Battlefield Tactics in Ridley Scott's Napoleon

The movie fails to show any real Napoleonic battles.

Order my book (“Napoleon: The Revolutionary Hero”) on Amazon today. It is a 200-page biography of Napoleon, covering his whole life from Corsica to Saint Helena.

When Ridley Scott released his Napoleon movie in 2023, many people were left scratching their hands. Why can’t Hollywood give us a good Napoleon movie anymore? 

Alexandre Robert, who runs the YouTube channel HistoryLegends, did an excellent review of the film, giving the scene-by-scene breakdown of Ridley Scott’s historical inaccuracies. 

In his review, Alex criticizes the movie’s shockingly unrealistic depiction of Napoleonic warfare. Battles are lazily shown like a mosh pit, without any attention to military formations or tactics. It looks more like a random collision than an organized battle between two European regular armies. 

Worst of all, the technology doesn’t even match the time period! While rifles existed, scopes were not invented until decades after Napoleon’s death. Trench warfare would not be widely used for another century, until the First World War. 

The reviewer was especially aggrieved by Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as Napoleon, which fails to breathe any life into one of history’s greatest military and political leaders. 

Watch the review for yourself. Do you agree with his thoughts? Or is he being too critical and unfair? Tell me in the comments.