The second you say "Well, were you there? No. Then shut up." As a response to your movie being awful and historically inaccurate, then you have lost the plot and need to stop immediately.
He made some good movies, but now he's spiraling hard. It's over.
https://www.cbr.com/ridley-scott-napoleon-historians-response/
Absolutely. His ego is huge and his output is shit.
shareI'm kinda shocked that so many directors like him and George Miller keep making these action-heavy productions well into their 80's. It kinda throws water into the face of my theory that directors generally get lazier and safer as they get older (look at how George Lucas made the Star Wars prequels which were the most lazily made, uncreative big-budget films I have seen that can't blame all their issues on studio meddling). Just think how exhausting that must be to have to figure out where to place extras for battle scenes and how to manage all the coverage from the various units.
Either that or he just has really great assistants who make the whole process really easy for him while he essentially rubber-stamps the creative decisions (think John Huston while "directing" ANNIE).
His recent films, though not exactly "good" in my opinion, are far better and livelier than what you'd think an 80+ year old would be interested in making.