The 10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies

I only take exception to the last movie on the list.

2001 was born of fiction and not based on any actual events that had already taken place. Besides if NASA would have had the equivelent funding throughout the years as it did when we went to the moon we very well could have had manned missions to Jupiter by now.

 

2001 historically inaccurate? Futuristically, maybe, but hey, it's science fiction, not a documentary.

 

It's happened before. Remember 2015 in the second Back to the Future movie? It shows fax machines as an important way of communication; enough to have printers in several rooms. Does that mean somebody in 2025 is going to say that movie was inaccurate. I agree with the other movies, but that one shouldn't be on that list.

 

I doubt it. Even with the most futuristic propulsion, such a trip would take years each way. Spending a week or so to get to the moon and back is one thing. Spending six months or a year in an earth satellite is a big step forward. But spending years in the outer solar system to reach Jupiter and return, is relatively far-fetched. You need astronauts willing to spend years confined in a small space, probably with less personal space than inmates in a crowded jail, and less possibility of getting out before the end of their sentence, in zero gravity, living on astronaut food, much of their time so far from the sun that it appears as just another star in the sky. You need life-support systems capable of running without any possibility of failure, for all those years, in an environment near absolute zero, and so far from the sun that only nuclear power could provide the necessary energy.

Even with a yearly budget equal to this war (which our economy cannot long maintain) a manned flight to Jupiter is pure science fiction.

But the most unrealistic thing about 2001 - A Space Odyssey is that artificial intelligence has not yet taken the first baby step toward anything that could be called intelligent, and who would be stupid enough to build a computer and then give the computer the physical mechanism to prevent it's being turned off? Sure, you could build a computer that's hard-wired into its power supply, and then wire in a high-voltage shocker to prevent anybody from throwing the switch, or give the computer a bypass so it would get power when you tried to turn it off, but why would you???

All computer-takes-over movies are unrealistic.

 

Gladiator got a lot right too. Like the cloth "roof" on the coloseum.

I didn't see that movie about the WWII sub that basically changed a losing battle to a winning one. I remember a British friend of mine going on and on about how the Americans lost but changed the ending. Can't remember the title. Had numbers in it. Like 357 or something.

I'd like to add TV shows. Dr. Quinn: Politically Correct Woman being the worst. There wasn't anything accurate about that "western" show. Not even the costumes.

BTW that is a sore point with me. If you're going to be accurate that means accurate in everything. So I nominate "First Knight" with Sean Connory and Richard Gere. It was supposed to be the King Arthur myth but the only resemblance was the names. The story didn't resemble any of the Arthurian legends. The costumes were complete garbage, totally inaccurate. And then there's the "British Idol" machine to test your knighthood that looked like it was designed by Rube Goldberg. Get through the machine and you get to kiss the pretty lady. Gag me.

I don't consider a lot of those movies the top ten inaccurate. Maybe the top ten inaccurate in the last...five years? El Cid was a lot more inaccurate than Gladiator. The real El Cid was in his 50s when he died. Most of the movies involving Cleopatra are inaccurate too. She had 4 children and lived into her 40s. She also wasn't the "totally blonde slut" she's usually made out to be. She spoke 7 languages and was an extremely shrewd politician.

Shakespeare in Love? Come on. (But the costumes were fabulous!)

A&E did a six part miniseries for the BBC on Ivanhoe. In the miniseries they kill the French badguy. Debracy? But in the book...he lives.

 

Blonde movie Cleopatras??? I remember Elizabeth Taylor playing her with jet-black hair. Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemys , and the only Ptolemy to learn and speak Egyptian. But it's thanks to the fact that the other Ptolemys spoke only Greek that modern scholars were able to decipher hieroglyphics: Greek was one of the languages on the Rosetta stone because that last dynasty of kings spoke only Greek.

 

While the following two movies may not be among the most historically inaccurate by themselves in the classical sense, their uniqueness is representative of a broader inaccuracy or bias of "Hollywood" movies as a whole, given the particular subject matter of the resistance to racial discrimination against blacks:

1. Mississippi Burning (1988) - The first Hollywood movie about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. And who are its protagonists and heroes? White men (Gene Hackman and Wilem Defoe). Specifically, white FBI men.

2. A World Apart (1988) - The first Hollywood movie about the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa, and who is its protagonist and hero? A white woman (Barbara Hershey).

 

1. Fahrenheit 911
2. An Inconvenient Truth

 

Whoever wrote that list seems to be missing the fact that movies are made for our entertainment. Factual accuracy is a rare commodity even in NEWS programming these days, so looking to works of fiction, or fact-inspired-fiction for factual accuracy is a little silly.

And of course it's extra-silly to claim 2001 in a list "historical" movies, just because we in the present have passed that date. That reminds me of this song :

 

"Totally Blonde" referring to I.Q., not hair color.

Cleopatra was a driving force behind the library at Alexandria as well.

 

I've been trying to find a Wookie to help pilot my starship, but they don't seem to exist. So I'm adding all the Star Wars movies to this list. They did happen a long time ago (in a galaxy far away) right?

 

Godiva mentioned "First Knight", which I wanted to throw out there... but I was going to mention the Jousting crowd beating out the lead in to "We will rock you"...

Perhaps it isn't impossible that Queen picked out that one from historical documents, but...

 

Different movie. We will rock you is the Heath Ledger movie A Knight's Tale. Also gag me for historical accuracy.

My only beef with Ladyhawke is that they used a rock soundtrack for an otherwise really nice fantasy medieval movie. It's distracting but not totally revolting.

Another beef: The Mummy Returns. The kids speaks anachronistically for the time period. ("Get a room."??) There were other issued with both movies. For instance....only four canopic jars, not five.

 

I never saw Star Wars when it first came out. So I rented Part 4 recently (the revised version of what was originally part 1).

What really struck me was how bad the acting was. I guess the special effects were ground-breaking at the time, and the fantasy characters were cool-looking. But even by Hollywood standards, the acting was dreadful.

No. The real point is that the FBI was virulently opposed to integration, slandered the civil rights workers, including Dr. King, as "communists" and was probably complicit in several of the murders of civil rights workers.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by fairclge:

The point I was making was not that Mississippi Burning or A World Apart were historically inaccurate or racist by themselves (tho they may have been), nor was I saying that the stories told were not good or legitimate stories to tell. But I was saying that there's a subtle or soft historical inaccuracy or racism present when Hollywood decides to make its first movie or movies about the resistance to racial discrimination and oppression against blacks in the United States and South Africa, and out of the hundreds of stories it could have told about such resistance movements, it chose to tell the story of two white men in Mississippi Burning and a white woman in A World Apart.

For a car analogy -- it would be as if Hollywood were to make its first movie about hybrids, and chose to make it about the Malibu hybrid, instead of the Honda Insight or Toyota Prius.

 

Mea Culpa. Yes, "A Knight's Tale".

See, it was so bad, I forgot its real title.

 

Star Wars is a B movie that had an A budget and studio backing. It isn't Sci-fi. It's fantasy that takes place in space. Which may be why it did well. A tale of the peasant hero destined for great things, with a fresh back drop. The special effects were also a big attraction.

SW also herald in the age of blockbusters.

Since Shakespeare in love was mentioned.
[ame="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5058529870025933880"]Star Wars George Lucas in Love[/ame]

 

BLASPHEMER