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Top 10 most historically inaccurate movies

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sea moose said:
starwars was real.... I know because......


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camel toe alert!
 
Apocalypto shouldn't have been on the list. Also, of course the spaniards weren't saviors. I thought that was obvious enough just from watching the damn movie.
 
waggy said:
its sad that it has to be said.

yeah these are movies. in no way are they documentary's. you shouldn't believe what they say.

But even documentary's are re-writing history. anyone watch the one about Abe Lincoln a few months ago? it was bad.
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You mean the one that was on The History Channel last Black History Month right?

I had to turn that crap off. Just because history isn't pretty doesn't mean you should put forth half truths and out right lies to make it more palatable or to fit some agenda.

Right when they said something along the lines of "Lincoln got into the war for the primary purpose of freeing the slaves" I turned it off. It's not true and wishing it was doesn't make it so.
 
The other thing about 300 was that it was told through an admittedly unreliable narrator. The story of the 300 warriors at Thermopylae was not supposed to be a historical account; rather, it was being told by the leader of the 10,000-strong army at the very end as a way of firing up his troops. It was intentionally inaccurate.
 
guyver01 said:
does anyone going into a "movie" looking for it to be a "documentary" ?

If i want historical accuracy.. i'll watch the History Channel.

Hell.. they coulda used F-18's and Apache Helecopters in "Pearl Harbor" and i wouldn't care.
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this. entertainment is rarely a history lesson.
 
Why the hell is 2001 on there? That's just stupid.

I recorded 10,000 BC on my PVR the other day, I'll have to check it out one of these days.

KT
 
Sheik Yerbouti said:
Going back to Apocalypto, I think at the end, when Jaguar Paw saw the Spaniards, the look on his face was taken as a sign of 'oh fuck... out of the frying pan and into hell. They weren't observed as saviors.
And the fact that he actually had the Mayan language spoke throughout that movie was ballsy. I am a fan (not historian, by any stretch) of the central american pyramid builders. I know that the whole sacrifice thing was gratuitous, but they weren't a very warm and fuzzy folk.
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bingo it was an open ended kind of thing. it was sh*ts gonna happen, but it was ambiguous on whether its good or bad.
 
zoiks said:
Schindlers list. The guy in the end didn't really leave broke and full of tears. He actually left pretty rich.
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I've read several books that relate directly to Schindler, and he was far from rich at the end. Perhaps you might be thinking of someone else?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Schindler#After_the_war

"By the end of the war Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for his workers. Virtually destitute, he moved briefly to Regensburg, Germany and, later, Munich, but did not prosper in postwar Germany. In fact, he was reduced to receiving assistance from Jewish organizations.[3] Eventually, Schindler emigrated to Argentina in 1948, where he went bankrupt."
 
Mermaidman said:
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.
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Also: the helmet style worn by Leonidas in the film was actually the style worn by regular spartan warriors (i.e. hoplets). In reality, Leonidas's helmet actually had a laterally positioned crest.

At least, that's how a documentary I watched portrayed it.
 
Gladiator was a pretty realistic roman world except they had to bend the plot/characters to fit the story. Any historical movie is going to be like that. Just following the life of someone from 800 years ago isn't that interesting.

Gladiator > 300 in my opinion because at least the society as depicted back then was correct, the plot and events were the part that was one-off.

300 made a ton of stylistic changes to where it didn't reflect Spartan society at all. The armor, the depictions of people, the lines, the plot, everything.
 
OverVolt said:
300 made a ton of stylistic changes to where it didn't reflect Spartan society at all. The armor, the depictions of people, the lines, the plot, everything.
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I went into 300 expecting a visual feast of badassery, at the cost of both plot and historical accuracy. I think as long as you went into it expecting this, you weren't disappointed. The only people who complain about 300 are always the people who went into it expecting a documentary from the History Channel.
 
Turbonium said:
The only people who complain about 300 are always the people who went into it expecting a documentary from the History Channel.
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I've seen the documentary on the History Channel. It's called "The Battle of Thermopyle" (or something like that) ... boring as hell, dry as can be.

It told almost the ENTIRE story of the movie 300, with some changes of course, for historical accuracy, and in about an hour, but it was like dry toast.
 
Special K said:
I'm not sure why they put 2001 on there. All of the other movies technically had no "excuse" for being historically inaccurate, considering all the facts had been available for quite awhile. Obviously it was the director's/writer's/producer's call, but they could have made it accurate if they wanted to. Movies set 40+ years in the future will obviously be purely speculation.
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the "excuse" is for story. frankly, the actual history can often be boring. if it makes for a good story...why the hell not? the issue is when people start to take this stuff seriously and assume it's fact. ....though I suppose it makes life easier for history professors when they can see right off who needs to fail.

taking liberties isn't a bad thing if it piques curiosity. Maybe some kid really enjoyed 300, then starts looking up info on Thermopylae of ancient Sparta. no harm in that...
 
guyver01 said:
I've seen the documentary on the History Channel. It's called "The Battle of Thermopyle" (or something like that) ... boring as hell, dry as can be.

It told almost the ENTIRE story of the movie 300, with some changes of course, for historical accuracy, and in about an hour, but it was like dry toast.
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you must have seen a different one. I think I saw "The real 300" ...or something. it was quite good. It talks about the history of Darius and then Xerxes, begins with the battle of Marathon (also a separate, badass documentary), details how Xerxes crosses the Hellspont (badass), and goes further into Plataea and before that, the large naval battles that truly wiped out Persia's army. Thermopolae was a mere splinter in the story of the Peloponesian war.
 
0roo0roo said:
bingo it was an open ended kind of thing. it was sh*ts gonna happen, but it was ambiguous on whether its good or bad.
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yup. and there actually isn't anything wrong about how it's shown: yeah, the Mayans were wiped out by the Spaniards, because they had an advanced, centralized society. the small tribes like Jaguar Paw's retreated further into the jungle, where many of them live today in relative isolation, more or less as they lived 500 years ago.

I never saw it as an "oh shit" look from him. It was a, "Whoa look at that....I'm getting the eff out."
 
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