To be fair, 300 was intentionally outrageous. The whole movie is meant to be mythical in the telling and the visuals, not historical. Not only because it was based on a comic book (graphic novel), but because it was told through the unreliable narrative eye of Dilios (the storyteller). You weren't watching the events occur, you were experiencing it through the heavily embellished retelling. His tale was intended to rally the Greek troops at the battle of Plataea, so he made the 300 Spartans like outnumbered gods, and the Persians larger-than-life monsters. That's also why Ephialtes the betrayer was depicted as a disfigured hunchback, a classic device of ancient epics. If you view the movie as a plot device of a tall tale told within the movie (meta), it all makes sense. None of it was real... even within the movie's reality. The look and style of the movie was a part of that device. Notice the brown and black hues and bright red blood? Ever see ancient Greek art (specifically vases)? That was the visual style, and Greek heroes in that art were often depicted with their bodies very visible.
At that period in time, a deformed infant would have been exposed to die. They didn't raise such children. The practice continued throughout the Roman Empire.
Correct. Like the mythology movies where there are monsters and giants and super strong men who can pick up an elephant. 300 was nothing more then a comic book super hero flick.
Pearl Harbor isn’t on the list because the main events depicted in the movie actually did happen and the historical inaccuracies were many but pretty small ones. It was the directors choices and writing that offended some people.
@@pmpowalisz You mean like the blatant, and unapologetic renditions of Japanese fighters firing at nurses, and other Pearl Harbor civilians? Even though HISTORICAL FACT has it that the Japanese did no such thing during Pearl Harbor?
Pearl Harbor is a terrific movie. It is a *fictional* story set against the backdrop of the entry of America into WWII. It is not, and was never presented as, a remake of Tora Tora Tora.
@@odysseusrex5908 And I would hope not. Because Tora, Tora, Tora was the vastly superior film. Whereas Pearl Harbor was a wannabe "love story," full of gross historical misrepresentations of both American, and Japanese, forces. But if I'm the only person capable of seeing that, then so be it.
EXACTLY. So many pathetic fanboys who swear the “oath of allegiance” to the rebel alliance (car stickers) as if it actually a real thing. F*#% the Disney Wars Force, Mando & your baby Grogu Yoda!! Lol
@@poopmaster9057 there is that very important word in there though, based. Based on a true story. As in the story has roots on stuff that actually happened.
@@memyself898 ah, yes I forgot about the word "based". I mean, I can tell you a story with those traits, then you could tell a story "like" mine "based" on the true story. At that point you could completely change the story to your liking.
ADRIAN LACKEY Mel Gibson actually used war crimes committed by the Nazis as the models for the atrocities of his fictional British Army. They are not at all historical.
Correct. It's astonishing that what you said even needs to be said. This whole video and the implications behind it of what makes a "great" movie is absurd and artistically degenerate.
Except conan is more historically accurate...also braveheart makes the same mistake as gladiator with the horses having saddles...the saddle is a 14th century Chinese invention, also Troy and Robin hood make my blood boil just as much as gladiator. But the true prince of turds when it comes to historical inaccuracy is Indiana Jones and the last crusade...over 1400 historical cockups and counting.
@@kennethbrynleyjohnsweet4252 Who cares if they had saddles? So what? It has zero effect on the movie. And the actors would be more comfortable. You expect hundreds of actors (some just low-paid extras) and highly paid stars to try to ride bare back on a horse and risk injury? Get real. This is a movie. Producing movies is hard. You don't make it needlessly harder for no reason.
Deeply deeply. It was basically a canadian rescue, not that I'm jingoist or try to take some personal pride for it, it was just such a blatant UNtelling of a fairly recent event.
The problem with "taking liberties" with a history-based drama -- especially one depicting famous people -- is that people confuse details of the drama with documented history. For example, most people probably think Richard III was "developmentally disabled" because Shakespeare said he was. However, "Bill S." was simply using that as a device to represent the personality of Richard III. Contemporaries of Richard III say he was a charming handsome and popular man.
@@robertdullnig3625 - Well, kudos to Shakespeare for tying his mythical ugliness to his character motivation: He can't be a hero so he must be a villain, and Lady Jane, the widow of his brother, calling him a toad, etc. It's quite a package.
Showing Richard III in a favourable light, when living in TUDOR Britain, would not have been a good "career move"........in fact he might have (literally) lost his head over it! However, it has to be said that Hollywood has always been "economical with the truth" as regards historical movies............some things been common to just about ANY Hollywood film depicting history. Example.............cannon balls, contary to Hollwood depictions.......do NOT explode! Nor did "US Cavalry" wear the same style uniform from, say, 1840 - 1900, so 180's "Indian Wars" uniforms are not general purpose for all periods use. As for U-571.........they might have least got the NATIONALITY right, even if nothing else.
@@Thurgosh_OG No one knowing that it's historically inaccurate or based on a comic.... I think most people get that movies are for entertainment, but most will have zero idea that something is mostly inaccurate/misleading. In fact something being in a movie or TV gives more credibility to it. For example the History Channel's "Ancient Aliens"
U-571 is just downright insulting to the veterans that were still alive at the time and should have been withdrawn and deleted to be honest. Braveheart is simply hilarious when find out the truth of William Wallace's life. Especially in his younger years when he was knocking about with his English mates in a warband in the North of England. English peasants were just as badly treated by the nobility as were the Scottish peasants. A fact that all people should fully understand before they get hostile across the borders in modern times.
@@bostonblackie9503 Yea, regardless of anything about Wallace, there was def ethnic hostility against Scots, particularly highlands. The clearances were only a few hundred yrs ago.
Don't even get me started on the history of the British Isles haha! Braveheart makes it seem like the Scots had always been oppressed by the English. I still like the movie, though.
Remember Mel Gibsons take on all this when questioned about the inaccuracies of, “Braveheart.” He said, “Remember Hollywood’s philosophy. Never let the truth get in the way of telling a good story.”
"The Life of Brian" is a historical film in a rare category of its own. It accurately portrays the fact that there were a lot of Messiah rumors floating around Judea in the reign of Caesar Augustus. However, only the story of Jesus of Nazareth has survived 2000 years.
Actually, the Bible itself tells about other messiah stories around at the time. Its never been a secret. But I agree about Life of Brian - for a film that sets out to be a comedy, it gets as much or more historically correct than many serious movies. Blessed are the Cheesemakers.
somehow we learn about Judaism and Christianity in nobody but it's never explicitly said that Christianity was just a particularly successful jewish cult or that Islam is a Mary Sue fanfic of abrahamic canon, life of brian kinda reminds you of that awkward gap
Eric Schmit Actually, I'm stunned at the number of people who do believe what they see in films. When I first started teaching Shakespeare, I couldn't understand why I was seeing the same wrong answers on so many exams. Then I watched "Shakespeare in Love." Sigh.
L. S. King Well, the Bush administration’s entire justification for “enhanced interrogation” was based on the TV show 24, so....yeah, we’re a nation of idiots.
Eric Schmit we also trust authority figures, believe everything our parents say, believe teachers and politicians are good people that only want the best for us, trust CEO's and big corporations and everything we see or read on the Internet. :)
@@JennetPreston I agree, I too am amazed when people use a film as the historical basis for their arguments. Shakespeare in Love is a comedy though; it is not meant to be taken as factual, apart from the dog bit, obviously. I love the film, 'though I take no lessons from it and would deny vigorously that Gwyneth made a convincing 'boy'. It does not belong on this list.
@Digger Gardi King Arthurs legend does not interlock with established historical facts. Boudicca's revolt does, or are you suggesting Nero and his general Agricola , are myths ?!?
I'm a history buff. So I can just about watch these films all the while knowing about their inaccuracies.but so many people watch these films and believe them to be totally accurate.i find that so depressing
But Gladiator is not even logically accurate. The idea that a heroic Roman general could be captured by a second rate slave trader and forced to fight for entertainment of the masses is ludicrous. In reality he would have beheaded his captor the moment they put a sword in his hands and walked away.
@@ALSmith-zz4yy so you’re gonna just ignore the character development throughout the movie? It’s a completely fictional movie. If you don’t start there, then what’s the point of watching any fiction? Fiction!
@@ALSmith-zz4yy oh, you mean the reluctant hero’s journey? He never took the mantle of the emperor. Turned it down. Gave up on life because his family was murdered & then sought revenge once he learned he could be face to face with the new emperor. The before he died, gave the power back to the senate. If you can’t follow that during the movie, just watch documentaries.
The British naval officer from HMS Bulldog, who led the raid, Sub-Lt David Balme, said of the film that it wouldn't have been made without American money so he was ok with it. What wasn't ok was the producers rejecting his request for there to be an afternote specifically identifying the mission and crew involved. They entered a huge ticking bomb, the scuttling charges set. U571 is the most egregious of these, because participants in the Bulldog raid were still alive, the USA was not even in the war and the huge efforts of Polish, then British personnel to seize and then decode the Enigma machines, an effort that resulted in the development of the modern computer by Alan Turing
What's worse is assuming Americans would reject the movie if it didn't ascribe success to American sailors. As an American and WWII history buff I would have embraced an accurate representation.
Yes, America WOULD have rejected U571 if it was historically accurate and depicted the real events of HMS Bulldog capturing U110s Enigma machine and its code books. When it came out, I was serving in the RAF in Incirlik with the USAF enforcing the northern o fly over Iraq, and for weeks, I had to listen USAF servicemen tell me in great detail the if it was not for the US Navy us Brits would have never have gotten an Enigma machine. Hollywood knows that the USA is the biggest market and they have to get bums on seats in American cinemas to make a profit and they won't pay to watch a load of Brits saving the day. It's all about money, and Hollywood wants to milk the cash cow that's the USA.
The first working copy of Enigma was delivered to the Allies by the Poles. It was also the Poles who deciphered the code of the first Enigma. They gave away the results of their work completely for free, providing the basis for Turing's research on subsequent versions of this code machine. For the curious - please read the biographies of Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski.
300 is based in the graphic novel by Frank Miller, it’s not supposed to be historically accurate. He even admitted while being interviewed about the movie.
People miss the obvious about 300. The fact that the entire movie is being told by the 1 spartan who left on his kings order to tell their story. What do you do when you retell a story of your dead battle brother's bravery against an invading enemy force? You embellish the details. This is why the immortals look like demons, why everything is hyper stylized, and just generally framed the way it is. He is rallying his countrymen to honor their dead heroes, because he was the best speaker among them, something Leonidas knew.
The problem is the same regime that ended the need for the use of ninjas also ended the use of firearms.. The Tokugawa banned all foreigners and all firearms
I remember watching The darkest hour in the cinema thinking; Could this train scene be any closer to the opposite of Churchill if it tried? Then again, I guess the cinema isn't the best place to get your history lessons
Very true,that was ridiculous. Churchill did rally the common people, he was out there after the Blitz,even when air raids were still in place, they didn't need to do that. I wish that they also showed Churchill's battles w the appeasers didn't disappear, George VI thought Chamberlain was a genius and the idiocy with the foreign secretary was true, Churchill had 2 wars to fight, idiots like Halifax who personally I would have had shot as a Nazi sympathizer along with the Duke of windsor ( who genuinely was a traitor).
I love how Argo turns a story about a Canadian hero, Ken Star, into some BS with Ben Affleck taking credit. You’d think Hollywood would honour Canada’s help in a better way. Imagine then giving it an Oscar.
@@rc59191 In the case of Frank Miller it's unambiguous. It's not even something he's ashamed of. World Trade Centre really shook him up. And later, splitting with his wife.
300 the movie is based on 300 the graphic novel by Frank Miller; which is a fictional depiction of the story of the actual 300,it’s not trying to be historically accurate.
"Pearl Harbor" from the early 2000's was a hard thing to watch for many Navy veterans. We kind of notice things like Spruance Class destroyers being bombed in the 1940's, decades before they even existed.
@AnotherWacko I don't think Pearl Harbor is a good back drop to a corny love story. It is painful. And Affleck's character moaning "over there fighting someone else's war", when in fact all U.S.A. citizens who fought in the Battle of Britain were volunteers because they wanted to fight the Nazis. They knew the threat.
We are reminded when doing war diorama's and soldiers hand painted, that if you enter them in juried shows it's quite likely (WW2 being the most popular subject) that you might have an attendee that actually WORE THE UNIFORM in combat. Be prepared..........to be torn another hole.
The weird aspect of Enemy at the Gates's sniper duel was that the true story it was based on was that of Simo Häyhä, the Finnish sniper from the Winter War who defended his nation against the invasion of Stalinist forces before the start of WWII. The Russians sent in a specialist sniper to hunt Häyhä, who wound up being lured into a trap and killed by the Finn.
It's embarrassing, coming from an American. The U-110 and the enigma was captured by British forces years before America seized U-505. U-571 has some interesting scenes, but its premise is ridiculous. We actually have our own military triumphs, but Hollywood almost never shows them these days (like our victory over Tripoli in the Barbary Wars).
I'm really surprised 2001's "Pearl Harbor" isn't prominently covered in this video. If ever a film ignored history and almost totally fictionalized everything but the basic fact that the Japanese attacked the US without warning, this one is it! It's shamefully disrespectful to the real participants and events (besides misinforming youngsters who might take it as gospel). Stay safe, everyone.
@@manchesterunitedno7 You would think they would have considered that many of the people who could be expected to want to see the movie would immediately spot the difference between 1980s and 1940s warships.
Ben Affleck’s character fighting in the “eagle” squadron, during the Battle of Britain, then shooting down an inordinate number of zeros, at Pearl Harbor, then flying a Mitchell bomber heading the Doolittle campaign thru Tokyo, yet managing to maintain the film’s love interest, was beyond nauseating, & a stupid insult, to the actual heroes who really fought in those events...
@Reluctant Human I am surprised by that comment, I think if you watch the film for what it is, pure entertainment, it is an excellent film, like Brave heart, I've never known anyone to refer to 300 on that way before, still. Each to their own I suppose.
The Polish had broken Enigma several years before the war. The Brits stole the code books before the USA even joined the war and the Poles help at Bletchley Heath in deciphering Enigma for the British. Quite different to the film.
yeah except for being given the plans and some working examples of computers the British had made the Americans had nothing to do with Enigma that I'm aware of
@@LordInter After the war Churchill told Bletchley Heath to "just give them what they want" - that was computer technology that the CIA wanted. The entire American computer industry started in Britain. You look at most of the stuff America "created" you'll find it's the patent laws that give them the edge. LASIK eye surgery was created by a Columbian, developed by a Russian and patented by the Americans... They take advantage of a lot of technicalities. That's why LASEK stopped development and other techniques were developed. The USA put a made in the USA sticker on it and priced development out of the market. Like many breakthroughs. In today's business climate the industrial revolution would never have happened. The pursuit of profit overrides the pursuit of development. That's why technology in particular has slowed in development. The patent holders refuse to allow development unless it's theirs, to protect their investment. This is why China advanced 50 years on 10 years. They don't protect patent or copyright. Japan did the same thing in the 1970's and advanced rapidly. By the way, this isn't an anti-American attack, it's just recognition that current restrictions actually restrain development, and the Americans are very aggressive at patenting/copyrighting and protecting patents and copyrights at the expense of future development. I'm sure others are too. I'm just not familiar with it.
@@LordInter It was a cooperative effort. The US built more and better bombes than the British, although they were based on Turing's work and designed with his direct input. if you aren't aware of these things that's because of your own ignorance, not the lack of American contributions. And of course, the basic design of the computer you're using to post these comments, as well as the OS it runs and the Internet you're posting them on, were invented by Americans, leaning very heavily on knowledge and funding from the American Apollo program that is still the only effort to succeed in putting people on another world. So much for American patent laws stifling innovation, eh?
@@brucetucker4847 oh the Americans designed the world wide Web did they? interesting theory you have there, and look at how you've written, you call me arrogant? jog on
The biggest gaffe with history in Gladiator comes at the very beginning when Commodus tries to have Maximus killed by the Praetorian Guard. The Roman Empire (emperors) period pre-dated European feudalism in structure as the Emperor serves with the cooperation of his generals, not the other way around. No emperor would ever think of trying to kill a widely popular general within their own camp, while on campaign. That emperor would have been immediately killed by the troops. Every single case of an emperor killing a general was through assassination (poisoning obviously) while the general was either traveling from his camp to Rome, or while the general was doing mundane tasks away from his camp. Emperors feared a popular general over anything else so they kept them close allies whenever possible. Also, the generals and Praetorian Guard conspired together a few times to kill an emperor. When I saw the movie and saw the scene where the Praetorian takes Maximus out for execution I just about fell out of my seat laughing as in such a case it would have been Commodus and his Praetorian Guard who would have wound up dead in real life with Maximus easily ascending to the role of Emperor with the support of his troops.
It was when the old emperor was telling his son that he wasn’t going to emperor because he was going to turn it into a democracy instead that I switched off in disgust.
Ridiculous comment. It's a MOVIE, not a historical documentary. The story is that Maximus gets hunted down and sold into slavery and his family murdered, and seeks revenge for himself and for all of Rome. That's the story! If you take away that event, you have no story. Who cares if in 'real life' that wouldn't have happened. It's a movie. It is NOT real life... Do you get it, Mr. Pompous?
@@intergalactic92 Why? Because that would "never" happen in real life? You missed out on a great story because of your close-minded psuedo-artistic arrogance.
Hidden Figures should be on this list, the women depicted in the movie played much less important roles in the space program than portrayed in the movie and they never made any claim of any kind of discrimination.
I mean it's based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. It's based on history but then through the prism of a comic book which takes a lot of artistic license.
How could you have missed "The Kingdom of Heaven," which used real historical characters in an invented story that completely ignored the real exciting epic of the Ibalin family, described by an Arab chronicler as "like kings" in the Holy Land.
@Furious Magpie I think when one uses real historical characters in real historical situations one can say the claim is made. Balian of Ibalin was of the highest nobility and likened to another king by Arab chronicles. He could not have married the Queen because he was already married to her step-mother and, in any case, she really adored Guy. Putting Guy in the costume of a Templar made no sense either, since the Knights Templar were monks with vows of poverty, chastity and celibacy who, in any case, lived together in barracks. One more small thing - the real Balian's nickname was "Balian the Hairy," who had body hair "like a pelt." It was a shame because the film was truly beautiful and the real story is quite as heroic, quite as film-worthy.
@@robertlehnert4148 Sorry, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Can you tell me the sources you consulted about the Crusades that led you to this conclusion?
I mean history fans generally like The Last Samurai. Sure the events aren’t 100% accurate or true, it is very authentic and has excellent production and set design.
I'm sorry, I must disagree. It wasn't authentic at all. It tried to paint the Samurai as in par with the Native Americans. Not even remotely similar. Samurai were the ruling class. A Samurai could take the head of a peasant for not bowing correctly, and be totally within his rights as their lord. Samurai were much closer to European knights. They revolted because they were losing power, not because of "honor" the catch all motivation for anything Asian. Also, as the video states, Americans would not have been sought to train Japanese in modernized warfare. Even in the 1920s, when the future commander at Iwo Jima, Tadamichi Kuribayashi, stated that the most prestigious posts after the military academy were in Europe. Going to the US, as he did, was a leftover assignment.
@@Rikalonius No, I don’t think the intention was to paint the Samurai like Native Americans. Obviously there are going to be parallels (The idea of the old vs the new), but that’s natural for a film dealing with this topic. I’m not gonna get into a debate about the history of Samurai. As I said it ISN’T accurate but as a historian and film buff I’d say it did an excellent job at showing the general vibe of the era while managing to balance being an entertaining film. It’s message is more about the cost of progress rather than trying to portray the Samurai as these super good guys. Edit: Plus, from the film and it’s scenes showing Katsumoto and his loss of influence over the Emperor and the scenes where the samurai are getting harassed in the streets, you can infer that the Samurai uprising is about the loss of status and power. It’s clever filmmaking on the writer’s part imo.
...no, it did not show the "general vibe of the era..." at all. Not only ist the story absolut bullshit and an insult to all knowing only a little bit about Japanese history of the second half of the 19 century. The way "the samurai" are depicted ist rediculus. The Satsuma-rebells did not lock or act like bushi of the middle-ages of the sengoku-jidai. They did not life like beeing in the year 1600. Many of them wearing modern european cloth and kind of uniforms, fighting with modern rifles and cannons in a modern way. There were outnumberd by the Imperial Army of ex-samurai and conscripts trained by the French. This was not a conflict "samurai vs the rest and the west", it was a conflict ex-samurai against ex-samurai about power and influenz in the new imperial Japan. The new Meiji-era Japan was ruled nearly exlusiv by ex-samurai and the nobility in politics, military and ecomomy...
@@heimdalshorn Again. I never said it was historically accurate. Just saying it’s a good film that does a good job showing the dilemma facing Japanese society and politics at the time.
The problem with it is in the opening description where it says the year. That combined with actual people who existed at that time makes it somewhat historical.
Throatwobbler Mangrove no I didn’t I know most the changers I’m saying they had to for the story. It don’t work for braveheat cause they were trying to tell a story where gladiator was a made up story with historical inspiration
@@throatwobblermangrove8510 isn't Gladiator some kind if an alternate universe take in the end of the five good emperors? Like, Rome returning to being a republic?
Right. Good example. How come they don't sneer about that movie? "That's not how Hitler really died, man." Really.... I never would have known if you hadn't told me, because the whole time, I felt like this movie was trying to accurately depict history. You mean, it wasn't? Hmm... maybe most of these other movies weren't either.
These movies don't even try to pretend they're accurate. It's kind of bad though when directors try to sell their fabrications as accurate and spread disinformation.
They used actual Irish soldiers as extras in Braveheart and they refused to do the scene where they fight alongside the British. So Gibson had to change the story so they'd act for him. Had the Irish switch sides during the battle.
Affleck screened Argo for a Canadian audience...I think it might have been at the Toronto film festival....the crowd booed long and loud when it was over. We're a pretty patriotic bunch when we're not given our due credit, especially when saving Americans.
You left out perhaps the worst example - “Heroes of Telemark“. It was based on the story of the commando raid that destroyed a laboratory that was producing “heavy water“ for the Nazi nuclear program in 1943. In the movie, the Raiders were shown as a mixed bag of British and American commandos. In reality, the actual commandos were all Norwegian. It was an incredible insult to the resourcefulness and bravery of the eight men who carried out the raid - who had to survive an entire winter in the summer arctic of central Norway before carrying out the raid.
It was not the worst example, do not be so ridiculous. It is only a film, and although I cannot really remember it I am sure Kirk Douglas was in it and played a Norwegian. The first attempt were British Paratroopers and Engineers, but the two gliders crashed in the mountains, killing most of them. The Germans tortured and executed the remaining wounded, so there were no survivors. They were to have met up with the 4-man Norwegian 'Grouse' team (later 'Swallow'), that had been inserted earlier by the British SOE to guide the paras/engineers to the target. After the winter the British dropped six Norwegian Commandoes to attack the heavy water plant, which they successfully did, lead by the 'Swallow' team who had over-wintered in Norway and come close to starvation. The British selected the target, trained and equipped the Norwegians and got them there. So Britain was involved. So was the US, as the factory was repaired and became operational again after the commando attack, and US bombers subsequently destroyed the factory with heavy saturation raids. France was also involved, as France had provided the underlying science and removed all the heavy water from the factory in anticipation of a German invasion of Norway. It is an interesting story. However, I personally am not too bothered by artistic licence if the film is good and realistic, even if historically inaccurate. Films portray events according to the desires of the film makers and the anticipated audience, and the number one desire is to make money, although Political Correctness is also a major driver these days. Some British MPs or a few Norwegians getting upset about some films does not affect the box office. The purpose of the, frankly dreadful, Churchill scene in the underground was to show a fake diversity standing up to Hitler. That was the intent of the film makers and actors. Propaganda for modern sensibilities is an equal driver to box office success now, so films will only get more inaccurate :) I think we the audience have to realise that film makers are not even remotely interested in historical accuracy, and we should not get too upset about it. I suspect the upcoming film tom Hanks film, 'Greyhound', will be totally inaccurate.
@@christopherdean1326 The first four commandos dropped into Norway in the fall, and had to spend the winter before the SOE could arrange a second attempt.
@@blowingfree6928 You're entitled to your opinion. I thought it was pretty awful. Most of the participants in the raid itself - all but one of whom were alive when the movie came out - savaged it.
The sad part is that a good percentage of the true stories ARE interesting enough to be in a film. I get it when the writers, directors, producers and stars (roughly ascending order or egos) think so highly of themselves that they MUST change history to entertain us, because sometimes they actually make some decisions that were fun. However when you look up the truth if the stories and others not even made into films yet, they’re often astounding the way they really happened. Crunching time periods doesn’t bother me as much, along with additional characters to depict life in the period, but I would like to know what it actually looked like to visit the situation if possible. Which brings me to the ancient, pre-recorded stuff. Now I thought there were several ridiculous things about 10,000BC as well, but be careful assuming (or at least the historians should be careful) assuming they know exactly what went down that long ago. I understand evidence is all they care about, but they make judgments based on evidence, and I made guesses decades ago based on logic that turned out more right than they had it. Yeah, I know others will doubt me and I have nothing published that proves it, but I predicted; -We would find many subspecies, related hominids and keep finding more. -That civilization starts randomly, dead ends, starts again and would far outpace some other human settlements or hunting grounds because of environment and luck. -That we would find many more earlier civilization evidence, such as the latest finds in Turkey, and I predicted that area and west, the Balkans, would be key to finding big changes in history. Look at the area... it’s a crossroads in so many ways. That means never, ever assume you know exactly when something like agriculture started, or when all humans stopped living like wild animals. Both directions would be untraceable, and that should be obvious. We weren’t there. Far too many scientists and “experts” can be intelligent and thorough with their methods, but the methods tend to restrict imagination, which is needed to picture the gaps and scenes built by evidence. It seems many of the “experts” are lousy at this, because they keep writing about each discovery as “nobody ever thought...” or “it was previously believed that...” Well speak for yourselves, because I had a lot of that right, simply by thinking about the way life usually works and what made sense.
Flintstones are suppose to take place in the future sort of like west world that is why they know what TV, Record players, Driven in restaurants and drive in movies are.
Historian here....and I love 300, and most other historians/archaeologists i know kinda love it as well. Yeah, much doesn't make sense, but the movie doesn't try to make sense. It isn't meant and doesn't try to be historically accurate. It is the story of Delios, with all the exaggerations, superstitions, make believe, prejudice and propaganda that you will need to keep in the back of your mind when reading all ancient stories and texts
300 is based on a graphic novel. Based on a mythical version of the Story of the 300 Spartans. It's not supposed to be true history anymore than Abe Lincoln vampire slayer is.
TheGrungy1 that was some great historical entertainment there. My master the Dark Lord of the South loved his portrayal in that movie Abe Lincoln Vampire Slayer. But they never get the eyes right.
You would be assuming wrong. Many historians praise some large scale productions. The best ones do not come from the US but even Hollywood can produce movies that are historically accurate enough to get praise, but they are very rare compared to other countries.
"Apollo 13" is one notable film that I've found historians actually tolerate. Even the actual people portrayed in the film don't seem to have any problems with the liberties that were taken at certain parts.
As a musician and classic rock and oldies fanatic, I must say I personally loved “That Thing You Do”, but then again Tom Hanks purposely went the extra mile to get the gear right, even though the story is fictional. Some gorgeous instruments and amps in that flick.
As a historian to be I can say you are only partialy correct. If films dont claim to be historical I just watch them as films and dont mind any inaccurate things. Only when a film claims to be historical but isnt i tend to hate them. For example I couldnt watch HBOs "Rome" beause it was o wrong in the first few minutes alone. Oh and by the way History is more than just the factual events from the past. Its much more about the lifestyle, culture and philosophy of the past. So I dont mind if afilm changes some dates if it gets these right. Although that loses much of its meaning in Modern History. I only work with medieval and Ancient History.
KONRAD Platt, I loved “Rome”. I knew just enough general things about the Romans, but not enough specific things to enjoy it. Plus I assumed HBO would take licenses with it.
Sometimes, you have to lie to get across a bigger truth. In "The King's Speech", it was implied that Prince Albert chose the name "George" because his given name was too German. The real reason was that (a) he was thinking of the precedent of his grandfather Edward VII who said that he didn't think ANY future king should take his father's name, but (b) he also wanted to show support to his mother that he was going to be a good king like dear old Dad George V. But to explain all that would have taken too much time and stopped the film completely. What was far more important was to establish that WWI was coming and now that he's king, Bertie was going to have to get ready to give the speech of his life----which you can actually hear on RUclips.
Excellent example of why a movie might take liberties now and then to serve the story. You, sir, have a great understanding of storytelling, unlike most of the people in this thread.
Another issue with Braveheart is Wallace's famous appeal to freedom to an army of peasants. In reality, such an appeal would have meant freedom for the Scottish nobility to oppress the Scottish peasants free from English interference.
Yeah that still seems like a very odd movie choice for him to direct. And boy have they buried that movie deep. Last time it even came up anywhere was when somebody mentioned that the person who threw the famous brick was actually a trans woman of color not some white guy.
10,000 BC was originally written as one of the original Stargate Trilogy films. It was supposed to be the Prequel to Stargate. The sequel was also re-written and it became Independence Day.
Sean B I’ve never heard that that’s incredible. Then again Roland Emmerich has it an ego the size of all outdoors. I mean making Stargate into a planned trilogy is as cocky as it gets. I mean luckily TV was able to come in and make it into a franchise but still.
1. Another inaccuracy with Braveheart was that William Wallace was well over 6 feet tall. Mel Gibson was what? 5 foot 7? 2. The biggest problem with historical movies is that there are grade school teachers who use them as teaching aids. I don't care how accurate they are, but Hollywood films should not be used to to teach school kids. I told my daughter's teacher that when she wanted to show Schindler's List to her 7th grade class. I told her she was being lazy and she should instead OPEN A HOSTORY BOOK AND TEACH THE KIDS HERSELF.
@@caiawlodarski5339 Interesting.... so you're saying the movie is more accurate but is terrible. Perhaps there's a lesson there about storytelling vs historical 'accuracy.' Great story comes first. Always.
@@kaihiggins725 Hi. so you'd recommend I watch it? I like historical settings, but so often jarring inaccuracies spoil the enjoyment. ps apart from my brother, you are the only Kai I've come across.
@@madcyclist58 deffo. They even have the accuracy of axes and mases getting used rather than the myth of a sword (swords did nothing to chainmail). Obviously it isn't 100% however these inaccuracies are small like bits of the armour and castle but apart from that nothing to complain about.
U-571 absolutely sent me over the edge. I was so insulted by that film. 300 gets a pass cos it's based off the comic which takes a much more fantastical approach to the proceedings.
It's a shame that our historical heroes usually didn't have the moral character or identifiable life struggles that these movies depict. Oh well, we can watch, enjoy, and dream. I don't go into these movies with the mindset of perfect historical accuracy anyway. I always insert the word 'loosely' in front of based myself. I think you just have to enjoy these films for what they are, not what they aren't.
2 films on the list are Americans stealing the heroics of others. U571 steals the heroics of the British and Argo steals the heroics of the Canadians. Good on ya mate.
Yes, the enigma provoked many British jokes about American inaccuracies ‘did they think they or invented everything? Is this what they call ‘ The American Dream, or just American delusion?
I think 10,000 BC can be seen as an alternate history movie where survivors from Atlantis established the cities and technologies that wouldn’t be seen for thousands of years later.
Colin Field: I'm guessing they needed a Hollywood A-lister on board in order to greenlight the production, and Matthew McConaughey can't do an English accent. No slight against the Royal Navy intended.
@@jlewisda There's plenty of big name British A-list actors who work in Hollywood. That wasn't the reason why. They just wanted to Americanise a WW2 action film because Hollywood is lazy and thought Americans wouldn't go and see it otherwise (which is nonsense btw).
The objective of a lot these movies isn't necessarily historical accuracy. It's entertainment, and for that I enjoy them. What's annoying is when things air on a network like discovery or the history channel, but have very little basis in actual history.
Movies are entertainment, not an encyclopedia. When a movie claims to be historically accurate and isn't, it's not good, I agree. But if in a movie like Braveheart they didn't wear kilts and face paint, you would be struggling to figure out who is who on the battlefield if you're not familiar with the history. That's why main characters don't wear helmets in battle scenes. So you can easily find them.
Even Encyclopedias are not entirely accurate. Many are factual accounts that have been corrected elsewhere but never included in revised versions of them. Many them were less accurate than earlier ones because persons and events important in earlier accounts were dropped out by the editors because they did not serve the purposes of the editor.
There are a thousand way you can make character distinguishable without dressing them up like anachronistic clowns begging to die. Just look at "Outlaw king". Same period and they did WAY BETTER.
'Historically accurate' is a phrase you rarely see connected with Hollywood to mean something good. It really pisses me off as a history buff to see how Americans tend to love to place themselves or their country (men) on a pedestal of 'righteousness' or paint themselves as a 'hero' in every historical scenario despite reality saying otherwise. Take WW2 for example, Hollywood likes to have the US take credit for things they didn't do and have others be blamed for atrocities committed by the US.
As a Canadian, I am utterly annoyed by the fact that the Americans turned up to both World Wars years late after everyone else, my Canadian uncles included, but who basically took credit for winning. If the rest of us hadn’t turned up at the start, there wouldn’t have been an opportunity for the Americans to make those claims. Just sayin’.
I always look at the 300 as a film or Delios (the survivor) telling his warrior tale, rather than historical fact. Truths get embellished and imaginations run wild. Like when someone come back bloodied and brused from a pub brawl, and says "oh yeah I was surrounded by 3 ex soldiers and I banged em out" when in reality the guy just got smacked about by 1 person.
Braveheart: when they did the Battle of Stirling Bridge I did not even know it was that battle, since, you know, there was no actual bridge in the scene. I did know that the elementary school aged Princess Isabelle did not cheat with Wallace, who was not the father of Edward III. Gladiator: I spent the last several minutes muttering: "This is wrong, Commodus lived for YEARS after this time period!"
Not to mention that fighting in the arena was seen as utterly shameful, and nothing the aristocracy - and certainly not the Emperor - would ever willingly do.
Both the 1956 live-action film "Anastasia" (which won Ingrid Bergman) an Oscar as well as the 1997 film try to imply that MAYBE the historical Princess Anastasia survived the assassination of the other Romanovs. No, she didn't, and he body has been accounted for. Keeping that in mind, both movies are fairly enjoyable.
Agreed! Apocalypto needs to be on the list. Not only does Gibson bring the Conquistadors in way earlier than they originally showed up, but he also makes the characters appear as savages and mixes the Maya sacrifices with the sacrifices that the Aztecs carried out! Those are two different civilizations people!
@@franciscodanconia45 The Passion was very inaccurate. The lingua franca of that day was Greek not Latin yet it is not spoken at all nor even shown in the sign over the cross. Btw, the film's Latin is horribly mispronounced. Mary's dress is wrong, her encounter with Pilate's wife never took place. The thief on the cross did not have his eyes plucked out by the crows. Jesus did not get choked half to death on the way to Caiafas' house, etc., etc., etc.
John Gurlides I’m no scholar, I’m just going by what the critics said at the time. Plus, when someone goes to the trouble to have the characters speak in Aramaic, that deserves some credit.
One of the British sailors,who took part in the operation to recover an Enigma machine was Colin Grazier,who was from my local town of Tamworth in the UK. There is a sculpture consisting of 3 anchors dedicated in the town centre to him and the others who lost their lives in that op.
I let '300' off as I heard that it was an adaption of a graphic novel that wasn't pretending to be historically accurate, but was always just going for epic artistic imagery, so all the corresponding stylisation of the movie was a dead giveaway to a new viewer that it was never meant to be taken seriously, but just meant to look awesome.
Would these movies have been better or worse if they had been historically accurate?
My thought exactly.
accuracy would have greatly impacted these films, removing the drama that sells tickets would have set them up for failure
A photograph is always more stunning than a painting.
100% better
yes
"Japan hadn't seen ninjas in centuries"
That just means the ninjas perfected their hiding skills.
You might have a point there ... lol ... everything else in this video is true though.
All ninja was samurai, not all samurai where ninja. Witch is basically just a spy.
that comment is just sad
well done Ninjas,
well done
Yes, ninjas were just spies. Almost everything we "know" about ninjas was made up.
To be fair, 300 was intentionally outrageous. The whole movie is meant to be mythical in the telling and the visuals, not historical. Not only because it was based on a comic book (graphic novel), but because it was told through the unreliable narrative eye of Dilios (the storyteller). You weren't watching the events occur, you were experiencing it through the heavily embellished retelling. His tale was intended to rally the Greek troops at the battle of Plataea, so he made the 300 Spartans like outnumbered gods, and the Persians larger-than-life monsters. That's also why Ephialtes the betrayer was depicted as a disfigured hunchback, a classic device of ancient epics. If you view the movie as a plot device of a tall tale told within the movie (meta), it all makes sense. None of it was real... even within the movie's reality. The look and style of the movie was a part of that device. Notice the brown and black hues and bright red blood? Ever see ancient Greek art (specifically vases)? That was the visual style, and Greek heroes in that art were often depicted with their bodies very visible.
At that period in time, a deformed infant would have been exposed to die. They didn't raise such children. The practice continued throughout the Roman Empire.
The 300 standing against imminent death means nothing cuz some rich spartans had slaves. NT
Exactly right. 300 should not even be judged as an historical film. It's a comic book.
Correct. Like the mythology movies where there are monsters and giants and super strong men who can pick up an elephant. 300 was nothing more then a comic book super hero flick.
@@jimgeorge3273 I agree it is a comic book. I'm pretty sure I saw an ogre in the Persian army.
"Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" has divided many historians as to the extent of its historical accuracy.
I'm offended that the monstrosity known as "Pearl Harbor" isn't on this list.
I just KNEW that piece of rat excrement would bo on here.
Pearl Harbor isn’t on the list because the main events depicted in the movie actually did happen and the historical inaccuracies were many but pretty small ones. It was the directors choices and writing that offended some people.
@@pmpowalisz You mean like the blatant, and unapologetic renditions of Japanese fighters firing at nurses, and other Pearl Harbor civilians? Even though HISTORICAL FACT has it that the Japanese did no such thing during Pearl Harbor?
Pearl Harbor is a terrific movie. It is a *fictional* story set against the backdrop of the entry of America into WWII. It is not, and was never presented as, a remake of Tora Tora Tora.
@@odysseusrex5908 And I would hope not.
Because Tora, Tora, Tora was the vastly superior film. Whereas Pearl Harbor was a wannabe "love story," full of gross historical misrepresentations of both American, and Japanese, forces.
But if I'm the only person capable of seeing that, then so be it.
At least we have the documentary called "Star Wars."
😂🤣🤣☠️
You mean rebel propaganda?
EXACTLY. So many pathetic fanboys who swear the “oath of allegiance” to the rebel alliance (car stickers) as if it actually a real thing. F*#% the Disney Wars Force, Mando & your baby Grogu Yoda!! Lol
War is wrong
@@GoldenAgeSk8Video woah woah woah hate Disney all you want. Don't hate Baby Yoda
"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" is a very historically accurate depreciation of multiple time periods.
True, true Socrates digs San Demas High
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON DUDES!
@@benharrison5816 Possibly Lincoln's finest moment.
I doubt if Mr. The Kid was as nice a guy as they made him out to be.
@@YABBAHEY1
The sad part is how many people think that “based on a true story” means completely true.
A story is a story fiction or non, so when they say true story it means there is a plot a setting and characters. A true story.
@@poopmaster9057 there is that very important word in there though, based. Based on a true story. As in the story has roots on stuff that actually happened.
true i know people who quote from J.F.K as to why there was a conspricy to kill jfk
@@memyself898 ah, yes I forgot about the word "based". I mean, I can tell you a story with those traits, then you could tell a story "like" mine "based" on the true story. At that point you could completely change the story to your liking.
@@poopmaster9057 exactly. It's all just entertainment.
"The Patriot" should be on this list.
My favorite historical movie is "Blazing Saddles".
"Where are all the white women at?"
I clicked on this assuming The Patriot would be on it.
Phil my favorite science show is Young Frankenstein😀
ADRIAN LACKEY The British Army behaves like the historical World War II Nazis.
ADRIAN LACKEY Mel Gibson actually used war crimes committed by the Nazis as the models for the atrocities of his fictional British Army. They are not at all historical.
I think that anyone watching "10,000 BC" would regard it as from the same genre as "Conan the Barbarian".
Correct. It's astonishing that what you said even needs to be said. This whole video and the implications behind it of what makes a "great" movie is absurd and artistically degenerate.
Except conan is more historically accurate...also braveheart makes the same mistake as gladiator with the horses having saddles...the saddle is a 14th century Chinese invention, also Troy and Robin hood make my blood boil just as much as gladiator. But the true prince of turds when it comes to historical inaccuracy is Indiana Jones and the last crusade...over 1400 historical cockups and counting.
@@kennethbrynleyjohnsweet4252 Who cares if they had saddles? So what? It has zero effect on the movie. And the actors would be more comfortable. You expect hundreds of actors (some just low-paid extras) and highly paid stars to try to ride bare back on a horse and risk injury? Get real. This is a movie. Producing movies is hard. You don't make it needlessly harder for no reason.
What? Conan the Barbarian isn't real?
Don't you DARE insult Conan the Barbarian like that!!! Maybe Kull the Conqueror...
Re: 300
Most of us know not to expect historical accuracy from a movie based on a comic book...
I can accept the historical inaccuracy, but why was the cinematography so horrible? The colours were muddy and dark. It was a mess.
@@shaunpcoleman that is what the rest of us loved about it. The colour palet was brilliant.
@@shaunpcoleman it's a love it or hate it, nothing inbetween kind of movie
300 is literally a character in the movie telling the story to other soldiers to motivate them. There is zero attempt at realism
motivate them to do what?became fascists?
@@wwanca3771 Beat the Persians
As a Canadian who remembers what happened in Iran that year .. Argo is deeply offensive.
Deeply deeply. It was basically a canadian rescue, not that I'm jingoist or try to take some personal pride for it, it was just such a blatant UNtelling of a fairly recent event.
Amen.
Agreed..
President Jimmy Carter, among others, agrees with your assessment of this fiction.
The problem with "taking liberties" with a history-based drama -- especially one depicting famous people -- is that people confuse details of the drama with documented history. For example, most people probably think Richard III was "developmentally disabled" because Shakespeare said he was. However, "Bill S." was simply using that as a device to represent the personality of Richard III. Contemporaries of Richard III say he was a charming handsome and popular man.
It goes a bit deeper than that. Representing Richard in that way was a common Tudor propaganda tactic, going back to at least Sir Thomas More.
@@robertdullnig3625 - Well, kudos to Shakespeare for tying his mythical ugliness to his character motivation: He can't be a hero so he must be a villain, and Lady Jane, the widow of his brother, calling him a toad, etc. It's quite a package.
Showing Richard III in a favourable light, when living in TUDOR Britain, would not have been a good "career move"........in fact he might have (literally) lost his head over it!
However, it has to be said that Hollywood has always been "economical with the truth" as regards historical movies............some things been common to just about ANY Hollywood film depicting history.
Example.............cannon balls, contary to Hollwood depictions.......do NOT explode! Nor did "US Cavalry" wear the same style uniform from, say, 1840 - 1900, so 180's "Indian Wars" uniforms are not general purpose for all periods use.
As for U-571.........they might have least got the NATIONALITY right, even if nothing else.
It was not total propaganda. He did have a crooked back.
@@brontewcat He had scoliosis but it wasn't visible when he was dressed in normal clothing or armour. Shakespeare did a number on him.
Not to defend 300, but its adapted from a Frank Miller comic book. Blame the comic for its lack of facts. Not the movie.
Agreed!
It's a good movie too. History buffs need to understand that it's for entertainment not to teach kids the history of Spartans.
The problem is no one knowing that when they watch it.
@@oolong2 no one knowing it's historically inaccurate or now one knowing it's just for entertainment?
@@Thurgosh_OG No one knowing that it's historically inaccurate or based on a comic.... I think most people get that movies are for entertainment, but most will have zero idea that something is mostly inaccurate/misleading. In fact something being in a movie or TV gives more credibility to it. For example the History Channel's "Ancient Aliens"
U-571 is just downright insulting to the veterans that were still alive at the time and should have been withdrawn and deleted to be honest. Braveheart is simply hilarious when find out the truth of William Wallace's life. Especially in his younger years when he was knocking about with his English mates in a warband in the North of England. English peasants were just as badly treated by the nobility as were the Scottish peasants. A fact that all people should fully understand before they get hostile across the borders in modern times.
Did you have your surname band?
@@bostonblackie9503 Yea, regardless of anything about Wallace, there was def ethnic hostility against Scots, particularly highlands. The clearances were only a few hundred yrs ago.
Don't even get me started on the history of the British Isles haha! Braveheart makes it seem like the Scots had always been oppressed by the English. I still like the movie, though.
It gave Mel Gibson the chance to do a bit of Brit bashing - he had a chip on his shoulder for sure.
I liked the movie. Not historically accurate but the way the crew worked was accurate.
There is a statue of William Wallace in Aberdeen, and he is wearing what he would have worn into battle - helmet, chainmail, etc.
The statue in Stirling looks like Mel Gibson.
Who knew knights of the time wore armor? Why where protect?
@@4evaavfc I think it was based on Mel Gibson
Taken from the Mel Gibson documentary?
So basically what your average European warrior at the time would have worn.
Remember Mel Gibsons take on all this when questioned about the inaccuracies of, “Braveheart.” He said, “Remember Hollywood’s philosophy. Never let the truth get in the way of telling a good story.”
Or an anti English one !
@Gazza Boo I came to say this
@Gazza Boo
But is the real story true. The problem with William Wallace is that facts are not facts they are assumptions.
@@bighands69 he was a criminal. It would have basically been a film of a highlander and outlaw. Bot really badass
@@kaihiggins725
Who was a criminal?
Wallace was a Clan leader so exactly what law was he a criminal under?
"The Life of Brian" is a historical film in a rare category of its own. It accurately portrays the fact that there were a lot of Messiah rumors floating around Judea in the reign of Caesar Augustus. However, only the story of Jesus of Nazareth has survived 2000 years.
Actually, the Bible itself tells about other messiah stories around at the time. Its never been a secret. But I agree about Life of Brian - for a film that sets out to be a comedy, it gets as much or more historically correct than many serious movies.
Blessed are the Cheesemakers.
@@mikem9001 Fact can be stranger than fiction, or in this case, funnier...
What did the Romans ever give us?
@@miguelservetus9534 Concrete
somehow we learn about Judaism and Christianity in nobody but it's never explicitly said that Christianity was just a particularly successful jewish cult or that Islam is a Mary Sue fanfic of abrahamic canon, life of brian kinda reminds you of that awkward gap
Japan hadn't "SEEN" Ninjas in centuries.... You don't see Ninjas, but doesn't mean they werent there....
THE fact that you CAN’T see them is proof that they ARE there
Lol this comment wins YT today. Thank you 😂🤣😂
Lol. Very funny point.
And right now, the high school me that wrote a four-page report on the origins and history of ninjas is crying
Lack of evidence is not evidene of lack.
Was hoping "The patriot" would be on this list :(
Not important enough !!!
Anyone who goes to a movie in America expecting historical accuracy out of Hollywood is probably stupid enough to believe what they see in the movie.
Eric Schmit Actually, I'm stunned at the number of people who do believe what they see in films. When I first started teaching Shakespeare, I couldn't understand why I was seeing the same wrong answers on so many exams. Then I watched "Shakespeare in Love." Sigh.
L. S. King Well, the Bush administration’s entire justification for “enhanced interrogation” was based on the TV show 24, so....yeah, we’re a nation of idiots.
Aw come on man we know Japanese actually speak Japanese in Japan not English as in some Godzilla movies.
Eric Schmit we also trust authority figures, believe everything our parents say, believe teachers and politicians are good people that only want the best for us, trust CEO's and big corporations and everything we see or read on the Internet. :)
@@JennetPreston I agree, I too am amazed when people use a film as the historical basis for their arguments. Shakespeare in Love is a comedy though; it is not meant to be taken as factual, apart from the dog bit, obviously. I love the film, 'though I take no lessons from it and would deny vigorously that Gwyneth made a convincing 'boy'. It does not belong on this list.
I think most of these 'historical' movies should be preceded by the disclaimer, "Any similarities with what actually happened is unintentional".
@Digger Gardi Roman history? Most of the history of the Late Republic and the Empire was written near contemporaneously.
Or how about just letting people watching the film and judge it for them self.
@Digger Gardi its a fair certainty she did! Nero sent his top general to put down her rebellion !!!! Dont tell me he didn't exist !!!
@Digger Gardi King Arthurs legend does not interlock with established historical facts. Boudicca's revolt does, or are you suggesting Nero and his general Agricola , are myths ?!?
@Digger Gardi id be very surprised if she didn't! Historians have never disputed her existence in the way they have Robin Hood.or King Arthur !!
I'm a history buff. So I can just about watch these films all the while knowing about their inaccuracies.but so many people watch these films and believe them to be totally accurate.i find that so depressing
Love when Gladiator gets out on these lists. It never claims to be historically accurate or to be based on true events.
But Gladiator is not even logically accurate. The idea that a heroic Roman general could be captured by a second rate slave trader and forced to fight for entertainment of the masses is ludicrous. In reality he would have beheaded his captor the moment they put a sword in his hands and walked away.
@@ALSmith-zz4yy so you’re gonna just ignore the character development throughout the movie? It’s a completely fictional movie. If you don’t start there, then what’s the point of watching any fiction?
Fiction!
You could say that about 10,000 b.c.. It never claimed to be a documentary. It was a bad movie however.
@@santinodewreede3955 What character development? At the end the of the movie he becomes Emperor which he was promoted to in the second scene.
@@ALSmith-zz4yy oh, you mean the reluctant hero’s journey? He never took the mantle of the emperor. Turned it down. Gave up on life because his family was murdered & then sought revenge once he learned he could be face to face with the new emperor. The before he died, gave the power back to the senate. If you can’t follow that during the movie, just watch documentaries.
The British naval officer from HMS Bulldog, who led the raid, Sub-Lt David Balme, said of the film that it wouldn't have been made without American money so he was ok with it. What wasn't ok was the producers rejecting his request for there to be an afternote specifically identifying the mission and crew involved. They entered a huge ticking bomb, the scuttling charges set.
U571 is the most egregious of these, because participants in the Bulldog raid were still alive, the USA was not even in the war and the huge efforts of Polish, then British personnel to seize and then decode the Enigma machines, an effort that resulted in the development of the modern computer by Alan Turing
That is anything for a dollar Hollyweird for you.
What's worse is assuming Americans would reject the movie if it didn't ascribe success to American sailors.
As an American and WWII history buff I would have embraced an accurate representation.
Yes, America WOULD have rejected U571 if it was historically accurate and depicted the real events of HMS Bulldog capturing U110s Enigma machine and its code books. When it came out, I was serving in the RAF in Incirlik with the USAF enforcing the northern o fly over Iraq, and for weeks, I had to listen USAF servicemen tell me in great detail the if it was not for the US Navy us Brits would have never have gotten an Enigma machine. Hollywood knows that the USA is the biggest market and they have to get bums on seats in American cinemas to make a profit and they won't pay to watch a load of Brits saving the day. It's all about money, and Hollywood wants to milk the cash cow that's the USA.
The first working copy of Enigma was delivered to the Allies by the Poles. It was also the Poles who deciphered the code of the first Enigma. They gave away the results of their work completely for free, providing the basis for Turing's research on subsequent versions of this code machine. For the curious - please read the biographies of Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski.
300 is based in the graphic novel by Frank Miller, it’s not supposed to be historically accurate. He even admitted while being interviewed about the movie.
People are generally stupid.
@@roshawngreene7069 including this entire channel.
It's a faithful adaptation of a graphic novel that was inspired by an earlier movie that was inspired by historical events.
@@wtk6069 It’s also a Sin City prequel. Leonidas is Dwight's ancestor, the ugly dwarf dude is the ancestor of the Roark clan
People miss the obvious about 300. The fact that the entire movie is being told by the 1 spartan who left on his kings order to tell their story.
What do you do when you retell a story of your dead battle brother's bravery against an invading enemy force? You embellish the details.
This is why the immortals look like demons, why everything is hyper stylized, and just generally framed the way it is. He is rallying his countrymen to honor their dead heroes, because he was the best speaker among them, something Leonidas knew.
I think Mel Gibson just wanted to reason to wear makeup and kilt. Lol
And have King Longshanks throw a sissy out of a 5th floor window to his death...
“...ooowwwww, my NIPPLES. They hurt when I TWIST them...”
Who can blame him?
Being Scottish, i consider "that movie" an insult to our history and of the people involved. So many inaccuracies to count.
Mad Melvyn does like his dress up.
"Japan hadn't seen ninjas in Centuries"- so they did there Job very well...
The problem is the same regime that ended the need for the use of ninjas also ended the use of firearms..
The Tokugawa banned all foreigners and all firearms
I remember watching The darkest hour in the cinema thinking; Could this train scene be any closer to the opposite of Churchill if it tried? Then again, I guess the cinema isn't the best place to get your history lessons
I was enjoying it up until then, but it became ridiculous at that point.
Leave out the train scene and the importance of the whiny secretary and the film is good.
Too many people learn their history from hollywood! Dangerous!
Very true,that was ridiculous. Churchill did rally the common people, he was out there after the Blitz,even when air raids were still in place, they didn't need to do that. I wish that they also showed Churchill's battles w the appeasers didn't disappear, George VI thought Chamberlain was a genius and the idiocy with the foreign secretary was true, Churchill had 2 wars to fight, idiots like Halifax who personally I would have had shot as a Nazi sympathizer along with the Duke of windsor ( who genuinely was a traitor).
Just imagine Churchill chatting in a train! Mind you its a miracle.the passengers weren't ethnic minorities !!!
Anyone who watched these movies for a history lesson should go back to school. Hollyweird rarely, if ever, get "history" correct.
“Hollyweird” 🤦🏻♀️ wow
@@ieatgremlins I had the same reaction. 🙄
@@ieatgremlins Yeah, Hollyweird lol. Those people definitely lack morals.
Schools very rarely get it right either. Or that’s what I’m learning the older I get. Lol
I feel that Gary Oldman should win the Oscar for every movie he’s in! From Drexel the pimp(True Romance) to Jim Gordon
I'm surprised by the omission of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
what that was 100% accurate
Same with the life of Brian
No historian could possibly hate that film.
“Where’d you get the coconuts?”
Yea ...everyone knows the holy hand grenade of Antioch. Count three. Two being to few unless you proceed onto three.
I liked the ad for Monty Python, the Life of Brian, "the movie that make Ben-Hur looks like a documentary"
I love how Argo turns a story about a Canadian hero, Ken Star, into some BS with Ben Affleck taking credit. You’d think Hollywood would honour Canada’s help in a better way. Imagine then giving it an Oscar.
Yeah that pissed me off. I couldn't get past that and just hated it.
300 is in the same category as Crouching Tiger. Folklore movie.
Except with far more racist undertones.
@@telquel7843 found the left wing moron who finds racism in everything.
@@rc59191 In the case of Frank Miller it's unambiguous. It's not even something he's ashamed of.
World Trade Centre really shook him up. And later, splitting with his wife.
300 the movie is based on 300 the graphic novel by Frank Miller; which is a fictional depiction of the story of the actual 300,it’s not trying to be historically accurate.
AW 525 I agree... I meant that the movie adaptation is more folklore than truth
"Pearl Harbor" from the early 2000's was a hard thing to watch for many Navy veterans. We kind of notice things like Spruance Class destroyers being bombed in the 1940's, decades before they even existed.
@AnotherWacko I don't think Pearl Harbor is a good back drop to a corny love story. It is painful. And Affleck's character moaning "over there fighting someone else's war", when in fact all U.S.A. citizens who fought in the Battle of Britain were volunteers because they wanted to fight the Nazis. They knew the threat.
They should have kept the ships and sunk the movie instead.
There were no P-40 pilots in the Doolittle raids.
Or the cross deck carrier they use at the end.
We are reminded when doing war diorama's and soldiers hand painted, that if you enter them in juried shows it's quite likely (WW2 being the most popular subject) that you might have an attendee that actually WORE THE UNIFORM in combat. Be prepared..........to be torn another hole.
The weird aspect of Enemy at the Gates's sniper duel was that the true story it was based on was that of Simo Häyhä, the Finnish sniper from the Winter War who defended his nation against the invasion of Stalinist forces before the start of WWII. The Russians sent in a specialist sniper to hunt Häyhä, who wound up being lured into a trap and killed by the Finn.
"Ninjas make everything better"
Truer words have never been spoken
Sir William Wallace was executed in 1305. Edward III was born in 1312. I'm pretty damn sure that Wallace wasn't the father.
Of course he wasn't. If he had been , he would have been very upset that his son gave the Scots a damned good thrashing at Halidon Hill
Longshanks is Edward the 1st. 1239-1307. Edward the II was to be a hideous king.
@@steveosullivan5262 he was useless. And he paid for it
Apollo Creed died in 1986, Adonis Creed's timeline makes him born approximately in 1988.
Who cares?
Ya know, Smokey and the Bandit is a true story.
I think, "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry" was more real...
🤗🤗🤗
A common theme seems to be giving Americans the credit for something someone else did.
It's embarrassing, coming from an American. The U-110 and the enigma was captured by British forces years before America seized U-505. U-571 has some interesting scenes, but its premise is ridiculous. We actually have our own military triumphs, but Hollywood almost never shows them these days (like our victory over Tripoli in the Barbary Wars).
Don't you know the Americans have won every battle since Marathon and invented everything since the wheel?!?
The current trend these days more & more is for China to do the same, i have noticed.
Yeah you're right. There were a lot of American heroes in Gladiator and Enemy at the Gates.
@@danm5911 another irony free American! You Yanks have no self awareness do you ?!?
I'm really surprised 2001's "Pearl Harbor" isn't prominently covered in this video. If ever a film ignored history and almost totally fictionalized everything but the basic fact that the Japanese attacked the US without warning, this one is it! It's shamefully disrespectful to the real participants and events (besides misinforming youngsters who might take it as gospel). Stay safe, everyone.
Should I mention another goof in that movie? During the bombing, you can clearly see modern warships lining up on the harbor.
@@manchesterunitedno7 You would think they would have considered that many of the people who could be expected to want to see the movie would immediately spot the difference between 1980s and 1940s warships.
@@ronaldalanperry4875 Yet, I did. A lot of moviegoers did.
They seem to want to put beloved films on the list.
Ben Affleck’s character fighting in the “eagle” squadron, during the Battle of Britain, then shooting down an inordinate number of zeros, at Pearl Harbor, then flying a Mitchell bomber heading the Doolittle campaign thru Tokyo, yet managing to maintain the film’s love interest, was beyond nauseating, & a stupid insult, to the actual heroes who really fought in those events...
"based on a true story" = we didn't have to pay writers for coming up with some of the names, and that's pretty much it
300 is not suppose to be historical, it's how the people are imagining the story told by Dilios. He's the narrator from the beginning.
I concur!
@@blackbee3085 so do i
Its based on a comic book isn't it?
@@memyself898 The film version is yes, you beat me to it.. 😀
@Reluctant Human I am surprised by that comment, I think if you watch the film for what it is, pure entertainment, it is an excellent film, like Brave heart, I've never known anyone to refer to 300 on that way before, still. Each to their own I suppose.
I thought 300 was based off a Frank Miller graphic novel, rather than the historical battle Thermopylae.
So any people miss the da t that it not supposed to be anymore than vaguely historical
It was.
The Polish had broken Enigma several years before the war. The Brits stole the code books before the USA even joined the war and the Poles help at Bletchley Heath in deciphering Enigma for the British. Quite different to the film.
yeah except for being given the plans and some working examples of computers the British had made the Americans had nothing to do with Enigma that I'm aware of
@@LordInter After the war Churchill told Bletchley Heath to "just give them what they want" - that was computer technology that the CIA wanted. The entire American computer industry started in Britain.
You look at most of the stuff America "created" you'll find it's the patent laws that give them the edge. LASIK eye surgery was created by a Columbian, developed by a Russian and patented by the Americans... They take advantage of a lot of technicalities. That's why LASEK stopped development and other techniques were developed. The USA put a made in the USA sticker on it and priced development out of the market. Like many breakthroughs.
In today's business climate the industrial revolution would never have happened. The pursuit of profit overrides the pursuit of development. That's why technology in particular has slowed in development. The patent holders refuse to allow development unless it's theirs, to protect their investment. This is why China advanced 50 years on 10 years. They don't protect patent or copyright. Japan did the same thing in the 1970's and advanced rapidly.
By the way, this isn't an anti-American attack, it's just recognition that current restrictions actually restrain development, and the Americans are very aggressive at patenting/copyrighting and protecting patents and copyrights at the expense of future development. I'm sure others are too. I'm just not familiar with it.
The sad thing is that many people here in the US think that is what really happened I thought the film about Turing was great though.
@@LordInter It was a cooperative effort. The US built more and better bombes than the British, although they were based on Turing's work and designed with his direct input. if you aren't aware of these things that's because of your own ignorance, not the lack of American contributions.
And of course, the basic design of the computer you're using to post these comments, as well as the OS it runs and the Internet you're posting them on, were invented by Americans, leaning very heavily on knowledge and funding from the American Apollo program that is still the only effort to succeed in putting people on another world. So much for American patent laws stifling innovation, eh?
@@brucetucker4847 oh the Americans designed the world wide Web did they? interesting theory you have there, and look at how you've written, you call me arrogant? jog on
“Shakespeare in Love” was absolute and total shit, the biggest mistake The Academy Awards ever made.
It was a comedy, with deliberate anachronisms.
The biggest gaffe with history in Gladiator comes at the very beginning when Commodus tries to have Maximus killed by the Praetorian Guard. The Roman Empire (emperors) period pre-dated European feudalism in structure as the Emperor serves with the cooperation of his generals, not the other way around. No emperor would ever think of trying to kill a widely popular general within their own camp, while on campaign. That emperor would have been immediately killed by the troops. Every single case of an emperor killing a general was through assassination (poisoning obviously) while the general was either traveling from his camp to Rome, or while the general was doing mundane tasks away from his camp. Emperors feared a popular general over anything else so they kept them close allies whenever possible. Also, the generals and Praetorian Guard conspired together a few times to kill an emperor. When I saw the movie and saw the scene where the Praetorian takes Maximus out for execution I just about fell out of my seat laughing as in such a case it would have been Commodus and his Praetorian Guard who would have wound up dead in real life with Maximus easily ascending to the role of Emperor with the support of his troops.
Well said. By the way the Invictus RUclips channel has a video on the Praetorian Guard that you might enjoy.
It was when the old emperor was telling his son that he wasn’t going to emperor because he was going to turn it into a democracy instead that I switched off in disgust.
@@intergalactic92 utter crap ! And isnt The Repubkic restored in the end ?!? Hollywood at its most ludicrous !!
Ridiculous comment. It's a MOVIE, not a historical documentary. The story is that Maximus gets hunted down and sold into slavery and his family murdered, and seeks revenge for himself and for all of Rome. That's the story! If you take away that event, you have no story. Who cares if in 'real life' that wouldn't have happened. It's a movie. It is NOT real life... Do you get it, Mr. Pompous?
@@intergalactic92 Why? Because that would "never" happen in real life? You missed out on a great story because of your close-minded psuedo-artistic arrogance.
the last samurai: the most accurate irl occidental advisor that inspired the movie was Jules Brunet, a French officer
Terribly inaccurate, but so what? It was great fun.
'Braveheart' was actually the name given to Robert the Bruce, who's heart would accompany the army inside a wooden box.
watch outlaw king instead of braveheart, it actually makes some attempt to be historically accurate, unlike: "FREEDOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!"
First hint that a movie is historically inaccurate, its a movie.
That's no excuse
rizon72, And the 2nd hint: made in Hollywood..!!
@@TheGourdKing entertainment and minimal accuracy are not mutually exclusive by any means.
Historical Documentaries were often inaccurate also.
Nope, some are reasonable, some even quite good. The ones on this video are really, really bad.
Hidden Figures should be on this list, the women depicted in the movie played much less important roles in the space program than portrayed in the movie and they never made any claim of any kind of discrimination.
Some of these movies do not claim to be historical accurate do they?
300 is widely known to be a fantasy movie isn't it?
I mean it's based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. It's based on history but then through the prism of a comic book which takes a lot of artistic license.
Wait,.... what? Are you trying to tell me that “a long time ago,... in a galaxy,.....” ISNT AN ACCURATE HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION??!?!!?
@@Nitrile7 did you watch the video?
@@MGC-XIII Oops. You may have missed the satire in Nitrile7's response!
@Charisma Girl I mean Snoop Dogg thinks that GoT is historical accurate and doesn't understand it's a fantasy world xD
How could you have missed "The Kingdom of Heaven," which used real historical characters in an invented story that completely ignored the real exciting epic of the Ibalin family, described by an Arab chronicler as "like kings" in the Holy Land.
@Furious Magpie I think when one uses real historical characters in real historical situations one can say the claim is made. Balian of Ibalin was of the highest nobility and likened to another king by Arab chronicles. He could not have married the Queen because he was already married to her step-mother and, in any case, she really adored Guy. Putting Guy in the costume of a Templar made no sense either, since the Knights Templar were monks with vows of poverty, chastity and celibacy who, in any case, lived together in barracks. One more small thing - the real Balian's nickname was "Balian the Hairy," who had body hair "like a pelt." It was a shame because the film was truly beautiful and the real story is quite as heroic, quite as film-worthy.
"Lawrence of Arabia "had many historical inaccuracies.
"The Osama Bin Laden version of the Crusades"
@@robertlehnert4148 Sorry, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Can you tell me the sources you consulted about the Crusades that led you to this conclusion?
@@robertlehnert4148 yeah, it was clear what Ridley was doing with the movie.
I mean history fans generally like The Last Samurai. Sure the events aren’t 100% accurate or true, it is very authentic and has excellent production and set design.
I'm sorry, I must disagree. It wasn't authentic at all. It tried to paint the Samurai as in par with the Native Americans. Not even remotely similar. Samurai were the ruling class. A Samurai could take the head of a peasant for not bowing correctly, and be totally within his rights as their lord. Samurai were much closer to European knights. They revolted because they were losing power, not because of "honor" the catch all motivation for anything Asian. Also, as the video states, Americans would not have been sought to train Japanese in modernized warfare. Even in the 1920s, when the future commander at Iwo Jima, Tadamichi Kuribayashi, stated that the most prestigious posts after the military academy were in Europe. Going to the US, as he did, was a leftover assignment.
@@Rikalonius No, I don’t think the intention was to paint the Samurai like Native Americans. Obviously there are going to be parallels (The idea of the old vs the new), but that’s natural for a film dealing with this topic. I’m not gonna get into a debate about the history of Samurai. As I said it ISN’T accurate but as a historian and film buff I’d say it did an excellent job at showing the general vibe of the era while managing to balance being an entertaining film. It’s message is more about the cost of progress rather than trying to portray the Samurai as these super good guys.
Edit: Plus, from the film and it’s scenes showing Katsumoto and his loss of influence over the Emperor and the scenes where the samurai are getting harassed in the streets, you can infer that the Samurai uprising is about the loss of status and power. It’s clever filmmaking on the writer’s part imo.
...no, it did not show the "general vibe of the era..." at all. Not only ist the story absolut bullshit and an insult to all knowing only a little bit about Japanese history of the second half of the 19 century. The way "the samurai" are depicted ist rediculus. The Satsuma-rebells did not lock or act like bushi of the middle-ages of the sengoku-jidai. They did not life like beeing in the year 1600. Many of them wearing modern european cloth and kind of uniforms, fighting with modern rifles and cannons in a modern way. There were outnumberd by the Imperial Army of ex-samurai and conscripts trained by the French. This was not a conflict "samurai vs the rest and the west", it was a conflict ex-samurai against ex-samurai about power and influenz in the new imperial Japan. The new Meiji-era Japan was ruled nearly exlusiv by ex-samurai and the nobility in politics, military and ecomomy...
@@heimdalshorn Again. I never said it was historically accurate. Just saying it’s a good film that does a good job showing the dilemma facing Japanese society and politics at the time.
@@987jof ...sorry again, that is the point: it did not face the "dilemma of Japanese society" in the 1870 - it missed it in an epic way....
I never took Gladiator as a historical film. I don't think it was meant to be.
The problem with it is in the opening description where it says the year. That combined with actual people who existed at that time makes it somewhat historical.
Throatwobbler Mangrove it’s inspired not based and they change history like the emperors sister was killed by him later
@@jackj9816 They changed all sorts of things. You've missed the point.
Throatwobbler Mangrove no I didn’t I know most the changers I’m saying they had to for the story. It don’t work for braveheat cause they were trying to tell a story where gladiator was a made up story with historical inspiration
@@throatwobblermangrove8510 isn't Gladiator some kind if an alternate universe take in the end of the five good emperors? Like, Rome returning to being a republic?
"Inglorious Bastards" was historically spot-on!
Right. Good example. How come they don't sneer about that movie? "That's not how Hitler really died, man." Really.... I never would have known if you hadn't told me, because the whole time, I felt like this movie was trying to accurately depict history. You mean, it wasn't? Hmm... maybe most of these other movies weren't either.
Yoir sarcasm is duly noted.
Jojo Rabbit was absolutely true, down to the last detail! dont fact check me, its true I promise!
These movies don't even try to pretend they're accurate. It's kind of bad though when directors try to sell their fabrications as accurate and spread disinformation.
@@miss.guidedghosts7858 jojo rabbit is literally supposed to be seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old kid
They used actual Irish soldiers as extras in Braveheart and they refused to do the scene where they fight alongside the British. So Gibson had to change the story so they'd act for him. Had the Irish switch sides during the battle.
"Movies aren't real."
Imagine my shock.
shocked Pikachu face
Then why can I hold a DVD in my hands?
Hahaha... deserves more likes.👍
Dishonorable Mention should included Birth of a Nation and The Atomic Cafe.
Affleck screened Argo for a Canadian audience...I think it might have been at the Toronto film festival....the crowd booed long and loud when it was over. We're a pretty patriotic bunch when we're not given our due credit, especially when saving Americans.
What I like about 300 is that it doesn't pretend to be historically accurate. You can tell just by looking at it
Yes, the first words in the movie is the text saying “based on the comic by Frank Miller”.
You left out perhaps the worst example - “Heroes of Telemark“. It was based on the story of the commando raid that destroyed a laboratory that was producing “heavy water“ for the Nazi nuclear program in 1943. In the movie, the Raiders were shown as a mixed bag of British and American commandos.
In reality, the actual commandos were all Norwegian. It was an incredible insult to the resourcefulness and bravery of the eight men who carried out the raid - who had to survive an entire winter in the summer arctic of central Norway before carrying out the raid.
An entire winter in the summer arctic????????????
It was not the worst example, do not be so ridiculous. It is only a film, and although I cannot really remember it I am sure Kirk Douglas was in it and played a Norwegian.
The first attempt were British Paratroopers and Engineers, but the two gliders crashed in the mountains, killing most of them. The Germans tortured and executed the remaining wounded, so there were no survivors. They were to have met up with the 4-man Norwegian 'Grouse' team (later 'Swallow'), that had been inserted earlier by the British SOE to guide the paras/engineers to the target. After the winter the British dropped six Norwegian Commandoes to attack the heavy water plant, which they successfully did, lead by the 'Swallow' team who had over-wintered in Norway and come close to starvation. The British selected the target, trained and equipped the Norwegians and got them there. So Britain was involved. So was the US, as the factory was repaired and became operational again after the commando attack, and US bombers subsequently destroyed the factory with heavy saturation raids. France was also involved, as France had provided the underlying science and removed all the heavy water from the factory in anticipation of a German invasion of Norway. It is an interesting story.
However, I personally am not too bothered by artistic licence if the film is good and realistic, even if historically inaccurate.
Films portray events according to the desires of the film makers and the anticipated audience, and the number one desire is to make money, although Political Correctness is also a major driver these days. Some British MPs or a few Norwegians getting upset about some films does not affect the box office. The purpose of the, frankly dreadful, Churchill scene in the underground was to show a fake diversity standing up to Hitler. That was the intent of the film makers and actors. Propaganda for modern sensibilities is an equal driver to box office success now, so films will only get more inaccurate :)
I think we the audience have to realise that film makers are not even remotely interested in historical accuracy, and we should not get too upset about it. I suspect the upcoming film tom Hanks film, 'Greyhound', will be totally inaccurate.
@@christopherdean1326 The first four commandos dropped into Norway in the fall, and had to spend the winter before the SOE could arrange a second attempt.
@@blowingfree6928 You're entitled to your opinion. I thought it was pretty awful. Most of the participants in the raid itself - all but one of whom were alive when the movie came out - savaged it.
@@mitchberg8229 That might well be the case, but you are missing my point. The sentence I quoted is gibberish, that is all I was saying......
Mel Gibson with Argentinian colours painted on his face always makes me chuckle 😁
Kinda gives away that he's going to lose 😄
Blue Woad was a plant dye used by the Celts since pre Roman times.
Nothing like making fun of an inaccuracy by being inaccurate. Brilliant
The sad part is that a good percentage of the true stories ARE interesting enough to be in a film. I get it when the writers, directors, producers and stars (roughly ascending order or egos) think so highly of themselves that they MUST change history to entertain us, because sometimes they actually make some decisions that were fun. However when you look up the truth if the stories and others not even made into films yet, they’re often astounding the way they really happened.
Crunching time periods doesn’t bother me as much, along with additional characters to depict life in the period, but I would like to know what it actually looked like to visit the situation if possible.
Which brings me to the ancient, pre-recorded stuff. Now I thought there were several ridiculous things about 10,000BC as well, but be careful assuming (or at least the historians should be careful) assuming they know exactly what went down that long ago.
I understand evidence is all they care about, but they make judgments based on evidence, and I made guesses decades ago based on logic that turned out more right than they had it. Yeah, I know others will doubt me and I have nothing published that proves it, but I predicted;
-We would find many subspecies, related hominids and keep finding more.
-That civilization starts randomly, dead ends, starts again and would far outpace some other human settlements or hunting grounds because of environment and luck.
-That we would find many more earlier civilization evidence, such as the latest finds in Turkey, and I predicted that area and west, the Balkans, would be key to finding big changes in history. Look at the area... it’s a crossroads in so many ways.
That means never, ever assume you know exactly when something like agriculture started, or when all humans stopped living like wild animals. Both directions would be untraceable, and that should be obvious. We weren’t there.
Far too many scientists and “experts” can be intelligent and thorough with their methods, but the methods tend to restrict imagination, which is needed to picture the gaps and scenes built by evidence. It seems many of the “experts” are lousy at this, because they keep writing about each discovery as “nobody ever thought...” or “it was previously believed that...”
Well speak for yourselves, because I had a lot of that right, simply by thinking about the way life usually works and what made sense.
Say it isn’t so! Next thing you’ll be claiming the Flintstones are not historically accurate!
Flintstones are suppose to take place in the future sort of like west world that is why they know what TV, Record players, Driven in restaurants and drive in movies are.
don't worry mate the flintstones is safe. Disney has all the original stone age film footage to prove thats what it was really like back then. :)
Blasphemy!!!
what? Wait.... the Flintstones wasn't real???
All my household appliances are animals who make snide remarks, too.
Historian here....and I love 300, and most other historians/archaeologists i know kinda love it as well. Yeah, much doesn't make sense, but the movie doesn't try to make sense. It isn't meant and doesn't try to be historically accurate. It is the story of Delios, with all the exaggerations, superstitions, make believe, prejudice and propaganda that you will need to keep in the back of your mind when reading all ancient stories and texts
300 is based on a graphic novel. Based on a mythical version of the Story of the 300 Spartans. It's not supposed to be true history anymore than Abe Lincoln vampire slayer is.
WHAT!? Next you're going to tell me that there were no Zombies in Pride and Prejudice!!??
TheGrungy1 that was some great historical entertainment there. My master the Dark Lord of the South loved his portrayal in that movie Abe Lincoln Vampire Slayer. But they never get the eyes right.
I’m assuming historians would hate all Hollywood ‘historical dramas’.
You would be assuming wrong. Many historians praise some large scale productions. The best ones do not come from the US but even Hollywood can produce movies that are historically accurate enough to get praise, but they are very rare compared to other countries.
"Apollo 13" is one notable film that I've found historians actually tolerate. Even the actual people portrayed in the film don't seem to have any problems with the liberties that were taken at certain parts.
As a musician and classic rock and oldies fanatic, I must say I personally loved “That Thing You Do”, but then again Tom Hanks purposely went the extra mile to get the gear right, even though the story is fictional. Some gorgeous instruments and amps in that flick.
As a historian to be I can say you are only partialy correct.
If films dont claim to be historical I just watch them as films and dont mind any inaccurate things.
Only when a film claims to be historical but isnt i tend to hate them. For example I couldnt watch HBOs "Rome" beause it was o wrong in the first few minutes alone.
Oh and by the way History is more than just the factual events from the past. Its much more about the lifestyle, culture and philosophy of the past. So I dont mind if afilm changes some dates if it gets these right. Although that loses much of its meaning in Modern History. I only work with medieval and Ancient History.
KONRAD Platt, I loved “Rome”. I knew just enough general things about the Romans, but not enough specific things to enjoy it. Plus I assumed HBO would take licenses with it.
My father (a huge fan of history) always said: "If you want historical accuracy, watch documentaries. Not movies."
Sometimes, you have to lie to get across a bigger truth. In "The King's Speech", it was implied that Prince Albert chose the name "George" because his given name was too German. The real reason was that (a) he was thinking of the precedent of his grandfather Edward VII who said that he didn't think ANY future king should take his father's name, but (b) he also wanted to show support to his mother that he was going to be a good king like dear old Dad George V. But to explain all that would have taken too much time and stopped the film completely. What was far more important was to establish that WWI was coming and now that he's king, Bertie was going to have to get ready to give the speech of his life----which you can actually hear on RUclips.
Excellent example of why a movie might take liberties now and then to serve the story. You, sir, have a great understanding of storytelling, unlike most of the people in this thread.
"But how do we know their scotish if their not using kilts?"😂😂😂
Could have shown them eating deep fried Mars Bars.
@@rogueriderhood1862 and dragging a reluctant sheep in tow??
@@rogueriderhood1862 Followed by Chicken Tikka Masala!
I once saw a photograph of William Wallace sipping an Irn-Bru! Of course he was a Scot! 😁
Another issue with Braveheart is Wallace's famous appeal to freedom to an army of peasants. In reality, such an appeal would have meant freedom for the Scottish nobility to oppress the Scottish peasants free from English interference.
"10,000 BC may be Roland Emmerich's most inaccurate"...laughs in Stonewall.
Yeah that still seems like a very odd movie choice for him to direct.
And boy have they buried that movie deep. Last time it even came up anywhere was when somebody mentioned that the person who threw the famous brick was actually a trans woman of color not some white guy.
10,000 BC was originally written as one of the original Stargate Trilogy films. It was supposed to be the Prequel to Stargate. The sequel was also re-written and it became Independence Day.
Sean B
I’ve never heard that that’s incredible. Then again Roland Emmerich has it an ego the size of all outdoors. I mean making Stargate into a planned trilogy is as cocky as it gets. I mean luckily TV was able to come in and make it into a franchise but still.
Midway was reasonably accurate aside from the over-the-top action sequences. A thousand times more accurate than Pearl Harbor, anyway.
Seems stupid to hire "Historical Consultants" and then ignore them. Why waste the money in the first place?
because total truth doesn't sell!! why don't you know this....jeez
@@olavwilhelm6843 You're right. I guess my point was, why bother to hire historical consultants in the first place.
1. Another inaccuracy with Braveheart was that William Wallace was well over 6 feet tall. Mel Gibson was what? 5 foot 7?
2. The biggest problem with historical movies is that there are grade school teachers who use them as teaching aids. I don't care how accurate they are, but Hollywood films should not be used to to teach school kids. I told my daughter's teacher that when she wanted to show Schindler's List to her 7th grade class. I told her she was being lazy and she should instead OPEN A HOSTORY BOOK AND TEACH THE KIDS HERSELF.
Colin Farel’s *Alexander* didn’t make the list? Missed opportunity. ☝️😪
Davy Jones Lector Alexander is on another there is a 2nd list
Alexander is pretty accurate though, despite being a terrible movie
@@caiawlodarski5339 Interesting.... so you're saying the movie is more accurate but is terrible. Perhaps there's a lesson there about storytelling vs historical 'accuracy.' Great story comes first. Always.
'The Patriot' and 'Braveheart' must be two of the most inaccurate films ever. Mind you 'The Outlaw King' is just coming out.
Re: PTriot and Brave heart. Yeah but they ere great craic. They never were sold as documentaries
At least Outlaw King did a decent job regarding costume though.
Outlaw king was close with the accuracy in about 90% of the movie. Prefer it way more than Braveheart however it isn't perfect
@@kaihiggins725 Hi. so you'd recommend I watch it? I like historical settings, but so often jarring inaccuracies spoil the enjoyment.
ps apart from my brother, you are the only Kai I've come across.
@@madcyclist58 deffo. They even have the accuracy of axes and mases getting used rather than the myth of a sword (swords did nothing to chainmail). Obviously it isn't 100% however these inaccuracies are small like bits of the armour and castle but apart from that nothing to complain about.
U-571 absolutely sent me over the edge. I was so insulted by that film. 300 gets a pass cos it's based off the comic which takes a much more fantastical approach to the proceedings.
It's a shame that our historical heroes usually didn't have the moral character or identifiable life struggles that these movies depict. Oh well, we can watch, enjoy, and dream. I don't go into these movies with the mindset of perfect historical accuracy anyway. I always insert the word 'loosely' in front of based myself. I think you just have to enjoy these films for what they are, not what they aren't.
Stop making sense Oliver. Your opinion has way too much common sense and self-awareness and artistic appreciation for this thread.
2 films on the list are Americans stealing the heroics of others. U571 steals the heroics of the British and Argo steals the heroics of the Canadians. Good on ya mate.
Criticising 300 on its historical inaccuracy is like bitting into a Wax Apple and complaining about how bad it tastes.
Yes, the enigma provoked many British jokes about American inaccuracies ‘did they think they or invented everything? Is this what they call ‘ The American Dream, or just American delusion?
@Darth Wheezius Economists estimate that Turing's codebreaking shortened the war by many months, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
As if British movies are any better.
They never claimed U-571 was based on a true story.
@@kimwhitehead9096
You may be correct. Can you give an example?
I'm waiting for the Americans to make a film where they won the Vietnam War!!!
You missed ”The Sound of Music”. The real story is so much more interesting and should be made.
It has
I think 10,000 BC can be seen as an alternate history movie where survivors from Atlantis established the cities and technologies that wouldn’t be seen for thousands of years later.
That Enigma film was one of the most heinous things I’ve ever seen. Let’s see RN involved as in real life
Yes, and let's speak of French defense of Dunkirk
@@gengis737
And the French defence against Operation Torch.
Colin Field: I'm guessing they needed a Hollywood A-lister on board in order to greenlight the production, and Matthew McConaughey can't do an English accent. No slight against the Royal Navy intended.
The whole history of the British Empire except for Grandi, has been whitewashed in numerous movies for decades. Gunga Din what a bunch of British bs.
@@jlewisda There's plenty of big name British A-list actors who work in Hollywood. That wasn't the reason why. They just wanted to Americanise a WW2 action film because Hollywood is lazy and thought Americans wouldn't go and see it otherwise (which is nonsense btw).
The objective of a lot these movies isn't necessarily historical accuracy. It's entertainment, and for that I enjoy them. What's annoying is when things air on a network like discovery or the history channel, but have very little basis in actual history.
Thank you for this, from an old history teacher.
But not a drama or storytelling teacher, which is what movies are.
Movies are entertainment, not an encyclopedia. When a movie claims to be historically accurate and isn't, it's not good, I agree. But if in a movie like Braveheart they didn't wear kilts and face paint, you would be struggling to figure out who is who on the battlefield if you're not familiar with the history. That's why main characters don't wear helmets in battle scenes. So you can easily find them.
Watch Tora Tora Tora! entertaining and accurate.
Even Encyclopedias are not entirely accurate. Many are factual accounts that have been corrected elsewhere but never included in revised versions of them. Many them were less accurate than earlier ones because persons and events important in earlier accounts were dropped out by the editors because they did not serve the purposes of the editor.
There are a thousand way you can make character distinguishable without dressing them up like anachronistic clowns begging to die.
Just look at "Outlaw king". Same period and they did WAY BETTER.
'Historically accurate' is a phrase you rarely see connected with Hollywood to mean something good. It really pisses me off as a history buff to see how Americans tend to love to place themselves or their country (men) on a pedestal of 'righteousness' or paint themselves as a 'hero' in every historical scenario despite reality saying otherwise. Take WW2 for example, Hollywood likes to have the US take credit for things they didn't do and have others be blamed for atrocities committed by the US.
As a Canadian, I am utterly annoyed by the fact that the Americans turned up to both World Wars years late after everyone else, my Canadian uncles included, but who basically took credit for winning. If the rest of us hadn’t turned up at the start, there wouldn’t have been an opportunity for the Americans to make those claims. Just sayin’.
I always look at the 300 as a film or Delios (the survivor) telling his warrior tale, rather than historical fact. Truths get embellished and imaginations run wild. Like when someone come back bloodied and brused from a pub brawl, and says "oh yeah I was surrounded by 3 ex soldiers and I banged em out" when in reality the guy just got smacked about by 1 person.
Braveheart: when they did the Battle of Stirling Bridge I did not even know it was that battle, since, you know, there was no actual bridge in the scene. I did know that the elementary school aged Princess Isabelle did not cheat with Wallace, who was not the father of Edward III.
Gladiator: I spent the last several minutes muttering: "This is wrong, Commodus lived for YEARS after this time period!"
Not to mention that fighting in the arena was seen as utterly shameful, and nothing the aristocracy - and certainly not the Emperor - would ever willingly do.
Wait...let me get this straight. You mean, are you saying.... Gladiator is a fictional story? Mind blowing! I had no idea!
Many of these movies had great soundtracks.
Both the 1956 live-action film "Anastasia" (which won Ingrid Bergman) an Oscar as well as the 1997 film try to imply that MAYBE the historical Princess Anastasia survived the assassination of the other Romanovs. No, she didn't, and he body has been accounted for. Keeping that in mind, both movies are fairly enjoyable.
The imposter Anna Anderson was also exposed by DNA testing several years after her death.
Every other "Historical" movie made by Gibson should have been on this list!!!!!
We Were Soldiers was pretty accurate except for the final battle scene.
Dave I feel like “The Passion” was pretty accurate...
Agreed! Apocalypto needs to be on the list. Not only does Gibson bring the Conquistadors in way earlier than they originally showed up, but he also makes the characters appear as savages and mixes the Maya sacrifices with the sacrifices that the Aztecs carried out! Those are two different civilizations people!
@@franciscodanconia45 The Passion was very inaccurate. The lingua franca of that day was Greek not Latin yet it is not spoken at all nor even shown in the sign over the cross. Btw, the film's Latin is horribly mispronounced.
Mary's dress is wrong, her encounter with Pilate's wife never took place.
The thief on the cross did not have his eyes plucked out by the crows.
Jesus did not get choked half to death on the way to Caiafas' house, etc., etc., etc.
John Gurlides I’m no scholar, I’m just going by what the critics said at the time. Plus, when someone goes to the trouble to have the characters speak in Aramaic, that deserves some credit.
The old phrase "Chewing the scenery" applys to a lot of these. Lookin' at you Mel.
One of the British sailors,who took part in the operation to recover an Enigma machine was Colin Grazier,who was from my local town of Tamworth in the UK. There is a sculpture consisting of 3 anchors dedicated in the town centre to him and the others who lost their lives in that op.
He was a hero of history!
I let '300' off as I heard that it was an adaption of a graphic novel that wasn't pretending to be historically accurate, but was always just going for epic artistic imagery, so all the corresponding stylisation of the movie was a dead giveaway to a new viewer that it was never meant to be taken seriously, but just meant to look awesome.
Agree, it's like debating the historical accuracy of Batman.