Very few cave women had auburn hair.
Very few cave women had auburn hair.
U-571 with the whole sub torpedoing another sub with both being underwater.
Also, not a historical film, but Crimson Tide with the boomer taking on water at 1300 feet, um, yeah, right...
When my father and I saw Pearl Harbor, he laughed right out loud at the scene with the Japanese naval officers using model ships in a pool.
He said that was an old coastal gun battery casemate in San Diego.
The pyrotechnics over the modern superstructures made me vomit. All the CGI and they couldn’t even get that right.
My personal favorite movie is not accurate. EL CID takes quite a few liberties with historical truth but it is still worth watching! Beautiful film!
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE also takes lots of liberties with historical truth.
One should compare FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE with Russell Crowe in GLADIATOR as they are basicly the same time period.
SPARTACUS is also very historicaly inacurate. Howard Fast’s novel did not have the Tony Curtis character and Spartacus was not crucified but killed on the battlefield. His body was never found. The movie is more Dalton Trumbo than Howard Fast.
The Buddy Holly Story
The Ghost and the Darkness. I had read the book years before, written by the man who killed the lions. When the movie came out, a boring railroad engineer who had to face down man-eating lions was not exciting enough, so they tossed in a fictional Yankee character named Winchester to steal most of the glory.
Braveheart. Those who don’t know the real story adored the film. Those who do, cringed.
There’s the famous one from DeMille: “The Crusades.”
As usual, every detail of costume and setting is nailed down, but when Richard the Lionheart gets married, the priest is using the Book of Common Prayer.
“Last King of Scotland”, while claiming to be historically accurate, is a total fabrication relative to what actually happened, which as it turns out, wasn’t very much anyway.
After scanning the bulk of this thread (sorry, PJ, didn’t mean to tangent with the Sensurround posts), I’m surprised to not see mentions of “JFK” or any other Oliver Stone celluloid colon ooze. The artistic license he took (golden-painted Clay Shaw nipple-pinching scenes et al) only prove that the most lauded in Hollywood are truly mentally ill. He even made Alexander look fruitier than Boy George.
The Far Horizons, a pretty good romantic tale about a supposed relationship between Lt. Clark and Sacajawea ... other then that whole never having happened part.
Anything by Oliver Stone.
Kingdom of Heaven.
The actual story would have made a much better movie.
I love the part when they were on the upturned hull of the Oklahoma, dozens of feet above the surface of the water, trying to cut through to rescue trapped crew. When they cut through, water comes gushing out. I guess the laws of physics don't extend to Hawaii.
I think the winner has to be the recent Robin Hood with Russell Crowe.
Manages to get King Richard killed off in France without ever being captured and held for ransom, which was just the biggest and most important event in English history for decades. Dang near bankrupted the country.
Also has the French launching an invasion of England that never occurred.
Not to mention the obligatory PC Maid Marion charging into combat in full armor.
Although I really like the ending where instead of staying up on the cliffs and shooting the French full of arrows without risk the themselves, they went down in the beach and fought them hand to hand. Even medieval knights weren’t that stupid.
I just saw the Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame. It was a fun movie and I really enjoyed hearing well-spoken Mandarin, but it took place in something like 689AD and in the market place they had big ears of dried maize hanging there.
How about The Untouchables? The movie went completely off the rails at the end where “Frank Nitti” (played by Ed from Northern Exposure) is killed by Elliot Ness in a shootout. Shame on you, David Mamet, for that screenplay.
Nitti’s portrayal in The Road to Perdition, written by Max Allan Collins and played by Stanley Tucci, was dead on accurate.
