Hollywood legend Ridley Scott didn’t offer much to critics of his upcoming film “Napoleon,” which stars Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role as a French emperor and general.
“Get a life,” the coach previously said of historian and TV presenter Dan Snow, who shot an entire video, in which he (for fun) fact-checks incorrect historical details in the film’s trailer.
“Napoleon” premiered in France last week, and according to the BBC, French reviewers were not particularly positive.
For example, Le Figaro wrote that the film should be renamed “Barbie and Ken Under the Empire.” The French CQ noted that it was “extremely clumsy, unnatural and an involuntary farce” to see French soldiers in 1793 chanting “Long live France” in an American accent. A French Napoleonic expert criticized the film in Le Point magazine for a “very anti-France and very pro-British” rewriting of history.
The BBC has In a longer interview Ridley asked Scott about the reaction to the French criticism, and as expected, he was not very responsive.
“The French can’t even afford to suffer themselves,” Scott bitterly tells the BBC. “The audience I showed it to in Paris, they loved it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he again responds to critics who call the film historically inaccurate: “Were you there?” Well, you weren’t there. how do you know that?”.
According to the BBC, “Napoleon” received positive reviews in Scott’s home country, Great Britain. Danish cinema premiere on Thursday 23 November.
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