Napoleon, has arrived in cinemas in the UK and the US – but is drawing criticism for its historical inaccuracies.Historian Dan Snow recently pointed out the film’s errors in a TikTok video, correcting scenes shown in the trailer.The video didn’t go down too well with Scott, who responded in an interview with the New Yorker. “Get a life,” the director told Snow via the publication. “I tend to be visual above all things, before the written word.”While Scott’s explosive biopic of the French Emperor knows how to entertain, it sometimes does so at the expense of getting things fully accurate.
In the movie, we see Napoleon shooting off the top of a pyramid in Egypt – a memorable scene, but not something that happened in real life.“When we were talking about it, and Scott said that was going to happen, some of us sort of looked at each other and said, ‘You know what, hang on a minute’,” Napoleon historian and advisor on the film Michael Broers told TIME. “But he turned to me and said, ‘When I told you we were going to shoot off the top of the pyramid, you laughed, didn’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well, yes.’ He said, ‘It’s staying in then.’”The film also shows the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon meeting during the Battle of Waterloo.
In reality, the pair never came face-to-face, even in battle, remaining some distance apart from each other as things went down.Aspects of Napoleon’s relationship with Joséphine are presented inaccurately, too.
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