There aren’t many names in Hollywood on either side of the camera who would flat-out tell a journalist to go f*ck themselves in the middle of an interview after taking issue with a question, but that’s Ridley Scott for you.
The legendary director has developed a habit as being arguably the most high-profile curmudgeon the industry has to offer, although he’s allowed to get cranky considering he’s been responsible for a laundry list of classics dating back decades.
His 21st Century output has largely been defined by a number of historical epics, though, a field he’s returning to shortly when the blockbuster Napoleon arrives. Artistic and creative license is required for projects of such scale and ambition, but Scott’s latest rebuttal is positively quaint by his standards.
When asked by The New Yorker for his thoughts on TV historian Dan Snow posting a blow-by-blow breakdown of what the movie gets wrong in regards to the facts and then posting it online for the world to see, all Scott could muster was a derisory “get a life.”
He’s said a lot worse, to be fair, so Snow got off pretty easy all things considered. Despite making it his genre of choice repeatedly over the last couple of decades, the jury is still out on whether or not Napoleon will turn out more like Gladiator or Exodus: Gods and Kings, even if a stellar central performance is guaranteed by virtue of Joaquin Phoenix playing the title role.
If critics don’t like it, will Scott even give so much as a rat’s ass? Based on his previous responses to such matters, we’re going to go out on a limb and say absolutely not.