"Ridley Scott's Napoleon is GARBAGE!" Says Historian J. David Markham

Leading Napoleon historian debunks Ridley Scott's 2023 movie.

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J. David Markham is the president of the International Napoleonic Society. In a two-hour conversation with Cameron Reilly, from December of 2023, Markham mocked Ridley Scott’s new Napoleon movie. He repeatedly criticized the movie’s lack of historical context and pro-British bias. The historian harshly mocked Joaquin Phoenix’s performance, which lacked any passion or charisma at all. Here is a summary of Markham’s scathing criticisms of the movie.

Hero or villain?

Markham hates how Ridley Scott’s movie portrayed Napoleon in such a negative light, accusing him of pro-British bias. 

Markham especially hates how the movie ends with a display of kill counts, implying that Napoleon himself was personally responsible for all of those deaths. He mocks British historians for making this fraudulent claim, and then exaggerating the actual number of deaths. Nor do those historians distinguish between soldiers and civilians. But what about Austria, Russia, and Britain—aren’t they also to blame? 

The historian insists that Napoleon’s wars against Europe were largely defensive. This is because Austria and the other European monarchies threatened to reinstall the Bourbon monarchy in France, thus reversing the gains of the French Revolution. Also, the Coalition Wars began with the French Revolution, prior to Napoleon’s accession to power. Napoleon tried very hard to make peace, but was rebuffed every time. In Markham’s opinion, Europe’s wars against Revolutionary France would have happened anyway—with or without Napoleon. 

For Markham, the movie completely fails to show any of Napoleon’s good qualities: his intelligence, his scholarliness, his passion for learning and science, his military and tactical genius, his legal reforms, etc. 

Markham condemns the film for making Napoleon out to be a proto-Hitler. He observes that the real Napoleon was a very progressive man, who freed the Jews from persecution. Given today’s discourse on anti-Semitism, Markham felt this part of Napoleon’s legacy should have be discussed. 

Emperor by Consent

Markham criticizes the film’s failure to adequately explain why Napoleon seized power as First Consul and later Emperor. In real life, this decision was triggered by an assassination plot, which is not covered in Ridley Scott’s movie. Napoleon feared that, without a strong executive, the French government would collapse and quickly be usurped by the disgraced Bourbon monarchy. In the historian’s view, a few sentences of exposition could have easily explained this monumental transition from the French Republic into Bonaparte’s Empire. 

Markham defends the real Napoleon against accusations of tyranny. He argues that, even as Emperor, Napoleon enjoyed enormous popularity among the ordinary people of post-Revolutionary France. He argues that Napoleon’s execution of the Duke of Enghien, a Bourbon nobleman, successfully destroyed any royalist attempts to usurp the French throne. The historian explains that Enghien was not an entirely innocent aristocrat, who might have been scheming to restore the Bourbon monarchy in France. 

Joaquin Phoenix picks up the crown, and says, “I picked this up from the gutter.” But Markham dismisses this line as completely ahistorical. If anything, Napoleon would have uttered this phrase during the Hundred Days Campaign. Markham suggests a much better line: Napoleon should have said, “I crown myself to symbolize that all future leaders of France will be based on their personal merits, and not on some religious deification.” To Markham, this single change of words would have vastly improved the scene.

Regarding the coronation scene, Markham observes that the Pope did not stay until the end of the ceremony. This is because, as part of his imperial oath, Napoleon vowed to protect religious freedom. But the Pope was a religious dictator who had no interest in tolerance for anything other than Catholicism in France. None of Napoleon’s conflict with the Pope and Church, or the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, is shown at all in the movie. 

Markham praises Napoleon as an honorable and virtuous leader. The real Napoleon cared deeply about his people, and believed firmly in the French Revolution’s principle of equality. Especially in the beginning of his military career, and arguably even as an Emperor, Napoleon was essentially a child of the French Revolution. 

Military genius 

Where was Napoleon’s tactical genius? Why wasn’t that shown in the movie? Noting how Napoleon loved to gloss over maps, Markham criticizes the film for not showing a single scene of Bonaparte looking at a map. During the Egypt campaign, why doesn’t the movie talk about Napoleon’s scientific breakthroughs? Why didn’t they show Napoleon discovering the Rosetta Stone, a discovery that single-handedly gave birth to modern Egyptology? 

Markham laughs at the film’s fighting scenes. He mocks them as overly simplistic. He especially takes issue with the onscreen depiction of Austerlitz. The historian criticizes the movie’s failure to explain any of Napoleon’s tactical genius at this pivotal battle. Nothing is said about Napoleon’s brilliant plan to lure the Russians and Austrians off the high ground, thus gaining the high ground himself. Prior to the battle, Napoleon cleverly pretended to be weak and uncertain of his troops at Austerliz. But it was all a trick by the French genius! The “frozen lake” scene is a myth, not historical fact. The historian also mocks the movie’s anachronisms of military technology, such as trenches and rifles. 

Leadership skills

For Markham, the film utterly fails to show how or why anyone would have followed Napoleon. Bonaparte’s troops followed their beloved general all across Europe. He mocks Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal, saying that nobody would have followed him up the stairs—let alone across the continent—if Napoleon had acted like this. He suggests that the film could have demonstrated Napoleon’s leadership skills by depicting the Italian campaign, where Bonaparte led his men to victory at Lodi and Arcole. 

Napoleon’s wife

One of Markham’s biggest complaints about the Ridley Scott movie is its depiction of Napoleon’s marriage. 

Age gap

In the movie, Joaquin Phoenix is a fifty-year-old man in a relationship with a twenty-year-old girl. 

In real life, Napoleon’s wife was six years older than him, not younger! The historian explains that Napoleon’s marriage to an older woman was very controversial at the time. 

Josephine was something of a motherly figure to Napoleon. Napoleon, who was himself very inexperienced with sex and romance, was deeply attracted to Josephine’s superior knowledge and experience in the bedroom. An aristocrat living before the French Revolution, Josephine enjoyed a hedonistic lifestyle. By the time she met Napoleon, she had already engaged with many lovers. Clearly, the middle-aged woman was sexually confident. 

Markham criticizes the age gap as absurd. He gives credit to Vanessa Kirby, while denigrating Phoenix’s performance by comparison. 

Raw sexuality 

The movie unfavorably portrays Napoleon as a very low-brow savage animal, who sodomizes his wife and has sex under the dinner table. 

Markham sharply criticizes this boorish depiction of Napoleon. He takes shots at Ridley Scott and Joaquin Phoenix, accusing both men of pro-British and anti-Napoleon bias in their public comments. 

Regarding these erotic scenes, Markham mocks the lack of passion and nudity. He complains that Napoleon and Josephine were both fully clothed in all of these “love” scenes. Napoleon’s romantic temperament is completely missing from the movie. He mocks Phoenix’s portrayal of Napoleon as an immature schoolboy, denouncing it as an almost parody-like interpretation of Napoleon’s sexuality. 

For Markham, the dynamics of Napoleon’s relationship were ambiguous and unclear. Even within a single scene, their dynamics shifted unpredictably from one extreme to another. 

Coming from Corsica

Markham gives another criticism: the movie doesn’t show Napoleon’s Corsican origins. 

Napoleon was the ultimate outsider, which is key to understanding his personality. As a young boy in France, Napoleon was bullied by his peers for his Italian accent. He similarly felt alienated as an adult receiving military education. Because of his time away from Corsica, Napoleon was eventually rejected by the island’s independence movement. This forced him to re-invent himself as a patriot of France. 

While respecting the movie’s time restraints, Markham still insists that even a few minutes of exposition, such as a brief flashback, could have easily established Napoleon’s connections to Corsica. He mocks the movie’s lengthy run time, given its flagrant omissions of Brienne and the Royal Military School. 

For Markham, the film completely fails to show any of Napoleon’s backstory prior to the French Revolution. The movie should have at least mentioned how Napoleon ended up in France, through his Corsican father’s ties to the French nobility. King Louis XVI himself actually signed off on Napoleon’s scholarship to study in mainland France. 

Shooting at Pyramids?

Markham mocks how Scott’s film just jumps right into the Egypt campaign, without any explanation. He explains that Revolutionary France planned an invasion of Britain. But the wise Napoleon realized that invading England was a suicide mission. So instead, France decided to attack Britain by assaulting its overseas colony of Egypt. 

He laughs at the film’s scene where Napoleon fires cannonballs right into the pyramids, arguing that the real Napoleon had far too much respect for Egyptian culture to do something so dumb. The Battle of the Pyramids occurred miles away from the actual pyramids, so French cannons were never close enough to directly fire at them. 

Another reason for the Egypt campaign, which the film fails to even mentions, is that the Directory feared Napoleon’s growing popularity and influence. So the French government sent him on a far away expedition to keep him occupied. 

Unlike the movie, the real Napoleon did not abandon his troops because of his wife’s affair back in Paris. The real reason was that Bonaparte was trying to stabilize the government, and avoid ending up on the wrong side of a coup. 

Joaquin Phoenix had a silly line about “you British think you’re better because you have boats!” But why doesn’t the movie show the Battle of the Nile, where the British Navy destroyed Napoleon’s fleet? This would have actually explained why Napoleon had to abandon his troops in Egypt. The naval battle of Trafalgar is similarly omitted. Neither of those two naval battles, Nile or Trafalgar, is even shown. 

Russian Blunder

While Markham gives some credit to Ridley Scott’s depiction of Napoleon’s Russian invasion, he criticizes the lack of historical context. When watching, the audience doesn’t know what Napoleon and Tsar Alexander are friends in one minute, and then enemies two seconds later. 

Markham explains that, while Tsar Alexander was personally friendly with Napoleon and somewhat progressive, the Russian aristocrats and business class were opposed to the Continental System. He dislikes how Scott’s film makes Napoleon’s invasion a matter of his personal ambition, rather than some deeper conflict. He points out that the Russians amassed troops along the border of what is now Poland, thus directly threatening one of Napoleon’s allies. 

The historian debunks myths about the “Russian winter” destroying Napoleon. Napoleon made plans for the winter, but it just happened to be especially bad that year. Worse still, the summer was unseasonably hot, which resulted in outbreaks of deadly typhus. Worse still, the Berezina River was in liquid form, meaning that Napoleon could not cross it quickly. But even without normal equipment, Napoleon’s excellent engineers managed to build three bridges to cross the Russian river. Contrary to myth, more of Napoleon’s men died on the way to Moscow, not from the return home.