re: Napoleon

Won't be watching since it appears the movie was made with a typical Hollywood agenda.

Swore off Hollywood historical efforts, after The Kingdom of Heaven - also by Ridley Scott - a totally fictionalized account about the Crusaders against Saladin, in which Saladin was presented as all that is good with humankind and the Crusaders were depicted as racist trogs who should've stayed out the Holy Land and left that wonderful culture to its own devices.

With particularly extreme contempt and malice shown toward the Templars.

Curiously, Richard the Lion-hearted was given a minor role in the film even though Saladin respected his prowess above all others.

They obviously decided that showing the truth about his successes against Saladin didn't fit the narrative, since he was the Crusader who it is said at least achieved a stalemate against Saladin and would've eventually won against him had he not needed to leave the crusade to go back to his country to prevent his brother from taking over his reign.

Hear that they even made Oppenheimer into a sympathetic figure.

Anything good about Napoleon and his wars of vanity are in the minority.

His most notables were his incursion into Egypt with his successful Battle of the Pyramids and the look that the savants accompanying his expeditions gave the world of Egypt at the time with their amazing, detailed sketches they made of the area, especially within the Great Pyramid.

He even spent a night by himself in Cheops' burial chamber in which he experienced something so unusual - whether self-induced or not - in which he refused to go into detail about with his generals. Giving rise to much speculation over the centuries. Something even on his death bed he refused to tell, saying that "you wouldn't believe me anyway."

But according to Napoleon himself, it was his compilation and writing of the Civil Code that he admits he was most proud of, still used in Louisiana.

His most destructive action was against his own people.

He was singularly responsible for that small country, France, having lost over 600,000 of its best men in his vanity wars.

Did they really have that much left to even get involved in WWI and II.

While he was establishing his "empire" it surely allowed him to be absent conveniently from France during the Reign of Terror when the Jacobins Robespierre and Saint Just were sending all those innocent people to the guillotine.

Napoleon had been associated with the murderous Jacobins, so it was a prudent move for him to be away from it all while the blood was flowing. They executed about 17,000 people in a country that could least afford such a loss.

Until it was Robespierre's and Saint Just's turn to walk up those steps. It's said that Saint Just was in line right behind Robespierre and cried like a baby at what he was about to face.

Napoleon was even arrested for treason after the end of the Reign of Terror.

But apparently he had a charisma that just wouldn't quit, which few leaders have been able to boast of over the centuries.