blessmycottonsocks
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OK, so we have threads here for horror, sci-fi, steampunk and worst movies, which sometimes touches on this topic, but I thought a thread dedicated to ostensively historical films which are littered with anachronisms and other cringeworthy goofs could be quite entertaining.
For the purposes of this thread, I'm discounting comedies/spoofs or movies based on comic-strip material, so no Life of Brian, 300 or Indiana Jones.
To kick things off, here are three that irk me:
The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986).
Based closely on Jean M. Auel's epic prehistoric soap-opera, she apparently carried out substantial research by visiting prehistoric sites and attending archaeological conventions and yet both the novels and the movie got many basics utterly wrong.
The Neanderthals were depicted as swarthy, whereas Ayla and her modern human people were fair, Nordic types. Definitely the wrong way around, when DNA evidence reveals that Neanderthals were likely pale-skinned with fair or ginger hair, whilst the Cro-Magnons were the more swarthy ones. Ayla and her lover are even blue-eyed, whereas the blue-eyed gene mutation occurred much later in human history. Both Ayla and the Neanderthal women have beautifully manicured nails and shaved armpits - which seems extremely unlikely.
The Battle of the Bulge (1965)
A dramatisation of the German Ardennes Offensive in December 1944.
It gets off to a poor start when, to recreate a wintry, forested Belgium, they decided to shoot the movie near Madrid in sunny Spain!
Then, as any lad who's ever built Airfix kits of Shermans, Tigers, Panthers and the like will tell you, the Korean war surplus tanks used in the movie look nothing like genuine WW2 tanks. Here's a M47 Patton tank painted to look like (presumably) a Tiger II and it's fooling no-one. Finally, the movie, as was par for the course back then, depicts solely the American effort, and totally ignores the two armies under Montgomery's command, not to mention the RAF air strikes, which helped tip the balance in the allies' favour.
The film was so historically inaccurate, that President Eisenhower allegedly came out of retirement and held a press conference just to denounce it!
Braveheart (1995)
Oh blimey! Where to start with this?
Widely panned as the least historically accurate movie ever made, all I can do is cut and paste from the long list of howlers:
Wallace himself wasn't a Highlander commoner, but was from a longstanding noble family of Norman descent.
The tartan and kilts worn by Wallace and his army are a few hundred years too early.
Whereas the face paint was at least a thousand years too late and had fallen out of fashion after the Picts and the Roman occupation.
The Battle of Stirling Bridge is missing the bridge, without which the military action is meaningless.
The Irish didn't join with the Scots at the battle of Falkirk.
The Scots never sacked York.
Isabella of France is not thought to have ever met Wallace and was probably around 8 years old at the time of these events, so a romance would have been unlikely to say the least.
"Braveheart" was the nickname of Robert the Bruce (who is downright slandered in the movie), not William Wallace.
Edward lived a further two years after Wallace's execution.
As author John O’Farrell, put it, the film couldn’t have been more inaccurate if a plasticine dog had been added to the cast and the film were retitled William Wallace and Gromit.
What are your favourite historically shambolic movies?
For the purposes of this thread, I'm discounting comedies/spoofs or movies based on comic-strip material, so no Life of Brian, 300 or Indiana Jones.
To kick things off, here are three that irk me:
The Clan of the Cave Bear (1986).
Based closely on Jean M. Auel's epic prehistoric soap-opera, she apparently carried out substantial research by visiting prehistoric sites and attending archaeological conventions and yet both the novels and the movie got many basics utterly wrong.
The Neanderthals were depicted as swarthy, whereas Ayla and her modern human people were fair, Nordic types. Definitely the wrong way around, when DNA evidence reveals that Neanderthals were likely pale-skinned with fair or ginger hair, whilst the Cro-Magnons were the more swarthy ones. Ayla and her lover are even blue-eyed, whereas the blue-eyed gene mutation occurred much later in human history. Both Ayla and the Neanderthal women have beautifully manicured nails and shaved armpits - which seems extremely unlikely.
The Battle of the Bulge (1965)
A dramatisation of the German Ardennes Offensive in December 1944.
It gets off to a poor start when, to recreate a wintry, forested Belgium, they decided to shoot the movie near Madrid in sunny Spain!
Then, as any lad who's ever built Airfix kits of Shermans, Tigers, Panthers and the like will tell you, the Korean war surplus tanks used in the movie look nothing like genuine WW2 tanks. Here's a M47 Patton tank painted to look like (presumably) a Tiger II and it's fooling no-one. Finally, the movie, as was par for the course back then, depicts solely the American effort, and totally ignores the two armies under Montgomery's command, not to mention the RAF air strikes, which helped tip the balance in the allies' favour.
The film was so historically inaccurate, that President Eisenhower allegedly came out of retirement and held a press conference just to denounce it!
Braveheart (1995)
Oh blimey! Where to start with this?
Widely panned as the least historically accurate movie ever made, all I can do is cut and paste from the long list of howlers:
Wallace himself wasn't a Highlander commoner, but was from a longstanding noble family of Norman descent.
The tartan and kilts worn by Wallace and his army are a few hundred years too early.
Whereas the face paint was at least a thousand years too late and had fallen out of fashion after the Picts and the Roman occupation.
The Battle of Stirling Bridge is missing the bridge, without which the military action is meaningless.
The Irish didn't join with the Scots at the battle of Falkirk.
The Scots never sacked York.
Isabella of France is not thought to have ever met Wallace and was probably around 8 years old at the time of these events, so a romance would have been unlikely to say the least.
"Braveheart" was the nickname of Robert the Bruce (who is downright slandered in the movie), not William Wallace.
Edward lived a further two years after Wallace's execution.
As author John O’Farrell, put it, the film couldn’t have been more inaccurate if a plasticine dog had been added to the cast and the film were retitled William Wallace and Gromit.
What are your favourite historically shambolic movies?
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