When it comes to Hollywood, “based on a true story” can mean just about anything. After all, the primary purpose of most movies is to entertain an audience, and sometimes the truth comes at the expense of dramatic effect.
Real people are turned into two-dimensional characters, timelines are played around with for the sake of narrative, and entire events get misrepresented or ignored altogether.
In other words, if you want a history lesson, watch a documentary. If you want to be entertained for a couple of hours and aren’t so concerned about “reality,” watch one of the following movies.
Apocalypto (2006)
Professors from Northwestern University called this Mel Gibson-directed film, set in pre-Columbian Central America, a “distorted view of Maya history.” They argue that its depiction of relentless violence, including scenes in which prisoners are decapitated, plays into the harmful stereotype of Indigenous people as being bloodthirsty, immoral, and “utterly evil” savages.
JFK (1991)
“JFK’s most compelling scenes are totally made up,” writes Avi Selk of The Washington Post about this “barely factual” Oliver Stone film about a prosecutor’s attempts to prove the CIA’s involvement in the assassination of the 35thpresident. Stone himself said that the film wasn’t so much concerned with telling the truth, but with exploring “all the possible scenarios of why Kennedy was killed, who killed him and why.”
10,000 BC (2008)
Woolly mammoths, sabre tooth tigers, carnivorous birds, and advanced civilizations, all existing at the same time? Not likely. As Slate’s Chris Wilson points out, it’s possible (though unlikely) that woolly mammoths and sabre tooth tigers existed at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch (or Ice Age), but carnivorous birds would have been long extinct by that point, and it would be another 7,000 years until the pyramids were built and man developed codified language.
Pearl Harbor (2001)
Critics largely panned this explosive-laden historical drama directed by Michael Bay, but its biggest detractors were actual veterans of World War II, including U.S. Air Force officer and flying ace Kenneth Taylor. Taylor, who was depicted in the film, called it “a piece of trash… over-sensationalized and completely distorted.” It’s easy to see why he would feel that way, given the film’s many historical inaccuracies. As just one example, the Japanese aircraft carriers shown in the movie were in fact the ones used by the U.S. Navy at the time.
Pocahontas (1995)
Historical accuracy isn’t the top priority for Disney animations, but even so, this 1995 blockbuster hit gets a lot wrong about the story of Native American Pocahontas (real name Amonute) and English colonist John Smith. Most glaringly, in real life Pocahontas is believed to have been about 10 or 11 years old when she met Smith, who was 27 years old at the time, so it’s unlikely that the relationship between the two was romantic in nature. Furthermore, as historians have pointed out, the “narrative of Pocahontas turning her back on her own people and allying with the English, thereby finding common ground between the two cultures” is largely a construct of mainstream culture.
The New World (2005)
Directed by Terrence Malick, The New World is another film that takes liberties with the Jamestown settlement story. As one critic put it, the movie “seems to strive not for historical accuracy but for the Smith-Pocahontas relationship to represent innocence compromised by imperialism.” One thing the film does do well is depict John Smith’s recounting of being saved by Pocahontas from execution by the Powhatan people in such a way that the viewer is left uncertain of what actually happened: “This is, in fact, the most historically accurate way they could have done it,” writes The Guardian’s Alex von Tunzelmann.
The Great Escape (1963)
Though it’s based on the firsthand account of an Australian fighter pilot who was present during the 1944 mass escape from the German prisoner of war camp Stalag Luft III, The Great Escape is largely Hollywood fiction. “There was no hair-raising theft of a German fighter plane for an aborted flight to Switzerland,” writes Michael Rowland of ABC News, “and the daredevil Steve McQueen character trying to leap to freedom on a motorcycle was a complete fiction.”
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
In fairness, director Don Chaffey clearly wasn’t too concerned with historical accuracy when he made this adventure film about a caveman who falls in love with a woman from another tribe, which depicts humans and dinosaurs inhabiting Earth at the same time. In fact, the last non-avian dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, while homo sapiens didn’t come about until about 300,000 BCE.
Gladiator (2000)
Director Ridley Scott set out to create the most realistic on-screen portrayal of 2nd-century Roman culture as possible, consulting with several historians and advisors. In many ways he did just that, despite taking some liberties with history. For example, the corrupt Commodus did not become Emperor by murdering his father, Marcus Aurelius, but instead was more or less handed the keys to the kingdom over time. Of course, if Scott had gone that route, we wouldn’t have gotten the epic showdown between Commodus and Maximus at the end of the film.
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
![11 of 21 Photos in Gallery: “[M]any scholars have taken the film to task for playing fast and loose with characterizations, dates and plausibility,” writes Biography’s Colin Bertram. Thomas Barnes, history professor at Berkeley, for example, took issue with the overall depiction of the era, including the Queen, her courtiers, and the city of London, arguing that it looked more like the 20thcentury than the 16th.](https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAVHjQG.img?w=700&q=60&f=jpg "Shakespeare in Love (1998) - Miramax")
“[M]any scholars have taken the film to task for playing fast and loose with characterizations, dates and plausibility,” writes Biography’s Colin Bertram. Thomas Barnes, history professor at Berkeley, for example, took issue with the overall depiction of the era, including the Queen, her courtiers, and the city of London, arguing that it looked more like the 20thcentury than the 16th.
The Last Samurai (2003)
This 2003 film “pulled from a grab bag of historical facts and spliced them into Hollywood blockbuster fodder, complete with Tom Cruise, swords, as few subtitles as realistically possible, samurai, and ninja,” writes Richard Milner, professor at Tokyo’s Kyoritsu Women's University, pointing out that ninjas hadn’t existed for centuries by the time the film takes place. Furthermore, The Last Samurai, with a story based on the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, which saw disaffected samurais push back against the rapid westernization of the new imperial government, has been cited as an example of a white saviour narrative, a cinematic trope in which a white character steps in to save the day for the non-white characters.
300 (2006)
![13 of 21 Photos in Gallery: Did anyone really expect a film shot almost entirely in front of green screen to be historically accurate? Based on Herodotus’s account of the Battle of Thermopylae during the Persian Wars, where a small number of Spartans took on the bulk of the Persian Army, Zack Snyder’s 300 is really nothing more than Hollywood fiction, earning a failing grade for its historical accuracy from The Guardian’s Alex von Tunzelmann, who called it “a truly horrible piece of cinema,” and the result of “shov[ing] Herodotus into a blender with pro-wrestling and a neo-conservative political agenda.”](https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AAVHvCC.img?w=700&q=60&f=jpg "300 (2006) - Legendary Pictures/Virtual Studios/Atmosphere Entertainment MM/Hollywood Gang Productions")
Did anyone really expect a film shot almost entirely in front of green screen to be historically accurate? Based on Herodotus’s account of the Battle of Thermopylae during the Persian Wars, where a small number of Spartans took on the bulk of the Persian Army, Zack Snyder’s 300 is really nothing more than Hollywood fiction, earning a failing grade for its historical accuracy from The Guardian’s Alex von Tunzelmann, who called it “a truly horrible piece of cinema,” and the result of “shov[ing] Herodotus into a blender with pro-wrestling and a neo-conservative political agenda.”
Alexander (2004)
Aside from the fact that Greeks and Macedonians speak in Irish accents, Oliver Stone’s critically derided, turgid three-hour historical epic contains a number of historical inaccuracies, including depicting the Persian Empire as disorganized and downright incompetent, when in fact they were disciplined, highly coordinated, and a challenging adversary to Alexander the Great.
Argo (2012)
The former Canadian ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor, took issue with the film’s Americanized portrayal of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, in which six U.S. diplomats managed to evade capture thanks in large part to the efforts of Canadians such as himself. Taylor, who is portrayed in the film by Victor Garber, said he felt “slighted” by the 2013 Best Picture Oscar winner, which makes it seem as though CIA operative Tony Mendez was largely responsible for getting the hostages to safety, when in fact President Jimmy Carter himself said it was 90% Canada, and 10% the CIA.
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
This Oscar-winning film, starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, is largely responsible for the myth that Bonnie and Clyde were a pair of Robin Hood-style bank robbers, only taking money from banks foreclosing on poor farmers. The truth is that their crimes were self-serving and downright heinous, far from the romantic folk hero image projected on the big screen. In fact, the criminal couple is believed to have killed at least 13 people, including a pair of police officers.
Titanic (1997)
In fairness to James Cameron, very little of what actually happened aboard the ill-fated Titanic is known to this day. “The rest,” as Culture Trip’s Katie Hill notes, “is unconfirmed theories and complete mystery.” No question the director does a great job of conveying the overall sense of fear and chaos as the ship went down, but some of the finer details are up for debate. For example, the scene where the band is shown playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee” almost certainly didn’t happen in real life, but is instead based on a similar scene from the 1958 film A Night to Remember. The film also “favoured dramatic effect over historical accuracy in the portrayal of Bruce Ismay, president of the company that built the Titanic.”
Black Hawk Down (2001)
It’s not so much that Black Hawk Down is inaccurate in its depiction of the U.S. military's 1993 raid in Mogadishu, but rather that it omits important facts, such as the pivotal role that the Malaysian Army played. More than 100 soldiers from the 19th battalion of the Royal Malay Regiment put their lives at risk to help rescue the outnumbered American troops from the heavily-armed Somalis, though you wouldn’t know it from watching this Ridley Scott movie.
The Patriot (2000)
Action takes precedence over accuracy in this Roland Emmerich film about a peaceful South Carolina farmer who takes part in the American Revolution after a cruel British officer murders one of his sons. The movie’s most egregious offences, according to the Los Angeles Times, “are the inaccurate portraits of the British and the place of Blacks in the colonial South Carolina of that era.” In reality, the redcoats were far from the brutal, bloodthirsty villains portrayed in the movie, while Black people were not in fact permitted to bear arms in South Carolina army units.
U-571 (2000)
This WWII thriller about a group of American submariners who capture the Enigma cipher machine by boarding a German U-boat was swiftly condemned by British politicians, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, who described the movie’s rewriting of history as a galling “affront” to the British soldiers who sacrificed their lives during the war. In fact it was the Royal Navy’s HMS Bulldog that retrieved the first naval Enigma machine from the Germans in May 1941, months before the U.S. had even joined the war.
Braveheart (1995)
The 1996 Best Picture Oscar winner about William Wallace’s late-13th-century rebellion against King Edward I of England has been called one of the most historically inaccurate films of all time. For starters, as The Scotsman points out, Scottish warriors would not have worn tartan in battle at the time, nor would they have painted their faces blue. It’s also unlikely that Wallace would have wielded a two-handed claymore, seeing as though they didn’t become common until the 16th century. Most importantly, Wallace was far from the “hero from humble highland beginnings” as depicted in the film. Instead, as historians have noted, he came from “noble lowland stock.”
إرسال تعليق