Historical Inaccuracy Corner

[Mechamorph]

For me its 10,000BC. As a biologist all the flora is wrong, the fauna is wrong, even logic takes a back seat. What appears to be Ancient Egypt with iron age technology is run by aliens. They capture *wooly mammoths* and slave labour to build the pyramids despite the fact that it is a desert and the mammoths would die of heat stroke within hours (not to mention... what are they feeding them?). The raiders also rode *horses* through the desert.....

Not to mention, sabretooth tigers and giant carnivorous flightless birds less than 15,000 years ago? Really? >_<

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Pretty much every WWII movie ever made where America saves the day single-handedly. I'm looking at you, Saving Private Ryan. Has there ever been a movie about the Eastern Front?

What? Saving Private Ryan is about a group of American soldiers rescuing a fellow American soldier. On this mission to rescue one person, almost all of them die, including the main character.

How the hell is that saving the day? Yes, it's not historically accurate, but not in the "America saves the day!" sense.

And there's been a shit load of movies about the eastern front.

 

[ExileNZ]

well i was going to say gladiator but someone stole my idea

but Passion of the christ missed alot of stuff and swapped to the wrong language at one stage

The film shows Jesus being crucified with nails through the palms of his hands. This is almost certainly historically wrong. The Romans more likely crucified people with nails through their wrists, rather than the palms of their hands. (See: 'The crucified man' on this site, for a detailed description).

Actually, see Stigmata for more on that one - the priest explains it in detail and then says that people just made the statues like that because they always had.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

It's sort of annoying me how many people are complaining, not noticing, mind you, but complaining about inaccurate Disney movies.

This animated children's musical isn't entirely accurate? Wait, does that mean Simba isn't real? Noooo...

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I honestly don't give a damn about historical inaccuracies; documentaries fascinate me, and I love nature shows... so when I want realism, I go to them. When I want spectacle, I go to Hollywood.

What bothers me isn't that movies tend to be economical with the truth. If Hollywood wants to use some poetic license to make the movie more fun to watch that's fine by me, because for the most part I already know what happened in real life.

What bothers me is that so many people have such a stunted knowledge of even relatively recent history, and so few can be arsed to expand their knowledge any further, that they will simply swallow what Hollywood feeds them and repeat it as fact. Case in point, almost all WW2 movies.

Pretty much every WW2 film ever made.
I am getting so fed up with no other country being mentioned other than
TEH AMERICAN SAVIOURS!!!111!!1!
We get it.
You helped.
...Eventually.

I agree, someone make a movie about Pegasus Bridge already, or Stalingrad.

 

[RabbiiFrystofsk]

That scene in Kokoda:39th Battalion where the guy is wearing white adidas trainers

 

[Hoplon]

What annoy's me about 300 isn't the depiction of the battle, it's the leather nappie's they are wearing.

Heaviest infantry in the world at the time, just in leather nappies and a helmet... I'LL GET YOU MILLER! AND YOUR LITTLE DOG TOO!

 

[SckizoBoy]

I agree, someone make a movie about Pegasus Bridge already, or Stalingrad.

Well, there's Longest Day (Richard Todd playing his own commanding officer... I wonder who played Richard Todd...) though the scene(s) was brief but it was all Brit, thankfully. And there's... well, Stalingrad, a German production which was hideously depressing (and IMO far superior to Enemy at the Gates, though to be fair they're two fundamentally different films).

I tend to be very picky about which WWII films I watch/enjoy/own. As a result, while I thoroughly enjoy the genre, I own very few of them (and the only one that I have that was made after 1980 is Stalingrad). IMO, just a better class of WWII film when there was still serviceable hardware.

 

[oktalist]

Regarding Braveheart; off the top of my head, I recall reading that William Wallace was not a commoner, and was in fact a Scottish noble; that the clothing they wore was very different, and that by the end of the film, they would've been pretty much just as well armed and armoured as the English; that Prima Noctis never existed; and that Wallace and Robert the Bruce were never really best buds.

Got a few to add as well; the French queen in the movie was just a few years old during the specific time. There also wasn't any kilts at the time. They didn't appear until late 1800's, iirc.

And William Wallace had earlier fought for the English as a mercenary.

 

[zehydra]

As much as I love the movie: Michael Collins, it's got a bunch of historical inaccuracies.

He was still a badass though.

 

[oktalist]

U-571

Depicting Americans finding the German Enigma machine and basically making up an entire history about a u-boat that was never sunk.

First off, Britain was given the Enigma code by a Pole and went on to crack it. Nothing to do with the USA .... in fact it was before they got involved.

It's worse than that. The film is loosely based on an action carried out by British forces, the capture and subsequent scuttling of U-110 by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Bulldog. Nine seamen boarded the damaged u-boat in rough seas via a wooden rowboat which broke up as they were boarding, and extracted the Enigma machine. Bulldog was then forced away to engage another u-boat, meaning that the seamen had to remain aboard the sinking u-boat for another five hours until Bulldog could return to retrieve them. U-110 was then scuttled in order to fool German intelligence into thinking the Enigma had not been captured.

This was an important action, as Naval Enigma was much harder to crack than the version of Enigma used by the Army and Luftwaffe.

Fifteen Enigmas were captured from u-boats in WW2. Thirteen by the Royal Navy, one by the Royal Canadian Navy and one by the US Navy in 1944 long after Naval Enigma had been cracked.

The screenwriter said later that he felt bad about the historical inaccuracy and would not do something like that again.

One part was based on real American heroism, though: the sacrifice made by the captain is based on a US Navy submarine captain in the Pacific fleet, who was wounded on the deck and ordered his men to leave him there and submerge the boat.

But for me, the nationality of a hero doesn't matter, and one person's actions don't reflect on their whole country, so I'm not bothered.

 

[GruntOwner]

The Rocketeer. George of The Jungle hadn't even been found until some time in the 90s, how was he able to win WWII with a beer powered rocket pack?

Also, out of curiosity to all the Escapist's tank buffs, how accurate was Company of Heroes? It'd be nice to know and I'd have no idea where to even begin researching it.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Also, out of curiosity to all the Escapist's tank buffs, how accurate was Company of Heroes? It'd be nice to know and I'd have no idea where to even begin researching it.

Haven't actually played the game (for some reason WWII & RTS just doesn't sit particularly well with me) but I have seen screenshots of it.

As far as I can tell, it's fairly accurate, as far as mechanical design is concerned (Shermans, PzKpfw Mks etc.), though I find some of the camo patterns to be questionable (and it seems to be rather King Tiger happy...). One thing, though, all the M4 Shermans are of the older A2 variant while at the time of the games' setting (post-Normandy... ish), most were A4 or later, still with the 75mm gun, but that was being phased out in favour of the 76mm (better anti-tank capability) version, along with the British adapted Firefly pattern (notably with the 55cal+ long barrel and muzzle-brake, features that the Americans quickly adopted as well).

EDIT: Apologies, though visually similar Panther =/= King Tiger... obviously... (underestimated the size of the KT's turret.)

 

[SckizoBoy]

spelling semantics

1. Saving Private Ryan. Great film but apparently Steven Spielberg has never heard of Sword, Gold and Juno beaches before and didn't read up about Omaha much either. In reality, the rangers disembarked from British ships and were taken to Omaha Beach by Royal Navy landing craft. The film depicts them as being United States Coast Guard-crewed craft from an American ship.

Alec Guinness's overacting

Sorry for the late quote... but regarding SPR, fairly sure that the Rangers only had one objective, and that was taking Pointe-du-Hoc at the far western end of the beach-zone. 29th and 1st were at Omaha...

Will now go away and check Operation Overlord order of battle...

EDIT: Yah... got my geography wrong, PdH is smack between Utah & Omaha... 2nd & 5th Btns were involved, though most of the fighting strength was diverted to Omaha. My bad...