  At 2 minutes and 38 seconds long, there aren't many, but enough for you to bend over towards whomever you are watching the movie with and whisper, "That never happened." 

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Right off the bat, the trailer invites us to “witness the rise of an emperor, lover, tyrant, and legend”… It's impossible to take umbrage with that tagline, but then it goes on to say, "He came from nothing. He conquered everything.”  

Neither of those sentences is true.

Napoleon did not come from nothing… He descended from a minor Tuscan noble family, and his folks were moderately wealthy.

Perhaps the “he conquered everything”-part is hyperbole, but I can tell you right now that Napoleon didn’t conquer everything… If you need an example, England is a pretty big one.

Am I splitting hairs here?… Absolutely.  But if Ridley Scott ever decides to do a movie about, say, Genghis Khan (and I hope he does), then he can confidently dust off the old "conquered everything" line for a guy who fucked his way into the DNA of almost every person alive today.  

Moving on… Within 20 seconds of the trailer starting, we see the date “1793" and see who I am sure is Marie Antoinette being led to the guillotine.

--- For those who don't read, Marie was the last queen of France before the French Revolution and was beheaded on October 16th, 1793. ---

In the trailer, she is wearing a dark dress and her hair is long and wild… And here’s my next issue.  Preparing for her execution, historians noted Marie Antoinette had to change clothes in front of her guards.  She wanted to wear a black dress but was forced to wear a plain white dress, white being the color worn by the widowed queens of France, and her hair was forcibly cut.

Again… Nitpicking… But the depiction of Marie Antoinette being taken to her death in a white dress and a shaved head is downright iconic for most historians and I am not sure what Scott accomplished by not sticking to that script.

I'll stay with the execution scene… In the trailer, Napolean witnessed her execution, but here's the thing… He wasn’t there.  Napoleon mentions later in the trailer he was the hero of something called the Siege of Toulon, which was actually being fought on the other side of the country when Marie was beheaded.  Look it up… The Siege was August-December 1793 and she was killed in October of that same year.

Another thing I wanted to note… Oftentimes, directors will make an attempt to make the star of their movie look like the subject that the star is portraying.  Val Kilmer basically became Jim Morrison while filming The Doors…

New York Daily News Archive. Getty Images.

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Gary Oldman got sufficiently fat and old to play Churchill…

And Daniel Day-Lewis got so into his Lincoln character, that I was tempted to invite him to the theatre just to shoot him in the head…

Carlos Alvarez. Getty Images.

Joaquin Phoenix looks exactly like himself, doing no accent, and he’s at least a decade older in most of the scenes than the character he's portraying.  

Phoenix just turned 49 years old (and he looks every fucking year of it), while Napoleon Bonaparte died at 51.  So most of the action Joaquin is re-enacting is that of a man in his 30s AND a man who spoke French and Corsican.

Moving on, the trailer shows a scene with the Pyramids and Sphinx in the background.  It's an obvious recreation of Napoleon's Egyptian Expedition (1798 - 1801) where Bonaparte set out to take over the Ottoman territories of modern-day Egypt and Syria.  I don't know where Ridley goes with this scene (as the movie just came out and I am not going until Friday), but I will tell you there is a popular myth that Napoleon ordered his cannons to fire on the Sphinx as target practice, which supposedly led to the destruction of the statue’s nose.

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In reality, however, the Sphinx was already missing its nose by the time of Napoleon’s Egyptian trip, as proven in a sketch created by a Danish naval captain and explorer Frederic Louis Norden in 1737, more than 60 years before Napoleon’s invasion.

So, we may not know who knocked off the statue's nose, but we know it wasn't Napoleon.

I'll point out only one more because I am starting to bore myself, and I don't think people want me to break down what really happened at Waterloo and/or Austerlitz… I'll save it for the podcast.

Towards the end of the trailer, there are shots of Napoleon on horseback with his saber drawn leading a cavalry into battle.  And as much as I'd like to believe the imagery, that is also embellished… He was an artillery specialist and master tactician, but not a cavalry fighter.  A simple search will tell you that most historians agree Napolean was a great strategist, but not a great horseman… But I get why the movies would want to create that image for him, and history books have made similar mistakes in the past.

What does all this mean?

Well, not much.

But I do think it gives you realistic expectations as you potentially avoid the Black Friday animals and head to the theatre instead this weekend to watch a biopic that seems like it'll be much more "pic" than it is "bio"… And that's okay.

Enjoy the movie and take a report.

-Large

Apparently, Clem went to see it, and the reviews are not good…

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We'll see.

TAR

-L