A friend of mine, Anna Busby, was a nurse at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. She was in her 80s when the Michael Bay atrocity was filmed. The production company sent a team to interview her on film and I got to see the video of her interview. She told the interviewers several stories that were not only true and great stories but would have been PERFECT for the film: how the first notion of something bad coming was when the breakfast trays in the hospital began to rattle, how during and after the attack when the nurses had far more than they could handle the hospital was filled with an army of volunteers who included prostitutes, nuns, Buddhist monks, Mormon college students, officer's wives- people who would never have socialized or mixed under normal conditions all working together to help the wounded, about driving a remote road with other nurses a few days after the attack to visit convalescing wounded when she heard a putter and a Japanese zero that had apparently landed during the attack flew over them (she never knew why it was there or how its crew got it working again). The interview crew's reaction was basically "That's nice. So tell us where did you go on dates when you dated doctors or flyboys?" She told them, REPEATEDLY, that nurses rarely dated doctors or flyboys and for the simple reason that it was hard to be romantic when the dates were chaperoned, had a curfew, you were limited to officers only, and you had to get formal permission. She said this was not formality or turn a blind eye either: it was rigidly enforced- violate any one of them and it was court martial for both parties. The crew was basically "Uh-huh. So what kind of things would you do on dates? Where would you go if you wanted privacy to make out?" Again, she said, there was a lot less making out than you'd think and in fact she didn't know of any. If doctors or sailors or pilots wanted to make out, they had R&R time and could avail themselves of any lady willing to go out with them or the many brothels and bars and pool halls, but the nurses were as close as you could get to a convent without taking holy orders. Again, she repeated several times, this wasn't "nudge nudge wink wink"- the US Navy wasn't concerned with the chastity of the men but if a naval nurse were to get pregnant then there better be a star leading shepherds and Middle Eastern men on camels bearing gifts to the nursery or else there'd be hell to pay. This was partly because of different standards and norms of course, but also to protect the nurses from sexual assault or STDs or a million other possible bad things that could happen in a place with lots and lots and lots of sailors. Then she'd proceed to tell them another fascinating story, like about the mild mannered sweet old gardener everybody loved who had spy cameras in his hut, or the doctor who reported for duty on the day of the attack so quick he was barefoot and in his bathrobe, or other true stories she'd personally witnessed, and they'd continue with "Hmmm. So were you given condoms?" (That's an actual question they asked her: in the first place, she'd just told them there was not really any need for them unless you were dating The Flash and managed to get behind a tree for five seconds [my analogy, not her's], and in the second place, those were issued to men, not to female nurses.) Needless to say, she hated the movie. She said every nurse in it would have been dishonorably discharged.
When Braveheart was in theaters, I was working as a book seller at Borders. A pair of teen-age girls came in and asked for books with the real Braveheart. I was so happy that the movie inspired young people to learn about history. When I showed them books about William Wallace in the Scottish history section, they giggled and clarified that they wanted something with pictures of Mel Gibson. For a minute there, I had hope for the future.
True story. So, I go into a blockbusters( vhs I think, believe it or not) and I ask the young clerk if they have The’ diary of Anne Frank’. Out of the moth of babes: “ Is that an exercise video?”🥵
Exactly. Given the parameters shown by the writers of this offering, who knew that the Germans used M60's (I think) and the attack only failed because they couldn't capture a fuel depot.
While Eisenhower did publicly strongly condemn the film, I’m kind of confused, about the came out of retirement comment. It’s not like he rejoined the army, and stormed the studio.
I've been reenacting the american revolution for some 30 years now. When we went to see'the patriot' my wife kept saying "It's just a movie i don't want to hear a peep out of you." HALF WAY through the movie SHE was yelling at the screen.
For me, it was when the African Americans saying they weren't slaves and worked for Gibsons character on their volition. I distinctly remember going" What? C'mon really?!
Also from a moviemaking perspective the movie has like a million continuity errors - all while the movie claims to be historical. But the music was quite good.
The first lie of Braveheart was actually before the first words are ever spoken: Bagpipes weren't introduced to Scotland until a century or two after William Wallace died.
Not a movie, but a series. I finished Manhunt about a month ago, and I have to say, it bugged me to NO END that the Confederates Booth interacted with kept saying they had been part of the Battle of Bull Run. Booth himself repeatedly calls it that. They were Confederates. They would have called it Manassas.
my 5x great-grandfather fought with Francis Marion in South Carolina. He stated in his pension application that he would rather have suffered the deprivations of camp than to be on furlough, because being at home was more dangerous - loyalists would kill a man at his fireside for being a patriot - whether he was or not.
Pocahontas died at Gravesend, Kent. After being taken ill shortly after setting sail for Virginia. Her grave was lost after the original St George's Church, Gravesend was destroyed by fire. "Since 1958 she has been commemorated by a life-sized bronze statue in St. George's churchyard, a replica of the 1907 Jamestown sculpture by the American sculptor William Ordway Partridge."
I have seen Alexander (2004) for a history project I did in high school. The role of Alexanders mother was way over the top, in some scenes it looks like she is going to *nudge nudge wink wink* her own son. But some scenes are based on history. There is a scene where Alexander asks a princess how she wishes to be treated after her country as fallen. She responsed: "As I am, a princess." Alexander gives her the treatment of a princess. That is based on a report in which Alexander asks a conquered king the same question, and he responded 'As I am, king", and Alexander did treat him as such.
10:08 I have to disagree. We don't have written history, but archeology exists. The archaeological record can certainly establish that horses and chickens were not domesticated during that period at that location.
Not to mention genetics and paleontology. Not sure that was specifically what Chris was referring to, though. Probably just referred to the actions of the people in the movie.
I agree with this. Where written history did not exist, we can still see what was happening through Archeological/Paleontological findings. We knew when the general date the Egyptian Pyramids were being built, if not through papyri, then through carbon datings or such.
History only covers an era of written record. What was before that is called prehistory. Movies taking place in an era before history are not historical. And for obvious reasons, 300 and Alexander are also not "historical"movies as they are clearly political propaganda stories and legends told by witnesses of the events not as a historical account, but for purposes of lifting the spirit of soldiers and for justification of political role of the narrator respectively.
i grew up near Austerlitz. I would gladly have a dozen talking trees, baba yaga, and a magical water spirit in Napoleon as a part of the battle rather than that abomination that was put on the screen.
What frustrates me the most about historical inaccuracy in movies/series is that oftentimes the very real and historically accurate story itself is straight out of a movie and I will never ever understand why the filmmakers would set the real thing aside and make up a new one.
I grew up near Austerlitz. Any filmmaker can easily shoot a movie there, they can even get huge amount of volunteers in costumes who do reenactments there every year for audience, they would supply costumes, there even is artillery... It is a plain with small hills, mostly fields, some trees, same as it was in the Napoleonic times. The last movie depicted it as lake a valley in the mountains. And it took a story from war propaganda about soldiers drowning in the water and made it into a major theme of the battle. In reality, the number of soldiers who drowned was 2 or 3, depending on the sources.
My issue with movies based on history is that many people are fools and take what they see in films as truth. In that awful Napoleon film where she shot the pyramids, many people thought that was true because it was in a "historical" movie. That's my main issue. *Edit* I know I'm dumb. It's he not she.
In cases like Napoleon and The Patriot, among many, I feel like the film makers should be held responsible to some degree for their blatant disinformation. A lot of people are fools indeed, or simply naive, and without proper education they will actually believe a lot of this kind of BS. Makes me really glad for channels like this one.
The most concerning thing is that the same idiots also watch the news and consume information from journalists that exhibit the same level of research capabilities. Watching a film and getting confused is bad and can lead to problems.Believing a journalist can have immediate and dangerous consequences. I’m all for everyone getting to have an opinion, but when they let those opinions be guided by other idiots/malicious actors, it’s terrifying. And then there’s politicians. 🤦🏼♀️
The defeat of the Spanish Armada didn’t occur at day or night, it was fought over several weeks as the English fleet pursued the Armada around the British coast!
Absolutely. The fleets first sighted each other off the coast of Cornwall. There was the Battle of Plymouth. The Battle of Portland. The Isle of Wight Battle. The fireships were unleashed near Calais (at night), The Battle of Gravlines, of the coast of Flanders
@@alanfox691 There was no British foot back then. The Scottish foot was slightly longer than the English one. Not sure what that has to do with the Spanish Armada though. Unless it's a typo. In which case, Britain didn't exist then. Scotland was a completely different country with it's own King and certainly wasn't at war with Spain.
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Not forgetting the bloody shambles of the English Armada in 1589.
Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. When Elizabeth was two years old, her parents' marriage was annulled, her mother was executed, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Henry restored her to the line of succession when she was 10, via the Third Succession Act 1543. After Henry's death in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother Edward VI ruled until his own death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to a Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statutes to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside within weeks of his death and Mary became queen, deposing and executing Jane. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels. Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne.She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
To be fair, no one wanted to make that movie, except John Wayne. The script was rejected but John Wayne somehow got hold of it & thought it would make a great movie.
Wasn't that movie made on top of a nuclear waste site, or near one? I remember reading something about the curse of that movie and how many people died from cancer later who were in it. I mean, they're all dead now, probably, but, A disproportionate amount died sooner rather than later in some video I watched about it
People often make excuses for it like that -- but when you pretend you're telling a story about HISTORICAL EVENTS, with real people many of whom are still alive, all while showing them doing things they never did and saying things they never said, is just bloody dishonest. Set your story in a different time and place, with different people, if every single detail of it is going to be a lie. It still amazes me how many gullible people watch that fictional rubbish called "The Crown" and think they know what really happened. Did they think the writers of that crap were there hiding in the shadows when real people who are still alive are supposed to have said things to each other? Guess again. In MANY of those scenes, there was nobody there to hear what they said -- so it's all made-up hogwash, to appeal to people who aren't very smart.
The 300 thing makes me crazy, if you pay attention, the movie or at least the battle scenes are narrated and based on the story Dilios is telling to the leaders in order to have the rest of the army mustered, he's exaggerating to make a better, more heroic story to get people's attention. And, as Chris says, it's based on the graphic novel.
When I first saw the movie I was caught a bit off guard by the monsters, mutant and (at first glance) historical inaccuracies. But after someone pointed out, that the movie doesn't actually portray the battle but the narration of the battle and the way such stories are often exaggerated by the narrator, the movie became a totally different kind of awesome^^
I love the movie, but it's completely fine to say that it's wildly historically inaccurate. There's nothing wrong with that. Historically Dilios wasn't telling a story to leaders, he was considered a disgrace when he returned to Sparta.
You make a good point during the review of Alexander. Hellenic and Greek mythos does not seem to label sexuality at all like we do today. Zeus would often take the shape of animals during some of his promiscuity. The myths surrounding Heracles during his 12 trials suggest as one of his rewards he impregnated up to 50 of King Thespius daughters and later in life also had many male lovers. Alexander was recorded as being very pious towards the Hellenic gods. His bisexuality would not have been something he had to hide. I don't think it would have even been notable. Original creator of this list of videos doesn't seem to have researched much Greek myth themselves lol.
ya and the weird thing is that their are some records that exist that do demonstrate that Alexander did have intense largely Romanic relationships with men so the narrator saying that their is no historical record of it is just untrue
if I remember correctly from the movie, the whole fama about sexuality goes because of a kiss on the mouth of two men but... Historically, even today (maybe not today, but up until 100 years ago) it was common in that area for "battle brothers" to kiss when they met that specific kiss meant literally "You're still alive bro. alive!" back then it was quite normal to go on an "expedition (of any kind)" and not return and the wars were particularly bloody
Thebes had the Sacred Band, Which may or may not have been comprised of lovers. Some sources I have seen suggest they are more partners than lovers, but most think they were lovers. Outside of spartans, They were probably the most feared warriors until alexander or Phillip killed them all in battle. I've also seen some stuff which suggests other city states were not fond of the practice. As far as with Alexander, I have always viewed it as kind of an open secret he had. Probably wasn't spoken about openly, but everyone knew, kind of thing.
One historical inaccuracy in Gladiator that they failed to mention was the fact that gladiators did not fight each other to the death. That is a falicy created by Hollywood. In truth, gladiators were very expensive to train, feed, and maintain. Having them fight to the death was ridiculously expensive and unnecessary. So they fought until they were forced to yield. Of course, when fighting with swords, tridents, etc, accidents will happen and deaths would sometimes occur. But they were typically not planned. Some Roman emperors, specifically Tiberius and later his son, Caligula, were so depraved and blood thirsty that they would insist on the gladiators fighting to the death. However, they were the exception, not the rule. Normally they would fight until one of them is too injured to continue, or one of them would yield.
Also - if the gladiator died, patrons and patricians often had to pay the trainer for the loos of his gladiator. Not mentioning the thumb trick that many movies show - thumb down or up. We don't know if they did that and if they did - it might be that it was the fist with the thumb being inside the fist or sticking to the side (sheath the blade or unsheath it) and if it was thumh up or down - down could be 'he lives, stays to the ground' and up 'he dies, his getting up'. But it is kind of roman salute thing there. Anyway the most funny thing for me will always be when Marcus Aurelius talks about getting the Republic back (where in reality he pushed for his son and it would mean that title of Augustus - yeah, in ancient Rome Augustus was higher than Caesar which was shown later with Diocletian reforms of the empire (idea of Tetrarchy) - would be hereditary and Commodus even served as co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius.
Apparently the director of Gladiator knew “Up for die, down for live”, but he knew most audience members wouldn’t know, so he went with the flow. Mistake, imo, he missed a chance to educate a tiny bit as well as to entertain.
Well it was atrocious exempting the battle scenes which were impeccably done. But people expected to see the character of one of the greatest military leaders of all time and Oliver stone's interpretation was that he's a momma's boy..
@@GothPaoki The momma's boy thing could have worked if Alexander was not miscast and the chronological sequence of the film a mad women's breakfast. I think I remember seeing a Chinese drama where Genghis Khan was portrayed as a mama's boy, but at least they tell his life story in sequence, staring with his mother's kidnapping by a warlord and her exile with her children by the tribe.
@@occam7382 There are so many series and films about Genghis Khan that I cannot track it down. I remember it was in Mongolian language, so it's not the Chinese series or the Japanese-Mongolian co-produced series.
The movie, same as 300, is hated by most people who completely missed the entire point. Those movies are not depictions of history, those are stories told not as accurate history, but as a legend, as propaganda. Alexander is told by old Ptolemy as a justification of his political role in Egypt. 300 is a campfire story told by a Spartan veteran to lift the spirit of the Greek soldiers right before a battle. Those scenes are in the beginning and at the end of the movie, they are impossible to miss and they put the story into context. And yet, people ignore them, somehow.
You can say Mel Gibson was just trying to make a good movie, but he made a movie so inaccurate that both the English and the Scottish unanimously agree is offensive.
If you're "just trying to make a good movie" by falsifying every detail, you don't get to pretend it has anything to do with HISTORY. Call it something else! Too many directors think "Based on a true story" gives them freedom to tell a tale that's almost complete bullshit (like "Argo!")
I was wondering if anyone would mention this one. Another "historical" movie that's really inaccurate? Disney's "Davey Crockett: King Of The Wild Frontier". I'm pretty sure that most of the things Davey Crockett is shown doing in the movie ("grinning" animals to death, fighting a bear with his knife and killing it, being the last volunteer to fall during the fall of The Alamo, etc) are all either falsified or greatly exaggerated. In a similar vein, the 1960's version of "The Alamo" was probably also greatly exaggerated. Although I have heard that the early 2000's version of "The Alamo" was pretty accurate.
Many people in the UK are still angry about *U571* that depicted a group of "brave American soldiers" capturing the Enigma machine! The TRUTH is that it was BRITISH soldiers who had captured it, when the U.S. wasn't even in the war yet! American film-makers have a really bad habit of spinning history to try to make Americans look like the heroes, when they weren't at all -- like all the epics about Vietnam that try to pretend the U.S. didn't LOSE.
@@stevecarson4162 Actually even that first sentence is wrong. The captors were British /sailors/ not soldiers, crew of HMS Bulldog, one of whom drowned passing the machine out of the uboat which had already been scuttled by her crew. Agreed about the revisionist history though trying to pretend the US did everything.
I actually liked this movie. Action packed, entertaining, good acting, especially by Keitel. Ridiculously inaccurate but very entertaining. I'll watch it whenever its on.
What makes u571 worse is the studio as part of it's marketing distributed workbooks to schools to be used in teaching history which if they meant to or not reinforced the idea in a generation of American kids that's the movie is historically accurate.
14:01 One thing about the Battle of Gaugamela in that movie, the time of day may have been inaccurate but the battle itself and the tactics that were used were shockingly accurate.
The Last Samurai is a 2003 New Zealand-Japanese-American film directed by Edward Zwick. It is a loose adaptation of the events of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. The main character is also based in part on Jules Brunet, a French officer who resigned from the French army out of loyalty to the last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who had previously made a treaty of friendship with Napoleon III. So the history is an interprétation of that Napoléon III ' officer...
Indeed. Jules Brunet helped train Shogunate forces during the Boshin War so he had arrived in Japan in 1866 as part of the French military mission (and not in 1876 like Cruise's character in the film). He also returned to France to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, was awarded recognition by the Imperial government that replaced the Shogunate, and lived a full life until his death at age seventy-three in 1911.
@@johnmiwa6256 "Glory" is pretty accurate. But the movie was focused on the drama between the characters. Needless to say the records of the regiment that we have are not based on personal relationships. I read a book on the letters of Robert Gould Shaw and his focus was on his fellow officers.
Alexander is well worth your time if you've an interest in historical movies. It has some of the most accurate battle depictions ever put to film (phalanx formations, Hellenic cavalry etc.). The general vibe of the film is supposed to come off almost like the rendition of a contemporary epic poem (especially given the narration and narrator - no spoilers!), so the innaccuracies like Olympias (the way I see it) are those flourishes for the epic poem audience. Sort of like Herodotus.
"Alexander" doesn't belong on the "historically inaccurate" list of films, by any means, let alone "top 12". Even that thing about Olympias Oliver Stone didn't pull out of his arse, she was a member or a priestess of some (unknown) mystic cult and there are some ancient depictions of her with snakes, she might have been behind murder of her husband (IIRC, it's left ambiguous in the film or strongly implied, depending on the version, i.e. "cut") - the whole affair was strange and conveniently timed so that Philip's new son from his Macedonian wife (Cleopatra/ Eurydice) wouldn't be named heir, as making Alexander the heir apparent, and then the king was her life's work, then there's her feeding his "son of Zeus" idea or delusion... so, "crazy witch" isn't that unfair description. All that is from ancient sources, the main surviving 5 (Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Justinus(Justin) and Rufus) - the only silly thing about Olympias that Stone put in the film, for no good reason, is implication that Alexander wanted to do his mother, while his actions suggest that he was happy to get away from her overbearing mothering and keep her out of politics. What else? From the top of my head... When "narrator"😊 was telling his story, the Lighthouse of Alexandria hasn't been built yet, idea that Greeks, albeit Macedonians, haven't seen a monkey before coming to India... or that India looked like a South-American jungle are historically (or geographically) inaccurate; it's likely there are more such small details, but at the moment, none come to mind. Historical accuracy isn't the problem with "Alexander". Unfortunately, the film has other problems, such as very unfortunate pacing - at times boring, some scenes drag on needlessly and in other Stone crammed to much information within single scenes (e.g. when "introducing" Alexander's friends and generals to audience, at war council, Stone did it by having Alexander make his case, in a speech, address about a dozen people by name, giving each an epithet, in Homeric style, such as: ~ "glorious Hephaistion", "brave Ptolemy", "sage Cassander", "noble Philotas", "loyal Cleitus" etc. When watching the film in cinema for the first time, by the time he got to 5th man I already forgot which actor played whom, although I knew beforehand the names of most (certainly, all of note) of Alexander's generals/friends, his inner circle (Alexander III of Macedon was my childhood hero, plus due to my education and profession). Thankfully, there are at least 4 versions/"cuts" - theatre/director's/ultimate/final - of the film, and I remember at least one where that scene was cut out, and handled differently. And then, there's acting. I suspect Oliver Stone was trying to portray temperamental, loud Greek, well, Mediterranean, way of speaking when we're in a hurry, mildly arguing or full-on quarrelling, but it doesn't translate well into English or work with British, Irish, Aussie or American actors - it doesn't come natural to them and just seems like over the top, annoying hysterical shouting or yelling. And there - what could've been a great, faithful to sources historical film and hit, due to some well-intended, but ultimately not working missteps, the movie underperformed. Still, having watched 4 different "cuts", over time I grew fonder of "Alexander", though I never thought it was bad. As you said, well worth watching.
Alexander was extremely accurate! At least according to what we believe to know about the real history. Alexander wasn't depicted as being poisoned in the movie, I don't know where they got that from. There are some cases of condensed history, like they put some reported events together in a single event, but that's just to reduce the runtime and is understandable in my opinion.
Odd as it may seem, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' was much praised by my history teacher as it emphasised the vital importance of Christianity in Medieval Europe, the tendency for irrational beliefs to become taken as fact, the violence of the era, the feudal system and the dangers of killer rabbits in them days.
300 is the Battle of Thermopylae as recounted by a storyteller (Dilios). The wild exaggerations and fantastical beasts/monsters make sense in a story meant to rouse Greeks to fight the Persians. They used multiple sayings attributed to the Spartans in 300. Alexander may not have gotten the time of day correct for the Battle of Gaugamela, but it is considered one of the best depictions of battlefield tactics of that time period.
One of my favorite movies is The Ghost and the Darkness. Based on a real event, it obviously over dramatizes the facts but its wonderfully enjoyable and like you said, it led me to looking up the actual history behind it.
Sexuality in Rome was more based on dominance. Men were expected to be men and to have a family and father children. But it was okay if a man wanted to have a guy on the side, as long as he was the dominant partner. Being on the receiving end would have been seen as submissive and, thus, effeminate and wrong.
It’s a movie not a documentary I think there’s something very strange about society where we have unlimited information at our fingertips. We have schools and people want to get there history from movies? do medical drama have to get the medicine, right?
Age is showing, I remember a weekly kids show titled “Swamp Fox” about Francis Marion. “Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox! Tail on his hat! Nobody knows where the Swamp Fox’s at.”
It was on the Disney channel. And it definitely did not show him as a slave owner(that I can recall, anyway) or some of the more horrifying acts of his.
His name is *Salieri,* not Saltieri. The most appalling thing about that movie is that F. Murray Abraham actually won an Oscar for "Best Acting", when his eyerolling and mugging in close-up was so absurdly exaggerated it was painful to watch. It seems he and/or the director thought it had to be so in-your-face that even the dullest audience member couldn't possibly miss it. They may as well have had it flash across the screen: *SALIERI JEALOUS!! SALIERI EMBARRASSED!! SALIERI DISMAYED!!* Enough already. That "the Academy" thought it was award-worthy does NOT say good things about them! Not at all.
@@stevecarson4162 How humiliating. Brain fade put the t in there, because I know well how to spell his name. I edited the embarrassing t out. Thank you for drawing my attention to it. I am conflicted by Amadeus. So much of the cinematography I love, and Mozart's inclination toward toilet humor and raunchiness is too often written out of memories of his character so I appreciate quite a bit of his depiction. But Salieri's role as an inspirational teacher of music, mentor to Beethoven, and his admiration for the young Mozart is such an important contributor to the history of music that repeating salascious lies about him poisoning Mozart is contemptible character assasination that prevents us from appreciating both his music, and the reality of the creative world that produced wonderful music., including Mozart, and so much more that was to follow.
@@benjalucian1515 The play is based on unsubstantiated gossip from shortly after Mozart’s death. As a result the Salieri poisoning Mozart gossip is also a historic reality. Doesn’t stop the character assassination of Salieri from being both factually incorrect and extremely unjust. Perpetuating it becomes a moral issue and not just to be passed off as “just another story. “ The crazy thing is that the actual story of Salieri’s interactions with other composers is far more interesting than this myth.
Although this doesn’t really have much to do with this topic, I’d like to recommend a war movie you’ve probably never heard of unless you’re Finnish, called Unknown Soldier. It takes place during the continuation war between 1941-44 (for context it was around the time Germany invaded Russia) and focuses around a machine gun company. It is based on a book with the same name written in 1954. The author was a guy called Väinö Linna, who served in the very same war and based the characters on people he served with. The thing I like about it is the fact that no character no matter how big or small seem invincible, just like in real life, unlike other movies. The reason why I mentioned it here is because I’m not too sure on the accuracy of the battles themselves that happen and the things that occur during the movie, but it’s accurate enough and it’s so good you really just enjoy it because of the greatness of the movie. The 2017 version is the one I recommend you watch, it is in Finnish but subtitles exist, and it should be on Netflix.
Gladiator was grossly historically incorrect in almost every way possible, but the things they say are incorrect for the most part weren't even errors! 😅
Mel Gibson never made an accurate war movie. Even the one where he tried, We Were Soldiers, only showed the first half of that battle, declared "yay we won" and then ended it.
I honestly couldn't say which is the most inaccurate historical movie, but I do know which one is absolutely the most true and best told historical movie, and that's, Robinhood Men In Tights👨🏫
My 6th great grandfather was a blacksmith for the Pennsylvania militia during The Revolution. He was murdered by loyalists in 1789, long after the war had ended.
My long-ago relative , also from Pennsylvania, fought in the Revolutionary War. So sorry about your 6x great-grandfather was killed so senselessly…but then, aren’t all murders senseless?
The Patriot is very innacurate, but I was obsessed with it as a kid and it definitely led me to learn more about colonial America and the Revolutionary War, so I'll always love it.
Elizabeth had eyes on her virtually every minute of the day and night, and ambassadors paid her staff to find out when she menstruated. Yet there is no solid evidence (aside from rumour and innuendo), that she ever had sexual relations with anyone. Given the risk of pregnancy and disgrace- why on Earth would she risk it? Everything of her family history would indicate Elizabeth would not want to make herself that vulnerable to any man.
Exactly. That's what I've been saying. And even if you take her favorites like Robert into account, there is NO solid evidence they ever had intercourse! To say she was certainly not a virgin was Definitely kind of an oversight.
Maybe because she loved someone? Or because she wanted to have sex because sex is fun? She had eyes on her, but she was in power and there were rumors about her, she could easily enjoy an affair with some man and get away with it, just saying "or, another slanderous accusation". Getting pregnant is not as easy as movies show it, to achieve it, you need to hit a specific window in the cycle that is only a couple of days per month and you need to have a specific type of sex during it.
@@neverstopschweiking You can love someone without having sex with them, and it used to be the norm (before reliable contraception) to wait until you were married. Also Elizabeth could not have had an affair without someone knowing about it. She did not even go to the toilet without some being present to help her. She literally was not alone at anytime during the day or night. Yet there is not one piece of evidence she spent any time alone with Dudley or anyone else in her entire reign. While there are some women who cannot fall pregnant or it is not easy, falling pregnant is incredibly likely for most women if she has sex regularly and does not use contraception. I am not sure what you mean about the movies, but my experience is from real life. I have worked with many women who have fallen women unintentionally. It literally happens to thousands of women every day. It happened to my mother with my brother, my mother in law with my husband and it seems it happened with my present partner’s grandmother. You can fall pregnant through any type of sex where the man ejaculates in the vagina and there is about a 5 day window each month. The egg is viable for about 2 days, but sperm can live for up to 5 days. So if you have sex 5 days before a woman ovulates, it is quite possible for her to fall pregnant. It is very concerning that you believe it is difficult to fall pregnant!
A couple of points regarding the church burning in The Patriot. While the British didn't go around burning all churches, they DID desecrate churches not part of the Church of England. John Burgoyne turned a church into a riding stable infuriating the local population. A few churches did actually burn down, including first Speaker of the US House Fredrick Muhlenburg's New York church, but there's debate if it was intentional or not. So to say it has no historical basis is itself historically questionable. That said, there were never any people in any destroyed church. There was a historical event in which the town was forced into a church which was then burnt down killing everyone inside. But it happened June 10, 1944, four days after D-Day, in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. The Nazi accused them of helping the French Resistance without any evidence. This incident was part of the Nuremberg Trials and 2 were executed for their part. Others received prison sentences. It is too bad the British army was made to look like Nazis in the movie, a scene we all could have done without.
Re: Alexander - most historians say that Alexander is quite accurate. The things shown as inaccurate are just added for entertainment. Regarding Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age are both really historically inaccurate. They didn't point out the real true historical issues in the second movie (and the first). The second film is just as bad as the first. Changes they made to history in the first film affected the second film. In the first film, the only explanation that I can think of for why they switched the ages of William Cecil and Kat Ashley is that they really wanted Richard Attenborough as Cecil. They also made changes to 'history' to move things from later in the reign to the beginning (execution of Norfolk). At the end of the first movie, they decided Elizabeth should retire Cecil. Completely untrue - the man was dying and she wouldn't let him retire. It also shows Robert Dudley taking part in a plot against Elizabeth and it says she never saw him again. Completely untrue. Those choices affected the second movie because both of those characters should have played big roles in the sequel.
I would have added Saving Private Ryan, because sending out a full squad to locate and retrieve 1 sodier from an active warzone was completely unacceptable to high command and so would never have happened
Not a "gross representation" of the Praetorian Guard. They were involved in the assassination of Caligula, almost a hundred years before Commodus took the Throne, was assassinated by the Guard and Senate (then then Guard installed Claudius when they realized they would be out of the job with no Emperor). They did auction off the Throne, after they killed Emperor Pertinex (who suceeded Commodus) in 193 to Julianus.
Terry Pratchett in his Discworld series praises the Night Watch as a force for good, in that they solved slightly more crimes than the committed. I like to think of the Praetorian Guard in the same vein. They protected slightly more emperors than they killed.
VTH, I'd recommend you watch Alexander. Alexander is an underrated gem in my opinion. If you can get past the accents - which never bothered me - it's a wonderful and pretty accurate portrayal of the life of Alexander the Great. Many of the lines in the film are taken straight from the sources, and pretty much all of the important events are recounted from sources like Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander, and Diodorus' Bibliotheca Historica. The narrator throughout is Ptolemy himself as he wrote his own history of Alexander, which is lost to us but is the basis for most of the classical writers whose accounts we do have. The armor and weaponry of the Macedonians is pretty accurate, and the same can be said for the Persians. The Battle of Gaugamela is one of the best portrayals of a historical battle in modern cinema, and it's pretty obvious why an early morning filming wouldn't have worked for how its shot; you wouldn't be able to see the armies if it was an early morning shoot, especially through the dust that gets kicked up. One of the things people complain about is the over dramatic acting, especially from Colin Farrel. Those complaining about it are missing the point, in my opinion. It's acted just like how an ancient-greek tragedy would be acted; legendary heroes with stormy emotions that match their incredible deeds. That also explains why Alexander's mother is portrayed as a witch who has a passion for the esoteric. Writers did claim that she was involved in cult practices for Dionysus, and Diodorus Siculus claimed she was involved in so-called "mystical practices" relating to the cult. These ideas stuck with Alexander throughout his campaign, and as he pushed East, his celebrations and self-association with Dionysus became more prominent. Many writers have also claimed that Olympias orchestrated the death of Phillip II so that Alexander could take the throne, or at least lead the charge to plant the double-edged words in Alexander's head that he was the son of Zeus, and destined for greatness. He was very close with his mother, and not very close with his father, who saw him as a rival or a threat. The depiction of Olympias as a witch with a cunning side is certainly exaggerated, much like Greek theatre, but it is not exactly a terribly inaccurate portrayal if the producers and writers stuck with the ancient sources and interpreted them for the movie. The biggest issue I see people point out is that it's boring, and I'm not going to argue against that. It's 3 hours long with two major battles (The Battle of Gaugamela and the Battle of the Hydaspes), and some have complained that it becomes "like a documentary." If you're not interested at all in Alexander, or his life and campaigns, it's not something you should watch. But if you have an interest in Alexander, or how the Greeks forever changed the course of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, you should certainly watch it. (Also, yes, in Greece at the time male-on-male relationships were incredibly common, but it was not seen as proper for a man to marry another man in the same way he would a woman. You can see evidence of this in the dialogues of Plato, and other works that were made in Classical Greece.)
What do I think? I'm so glad you asked: 1) I think that "Troy" has even less business being on this list than "Arthur" does, given that both movies' origin stories are equally mythological in nature, and were written multiple THOUSANDS of years ago, so accuracy was never going to be the strong suit of either tale. At least "Troy" had the decency to take place right about where it needed to, and didn't involve any actual "god work" in the story, whereas "Arthur" was a complete fabrication that turned King Arthur into a simple Roman Commander, who was out of his element. If anything, "Troy" was the more believable of the two movies. 2) Why, oh dear God, WHY is "Pearl Harbor" not included on this list??? That movie is a prime example of RECENT HISTORY being blatantly fudged up, and twisted around, so as to make the movie more exciting, rather than tell an accurate story of what actually happened! And it was made by a director KNOWN for his science fiction-level explosions, moreso than his actual ability to tell a great story! "Pearl Harbor" was an insult to historians everywhere. Why the hell is it nowhere among the Top 12 of this list?! 3) "Titanic" was a good romance flick, involving a historical incident. But its' accuracy leaves a lot to be desired. Particularly when you take in the fact that 90% of the main cast of the movie NEVER EXISTED AT ALL, and were created purely for the drama of the whole event, whereas the actual historically accurate characters were blatantly shoved to the side, and made to be nothing more than "hey, look at him over there!" pieces, than as players in the big game. Also, it is now KNOWN that the Titanic did not actually snap in two, at the surface, as depicted in the film. It broke apart underwater, after it had already sank beneath the surface. So nobody would have seen it happen at all. 4) "Braveheart" should be higher on this list, because it has LOADS of historical inaccuracies, moreso than many of the other inclusions hereon. It in fact should be TOP FIVE in terms of inaccuracy. Not bringing up the rear, at number 12. I dare say that "10,000 BC" is arguably more accurate, and we KNOW what's wrong about that stupid movie! 5) "Dunkirk" was a great movie. I hate to include it here. But it is also pretty stupidly inaccurate. It's a well-told story, and the characters are all well-directed and well-acted. So again, I hate to say it should be on this list. But again... recent history being "romanticized" for the sake of entertainment is a little bit more unforgivable than some story from WAY BACK in ancient times, that has the argument of "Well, we really don't know for sure," to defend itself with. World War II movies do not have this advantage. Nor should they.
Arthur (the guy’s nickname) lived abou 1500 years ago, & Troy (Homer’s) was burned by Agamemnon about 3-4 thousand years ago- so big gap there. Not contemporaries.
I am not sorry, Braveheart is a travesty where making money doesn't make it all right, it makes it worse. e.g. showing Robert the Bruce as a traitor, when actually historically HE is "braveheart" - troops carried a box containing his heart after his death to inspire the scots - is unforgiveable. When a movie could so easily be much more accurate and arguably be more entertaining because of it, it should not be tolerated. Being inaccurate for no reason is not acceptable.
You talking about The Patriot reminds me of your reaction to History Buffs video on the film. He was furious at this film, like a personal insult, and you just weren't having it lol
After watching "Titanic" I overheard a woman saying "that wouldn't have happened". Her friend looked puzzled, and she clarified that she had been on plenty of cruises, and she said that people aren't allowed to throw cigarettes over the side. That is what bothered her most.
Real ! Its hard to get anybody to watch historical movies with me because they are just full of nonsense most of the time 😅 especially now that Hollywood wants to show every historical figure as homosexual and use history to promote their own political views
My son is 49, and from the time he was about 12 or 13, he would say, "No, Mom, you do not want to watch this one. And I DO NOT want to watch it with you." Same reasons.
I refuse to WATCH any "historical movie" where they've falsified virtually every detail and character in it, yet still pretend it's "based on" real events from that time and place. Would people accept a movie about the U.S. Civil War, if they changed it to German soldiers fighting Norwegians "to make it more dramatic"? Why is that any less acceptable?
@@bernard3303: You say, "Hollywood wants to show every historical figure as homosexual". Which movies do that? Name them. (BTW, you've made YOUR own political views very clear, too. What makes you any better?)
I throughly enjoyed this analysis and you're very well rounded take on these movies. I love history and I love good historical movies but I can let slide something that helps move the story along as long as it's not out in left field. Thank you for this!
I attended a lecture on greek philosophy in college, where they touched on the subject of homosexuality. According to quite a few greek philosophers the love between two men was the purest because it was a connection of body, mind and spirit, whereas love between woman and man was purely a biological necessity. Therefor I am pretty sure that the greeks/macedonians couldn't care less if Alexander was bi-sexual :)
I mean, from many things I saw and read - it's complicated topic as love in ancient Greece or even Rome - wasn't the one term. We had a Plato who was talking about love - platonic love. There were many who were saying that Achilles and Patroclos were lovers for example. In Sparta many soldiers had romances with younger soldiers. I would say that what they knew and called love (they used few terms to distinct one type of love from other) and what we understand by it is very different. Homosexuality was viewed in different way - it wasn't fully accepted as a lot of times it was power based, status based - passive side was looked down on while active side was more okay, yet still being only with partner of same sex wasn't the thing that was accepted. I mean, even male partners of Nero or Hadrian where forced or convinced to pretty much change into female. Some laughed at Commodus that he acts as a woman and plays as prostitute. Spartans laughed and Athenians that they were girly, feminine. So it's very complicated topic, bur sure, being bisexual for sure was less looked down on (especially when you are rich and rule whole country and you get fame as one of the most talented generals) as you would still sleep with women.
They wouldn't understand our concept of sexuality. They wouldn't know why modern Anglo-Saxon culture obsesses about the fact some man slept with a man and than with a woman. For them it would be like for us someone enjoying pictures of feet instead of pictures of breasts. Recognized, but not relevant. In ancient Greece, at least among the aristocrats, sex was a part of marriage to produce children and a marriage was often a political or business deal. Having a love and romance in a marriage would be nice, but not as common as we have it today. And same-sex attraction would be preferable type of infidelity as it doesn't threaten the inheritance rights of the kids.
Greek man/boy relations were chiefly a rite of passage, and usually occurred between pupils and mentors, or as a bonding ritual during military tutilage. Homosexuality was neither particularly accepted nor opposed, it was chiefly a non-issue. The Romans were a bit more divided, but this was case in most matters of sexuality, and such views tended to ebb and flow in accordance with the personal opinions of the Emperors.
Hi! I would like to add that the character of Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai is not entirely fictional - he is based of a french officer/ adviser who fought for the shogun. He defied orders from France to stay and fight for what he came to admire. His name was Jules Brunet, and his story is actually quite remarkable and interesting.
They do show Achilles being shot by an arrow to the heel, followed up by multiple shots to his torso, which Achilles pulls out, on screen it implies he bleeds out, though in the Illiad he is shot in the heel with a poisoned arrow, which is not out of the realm of possibility in the film either. What they get wrong is that Achilles is killed during the sacking of Troy, whereas in the Illiad, he's killed prior to the building of the Horse.
Oliver Stone's Alexander, that pretty much sums it up. You either dig Stone films or like normal people, you ignore them. As for Arthur, "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government." Pretty sure Monty Python and the Holy Grail should have been number 1 on this list.
Monty Python never claimed to be historically accurate in /any/ of their films. They were /Comedies/ loosely set in a pseudo historical era. Ergo they have no place on a list of Historical movies.
@@julianmhall very few movies claim to be "historically accurate". The public just sort of deems what they think is accurate. Even those that claim accuracy take creative license: For example, Easy company finding a concentration camp in Band of Brothers. Never happened, they came to one discovered by another unit the day before.
That comment about Achilles heel not being "historically" accurate needed a bit more commenting on. If anything, I feel it's one of the few parts of the movie that makes it somewhat historically "accurate", as the makers of the movie choose to go with a much less mythological version of the story: If a warrior named Achilles fought in this war and was said to be near invincible in combat, but had a weak heel, then it's very likely that he was a very skilled warrior who just so happened to take an arrow to the heel at a critical moment that cost him his life - thus causing the myth that he had been blessed by the gods and this was the only way of killing him.
@@84tand It is more like being faithful to the myth than the history. I must say though that I thought they did a good job with the battle between Achilles and Hector.
The graphic Novel of 300 was inspired in a large way by the 1962 Movie "The 300 Spartans" which is a fairly accurate retelling of the battle whilst Gladiator is an OTT Reboot of 1964s The Fall of the Roman Empire. The legends of Arthur were being told as early as the 7th century and the 2004 movie went with the not wholly accepted Sarmatian hypothesis.
13:19 re: Alexander’s mother Olympias - Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History has multiple episodes where he quotes contemporary writers AT LEGNTH that say she absolutely was a “snake worshiping witch” Source: Glimpses of Olympias Mania for Subjugation episode 1
However, writers at the time weren't necessarily writing in the sense of journalistic, let alone academic reporting. It's important to understand that they wanted to convey certain things, and not necessarily through truthfulness.
Please watch Alexander if you have time. It’s a great movie and it’s arguably one of the most historically accurate movies. The “flaws” the AI channel was mentioning are very strange.
The problem with playing fast and loose with the facts is that movies are a very evocative medium. Even if I get interested in the facts after and do some internet searching, it's going to be really hard to get other content to sort of "overwrite" the movie in my brain, just because of how more memorable movies are in comparison with text. It's kind of like when you read a book you imagine characters a certain way, but when you see a film adaptation and then re-read the book, you have a hard time not seeing actors' faces in your mind. So that's why I think that there is a certain responsibility there, not to get everything exactly right, but just not completely wrong.
The reason I have been subscribed to you is beacsue you can distinguish fact from fiction, and as a film buff and (sorta) film historian, I love you clarify that film directors are meant to make a film for dramatic purpose but there are great directors who are historically accurate films.
Concerning "Alexander", it is probably the most accurate depiction of the use of the phalanx in war that has ever been committed to film, and the course of the battle of Gaugamela is spot on.
@@Forester- We Were Soldiers was pretty good the only thing that kind of annoyed me was that one scene with all the wives at home and one of them makes a comment on how she couldn't wash any colored sheets at a laundromat because she didn't know about segregation in 1965.
When I was a young kid in the late 50s and early 60s there was a Disney series called The Swamp Fox about the exploits of Francis Marion. I remember being enamored with it and peaked my interest in the Revolutionary War.
One of the reasons Pocahontas turned out the way it did was the timescale it was made. Disney saw Beauty and the Beast do really well and so wanted another film in the forbidden love/love brewing as a battle happens story frame, and the next film in their production line that was early enough in production that they were able to make that sort of change to was Pocahontas (other films like the Lion King were too far into production) I've not seen the Pocahontas sequel (as, like most Disney straight to home media sequels, it's got AWFUL reviews), but it does appear to be *somewhat* (and I use somewhat very loosely) more accurate to the real Pocahontas, as she does at least go to London as her love interest in that film is John Rolfe Also, I want a *good* Disney Pocahontas prequel about the Lost Colony of Roanoke
Alexander may have it's issues, but it has probably the best depiction of ancient warfare I've ever seen. The fact that they actually had the troops move in formation and maintain unit cohesion is superb. I wish more movies/shows would do this instead of depicting helmetless warriors engaging in a chaotic mess.
My only issue with 300 is that there are people who think that actually happened the way the movie portrays it. 300 contributed to this weird psuedo-mythology we have today about Spartans being super soldiers that were better than everyone else at the time, when in reality most historians would tell you that they only really differed in the fact that military service was a major focus of their culture. They were good soldiers, absolutely, but they were not making everyone else look like rubes.
Spartans at that time were a very, very well-trained soldiers. Spartan women were obviously orders of magnitude better warriors than other Greek or Persian women, they even attended the Olympic games as athletes. When it comes to men, there were many Greeks and Persians who would be on the same level as an average Spartan, but the entire point of the military service in Sparta was to eliminate the weaker members of the military formation. And you can see they are depicted as strong, but not supermen. The moment they face the immortals, the elite Persian infantry, quite a lot of them die. Also keep in mind these are not random Spartans, these are the best of the best, hand-picked by the king himself for a suicide mission that real Spartans would consider the highest honor and would fight over the privilege to attend.
The British did burn a church with Patriots trapped inside, but it was in St-Eustache (QC) in 1837. They also burned entire villages in Quebec during the 1837-1838 Rebellions under General John Colborne's order.
@@drbuckley1 well they were not the same patriots, but they were republicans who took arms to get rid of the British. So, same old same old. But I agree that the British were way more aweful in Asia, Africa and Oceania
I think the most obvious movie to put on a list like this is DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. The insane portrayal of freed black men destroying the post-war south, and threatening the virtue of white women, but then valiantly saved by the ku klux klan, was a gross inaccuracy that caused immeasurable harm to the US.
10,000 B.C. is a caveman movie, like Quest for Fire. It's not supposed to be a historical movie, it's literally the story of Moses in the Stone Age. Good fun, but watch it as just that, fun.
The 1965 film battle of the bulge was so bad Eisenhower came out of retirement to denounce the movie for being so wrong and inaccurate. Like... the film was made in spain amd there is no snow. They have some fake snow but not much. And almost no trees. For the battle of the bulge which was in december 1944 in the Ardennes
It is interesting that the 2 historical figures that they gave private showings to came out and gave public panning of it. Besides Eisenhower, Hasso von Manteuffel also gave a terrible review of the film to the press.
To me this is a bad list because it misses the most egregious thing a historical movie can do, which is to portray themselves as historically accurate when they are not. To me the worst case would be JFK, which is done to look almost like a docudrama while intentionally getting facts incorrect to paint a specific narrative. Another egregious example would be 12 Years a Slave. which changes just about every fact that happened in real life.
I appreciated the fact that in ‘Those About To Die”, Domitian had Titus murdered in a secluded place and told his men to tell everyone that Titus died of a fever from bad food. It shows the fact that the writers are straying from history, while also acknowledging that Titus really did die from a short illness.
TO THIS DAY i don't understand the hate Alexander get. Especially from the historical community. I was for the longest time passionate about ancient history and the period of classical till late antiquity was always my favourite. i used to read the authors pieces.. i read all of Herodotus and more.. Alexander IS a great movie. It give the CORRECT vibe to the historical events surrounding Alexander's life and epic. It has great storytelling, amazing battles and it is one of the few movies in HISTORY that bothers to show people fighting in ACTUAL FORMATIONS, not the garbage moshpits of hollywood. The entire Gaugamela sequence is a masterpiece alone! The "issues" of the movies are more due to sincretism, they had to condense 20years of history into a few key moments including a few battles, so yes, there is a lot of "people in the wrong place" or multiple events and people condensed into one. Is not a 20 hours TV series. is a barely 3h movie. They had to cut things up. Anthony Hopkins as an older Ptolomy narrating his biography and "changing" it to make it look nicer as he is dictating it to his scribe is majestic. Also Soundtrack from Vangelis. COME ON. Shittier films get hyped and a really good one is dumped. I know NOW Ritter has a mark on his shoulder for being a hack. But in the 2000s he was on fire. Give the movie a try at least.
Disney had a series about Francis Marion called 'Swamp Fox'. Starred a very very young Leslie Nielsen. Doubt it had much in the way of historical accuracy, but it was how I first heard of him.
Film Historian graduated with a Masters in film. Bohemian Rhapsody is inaccurate, Argo almost completely ignored the Canadian's help, Untouchables, just a few to name. Congrats on the channel.
Re: "Argo" -- actually the Canadians did more than "help" -- they did the whole thing. Mendez only arrived at the very last minute, forgot the movie screenplay in his car so it wasn't used, and he never took ANY of the Americans ANYWHERE, not at any time. Affleck first showed the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, of all places, and was so dismayed at the anger from the Canadian audiences that he quickly added a disclaimer before its general release. Too little, too LATE -- especially when he was doing interviews declaring "It's all true!" Like hell it was. Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador, *who was THERE,* has said the movie is "almost total fiction". You don't get to say "Based on a true story", when virtually NOTHING in the movie is what really happened during the real events.
Alexander is one of the most historically accurate films made. The attention to detail, meticulous reconstruction of the uniforms, characters and, especially, the battles means it normally appears in the lists of MOST accurate films. Do yourselves a favour and watch it!! You will not regret it!!!
It's so typical of "Hollowood" to falsify history in an attempt to pretend Americans were the heroes, when they weren't at all. Like all the Vietnam movies that sidestep the ugly reality that the U.S. LOST that war.... And "U571" that pretended it was heroic AMERICAN seamen who captured the Enigma machine, when it was BRITISH seamen, before the U.S. was even in the war. Or "Argo" which pretended Mendez (played by the DIRECTOR!) was some kind of hero, when he only arrived at the last minute, and never took ANY of the Americans ANYWHERE, not at any time. Canadians are still angry about "Argo", like Brits are still angry about "U571".
Go watch Alexander. The movie was lambasted by fan boys who didn't want a character study and Greeks who didn't want their hero to swing both ways and by people who didn't know the history of Alexander. Oliver Stone does. He studied the histories very extensively and the movie reflects this. Yes, it was dramatized in areas, but it was pretty accurate to the time and place and events as per the records. Oh and Oliver Stone didn't name his movie "Alexander the Great". He was making a character study, hence the movie title "Alexander".
At the time of Alexander it was common to have male lovers. I remember an old quote 'A man for love, a woman for duty and a boy for pleasure' sex between soldiers was promoted to create a deeper bond.
Just discovered your channel! Love it! Here are a few-all of which I love-which are just hopeless when judged against the historical record: 1) The Ten Commandments (😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂); 2) The Lion in Winter (a fictional Christmas Court in 1183 held Chinon France with King Henry II, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, King Philip of France, Richard the Lionhearted); 3) Kingdom of Heaven (another Ridley Scott sunglazed, exotic costume fantasy shot in locations bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the real sites in which they occurred, with echoes of the story of Baldwin IV King of Jerusalem and Saladin Sultan of Egypt, along with a fictional romance between two people who absolutely never met); 4) Elizabeth AND Elizabeth, The Golden Age (both fabulously entertaining, AND absolutely PERMEATED with historical inaccuracies); 5) The Wind and the Lion (Theodore Roosevelt, navigating a foreign policy crisis in Morocco with a brigand sultan who has kidnapped an ambassador’s wife, along side his grief over the loss of both his wife and mother on the same day during a month’s long hunting expedition into the Wyoming/Montana wilderness); 6) Franklin and Eleanor (made for TV, two part mini-series that does admirably-but stops short of the the aftermath of Roosevelt’s death); 6) Jackie, Ethel, and Joan (also made for TV, which predictably gives short shrift to the far less more troublesome and tawdry second and third Kennedy wives).
A friend of mine, Anna Busby, was a nurse at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. She was in her 80s when the Michael Bay atrocity was filmed. The production company sent a team to interview her on film and I got to see the video of her interview.
She told the interviewers several stories that were not only true and great stories but would have been PERFECT for the film: how the first notion of something bad coming was when the breakfast trays in the hospital began to rattle, how during and after the attack when the nurses had far more than they could handle the hospital was filled with an army of volunteers who included prostitutes, nuns, Buddhist monks, Mormon college students, officer's wives- people who would never have socialized or mixed under normal conditions all working together to help the wounded, about driving a remote road with other nurses a few days after the attack to visit convalescing wounded when she heard a putter and a Japanese zero that had apparently landed during the attack flew over them (she never knew why it was there or how its crew got it working again).
The interview crew's reaction was basically "That's nice. So tell us where did you go on dates when you dated doctors or flyboys?"
She told them, REPEATEDLY, that nurses rarely dated doctors or flyboys and for the simple reason that it was hard to be romantic when the dates were chaperoned, had a curfew, you were limited to officers only, and you had to get formal permission. She said this was not formality or turn a blind eye either: it was rigidly enforced- violate any one of them and it was court martial for both parties.
The crew was basically "Uh-huh. So what kind of things would you do on dates? Where would you go if you wanted privacy to make out?"
Again, she said, there was a lot less making out than you'd think and in fact she didn't know of any. If doctors or sailors or pilots wanted to make out, they had R&R time and could avail themselves of any lady willing to go out with them or the many brothels and bars and pool halls, but the nurses were as close as you could get to a convent without taking holy orders. Again, she repeated several times, this wasn't "nudge nudge wink wink"- the US Navy wasn't concerned with the chastity of the men but if a naval nurse were to get pregnant then there better be a star leading shepherds and Middle Eastern men on camels bearing gifts to the nursery or else there'd be hell to pay. This was partly because of different standards and norms of course, but also to protect the nurses from sexual assault or STDs or a million other possible bad things that could happen in a place with lots and lots and lots of sailors.
Then she'd proceed to tell them another fascinating story, like about the mild mannered sweet old gardener everybody loved who had spy cameras in his hut, or the doctor who reported for duty on the day of the attack so quick he was barefoot and in his bathrobe, or other true stories she'd personally witnessed, and they'd continue with "Hmmm. So were you given condoms?" (That's an actual question they asked her: in the first place, she'd just told them there was not really any need for them unless you were dating The Flash and managed to get behind a tree for five seconds [my analogy, not her's], and in the second place, those were issued to men, not to female nurses.)
Needless to say, she hated the movie. She said every nurse in it would have been dishonorably discharged.
Giving Bay military history is akin to giving Abrams sci-fi.
Wow those are some fascinating stories! Shame they didn't get told
This is absolutely fascinating. I can't believe a dumb romance fiction plot is what they thought would be more captivating
I came to this video for Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor (2001) was not a history movie, it was a terrible love story that I wish I never saw.
When Braveheart was in theaters, I was working as a book seller at Borders. A pair of teen-age girls came in and asked for books with the real Braveheart. I was so happy that the movie inspired young people to learn about history. When I showed them books about William Wallace in the Scottish history section, they giggled and clarified that they wanted something with pictures of Mel Gibson. For a minute there, I had hope for the future.
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😕
True story. So, I go into a blockbusters( vhs I think, believe it or not) and I ask the young clerk if they have The’ diary of Anne Frank’. Out of the moth of babes: “ Is that an exercise video?”🥵
@@chriswest8389 That book has been required reading in most schools for over thirty years! I wonder where she was educated. Or if she was educated.
@@davohl130 years ago?!? The Diary of Anne Frank was being studied when I was at school, something like 50 or 60 years ago!
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter should be top of the list. We all know he was a werewolf hunter, but obviously these writers don't do any research.
I think he could have done both!
I thought he fought zombies
I thought that he was a Ghostbuster!
My late brother said this movie was going to give history teachers some very entertaining answer on tests about the American civil war.
@@FriscoFlame Nah, that was Andrew Jackson. I know this because Andrew Jackson fought with everyone.
Chris, stop giving these AI channels views. Find someone that puts in the time and proves they are real
This needs to be the top comment
yeah i realized pretty quickly this was probably AI narrated
The Alexander part especially was nonsense, it’s too accurate if anything
Yeah, I thought the script and arguement was a lackluster and kind of a generalized tone, that's why I knew it's made by AI
I work with and study AI and can say with decent confidence that the narration is legit, but yeah the script is pretty lackluster.
The 1965 film "The Battle of the Bulge" was so bad that Eisenhower came out of retirement to publicly deride it.
Exactly. Given the parameters shown by the writers of this offering, who knew that the Germans used M60's (I think) and the attack only failed because they couldn't capture a fuel depot.
I was thinking the same thing. Terrible “historical “ film.
While Eisenhower did publicly strongly condemn the film, I’m kind of confused, about the came out of retirement comment. It’s not like he rejoined the army, and stormed the studio.
@@jeffmattes5446 Eisenhower had retired from public life before the film came out.
I can't believe I watched that movie.
I've been reenacting the american revolution for some 30 years now. When we went to see'the patriot' my wife kept saying "It's just a movie i don't want to hear a peep out of you." HALF WAY through the movie SHE was yelling at the screen.
That's how you know a movie f*cked up.
For me, it was when the African Americans saying they weren't slaves and worked for Gibsons character on their volition. I distinctly remember going" What? C'mon really?!
Definitely surprised to not see Pearl Harbor on here.
Or U571
My favorite part of Braveheart is the first 10 seconds… The narrator says some will call me a liar then he tells a bunch of lies lol
Also from a moviemaking perspective the movie has like a million continuity errors - all while the movie claims to be historical. But the music was quite good.
My favorite part was just how mustache twirling evil They depicted the king of England, so many quotable lines.
I thought Edward 1 aka " Longshanks" was played really well too, Back in Medieval times you had to be brutal to keep your throne .
The first lie of Braveheart was actually before the first words are ever spoken: Bagpipes weren't introduced to Scotland until a century or two after William Wallace died.
Braveheart is one of the worst films ever made in the history of film.
I say this as a Scotsman from the village
William Wallace came from.
"Cate Blanchett is just awesome.. she's also really hot." 😅 I like this new Chris.
The "Yeaah" afterwards was a little scary.
I mean, the guy is single now, he doesn't have to hide / pretend other women aren't hot 😅😂
@@MonsieurDeVeteran since when
I had a crush on her since she appeared as Galadriel in LOTR. And her role as Hela in Thor Ragnarok...
@@MonsieurDeVeteranwait what
Not a movie, but a series. I finished Manhunt about a month ago, and I have to say, it bugged me to NO END that the Confederates Booth interacted with kept saying they had been part of the Battle of Bull Run. Booth himself repeatedly calls it that.
They were Confederates. They would have called it Manassas.
They got many of the details wrong including Booth breaking the wrong leg and what he said after shooting Lincoln.
my 5x great-grandfather fought with Francis Marion in South Carolina. He stated in his pension application that he would rather have suffered the deprivations of camp than to be on furlough, because being at home was more dangerous - loyalists would kill a man at his fireside for being a patriot - whether he was or not.
Pocahontas died at Gravesend, Kent. After being taken ill shortly after setting sail for Virginia. Her grave was lost after the original St George's Church, Gravesend was destroyed by fire. "Since 1958 she has been commemorated by a life-sized bronze statue in St. George's churchyard, a replica of the 1907 Jamestown sculpture by the American sculptor William Ordway Partridge."
Yep. Gravesend, Kent. NOT London.
I have seen Alexander (2004) for a history project I did in high school. The role of Alexanders mother was way over the top, in some scenes it looks like she is going to *nudge nudge wink wink* her own son. But some scenes are based on history. There is a scene where Alexander asks a princess how she wishes to be treated after her country as fallen. She responsed: "As I am, a princess." Alexander gives her the treatment of a princess. That is based on a report in which Alexander asks a conquered king the same question, and he responded 'As I am, king", and Alexander did treat him as such.
10:08 I have to disagree. We don't have written history, but archeology exists. The archaeological record can certainly establish that horses and chickens were not domesticated during that period at that location.
Not to mention genetics and paleontology. Not sure that was specifically what Chris was referring to, though. Probably just referred to the actions of the people in the movie.
I agree with this. Where written history did not exist, we can still see what was happening through Archeological/Paleontological findings. We knew when the general date the Egyptian Pyramids were being built, if not through papyri, then through carbon datings or such.
is not the case of horses is that they were too small to be good riding animal.
History only covers an era of written record. What was before that is called prehistory. Movies taking place in an era before history are not historical. And for obvious reasons, 300 and Alexander are also not "historical"movies as they are clearly political propaganda stories and legends told by witnesses of the events not as a historical account, but for purposes of lifting the spirit of soldiers and for justification of political role of the narrator respectively.
hell we had not even domesticated grass (rice wheat corn barley)
I also take issue with the movie Pocahontas showing talking trees. There were obviously no talking trees at that time.
i grew up near Austerlitz. I would gladly have a dozen talking trees, baba yaga, and a magical water spirit in Napoleon as a part of the battle rather than that abomination that was put on the screen.
Have you tried talking to every tree?
/s
And still aren’t. 😊
I heard that the trees in Pocahontas were distant relatives of the Ents of Middle Earth, except they didn't walk OR talk.
What frustrates me the most about historical inaccuracy in movies/series is that oftentimes the very real and historically accurate story itself is straight out of a movie and I will never ever understand why the filmmakers would set the real thing aside and make up a new one.
Very true about the only cinema release about Lewis and Clark, "The Far Horizons."
I grew up near Austerlitz. Any filmmaker can easily shoot a movie there, they can even get huge amount of volunteers in costumes who do reenactments there every year for audience, they would supply costumes, there even is artillery... It is a plain with small hills, mostly fields, some trees, same as it was in the Napoleonic times. The last movie depicted it as lake a valley in the mountains. And it took a story from war propaganda about soldiers drowning in the water and made it into a major theme of the battle. In reality, the number of soldiers who drowned was 2 or 3, depending on the sources.
I agree.
Spot on! However Hollywood has always lived off Tropes and has always sacrificed anything for a trope.
My issue with movies based on history is that many people are fools and take what they see in films as truth. In that awful Napoleon film where she shot the pyramids, many people thought that was true because it was in a "historical" movie. That's my main issue.
*Edit* I know I'm dumb. It's he not she.
She?
@@geenkaas6380 Oops my bad. 😑
In cases like Napoleon and The Patriot, among many, I feel like the film makers should be held responsible to some degree for their blatant disinformation.
A lot of people are fools indeed, or simply naive, and without proper education they will actually believe a lot of this kind of BS.
Makes me really glad for channels like this one.
The most concerning thing is that the same idiots also watch the news and consume information from journalists that exhibit the same level of research capabilities. Watching a film and getting confused is bad and can lead to problems.Believing a journalist can have immediate and dangerous consequences. I’m all for everyone getting to have an opinion, but when they let those opinions be guided by other idiots/malicious actors, it’s terrifying. And then there’s politicians. 🤦🏼♀️
@@jaega4247 Numerous films in this list, like The Patriot, The Last Samurai, Troy, etc... were not advertised as being "based on a true story".
U571
U571
Did I mention U571?
Pearl Harbor
U571
What about U571?
@@kcc-karenschroniccorner9432 Stolen Valour.
I mentioned this film to a friend of mine and told him the plot. His response was the same as mine - HMS Bulldog.
Is it ok if I still like u571?
@@ParticleLarry Ok as long as you understand that other people have vices.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada didn’t occur at day or night, it was fought over several weeks as the English fleet pursued the Armada around the British coast!
Absolutely. The fleets first sighted each other off the coast of Cornwall. There was the Battle of Plymouth. The Battle of Portland. The Isle of Wight Battle. The fireships were unleashed near Calais (at night), The Battle of Gravlines, of the coast of Flanders
British feet pal not English.
@@alanfox691 There was no British foot back then. The Scottish foot was slightly longer than the English one. Not sure what that has to do with the Spanish Armada though. Unless it's a typo. In which case, Britain didn't exist then. Scotland was a completely different country with it's own King and certainly wasn't at war with Spain.
Not forgetting the bloody shambles of the English Armada in 1589.
Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. When Elizabeth was two years old, her parents' marriage was annulled, her mother was executed, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Henry restored her to the line of succession when she was 10, via the Third Succession Act 1543. After Henry's death in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother Edward VI ruled until his own death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to a Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statutes to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside within weeks of his death and Mary became queen, deposing and executing Jane. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.
Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne.She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
"The Conqueror"... You know the one with John wayne as Ghengis Khan 😂😂😂
To be fair, no one wanted to make that movie, except John Wayne. The script was rejected but John Wayne somehow got hold of it & thought it would make a great movie.
@@skasteve6528 which is why it should have never been made 😂
But it is so bad it is funny. Come on Pilgrim, let’s go sack Bagdad,
@@erikschultz7166 😂😂
Wasn't that movie made on top of a nuclear waste site, or near one? I remember reading something about the curse of that movie and how many people died from cancer later who were in it. I mean, they're all dead now, probably, but, A disproportionate amount died sooner rather than later in some video I watched about it
Maybe it’s just me, but I have never gone to a movie theatre to learn history, but to be entertained.
Same here. If I want accuracy I'll watch a doc, or better yet, read about it.
People often make excuses for it like that -- but when you pretend you're telling a story about HISTORICAL EVENTS, with real people many of whom are still alive, all while showing them doing things they never did and saying things they never said, is just bloody dishonest. Set your story in a different time and place, with different people, if every single detail of it is going to be a lie.
It still amazes me how many gullible people watch that fictional rubbish called "The Crown" and think they know what really happened. Did they think the writers of that crap were there hiding in the shadows when real people who are still alive are supposed to have said things to each other? Guess again. In MANY of those scenes, there was nobody there to hear what they said -- so it's all made-up hogwash, to appeal to people who aren't very smart.
The 300 thing makes me crazy, if you pay attention, the movie or at least the battle scenes are narrated and based on the story Dilios is telling to the leaders in order to have the rest of the army mustered, he's exaggerating to make a better, more heroic story to get people's attention. And, as Chris says, it's based on the graphic novel.
the movie 300 is named not for the Spartans at Thermopylae but how many seconds the movie would be without slow mo.
When I first saw the movie I was caught a bit off guard by the monsters, mutant and (at first glance) historical inaccuracies. But after someone pointed out, that the movie doesn't actually portray the battle but the narration of the battle and the way such stories are often exaggerated by the narrator, the movie became a totally different kind of awesome^^
@@jerrysmooth24 Lol
What about the second one?
I love the movie, but it's completely fine to say that it's wildly historically inaccurate. There's nothing wrong with that. Historically Dilios wasn't telling a story to leaders, he was considered a disgrace when he returned to Sparta.
You make a good point during the review of Alexander. Hellenic and Greek mythos does not seem to label sexuality at all like we do today. Zeus would often take the shape of animals during some of his promiscuity. The myths surrounding Heracles during his 12 trials suggest as one of his rewards he impregnated up to 50 of King Thespius daughters and later in life also had many male lovers. Alexander was recorded as being very pious towards the Hellenic gods. His bisexuality would not have been something he had to hide. I don't think it would have even been notable. Original creator of this list of videos doesn't seem to have researched much Greek myth themselves lol.
ya and the weird thing is that their are some records that exist that do demonstrate that Alexander did have intense largely Romanic relationships with men so the narrator saying that their is no historical record of it is just untrue
if I remember correctly from the movie, the whole fama about sexuality goes because of a kiss on the mouth of two men
but...
Historically, even today (maybe not today, but up until 100 years ago) it was common in that area for "battle brothers" to kiss when they met
that specific kiss meant literally
"You're still alive bro. alive!"
back then it was quite normal to go on an "expedition (of any kind)" and not return
and the wars were particularly bloody
Thebes had the Sacred Band, Which may or may not have been comprised of lovers. Some sources I have seen suggest they are more partners than lovers, but most think they were lovers. Outside of spartans, They were probably the most feared warriors until alexander or Phillip killed them all in battle. I've also seen some stuff which suggests other city states were not fond of the practice.
As far as with Alexander, I have always viewed it as kind of an open secret he had. Probably wasn't spoken about openly, but everyone knew, kind of thing.
As for the Greeks, Achilles and Patroclus obviously had a thing going.
Chris the gaming channel needs food💀💀💀
People actually watch this dude game?
Yall have nothing be better to do?
Three words. Last Train Home.
@@Logan0o And you have nothing better to do with yourself than to whine and worry about what someone else enjoys?
Nah, he’s cool now; he only does things that aren’t gaming and Napoleons Marshals.
I second this
One historical inaccuracy in Gladiator that they failed to mention was the fact that gladiators did not fight each other to the death. That is a falicy created by Hollywood. In truth, gladiators were very expensive to train, feed, and maintain. Having them fight to the death was ridiculously expensive and unnecessary. So they fought until they were forced to yield. Of course, when fighting with swords, tridents, etc, accidents will happen and deaths would sometimes occur. But they were typically not planned.
Some Roman emperors, specifically Tiberius and later his son, Caligula, were so depraved and blood thirsty that they would insist on the gladiators fighting to the death. However, they were the exception, not the rule. Normally they would fight until one of them is too injured to continue, or one of them would yield.
Also - if the gladiator died, patrons and patricians often had to pay the trainer for the loos of his gladiator. Not mentioning the thumb trick that many movies show - thumb down or up. We don't know if they did that and if they did - it might be that it was the fist with the thumb being inside the fist or sticking to the side (sheath the blade or unsheath it) and if it was thumh up or down - down could be 'he lives, stays to the ground' and up 'he dies, his getting up'. But it is kind of roman salute thing there.
Anyway the most funny thing for me will always be when Marcus Aurelius talks about getting the Republic back (where in reality he pushed for his son and it would mean that title of Augustus - yeah, in ancient Rome Augustus was higher than Caesar which was shown later with Diocletian reforms of the empire (idea of Tetrarchy) - would be hereditary and Commodus even served as co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius.
Apparently the director of Gladiator knew “Up for die, down for live”, but he knew most audience members wouldn’t know, so he went with the flow. Mistake, imo, he missed a chance to educate a tiny bit as well as to entertain.
My mother doesn't usually use the word "hate" but she genuinely hates this movie about Alexander the Great.
Well it was atrocious exempting the battle scenes which were impeccably done. But people expected to see the character of one of the greatest military leaders of all time and Oliver stone's interpretation was that he's a momma's boy..
@@GothPaoki The momma's boy thing could have worked if Alexander was not miscast and the chronological sequence of the film a mad women's breakfast. I think I remember seeing a Chinese drama where Genghis Khan was portrayed as a mama's boy, but at least they tell his life story in sequence, staring with his mother's kidnapping by a warlord and her exile with her children by the tribe.
@@Edax_Royeaux, do you know where to find this? Because that sounds fascinating.
@@occam7382 There are so many series and films about Genghis Khan that I cannot track it down. I remember it was in Mongolian language, so it's not the Chinese series or the Japanese-Mongolian co-produced series.
The movie, same as 300, is hated by most people who completely missed the entire point. Those movies are not depictions of history, those are stories told not as accurate history, but as a legend, as propaganda. Alexander is told by old Ptolemy as a justification of his political role in Egypt. 300 is a campfire story told by a Spartan veteran to lift the spirit of the Greek soldiers right before a battle.
Those scenes are in the beginning and at the end of the movie, they are impossible to miss and they put the story into context. And yet, people ignore them, somehow.
You can say Mel Gibson was just trying to make a good movie, but he made a movie so inaccurate that both the English and the Scottish unanimously agree is offensive.
If you're "just trying to make a good movie" by falsifying every detail, you don't get to pretend it has anything to do with HISTORY. Call it something else! Too many directors think "Based on a true story" gives them freedom to tell a tale that's almost complete bullshit (like "Argo!")
U571 is one of the most egregious examples I can think of
I was wondering if anyone would mention this one.
Another "historical" movie that's really inaccurate? Disney's "Davey Crockett: King Of The Wild Frontier". I'm pretty sure that most of the things Davey Crockett is shown doing in the movie ("grinning" animals to death, fighting a bear with his knife and killing it, being the last volunteer to fall during the fall of The Alamo, etc) are all either falsified or greatly exaggerated. In a similar vein, the 1960's version of "The Alamo" was probably also greatly exaggerated. Although I have heard that the early 2000's version of "The Alamo" was pretty accurate.
Many people in the UK are still angry about *U571* that
depicted a group of "brave American soldiers" capturing
the Enigma machine! The TRUTH is that it was BRITISH
soldiers who had captured it, when the U.S. wasn't even
in the war yet!
American film-makers have a really bad habit of spinning
history to try to make Americans look like the heroes,
when they weren't at all -- like all the epics about
Vietnam that try to pretend the U.S. didn't LOSE.
@@stevecarson4162 Actually even that first sentence is wrong. The captors were British /sailors/ not soldiers, crew of HMS Bulldog, one of whom drowned passing the machine out of the uboat which had already been scuttled by her crew. Agreed about the revisionist history though trying to pretend the US did everything.
I actually liked this movie. Action packed, entertaining, good acting, especially by Keitel. Ridiculously inaccurate but very entertaining. I'll watch it whenever its on.
What makes u571 worse is the studio as part of it's marketing distributed workbooks to schools to be used in teaching history which if they meant to or not reinforced the idea in a generation of American kids that's the movie is historically accurate.
Cromwell really deserved to be on this list more than half of those that actually appeared.
14:01 One thing about the Battle of Gaugamela in that movie, the time of day may have been inaccurate but the battle itself and the tactics that were used were shockingly accurate.
The Last Samurai is a 2003 New Zealand-Japanese-American film directed by Edward Zwick. It is a loose adaptation of the events of the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. The main character is also based in part on Jules Brunet, a French officer who resigned from the French army out of loyalty to the last shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who had previously made a treaty of friendship with Napoleon III.
So the history is an interprétation of that Napoléon III ' officer...
Indeed. Jules Brunet helped train Shogunate forces during the Boshin War so he had arrived in Japan in 1866 as part of the French military mission (and not in 1876 like Cruise's character in the film). He also returned to France to fight in the Franco-Prussian War, was awarded recognition by the Imperial government that replaced the Shogunate, and lived a full life until his death at age seventy-three in 1911.
Zwick also made Glory, another great movie that is only loosely based on real history.
@@johnmiwa6256 yes it s à good movie...now i m not american, so i can t tell how historically correct it is.
@@johnmiwa6256 "Glory" is pretty accurate. But the movie was focused on the drama between the characters. Needless to say the records of the regiment that we have are not based on personal relationships. I read a book on the letters of Robert Gould Shaw and his focus was on his fellow officers.
Alexander is well worth your time if you've an interest in historical movies. It has some of the most accurate battle depictions ever put to film (phalanx formations, Hellenic cavalry etc.). The general vibe of the film is supposed to come off almost like the rendition of a contemporary epic poem (especially given the narration and narrator - no spoilers!), so the innaccuracies like Olympias (the way I see it) are those flourishes for the epic poem audience. Sort of like Herodotus.
"Alexander" doesn't belong on the "historically inaccurate" list of films, by any means, let alone "top 12".
Even that thing about Olympias Oliver Stone didn't pull out of his arse, she was a member or a priestess of some (unknown) mystic cult and there are some ancient depictions of her with snakes, she might have been behind murder of her husband (IIRC, it's left ambiguous in the film or strongly implied, depending on the version, i.e. "cut") - the whole affair was strange and conveniently timed so that Philip's new son from his Macedonian wife (Cleopatra/ Eurydice) wouldn't be named heir, as making Alexander the heir apparent, and then the king was her life's work, then there's her feeding his "son of Zeus" idea or delusion... so, "crazy witch" isn't that unfair description. All that is from ancient sources, the main surviving 5 (Arrian, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, Justinus(Justin) and Rufus) - the only silly thing about Olympias that Stone put in the film, for no good reason, is implication that Alexander wanted to do his mother, while his actions suggest that he was happy to get away from her overbearing mothering and keep her out of politics. What else? From the top of my head... When "narrator"😊 was telling his story, the Lighthouse of Alexandria hasn't been built yet, idea that Greeks, albeit Macedonians, haven't seen a monkey before coming to India... or that India looked like a South-American jungle are historically (or geographically) inaccurate; it's likely there are more such small details, but at the moment, none come to mind. Historical accuracy isn't the problem with "Alexander".
Unfortunately, the film has other problems, such as very unfortunate pacing - at times boring, some scenes drag on needlessly and in other Stone crammed to much information within single scenes (e.g. when "introducing" Alexander's friends and generals to audience, at war council, Stone did it by having Alexander make his case, in a speech, address about a dozen people by name, giving each an epithet, in Homeric style, such as: ~ "glorious Hephaistion", "brave Ptolemy", "sage Cassander", "noble Philotas", "loyal Cleitus" etc. When watching the film in cinema for the first time, by the time he got to 5th man I already forgot which actor played whom, although I knew beforehand the names of most (certainly, all of note) of Alexander's generals/friends, his inner circle (Alexander III of Macedon was my childhood hero, plus due to my education and profession). Thankfully, there are at least 4 versions/"cuts" - theatre/director's/ultimate/final - of the film, and I remember at least one where that scene was cut out, and handled differently. And then, there's acting. I suspect Oliver Stone was trying to portray temperamental, loud Greek, well, Mediterranean, way of speaking when we're in a hurry, mildly arguing or full-on quarrelling, but it doesn't translate well into English or work with British, Irish, Aussie or American actors - it doesn't come natural to them and just seems like over the top, annoying hysterical shouting or yelling. And there - what could've been a great, faithful to sources historical film and hit, due to some well-intended, but ultimately not working missteps, the movie underperformed. Still, having watched 4 different "cuts", over time I grew fonder of "Alexander", though I never thought it was bad. As you said, well worth watching.
Alexander was extremely accurate! At least according to what we believe to know about the real history. Alexander wasn't depicted as being poisoned in the movie, I don't know where they got that from. There are some cases of condensed history, like they put some reported events together in a single event, but that's just to reduce the runtime and is understandable in my opinion.
Odd as it may seem, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' was much praised by my history teacher as it emphasised the vital importance of Christianity in Medieval Europe, the tendency for irrational beliefs to become taken as fact, the violence of the era, the feudal system and the dangers of killer rabbits in them days.
Especially the rabbits! A shockingly much overlooked scourge of the time!
It’s also how we learned that the world is banana-shaped
Say what you want about that movie, the coconut-based horses were spot on.
@@joefaller4525 they even explained how they got the coconuts
It also showed how being a black knight was a vanishing occupation. It literally got chopped
300 is the Battle of Thermopylae as recounted by a storyteller (Dilios). The wild exaggerations and fantastical beasts/monsters make sense in a story meant to rouse Greeks to fight the Persians. They used multiple sayings attributed to the Spartans in 300.
Alexander may not have gotten the time of day correct for the Battle of Gaugamela, but it is considered one of the best depictions of battlefield tactics of that time period.
Alexander is a legend as recounted by a storyteller (Ptolemy).
Just as it makes sense fight a battle before the day gets too hot, it also makes sense to film it in full daylight.
One of my favorite movies is The Ghost and the Darkness. Based on a real event, it obviously over dramatizes the facts but its wonderfully enjoyable and like you said, it led me to looking up the actual history behind it.
You can also see the mounted lions' pelts (or what left of them) at the Field Museum in Chicago..
Sexuality in Rome was more based on dominance. Men were expected to be men and to have a family and father children. But it was okay if a man wanted to have a guy on the side, as long as he was the dominant partner. Being on the receiving end would have been seen as submissive and, thus, effeminate and wrong.
It’s a shame that a lot of the time they don’t care about accuracy.
Great job dan
@@Nalon.1242 🫡
It’s a movie not a documentary I think there’s something very strange about society where we have unlimited information at our fingertips. We have schools and people want to get there history from movies? do medical drama have to get the medicine, right?
Age is showing, I remember a weekly kids show titled “Swamp Fox” about Francis Marion. “Swamp Fox, Swamp Fox! Tail on his hat! Nobody knows where the Swamp Fox’s at.”
I never saw it but was aware the show existed., If I am not mistaken, Leslie Nielson (AKA Frank Drebin and DR Rumack) played the swamp Fox.
John Wayne was actually named. Marion Morris.
Oh I remember that too! Loved it!
It was on the Disney channel. And it definitely did not show him as a slave owner(that I can recall, anyway) or some of the more horrifying acts of his.
Swamp Fox Swamp Fox hiding in the glen. He’ll run away to fight again.
Amadeus is a continuing character assassination of Salieri that is well known to be very inaccurate.
Yeah, but it made me fall in love with film and filmmaking..
His name is *Salieri,* not Saltieri. The most appalling thing about that movie is that F. Murray Abraham actually won an Oscar for "Best Acting", when his eyerolling and mugging in close-up was so absurdly exaggerated it was painful to watch. It seems he and/or the director thought it had to be so in-your-face that even the dullest audience member couldn't possibly miss it.
They may as well have had it flash across the screen: *SALIERI JEALOUS!! SALIERI EMBARRASSED!! SALIERI DISMAYED!!* Enough already. That "the Academy" thought it was award-worthy does NOT say good things about them! Not at all.
@@stevecarson4162 How humiliating. Brain fade put the t in there, because I know well how to spell his name. I edited the embarrassing t out. Thank you for drawing my attention to it.
I am conflicted by Amadeus. So much of the cinematography I love, and Mozart's inclination toward toilet humor and raunchiness is too often written out of memories of his character so I appreciate quite a bit of his depiction. But Salieri's role as an inspirational teacher of music, mentor to Beethoven, and his admiration for the young Mozart is such an important contributor to the history of music that repeating salascious lies about him poisoning Mozart is contemptible character assasination that prevents us from appreciating both his music, and the reality of the creative world that produced wonderful music., including Mozart, and so much more that was to follow.
It was based on a play and not meant to imitate a documentary.
@@benjalucian1515 The play is based on unsubstantiated gossip from shortly after Mozart’s death. As a result the Salieri poisoning Mozart gossip is also a historic reality. Doesn’t stop the character assassination of Salieri from being both factually incorrect and extremely unjust. Perpetuating it becomes a moral issue and not just to be passed off as “just another story. “
The crazy thing is that the actual story of Salieri’s interactions with other composers is far more interesting than this myth.
Although this doesn’t really have much to do with this topic, I’d like to recommend a war movie you’ve probably never heard of unless you’re Finnish, called Unknown Soldier. It takes place during the continuation war between 1941-44 (for context it was around the time Germany invaded Russia) and focuses around a machine gun company. It is based on a book with the same name written in 1954. The author was a guy called Väinö Linna, who served in the very same war and based the characters on people he served with. The thing I like about it is the fact that no character no matter how big or small seem invincible, just like in real life, unlike other movies. The reason why I mentioned it here is because I’m not too sure on the accuracy of the battles themselves that happen and the things that occur during the movie, but it’s accurate enough and it’s so good you really just enjoy it because of the greatness of the movie. The 2017 version is the one I recommend you watch, it is in Finnish but subtitles exist, and it should be on Netflix.
I wonder if Elizabethan-era attendees of the Globe Theater came away being all pissy that HAMLET wasn’t an accurate depiction of the Danish kings?
Macbeth was actually a well loved king, with a short reign, helping to dispose a tyrant prior gaining the throne.
The “groundlings” were mainly there for the sword fights Willie always shoehorned into his plays.
Gladiator was grossly historically incorrect in almost every way possible, but the things they say are incorrect for the most part weren't even errors! 😅
The Patriot and Bravehart are the same movie.
And Mel Gibson is exactly the same character
Just replace the word 'movie' in that sentence for....
Both are about Gibson's ego and hatred for the English as far as I can tell.
@@gogreen7794Born in the United States, raised in Australia. Checks out.
Mel Gibson never made an accurate war movie. Even the one where he tried, We Were Soldiers, only showed the first half of that battle, declared "yay we won" and then ended it.
I honestly couldn't say which is the most inaccurate historical movie, but I do know which one is absolutely the most true and best told historical movie, and that's, Robinhood Men In Tights👨🏫
😂 Yes, absolutely! 😂
😂
My 6th great grandfather was a blacksmith for the Pennsylvania militia during The Revolution. He was murdered by loyalists in 1789, long after the war had ended.
My long-ago relative , also from Pennsylvania, fought in the Revolutionary War. So sorry about your 6x great-grandfather was killed so senselessly…but then, aren’t all murders senseless?
The Patriot is very innacurate, but I was obsessed with it as a kid and it definitely led me to learn more about colonial America and the Revolutionary War, so I'll always love it.
I would certainly have included "Pearl Harbor". A distortion of a historic event if ever there was one!
Elizabeth had eyes on her virtually every minute of the day and night, and ambassadors paid her staff to find out when she menstruated. Yet there is no solid evidence (aside from rumour and innuendo), that she ever had sexual relations with anyone.
Given the risk of pregnancy and disgrace- why on Earth would she risk it? Everything of her family history would indicate Elizabeth would not want to make herself that vulnerable to any man.
Exactly. That's what I've been saying. And even if you take her favorites like Robert into account, there is NO solid evidence they ever had intercourse! To say she was certainly not a virgin was Definitely kind of an oversight.
My personal theory is that Elizabeth was asexual, although she experienced romantic love with Robert Dudley, Francois de Valois, and Robert Devereux.
Maybe because she loved someone? Or because she wanted to have sex because sex is fun? She had eyes on her, but she was in power and there were rumors about her, she could easily enjoy an affair with some man and get away with it, just saying "or, another slanderous accusation".
Getting pregnant is not as easy as movies show it, to achieve it, you need to hit a specific window in the cycle that is only a couple of days per month and you need to have a specific type of sex during it.
@@neverstopschweiking You can love someone without having sex with them, and it used to be the norm (before reliable contraception) to wait until you were married.
Also Elizabeth could not have had an affair without someone knowing about it. She did not even go to the toilet without some being present to help her. She literally was not alone at anytime during the day or night. Yet there is not one piece of evidence she spent any time alone with Dudley or anyone else in her entire reign.
While there are some women who cannot fall pregnant or it is not easy, falling pregnant is incredibly likely for most women if she has sex regularly and does not use contraception.
I am not sure what you mean about the movies, but my experience is from real life. I have worked with many women who have fallen women unintentionally. It literally happens to thousands of women every day. It happened to my mother with my brother, my mother in law with my husband and it seems it happened with my present partner’s grandmother.
You can fall pregnant through any type of sex where the man ejaculates in the vagina and there is about a 5 day window each month. The egg is viable for about 2 days, but sperm can live for up to 5 days. So if you have sex 5 days before a woman ovulates, it is quite possible for her to fall pregnant.
It is very concerning that you believe it is difficult to fall pregnant!
Do some research into The Bisley Boy!!
A couple of points regarding the church burning in The Patriot. While the British didn't go around burning all churches, they DID desecrate churches not part of the Church of England. John Burgoyne turned a church into a riding stable infuriating the local population. A few churches did actually burn down, including first Speaker of the US House Fredrick Muhlenburg's New York church, but there's debate if it was intentional or not. So to say it has no historical basis is itself historically questionable. That said, there were never any people in any destroyed church.
There was a historical event in which the town was forced into a church which was then burnt down killing everyone inside. But it happened June 10, 1944, four days after D-Day, in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane. The Nazi accused them of helping the French Resistance without any evidence. This incident was part of the Nuremberg Trials and 2 were executed for their part. Others received prison sentences. It is too bad the British army was made to look like Nazis in the movie, a scene we all could have done without.
Re: Alexander - most historians say that Alexander is quite accurate.
The things shown as inaccurate are just added for entertainment.
Regarding Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age are both really historically inaccurate. They didn't point out the real true historical issues in the second movie (and the first).
The second film is just as bad as the first. Changes they made to history in the first film affected the second film.
In the first film, the only explanation that I can think of for why they switched the ages of William Cecil and Kat Ashley is that they really wanted Richard Attenborough as Cecil.
They also made changes to 'history' to move things from later in the reign to the beginning (execution of Norfolk).
At the end of the first movie, they decided Elizabeth should retire Cecil. Completely untrue - the man was dying and she wouldn't let him retire. It also shows Robert Dudley taking part in a plot against Elizabeth and it says she never saw him again. Completely untrue. Those choices affected the second movie because both of those characters should have played big roles in the sequel.
I would have added Saving Private Ryan, because sending out a full squad to locate and retrieve 1 sodier from an active warzone was completely unacceptable to high command and so would never have happened
Yeah, but where it intersects true historical events, *chef's kiss* beautiful!
Gen Patton sent a column of vehicles and about 300 men behind enemy lines to rescue his son-in-law.
Traveling from Omaha beach to behind Utah beach near Ste Mere Eglise would be quite a trip through enemy lines, about 28 miles.
Not a "gross representation" of the Praetorian Guard. They were involved in the assassination of Caligula, almost a hundred years before Commodus took the Throne, was assassinated by the Guard and Senate (then then Guard installed Claudius when they realized they would be out of the job with no Emperor). They did auction off the Throne, after they killed Emperor Pertinex (who suceeded Commodus) in 193 to Julianus.
Terry Pratchett in his Discworld series praises the Night Watch as a force for good, in that they solved slightly more crimes than the committed. I like to think of the Praetorian Guard in the same vein. They protected slightly more emperors than they killed.
calling troy a bad movie is the worst opinion anyone has ever had
VTH, I'd recommend you watch Alexander. Alexander is an underrated gem in my opinion. If you can get past the accents - which never bothered me - it's a wonderful and pretty accurate portrayal of the life of Alexander the Great. Many of the lines in the film are taken straight from the sources, and pretty much all of the important events are recounted from sources like Arrian's Anabasis of Alexander, and Diodorus' Bibliotheca Historica. The narrator throughout is Ptolemy himself as he wrote his own history of Alexander, which is lost to us but is the basis for most of the classical writers whose accounts we do have.
The armor and weaponry of the Macedonians is pretty accurate, and the same can be said for the Persians. The Battle of Gaugamela is one of the best portrayals of a historical battle in modern cinema, and it's pretty obvious why an early morning filming wouldn't have worked for how its shot; you wouldn't be able to see the armies if it was an early morning shoot, especially through the dust that gets kicked up.
One of the things people complain about is the over dramatic acting, especially from Colin Farrel. Those complaining about it are missing the point, in my opinion. It's acted just like how an ancient-greek tragedy would be acted; legendary heroes with stormy emotions that match their incredible deeds. That also explains why Alexander's mother is portrayed as a witch who has a passion for the esoteric. Writers did claim that she was involved in cult practices for Dionysus, and Diodorus Siculus claimed she was involved in so-called "mystical practices" relating to the cult. These ideas stuck with Alexander throughout his campaign, and as he pushed East, his celebrations and self-association with Dionysus became more prominent. Many writers have also claimed that Olympias orchestrated the death of Phillip II so that Alexander could take the throne, or at least lead the charge to plant the double-edged words in Alexander's head that he was the son of Zeus, and destined for greatness. He was very close with his mother, and not very close with his father, who saw him as a rival or a threat. The depiction of Olympias as a witch with a cunning side is certainly exaggerated, much like Greek theatre, but it is not exactly a terribly inaccurate portrayal if the producers and writers stuck with the ancient sources and interpreted them for the movie.
The biggest issue I see people point out is that it's boring, and I'm not going to argue against that. It's 3 hours long with two major battles (The Battle of Gaugamela and the Battle of the Hydaspes), and some have complained that it becomes "like a documentary." If you're not interested at all in Alexander, or his life and campaigns, it's not something you should watch. But if you have an interest in Alexander, or how the Greeks forever changed the course of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, you should certainly watch it.
(Also, yes, in Greece at the time male-on-male relationships were incredibly common, but it was not seen as proper for a man to marry another man in the same way he would a woman. You can see evidence of this in the dialogues of Plato, and other works that were made in Classical Greece.)
I loved the movie. I had read some of the histories and yes, it was pretty accurate.
What do I think? I'm so glad you asked:
1) I think that "Troy" has even less business being on this list than "Arthur" does, given that both movies' origin stories are equally mythological in nature, and were written multiple THOUSANDS of years ago, so accuracy was never going to be the strong suit of either tale. At least "Troy" had the decency to take place right about where it needed to, and didn't involve any actual "god work" in the story, whereas "Arthur" was a complete fabrication that turned King Arthur into a simple Roman Commander, who was out of his element. If anything, "Troy" was the more believable of the two movies.
2) Why, oh dear God, WHY is "Pearl Harbor" not included on this list??? That movie is a prime example of RECENT HISTORY being blatantly fudged up, and twisted around, so as to make the movie more exciting, rather than tell an accurate story of what actually happened! And it was made by a director KNOWN for his science fiction-level explosions, moreso than his actual ability to tell a great story! "Pearl Harbor" was an insult to historians everywhere. Why the hell is it nowhere among the Top 12 of this list?!
3) "Titanic" was a good romance flick, involving a historical incident. But its' accuracy leaves a lot to be desired. Particularly when you take in the fact that 90% of the main cast of the movie NEVER EXISTED AT ALL, and were created purely for the drama of the whole event, whereas the actual historically accurate characters were blatantly shoved to the side, and made to be nothing more than "hey, look at him over there!" pieces, than as players in the big game. Also, it is now KNOWN that the Titanic did not actually snap in two, at the surface, as depicted in the film. It broke apart underwater, after it had already sank beneath the surface. So nobody would have seen it happen at all.
4) "Braveheart" should be higher on this list, because it has LOADS of historical inaccuracies, moreso than many of the other inclusions hereon. It in fact should be TOP FIVE in terms of inaccuracy. Not bringing up the rear, at number 12. I dare say that "10,000 BC" is arguably more accurate, and we KNOW what's wrong about that stupid movie!
5) "Dunkirk" was a great movie. I hate to include it here. But it is also pretty stupidly inaccurate. It's a well-told story, and the characters are all well-directed and well-acted. So again, I hate to say it should be on this list. But again... recent history being "romanticized" for the sake of entertainment is a little bit more unforgivable than some story from WAY BACK in ancient times, that has the argument of "Well, we really don't know for sure," to defend itself with. World War II movies do not have this advantage. Nor should they.
Which Dunkirk? The original IMHO is a masterpiece.. the modern Nolan one however.. is a couple of hours of my life I will never get back..
@@julianmhall The Nolan one. I didn't even know there was an original. lol
Arthur (the guy’s nickname) lived abou 1500 years ago, & Troy (Homer’s) was burned by Agamemnon about 3-4 thousand years ago- so big gap there. Not contemporaries.
I am not sorry, Braveheart is a travesty where making money doesn't make it all right, it makes it worse. e.g. showing Robert the Bruce as a traitor, when actually historically HE is "braveheart" - troops carried a box containing his heart after his death to inspire the scots - is unforgiveable. When a movie could so easily be much more accurate and arguably be more entertaining because of it, it should not be tolerated. Being inaccurate for no reason is not acceptable.
Making money doesn’t make it all right, being a good movie does
It did make an international audience interested in Scotland.
Well William Wallace is not referred to as braveheart in that movie and Robert the Bruce is the guy telling the story!
Robert the Bruce or more accurately Robert le Brus was a murderer and about as Scottish as Mel Gibson
Lack of a bridge for the climactic bridge battle is ridiculous.
Yesss!! I was hoping from the start you would mention Master and Commander at some point 😉👌🏼
You talking about The Patriot reminds me of your reaction to History Buffs video on the film. He was furious at this film, like a personal insult, and you just weren't having it lol
After watching "Titanic" I overheard a woman saying "that wouldn't have happened". Her friend looked puzzled, and she clarified that she had been on plenty of cruises, and she said that people aren't allowed to throw cigarettes over the side. That is what bothered her most.
My children refuse to go watch any historical movie with me because I keep pointing out inaccuracies.
Real ! Its hard to get anybody to watch historical movies with me because they are just full of nonsense most of the time 😅 especially now that Hollywood wants to show every historical figure as homosexual and use history to promote their own political views
My son is 49, and from the time he was about 12 or 13, he would say, "No, Mom, you do not want to watch this one. And I DO NOT want to watch it with you." Same reasons.
I refuse to WATCH any "historical movie" where they've falsified virtually every detail and character in it, yet still pretend it's "based on" real events from that time and place. Would people accept a movie about the U.S. Civil War, if they changed it to German soldiers fighting Norwegians "to make it more dramatic"? Why is that any less acceptable?
@@bernard3303: You say, "Hollywood wants to show every historical figure as homosexual". Which movies do that? Name them. (BTW, you've made YOUR own political views very clear, too. What makes you any better?)
I throughly enjoyed this analysis and you're very well rounded take on these movies. I love history and I love good historical movies but I can let slide something that helps move the story along as long as it's not out in left field. Thank you for this!
You should really see Alexander, it needs to be seen. It is good, no matter what the critics say
I attended a lecture on greek philosophy in college, where they touched on the subject of homosexuality. According to quite a few greek philosophers the love between two men was the purest because it was a connection of body, mind and spirit, whereas love between woman and man was purely a biological necessity. Therefor I am pretty sure that the greeks/macedonians couldn't care less if Alexander was bi-sexual :)
I mean, from many things I saw and read - it's complicated topic as love in ancient Greece or even Rome - wasn't the one term. We had a Plato who was talking about love - platonic love. There were many who were saying that Achilles and Patroclos were lovers for example. In Sparta many soldiers had romances with younger soldiers.
I would say that what they knew and called love (they used few terms to distinct one type of love from other) and what we understand by it is very different. Homosexuality was viewed in different way - it wasn't fully accepted as a lot of times it was power based, status based - passive side was looked down on while active side was more okay, yet still being only with partner of same sex wasn't the thing that was accepted.
I mean, even male partners of Nero or Hadrian where forced or convinced to pretty much change into female. Some laughed at Commodus that he acts as a woman and plays as prostitute. Spartans laughed and Athenians that they were girly, feminine.
So it's very complicated topic, bur sure, being bisexual for sure was less looked down on (especially when you are rich and rule whole country and you get fame as one of the most talented generals) as you would still sleep with women.
They wouldn't understand our concept of sexuality. They wouldn't know why modern Anglo-Saxon culture obsesses about the fact some man slept with a man and than with a woman. For them it would be like for us someone enjoying pictures of feet instead of pictures of breasts. Recognized, but not relevant. In ancient Greece, at least among the aristocrats, sex was a part of marriage to produce children and a marriage was often a political or business deal. Having a love and romance in a marriage would be nice, but not as common as we have it today. And same-sex attraction would be preferable type of infidelity as it doesn't threaten the inheritance rights of the kids.
Greek man/boy relations were chiefly a rite of passage, and usually occurred between pupils and mentors, or as a bonding ritual during military tutilage. Homosexuality was neither particularly accepted nor opposed, it was chiefly a non-issue. The Romans were a bit more divided, but this was case in most matters of sexuality, and such views tended to ebb and flow in accordance with the personal opinions of the Emperors.
Hi! I would like to add that the character of Nathan Algren in The Last Samurai is not entirely fictional - he is based of a french officer/ adviser who fought for the shogun. He defied orders from France to stay and fight for what he came to admire. His name was Jules Brunet, and his story is actually quite remarkable and interesting.
Yet in the Boshin War, Brunet fought as an enemy to the real Katsumoto aka Saigo Takamori.
Based off a FRENCH officer, made into an American by Hollowood to appeal to ignorant Americans who would like that better.
They do show Achilles being shot by an arrow to the heel, followed up by multiple shots to his torso, which Achilles pulls out, on screen it implies he bleeds out, though in the Illiad he is shot in the heel with a poisoned arrow, which is not out of the realm of possibility in the film either. What they get wrong is that Achilles is killed during the sacking of Troy, whereas in the Illiad, he's killed prior to the building of the Horse.
Outlaw King is definitely the most historically accurate and authentic medieval movie I’ve seen.
At least they showed us that armor works.
Doesn’t really say much
@@gilgamesh8334 I disagree. Of course it’s not perfect, but it avoids a lot of cliches and myths most medieval Hollywood movies have.
It might be the most accurate modern Hollywood movie set in the medieval times, but that is a really low bar anyway.
The book is very good.
Oliver Stone's Alexander, that pretty much sums it up. You either dig Stone films or like normal people, you ignore them. As for Arthur, "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government." Pretty sure Monty Python and the Holy Grail should have been number 1 on this list.
You ignore Platoon, Wall Street, Scarface?
@@ricomajestic saw them, once in the theater upon release, zero desire to see them again.
JFK was Stone's worst film.
Monty Python never claimed to be historically accurate in /any/ of their films. They were /Comedies/ loosely set in a pseudo historical era. Ergo they have no place on a list of Historical movies.
@@julianmhall very few movies claim to be "historically accurate". The public just sort of deems what they think is accurate. Even those that claim accuracy take creative license: For example, Easy company finding a concentration camp in Band of Brothers. Never happened, they came to one discovered by another unit the day before.
That comment about Achilles heel not being "historically" accurate needed a bit more commenting on. If anything, I feel it's one of the few parts of the movie that makes it somewhat historically "accurate", as the makers of the movie choose to go with a much less mythological version of the story: If a warrior named Achilles fought in this war and was said to be near invincible in combat, but had a weak heel, then it's very likely that he was a very skilled warrior who just so happened to take an arrow to the heel at a critical moment that cost him his life - thus causing the myth that he had been blessed by the gods and this was the only way of killing him.
On top of that it’s hard to be historically accurate on a conflict that we know very little about
yes, I always took that as a rendition of how a historical event could have occurred that led to the myth of the Achilles heel
@@84tand It is more like being faithful to the myth than the history. I must say though that I thought they did a good job with the battle between Achilles and Hector.
The graphic Novel of 300 was inspired in a large way by the 1962 Movie "The 300 Spartans" which is a fairly accurate retelling of the battle whilst Gladiator is an OTT Reboot of 1964s The Fall of the Roman Empire. The legends of Arthur were being told as early as the 7th century and the 2004 movie went with the not wholly accepted Sarmatian hypothesis.
13:19 re: Alexander’s mother Olympias - Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History has multiple episodes where he quotes contemporary writers AT LEGNTH that say she absolutely was a “snake worshiping witch”
Source:
Glimpses of Olympias
Mania for Subjugation episode 1
However, writers at the time weren't necessarily writing in the sense of journalistic, let alone academic reporting. It's important to understand that they wanted to convey certain things, and not necessarily through truthfulness.
Olympias was a devotee of a snake cult. And she was very pious where it was concerned.
Please watch Alexander if you have time. It’s a great movie and it’s arguably one of the most historically accurate movies. The “flaws” the AI channel was mentioning are very strange.
The problem with playing fast and loose with the facts is that movies are a very evocative medium. Even if I get interested in the facts after and do some internet searching, it's going to be really hard to get other content to sort of "overwrite" the movie in my brain, just because of how more memorable movies are in comparison with text. It's kind of like when you read a book you imagine characters a certain way, but when you see a film adaptation and then re-read the book, you have a hard time not seeing actors' faces in your mind. So that's why I think that there is a certain responsibility there, not to get everything exactly right, but just not completely wrong.
It is more a problem when something is promoted as historical movie. Rather then costume movie.
The reason I have been subscribed to you is beacsue you can distinguish fact from fiction, and as a film buff and (sorta) film historian, I love you clarify that film directors are meant to make a film for dramatic purpose but there are great directors who are historically accurate films.
Chris, new Mr Beat just dropped: 10 Worst Laws, seems like something you would like to take a look at
Concerning "Alexander", it is probably the most accurate depiction of the use of the phalanx in war that has ever been committed to film, and the course of the battle of Gaugamela is spot on.
Moral of this story if your Historical Drama involves Mel Gibson any way the history is gonna suck.
I don't think We Were Soldiers was too bad.
@@Forester- We Were Soldiers was pretty good the only thing that kind of annoyed me was that one scene with all the wives at home and one of them makes a comment on how she couldn't wash any colored sheets at a laundromat because she didn't know about segregation in 1965.
@@jameslars7391 That part was really dumb
Ridley Scott as well, he goes as far as detesting historians
I think he did well with Hacksaw Ridge.
When I was a young kid in the late 50s and early 60s there was a Disney series called The Swamp Fox about the exploits of Francis Marion. I remember being enamored with it and peaked my interest in the Revolutionary War.
One of the reasons Pocahontas turned out the way it did was the timescale it was made. Disney saw Beauty and the Beast do really well and so wanted another film in the forbidden love/love brewing as a battle happens story frame, and the next film in their production line that was early enough in production that they were able to make that sort of change to was Pocahontas (other films like the Lion King were too far into production)
I've not seen the Pocahontas sequel (as, like most Disney straight to home media sequels, it's got AWFUL reviews), but it does appear to be *somewhat* (and I use somewhat very loosely) more accurate to the real Pocahontas, as she does at least go to London as her love interest in that film is John Rolfe
Also, I want a *good* Disney Pocahontas prequel about the Lost Colony of Roanoke
Alexander may have it's issues, but it has probably the best depiction of ancient warfare I've ever seen. The fact that they actually had the troops move in formation and maintain unit cohesion is superb. I wish more movies/shows would do this instead of depicting helmetless warriors engaging in a chaotic mess.
My only issue with 300 is that there are people who think that actually happened the way the movie portrays it.
300 contributed to this weird psuedo-mythology we have today about Spartans being super soldiers that were better than everyone else at the time, when in reality most historians would tell you that they only really differed in the fact that military service was a major focus of their culture. They were good soldiers, absolutely, but they were not making everyone else look like rubes.
300 is so obviously an over the top representation of what happened that if you think it was real you were beyond saving anyway
Spartans at that time were a very, very well-trained soldiers. Spartan women were obviously orders of magnitude better warriors than other Greek or Persian women, they even attended the Olympic games as athletes. When it comes to men, there were many Greeks and Persians who would be on the same level as an average Spartan, but the entire point of the military service in Sparta was to eliminate the weaker members of the military formation. And you can see they are depicted as strong, but not supermen. The moment they face the immortals, the elite Persian infantry, quite a lot of them die.
Also keep in mind these are not random Spartans, these are the best of the best, hand-picked by the king himself for a suicide mission that real Spartans would consider the highest honor and would fight over the privilege to attend.
The British did burn a church with Patriots trapped inside, but it was in St-Eustache (QC) in 1837. They also burned entire villages in Quebec during the 1837-1838 Rebellions under General John Colborne's order.
The Patriotes were not Patriots. British terror was more common in India.
@@drbuckley1 well they were not the same patriots, but they were republicans who took arms to get rid of the British. So, same old same old. But I agree that the British were way more aweful in Asia, Africa and Oceania
I think the most obvious movie to put on a list like this is DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. The insane portrayal of freed black men destroying the post-war south, and threatening the virtue of white women, but then valiantly saved by the ku klux klan, was a gross inaccuracy that caused immeasurable harm to the US.
Alexander is extremely historically accurate, and definitely worth a watch if you are into ancient/classical history.
10,000 B.C. is a caveman movie, like Quest for Fire. It's not supposed to be a historical movie, it's literally the story of Moses in the Stone Age. Good fun, but watch it as just that, fun.
Closest I’ve gotten to a vid drop! Love you Chris!
The 1965 film battle of the bulge was so bad Eisenhower came out of retirement to denounce the movie for being so wrong and inaccurate.
Like... the film was made in spain amd there is no snow. They have some fake snow but not much. And almost no trees. For the battle of the bulge which was in december 1944 in the Ardennes
It is interesting that the 2 historical figures that they gave private showings to came out and gave public panning of it. Besides Eisenhower, Hasso von Manteuffel also gave a terrible review of the film to the press.
To me this is a bad list because it misses the most egregious thing a historical movie can do, which is to portray themselves as historically accurate when they are not. To me the worst case would be JFK, which is done to look almost like a docudrama while intentionally getting facts incorrect to paint a specific narrative. Another egregious example would be 12 Years a Slave. which changes just about every fact that happened in real life.
I appreciated the fact that in ‘Those About To Die”, Domitian had Titus murdered in a secluded place and told his men to tell everyone that Titus died of a fever from bad food. It shows the fact that the writers are straying from history, while also acknowledging that Titus really did die from a short illness.
Thats stupidity 10000 BC was not intended to be historical.
TO THIS DAY i don't understand the hate Alexander get. Especially from the historical community.
I was for the longest time passionate about ancient history and the period of classical till late antiquity was always my favourite. i used to read the authors pieces.. i read all of Herodotus and more..
Alexander IS a great movie. It give the CORRECT vibe to the historical events surrounding Alexander's life and epic.
It has great storytelling,
amazing battles
and it is one of the few movies in HISTORY that bothers to show people fighting in ACTUAL FORMATIONS, not the garbage moshpits of hollywood.
The entire Gaugamela sequence is a masterpiece alone!
The "issues" of the movies are more due to sincretism, they had to condense 20years of history into a few key moments including a few battles, so yes, there is a lot of "people in the wrong place" or multiple events and people condensed into one.
Is not a 20 hours TV series. is a barely 3h movie. They had to cut things up.
Anthony Hopkins as an older Ptolomy narrating his biography and "changing" it to make it look nicer as he is dictating it to his scribe is majestic.
Also Soundtrack from Vangelis.
COME ON. Shittier films get hyped and a really good one is dumped. I know NOW Ritter has a mark on his shoulder for being a hack. But in the 2000s he was on fire.
Give the movie a try at least.
I've been in the Fate fandom for so long, that it's weird for me to see King Arthur as a dude lol
Yeah me too… EXCALIBUR!
Disney had a series about Francis Marion called 'Swamp Fox'. Starred a very very young Leslie Nielsen. Doubt it had much in the way of historical accuracy, but it was how I first heard of him.
Film Historian graduated with a Masters in film. Bohemian Rhapsody is inaccurate, Argo almost completely ignored the Canadian's help, Untouchables, just a few to name. Congrats on the channel.
Re: "Argo" -- actually the Canadians did more than "help" -- they did the whole thing. Mendez only arrived at the very last minute, forgot the movie screenplay in his car so it wasn't used, and he never took ANY of the Americans ANYWHERE, not at any time.
Affleck first showed the movie at the Toronto International Film Festival, of all places, and was so dismayed at the anger from the Canadian audiences that he quickly added a disclaimer before its general release. Too little, too LATE -- especially when he was doing interviews declaring "It's all true!" Like hell it was.
Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador, *who was THERE,* has said the movie is "almost total fiction". You don't get to say "Based on a true story", when virtually NOTHING in the movie is what really happened during the real events.
Alexander is one of the most historically accurate films made. The attention to detail, meticulous reconstruction of the uniforms, characters and, especially, the battles means it normally appears in the lists of MOST accurate films. Do yourselves a favour and watch it!! You will not regret it!!!
The last samurai is based over Jules Brunet, a french officer. But as a french officer wasn't good enough for Hollywood, they americanized him.
It's so typical of "Hollowood" to falsify history in an attempt to pretend Americans were the heroes, when they weren't at all. Like all the Vietnam movies that sidestep the ugly reality that the U.S. LOST that war....
And "U571" that pretended it was heroic AMERICAN seamen who captured the Enigma machine, when it was BRITISH seamen, before the U.S. was even in the war. Or "Argo" which pretended Mendez (played by the DIRECTOR!) was some kind of hero, when he only arrived at the last minute, and never took ANY of the Americans ANYWHERE, not at any time.
Canadians are still angry about "Argo", like Brits are still angry about "U571".
Go watch Alexander. The movie was lambasted by fan boys who didn't want a character study and Greeks who didn't want their hero to swing both ways and by people who didn't know the history of Alexander. Oliver Stone does. He studied the histories very extensively and the movie reflects this. Yes, it was dramatized in areas, but it was pretty accurate to the time and place and events as per the records. Oh and Oliver Stone didn't name his movie "Alexander the Great". He was making a character study, hence the movie title "Alexander".
At the time of Alexander it was common to have male lovers. I remember an old quote 'A man for love, a woman for duty and a boy for pleasure' sex between soldiers was promoted to create a deeper bond.
Just discovered your channel! Love it! Here are a few-all of which I love-which are just hopeless when judged against the historical record:
1) The Ten Commandments (😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂);
2) The Lion in Winter (a fictional Christmas Court in 1183 held Chinon France with King Henry II, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, King Philip of France, Richard the Lionhearted);
3) Kingdom of Heaven (another Ridley Scott sunglazed, exotic costume fantasy shot in locations bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the real sites in which they occurred, with echoes of the story of Baldwin IV King of Jerusalem and Saladin Sultan of Egypt, along with a fictional romance between two people who absolutely never met);
4) Elizabeth AND Elizabeth, The Golden Age (both fabulously entertaining, AND absolutely PERMEATED with historical inaccuracies);
5) The Wind and the Lion (Theodore Roosevelt, navigating a foreign policy crisis in Morocco with a brigand sultan who has kidnapped an ambassador’s wife, along side his grief over the loss of both his wife and mother on the same day during a month’s long hunting expedition into the Wyoming/Montana wilderness);
6) Franklin and Eleanor (made for TV, two part mini-series that does admirably-but stops short of the the aftermath of Roosevelt’s death);
6) Jackie, Ethel, and Joan (also made for TV, which predictably gives short shrift to the far less more troublesome and tawdry second and third Kennedy wives).