One could remedy this situation with an entertaining secondary cast of characters. But there are hardly secondary characters to speak of. The real Napoleon lived a life surrounded by a gallery of legendary figures. He rose to power with the help of brilliant and charismatic comrades like Joachim Murat, André Masséna, and Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, all of whom could feature as the stars of their own movies. He battled great foes like Archduke Charles of Austria and Mikhail Kutuzov of Russia. But in Scott’s telling Napoleon has no mentors, friends, or comrades. Nor does he have any antagonists, rivals, or enemies—at least none who make any impression on Napoleon or the audience. Some of the great figures surrounding Napoleon do appear on onscreen, like Paul Barras, Abbé Sieyès, and Talleyrand. But they are often accompanied by docudrama style labels of their name and position, whereupon they deliver some necessary exposition, and then recede from the story. For a film that does not care about historical accuracy, the invocation of history often seems to be all we have left. This is not a movie enlivened by a large and colorful cast of characters who propel the plot, add emotional notes, or provide any kind of relief, comic or otherwise—without any context we are left just with a lot of action.

The lack of meaningful interactions with other characters leaves the film emotionally empty. Napoleon’s marshals demanding that their beloved emperor abdicate at Fontainebleau would have hit hard had the audience ever been told who these marshals were. Napoleon’s dramatic reunion with the Fifth Regiment during the Hundred Days might have stirred tears had the bond between Napoleon and his common soldiers been established earlier in the film. The Duke of Wellington’s speech before the Battle of Waterloo might have had real dramatic weight had the scene not doubled as Wellington’s very first appearance in the movie. Despite his “get a life” attitude, we find Scott not all that interested in the actual lives of this subjects.

If this were all simply a matter of a filmmaker disregarding history for the sake of a big-screen spectacle, that would at least be understandable. Unfortunately, “get a life” was not Scott’s only retort to his critics. Asked in another forum about the issues historians have with the movie, he responded, “Well, I have issues with historians. I ask: Excuse me mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.” Scott is not just saying that it is silly to care about telling a fact-based story, but also that no one really knows what the facts are. More to the point: that Ridley Scott’s interpretation of Napoleon is as valid as any historian’s.

So what does Ridley Scott have to say in Napoleon? Often the only life he seems interested in is Josephine’s sex life. It is not an exaggeration to say the entire film revolves around one memorable scene when Josephine seductively flashes Napoleon and captures him forever. Everything else is shoved to the side to focus on this one paramount fixation. This was clearly at the heart of Scott’s interest in making the movie in the first place. When the filmmaker announced the project, he released a statement. “Napoleon is a man I’ve always been fascinated by,” Scott says, “He came out of nowhere to rule everything — but all the while he was waging a romantic war with his adulterous wife Josephine. He conquered the world to try to win her love, and when he couldn’t, he conquered it to destroy her, and destroyed himself in the process.”

Scott’s thesis that Napoleon’s unattainable goal of controlling Josephine’s sex life animated his career is borne out by two key moments in the film. The first is when Napoleon abandons his army in Egypt in 1799, the second when he returns from exile on Elba in 1815. Both are unambiguously portrayed as the result of Napoleon’s learning that Josephine has been unfaithful. If true, these moments would have made for a powerful insight into Napoleon’s life as valid as any historian’s. But here’s the problem: This isn’t actually how it happened! Portraying Napoleon’s primary motivation in these two incidents as anger at his wife’s indiscretions is just another example of the film’s errors, mirepresentations, and outright fabrications we’ve long since given up cataloging.

So what does that leave us? Unfortunately, not a lot. As a movie, Napoleon suffers from a lifeless plot, wooden characters, and thin worldbuilding. As an exploration of the life and times of a great historical figure, Napoleon suffers from Scott’s scorn for history. What’s the point of making a movie about a historical figure when every single fact has been replaced by fiction?

Even granting the necessity of poetic license, we know that depictions of historical events in pop culture ground our historical imaginations. A survey by the American Historical Association shows that 66 percent of respondents said fictional film/TV were sources of their historical knowledge; so some people, maybe many people, will walk away from Napoleon believing that he fired canons at the pyramid, impregnated a prostitute to prove his virility, and slapped Josephine at their divorce hearing. So even as we accept that reality can never be fully depicted on screen, it’s not unreasonable to ask a filmmaker to still accept some responsibility for how he depicts the past.

One can still grind down some of history’s details to dust to make a larger lens of truth, but it’s important, at the very least, for that lens to say something true about the subject. Napoleon unfortunately does not do this. It tells us little about Napoleon the man, almost nothing about the world he lived in, and leaves the viewer with even less of an understanding of his choices and motivations. It’s sad that a historical subject as compelling as Napoleon has been paired with a director so uninterested in engaging with reality. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go get a life.