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.

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?”

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.

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?”

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.

Scott, a veteran of big screen hits from Alien to Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, said he couldn’t resist telling the story of Napoloeon: “He’s so fascinating. Revered, hated, loved… more famous than any man or leader or politician in history. How could you not want to go there?”

I don't know about that, Ridley. More famous than Hitler? Or Julius Caesar? Genghis Kahn? The Buddha?

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.

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.

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… ?

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.

At least he didn't blame millennials and their cellphones again.. yet

Napoleon wasn't French though. Lol

Well... He's not wrong. The French don't like themselves either... ^^;