10 most historically innacurate movies

1)10000 BC
Director Roland Emmerich is usually a stickler for realism (see: sending a computer virus via Macintosh to aliens in Independence Day). So we hate to inform him that woolly mammoths were not, in fact, used to build pyramids. Heck, woolly mammoths weren't even found in the desert. They wouldn't need to be woolly if that were the case. And there weren't any pyramids in Egypt until 2,500 B.C or so.
2)Gladiator
Emperor Commodus was not the sniveling sister-obsessed creep portrayed in the movie. A violent alcoholic, sure, but not so whiny. He ruled ably for over a decade rather than ineptly for a couple months. He also didn't kill his father, Marcus Aurelius, who actually died of chickenpox. And instead of being killed in the gladiatorial arena, he was murdered in his bathtub.
3)300
Though this paean to ancient moral codes and modern physical training is based on the real Battle of Thermopylae, the film takes many stylistic liberties. The most obvious one being Persian king Xerxes was not an 8-foot-tall Cirque du Soleil reject. The Spartan council was made up of men over the age of 60, with no one as young as Theron (played by 37-year-old Dominic West). And the warriors of Sparta went into battle wearing bronze armor, not just leather Speedos.
4)Last Samurai
The Japanese in the late 19th century did hire foreign advisers to modernize their army, but they were mostly French, not American. Ken Watanabe's character was based on the real Saigo Takamori who committed ritual suicide, or "seppuku," in defeat rather than in a volley of Gatling gun fire. Also, it's doubtful that a 40-something alcoholic Civil War vet, even one with great hair, would master the chopsticks much less the samurai sword.
5)Apocalypto
This one movie has given entire Anthropology departments migraines. Sure the Maya did have the odd human sacrifice but not to Kulkulkan, the Sun God, and only high-ranking captives taken in battle were killed. The conquistadors arriving at the end of the film made for unlikely saviors: an estimated 90% of indigenous American population was killed by smallpox from the infected Spanish pigs.
6)Memoirs of a Geisha
The geisha coming-of-age, called "mizuage," was really more of a makeover, where she changed her hairstyle and clothes. It didn't involve her getting... intimate with a client. In the climactic scene where Sayuri wows Gion patrons with her dancing prowess, her routine - which involves some platform shoes, fake snow, and a strobe light - seems more like a Studio 54 drag show than anything in pre-war Kyoto.
7)Brave Heart
Let's forget the fact that kilts weren't worn in Scotland until about 300 years after William Wallace's day and just do some simple math. According to the movie, Wallace's blue-eyed charm at the Battle of Falkirk was so overpowering, he seduced King Edward II's wife, Isabella of France, and the result of their affair was Edward III. But according to the history books, Isabella was three years old at the time of Falkirk, and Edward III was born seven years after Wallace died.
8)Elizabeth:The Golden Age
In 1585, when the movie takes place, Queen Elizabeth was 52 years old - Cate Blanchett was 36 when she shot the film - and was not being courted by suitors like Ivan the Terrible (who was dead by then). And though the movie has her rallying the troops at Tilbury astride a white steed in full armor with a sword, in fact she rode side saddle, carrying a baton. She was more of a regal majorette than Joan of Arc.
9)The Patriot
Revolutionary War figure Francis "The Swamp Fox" Marion was the basis for Mel Gibson's character, but he wasn't the forward-thinking family man they show in the flick. He was a slave owner who didn't get married (to his cousin) until after the war was over. Historians also say that he actively persecuted and murdered native Cherokees. Plus, the thrilling Battle of Guilford Court House where he vanquishes his British nemesis? In reality, the Americans lost that one.
10)2001:A space Odyssey
According to this film, in year 2001 we would have had manned voyages to Jupiter, a battle of wits with a sentient computer, and a quantum leap in human evolution. Instead we got the Mir Space Station falling from the sky, Windows XP, and Freddy Got Fingered. Apparently the lesson here is that sometimes it's better when the movies get the facts all wrong.

grrrrrr......Historically inaccurate movies always get on my nerves.

They may be historically inaccurate, BUT they do create a stimulas to find out more info and what really happened. They give a sense of the era's look, costume, manner, and offer entertainment for those who like to use their imagination to enter that time real or fictionous. Some are just great movies. What abou King Arthur, Robin Hood, Merlin, all fiction by most beliefs but great to see movies and read about...

they are good movies.

Rokassan wrote:they are good movies.

I agree but they make so many people believe that what the movie shows is completely true.

Solskritt, I sent you a PM...

Yeah.. You always have to take movies like that with a grain of salt. How many movies are like DEAD ON statistically accurate with no artistic license whatsoever? Very few, if any.

Here are some other historically inaccuarate movies off the top of my head

Practically any Chinese movie featuring Kung Fu... these movies are the eastern version of our westerns... it's all mythology

Clash of the Titans... They fucked everything up in that movie, even with the fact that it's all mythology. except for perseus and Medusa, they messed alot of stuff up

The passion of the Christ... WTF? at least they got the main parts right, I guess., according to Luke and Mathew

Pearl Harbor... nuff said

U571... Wasn't it the english that captured that decoder from the Germans?

I dont know why 300 is there. It was never intended to be a Historical movie. It was based off a Graphic novel, not the actual battle. and 2001: ASO, was what people believed 2001 would be in the 1960's, not a movie based off historical facts.

Yea I should take these movies with a grain of salt but the thing is there's millions of Ignorant people who actually believe it and that's what gets me, but whatever, the reason we watch these movies is to entertain us for an hour or two.

Anything Roland Emmerich touches, as well as michael bay, turns into a steaming corn studded turd.

An old interesting post.

The Threadomancer strikes again !

I thought I'd read this before...

You may have. Look at the date. Just though the newer members might find it interesting.

300 as been said is hard to take serious on the list. It really didn't try to be realistic, it even had giants, magic, and giant beasts that don't even exist in it.

Replace it with 'Windtalkers'

Oh Christ on a bike, don't get me started on this one.

I actually do some Living History, Late Medieval, mainly, and I'm a member of various forums for that. Nothing gets us united like a crappy movies thread...

I have to make some comments on this... I just have to as a film fan and a historian.

1) 10,000 BC
This was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of ancient human life.
More fantasy like myths and legends than any true history... to think of it as attempt to be accurate and judge it as such is really a dumb thing to do... but then it seems many historians have nothing better to do with their time.

3) 300
A fictional and surreal representation of a graphic novel story based a historical event.
It wasn't meant to be historically accurate in anyway shape or form. Frank Miller was more interested in the mythos of the battle than the reality.
(Though film wise I much prefer The 300 Spartans)

7) Braveheart
Very much like 300 the writer of the novel the movie was based upon wasn't focusing on the direct history, but more the myth and legend elements that sprung from what Wallace had managed to achieve.
Essentially he didn't want to write the history of Wallace, but an entertaining fictional tale of the legend of Wallace (as such the majority of all the historical inaccruacies were because of this).
Now that being said, the kilts did exist... and this is a point which pisses me off with most historians.
The kilt did technically exist at that time... they had even existed in some shape or form all the way back to Roman days (though they were not the more classic image of the kilt from the 1300s and on).
What did not exist at all until three hundred years later was the plaid (the pattern you see on the cloth).
Now lowlanders like Wallace actually didn't tend to wear the kilts at all (they wore clothes more like the English)... kilts were more common for highlanders. Which does mean the majority of Wallce's army would have been wearing some form of hose or pants... and really only the highlanders that joined him would have been in kilts.

9) The Patriot
Mel Gibson's character was not based upon just Francis Marion (something which the film makers said time and time again, but was completely ignored by most historians critiquing the film). He was also based off of Thomas Sumpter and Andrew Pickens as well... which creates many to all of the inconsistencies with Marion's life.
Also the Battle of Gilford Courthouse, which anyone paying any attention to the movie would notice, was not that battle, nor was it meant to be just that battle. It had the same terrain and people present, but it was not Gilford Courthouse.
It was (as the movie captioned at the bottom) the Battle of Cowpens, which was a victory for the Americans... using the very same fake retreat to sucker in the British (granted the Americans still nearly got their asses kicked).
Though technically it would be better to call it (like Gibson's character) an amalgamation of both battles... since Cornwallis was not at Cowpens (though Tarlten was... Cornwallis was at Gilford though) just like the terrain of the battle was more consistent with Gilford.

10) 2001: A Space Odyssey...
Oh come on... so Clarke was a little overly optimistic on what we would be able to achieve in the future.
But then many other science-ficiton writer have also been equally guilty.
Persoanlly I'm glad HAL doesn't exist... he'd kill me as a useless waste of space in a heartbeat.
Right now the only sci-fi film I believe has any chance of coming true is Idiocracy (be afraid, be very afraid).


I'm not overly sure on any of the others... since in many cases I don't know the actual history behind them, nor of what the writers/filmakers were intentionally going for when they made them.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of them were the same cases of the people making them more caught up in the mythos of the events rather than the nitpicky accurate details of the events.

the wanderer wrote:They may be historically inaccurate, BUT they do create a stimulas to find out more info and what really happened. They give a sense of the era's look, costume, manner, and offer entertainment for those who like to use their imagination to enter that time real or fictionous. Some are just great movies. What abou King Arthur, Robin Hood, Merlin, all fiction by most beliefs but great to see movies and read about...

The worst thing is that a lot of these movies don't show anything correct about the era's look, costume and manners.

The image in most peoples minds of a medieval feast is that from various movies of Henry VIII. Tearing meat off of a carcass with a knife, throwing the bones over your shoulder for a dog.... Does this tie with cultures that gave us soaring cathedrals.....?

Costumes are often a mismatch of what the director thinks looks best, and don't look anything like what they should have had at the time....

History is often not pretty, presentable in a narrative, or interesting. Movie makers want people to see their movies for entertainment. If they made most of these movies "accurate", they would never have been as popular in most cases, or as interesting of stories.

I really can not think of one historical movie that was even remotely accurate.

Now that would be a hard list to make!

"The Ten Most Accurate Historical Movies"

JerryB