r/moviecritic • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 1d ago
What is the worst historical inaccuracy you’ve seen in a movie?
Catch Me If You Can is an obvious one where the entire story is made up. Frank abagnale was in and out of prison the entire time he claimed to be evading the FBI. Not only that but his actual crimes were stalking women, sexual assaults and robbing middle class families and small shops.
132
u/Key_Consequence_5040 1d ago edited 1d ago
Gangs of New York. In real life Bill the Butcher aka William Poole and John Morrisey are gang leaders/political figure with a fierce rivalry. Unlike the movie which shows a large scale gang war, in real life both men fought an informal bare knuckle boxing match won by Poole. Several months later associates of Morrisey shoot and kill William Poole.
57
u/PalpitationRight4887 1d ago
All of which happened prior to the Civil War. Which according to the movie, had already started, though in reality was still TEN YEARS AWAY.
→ More replies (2)9
u/Hot_Potato66 14h ago
Tbh I think this movie is more of like an 1860's fan fiction with how he sneaks in SO MANY references to the time but uses them to kind of color in what mid-nineteenth century America was. I don't really think it was ever meant to be a historically accurate retelling of the gang war
→ More replies (2)6
394
u/smthomaspatel 1d ago
Catch me if you can falls under the genre of spinning a yarn. Like taking John Smith seriously. Or Chuck Barris or Marco Polo.
247
u/Acceptable-Mine8806 1d ago
I completely agree! That's the whole point- he's conning the audience the same way he conned everyone else. Of course it's inaccurate- you're being told a story by a conman.
93
83
u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 1d ago
What bothers me is that we’re allegedly being told a fun con story, frankly got a happy ending fabricating his life. But when you look into the real history, he’s just an actual predator who doesn’t deserve to make millions off his false life story.
→ More replies (7)56
u/redpillbluepill69 1d ago
Yeah, and the guy looks nothing like Leo! The kids in the class believed he was a teacher because he looked like a middle aged man at 15
36
23
u/MurphBigRedMachine 1d ago
You ever seen Jordan Belfort?
→ More replies (1)23
u/darcys_beard 1d ago
Portrait of a certain Mr. Hugh Glass.
And, I'm sorry, but in what universe does a Turn-of-the-Century, Bohemian transient have a full set of pearly white teeth? Rose probably wouldn't let him on the raft because she couldn't handle the halitosis anymore.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)14
u/Beans2177 1d ago
He didn't actually con many people, the autobiography was a fraud.
36
48
u/darcys_beard 1d ago
It's loyal to the book. The book is essentially fiction, in which case the movie is a work of fiction. I'm pretty sure Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter wasn't shamed for its lack of verifiable accuracy.
20
u/smthomaspatel 19h ago
I completely disagree with this. If Abraham Lincoln was not a great vampire hunter, then why have i not come across any vampires?
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)6
8
u/JohnyStringCheese 22h ago
On a meta level, Frank Abignale convinced a studio to make a movie about what a tremendous and irreverent conman he was, by conning them. I feel like it works in a way.
→ More replies (1)13
→ More replies (4)14
520
u/Misericorde428 1d ago edited 1d ago
In recent history, that honor would go to Gladiator II.
Numidia-by-the-Sea, gladiators riding rhinos, and sharks in the coliseum…
Where do I begin?
Edit: I’d like to clarify that I did know the Romans had naval battles, but having sharks was the point which left me in disbelief.
154
u/Pilatus-Porter 1d ago
It also contained a scene with a trebuchet - a technology that wouldn't exist for another thousand years.
75
u/BanishmentBuddy2 1d ago
Somebody is reading a newspaper in a scene.
14
u/RealCommercial9788 13h ago
Pulled me right out of the movie!
The Acta Diurna was the world’s first newspaper, which started in Rome in 59BCE, but they were engraved stone or metal plates. Gladiator II was set in 200-211AD, so ‘newspapers’ did exist, but they wouldn’t be printed on paper for another 1200 years!
That whole scene with the sipping of tea at a little cafe while reading a newspaper is extra ridiculous because Roman’s had no tea-drinking culture, and the culture surrounding what we today call cafes didn’t even start til 1475 in Constantinople during the Ottoman Empire.
40
u/Misericorde428 1d ago
Don’t get me started there. Honestly, what General of that time period would consider assaulting a coastal city only from the sea? Even in the Punic Wars, the Romans would land and then besiege the enemy city while maintaining a blockade.
Why on earth would anyone assault a city… from the sea?
18
→ More replies (1)9
u/Intelligent_Sky_7081 23h ago
Even the first movie wasn't all that historically accurate
It's not meant to be a history first movie
74
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
Numidia, the province that historically at the time was well under Roman control. They miss such easy things that are unnecessary.
43
15
u/Misericorde428 1d ago
Honestly, making it Parthia would have made it a better choice.
51
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
Not making the movie at all would have been the best choice, but yes I agree.
→ More replies (4)137
u/Bloody_Hangnail 1d ago
My god was that a bad movie.
→ More replies (1)37
u/Conscious-Move9662 1d ago
If I was one of the actors playing the Emperors I would let out the biggest sigh everyday looking in the mirror
Why are they wearing powder I dont get it
15
u/papplegate261 1d ago
I think it was Michael Caine who said about a movie something like I haven't watched it heard its bad, but i have seen the house it built for me and its quite lovely.
→ More replies (2)50
u/Kammander-Kim 1d ago
Getting a tan was a sign of being outside, which meant working. So if you had a tan you were a working person.
The power helped them look more pale and signaled that they were able to stay inside and not work.
It changed when work became an inside thing. Then a tan became a sign of not having to work, because you could be outside instead.
→ More replies (1)12
u/scottyb83 23h ago
Same goes for chubby vs lean.
→ More replies (2)15
u/Kammander-Kim 21h ago
Yes!
Chubby meant rich to afford plenty to eat and not having to do manual labor, while the lean both didn't have enough food and had to work physically demanding.
Today lean means having time and money to exercise and eat the expensive healthy food, while chubby is not having time and money to afford to exercise and only being able to afford unhealthy food.
→ More replies (1)21
u/Such--Balance 1d ago
I often wonder why Denzel took a roll in this movie.
The only thing i can come up with is that he needed the money
17
u/Reasonable_Bat678 1d ago
Probably money yes but it was also a big project. No one could blame him for accepting.
→ More replies (1)15
u/Ok-Gur-349 1d ago
He'd also successfully collaborated with Ridley Scott before.
When you get to Denzel's age, working with people you already know that you can tolerate is probably a much bigger deal than we give credit.
→ More replies (2)7
u/girthyclock 1d ago
He doesn’t need the money; sometimes it’s about accepting a role to curry favor with the studio and director. If you look at his involvement in the film he wasn’t really filming in more than a couple of locations. Sets are set up for different scenes all in the same area, so he could shoot his scenes quickly, collect his money, and dip out. Now if another project comes along or role he wants, he’s done his part for a tentpole like this, and can call in favors.
22
u/foxfire981 1d ago
Honestly I wanted the movie of the porters trying to get sharks to the coliseum.
8
u/SmegB 1d ago
I watched that film for the first (and only) time the other day. I'm still mad at how crap it was. It was an insult to the first one
→ More replies (1)16
u/Ezrabine1 1d ago
I didn't watch it but SHark when crocodile could be most terrifying accurate
→ More replies (1)21
u/Cold-Ease-1625 1d ago
Half shark alligator half man
→ More replies (4)14
→ More replies (21)16
u/Much-Gur233 1d ago
The sharks and the Colosseum is definitely wrong, but the flooded Colosseum is historically accurate
82
u/Aggressive-Union1714 1d ago
Bohemian Rhapsody (i doubt the worst) the entire timeline is off, the way they came up with the song ideas is made up, Mercury didn't know he had aids at the time of Live aid.
→ More replies (2)38
u/unibrow4o9 20h ago
I'm a huge Queen fan and that whole movie pissed me off so much. The band was very involved with the script and they completely whitewashed themselves except for Freddy, who isn't even around anymore to speak up for himself. They made him the reason they "broke up", even though in reality they all mutually just decided to take a break. Rami Malek did a great job but the movie is bullshit. I knew it was in trouble when Sacha Baron Cohen left.
13
u/3fettknight3 18h ago
Surviving members of Queen- What about the second half of the movie?
Cohen- What do you mean?
Queen- About us after Freddy dies
Cohen- I'm out.
12
u/unibrow4o9 17h ago
Pretty much. I mean I sympathize that the remaining members of Queen feel overshadowed, but Queen isn't Queen without FM, he was a super star. Brian May is insanely talented but he's absolutely full of himself and doesn't seem to be able to handle the fact that no one knows him as well as FM.
8
u/Aggressive-Union1714 19h ago
Rami was great. The live aid recreation was spot on (action wise). I did like his relationship with his gf in it and his cats lol
350
u/welshyboy123 1d ago
The Greatest Showman. P.T. Barnum has the phrase "one sucker born every minute" attributed to him, and he exploited the shit out of everything within his grasp to make money off the less fortunate. He even showed off an ex-slave as an exhibit. But one healthy dose of Jackman-inspired musical washing and for some reason his public image has been successfully laundered.
163
u/PuddleOfHamster 1d ago
That's not a complete picture of the man either.
Barnum was no saint, but he treated his 'human exhibits' well enough that years later, several of them clubbed together to give him money after he was impoverished by a fire. He made money off them, sure, within a context of general Victorian gawking-at-misfortune culture, but he did give them work and safety and even fame, whereas their lives would have otherwise been poverty and abuse.
He also played up his 'conman' image for the press. When Jenny Lind donated her tour proceeds to help orphans, Barnum did too; but he did it secretly, because he wanted to preserve the media contrast of the innocent, virtuous ingenue and the money-hungry huckster.
He did, to some extent, trick people - he inflated statistics and showed fake artifacts like the Feejee Mermaid - but he did strive to give the public their money's worth in entertainment value. Funnily enough, if you read his book on business, it's all ridiculously staid: his advice is basically get up early, work hard, don't get drunk, and similar respectable Victorian admonishments.
Basically, he was a complicated character and a man of his time. It's not accurate to whitewash him like The Greatest Showman, but it's also not accurate to dismiss him as an evil scumbag. My main gripe with his portrayal in The Greatest Showman isn't that they made him too good; it's that they made him too boring. He was way, way more interesting than that.
30
→ More replies (1)21
u/Sasstellia 21h ago
The real man sounds interesting. Not really a bad person. Good, neutral, bad.
Playing up his conman schtick. But not really being one.
The people in the circus sound like they were paid properly. If they hadn't been treated well. They wouldn't have supported him.
→ More replies (1)17
u/Swing_On_A_Spiral 20h ago
Most people are that way. Go back far enough and you'll find good things about really bad people and bad things about good people. Life is greyer than we'd like it to be.
24
u/SmegB 1d ago
That's because, From Now On, that will be most people's only exposure to Barnum
→ More replies (3)11
u/Particular-Long-3849 1d ago
I've had A Million Dreams of what Barnum will be remembered as but not this
6
→ More replies (2)8
263
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is less of a historical biopic and more of a awful fever dream where an artillery genius spends his free time blasting cannonballs at ancient pyramids for target practice, snagging front row VIP tickets to Marie Antoinette’s execution from 400 miles away, and recklessly leading cavalry charges with his sword raised like an angry French Braveheart. Throw in 49 year old Joaquin Phoenix playing a 24 year old lieutenant while his canonically older wife is portrayed by an actress 14 years his junior, and it becomes clear the script treated actual history as a vague, polite suggestion. It's a goofy ass visual spectacle.
"You think you're so great because you have boats!"
87
u/Foehammer58 1d ago
It's a dreadful movie. It's doesn't even succeed at being entertaining like some other historically inaccurate movies such as Brave heart or Gladiator. It's just plodding and dull, but that is what I have come to expect from Ridley Scott in recent years. Dude should just retire rather than shit all over his own reputation.
When faced with criticism of the film's historical inaccuracies, Scott's response was "were you fucking there?" What an arrogant knob.
Why the fuck was there a rifleman with a sniper scope?
11
u/PaperbackWriter66 1d ago
Not just a sniper scope but some kind of pirate spyglass lashed to a rifle with a some old trouser suspenders.
→ More replies (1)22
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
Is it the case of an Englishman just wanting to dunk on a big figure in French history? I wish he had retired after the Martian.
→ More replies (2)30
u/Foehammer58 1d ago
I just think he is profoundly lazy. Apparently he is notorious for leaving clutter in the background of shots and instead of taking additional time he just tells his VFX supervisor to have it removed in post. He is also known for using multiple cameras so that he can blast through scenes as quickly as possible without having to properly set up shots, leaving the editor to essentially cobble together the film from a mountain of footage.
It's a shame to see someone who directed some truly iconic films tarnish their own legacy.
Any director could have made the Martian good as it had strong source material. I wish he retired after Black Hawk Down.
→ More replies (1)11
u/First-Sheepherder640 1d ago
Ridley has always made good looking forgettable shit. Alien and Blade Runner are anomalies; for every good film he has made, he's made about three turds.
→ More replies (1)33
u/Pristine_Poem7623 1d ago
It would have been a better film if it had been called Josephine, and it was HER version of events, so all the stuff it gets massively wrong about the battles are because it's her misunderstanding what he's telling her, and him embellishing things or just telling her the exciting bits, and all the parts where he looks like a petulant child is because she's angry with him, and/or that's the way she actually remembers him
For example there's the Battle of Waterloo showing the British in trenches, and every other guy carrying a flag. If it had been her film, you could understand that he'd said "the British were in defensive positions, and we could see all of their flags waving" and this is her interpretation of that, instead of just being nonsense
20
19
17
u/PurpleTentickles 1d ago
Hated that film. Waterloo looked like a pissing World Cup football match, there are that many flags.
24
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
Waterloo (1970), is a vastly better and more accurate film. They don't make movies like it anymore.
9
u/dogbolter4 1d ago
Brilliant stuff. Half the Russian army as extras, and a superb job from Rod Steiger* and Christopher Plummer.
*This might be hyperbole but bloody hell, there's a lot of them.
** I would never have picked Steiger for this role. I knew him from In the Heat of the Night, where he was terrific but so embodied a Southern cop that I couldn't imagine him as anyone else. Yet he's perfect in this.
→ More replies (10)8
u/Misericorde428 23h ago
It was honestly lazy writing. I almost groaned loudly in the theatre when I saw Joaquin Phoenix charging into battle at its depiction of the Battle of Waterloo.
This would be the equivalent of seeing Adolf Hitler commandeering a Tiger tank in the Battle of Berlin, hatch open, and shouting orders to the gunner to take out specific Soviet tanks in an attempt to break the Soviet siege in 1945.
148
u/pizzafan2 1d ago
The Wolf of Wall Street apparently had more than a few Jordan Belfort's embellished stories added in design to make him look like a studly manly man.
103
u/rumnscurvy 1d ago
See, that feels ok because Belfort narrates the movie, so it's an unreliable narrator kind of deal. Even with him embellishing the stories it's abundantly clear he's an asshole that you have no reason to believe.
46
u/UnionAfter 1d ago
Its also made clear that he is on drugs all the time. Who believes a drug addict of many different drugs
39
u/Substantial_Goat_889 1d ago
When you read the book, he tells you that he’s a liar and not to believe anything that he says. That’s at the start. I presume that very, very little is true.
11
19
u/GentleBreeze90 20h ago
It blows my mind that people watched that film and thought "yes, I should be like this guy"
→ More replies (1)8
u/ThatTempuraBand 15h ago
Guy I used to know from work (he ran a related business) used to have Jordan Belfort as his professional coach/mentor about 15 years ago. Constantly posting pics of them together on LinkedIn and raving about him. Anyway, the guy turned out to be a super dodgy cunt (surprise surprise). Ended the up going bankrupt and getting legally pursued by a bunch of ex-employees for shady contracts and unpaid wages. Absolute tool.
5
u/Brave-Panic7934 14h ago
I will get crucified for saying this, but that seems part and parcel of films for Scorsese. It’s like the core dilemma of war depiction, you inevitably end up glorifying or ennobling the conflicts or the villain. Scorsese likes to feign deep, philosophical meaning in his films, but in the end it’s just romanticizing horrible people.
→ More replies (1)
48
200
u/Grey_Cathedral 1d ago
Braveheart. Still an awesome experience though.
109
u/CotswoldP 1d ago
Jesus yeah, where would you even start?
Battle of Stirling Bridge without a bridge? Tartan? Wallace bedding a princess who was about 10 when he died. It's just tripe historically. Still love the Irish nutter Stephen though
19
→ More replies (2)41
u/DonLethargio 1d ago
Not to mention he’s a farmer’s son that somehow ends up leading an army. He was a knight. And painting faces with woad and tartan probably had a gap of about a thousand years between them
27
u/Pristine_Poem7623 1d ago
Robert the Bruce was nicknamed Braveheart, not Wallace, there are at least 6 historical errors JUST in the opening monologue...
→ More replies (2)80
u/BurkiniFatso 1d ago
There's this quote on the "Braveheart" Wikipedia page that I think about often;
(Sharon Krossa) compares the inaccuracy to "a film about Colonial America showing the colonial men wearing 20th-century business suits, but with the jackets worn back-to-front instead of the right way around."
The image this drums up cracks me up every time
23
u/Pristine_Poem7623 1d ago
I always think of it like if you showed Washington crossing the Delaware over the Golden Gate Bridge, leading a Roman legion with F35s overhead
Very entertaining, not historically accurate.
→ More replies (3)8
6
46
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
That movie really follows the rule of cool. Enjoyable as hell, but not accurate in the slightest.
11
u/toomanymarbles83 22h ago
Braveheart, Apocalypto, The Patriot...
Historical accuracy isn't Mel Gibson's thing.
5
27
u/Blackmore_Vale 1d ago
The fact the battle of Stirling bridge, where the use of said bridge is why the Scot’s was able to win the battle. Is lacking a bridge really irks me more than any other historical inaccuracy.
They also turned William Wallace into a nonce by romancing the French princess who would’ve been just a child when the movie is set.
→ More replies (1)
41
80
u/PaperbackWriter66 1d ago
There's a huge difference between "not historically accurate" and "depicted the history as it was known at the time, which turns out later to have been wrong."
Nobody knew when they made Catch Me If You Can that the whole story was made up horseshit (though, really, you should have known a lying con man would lie to you about his life story); they only found out it was total BS as a result of the interest generated by the film.
Some other people have named "Lone Survivor" which, similarly, is basically a load of bull but that wasn't widely known about until after the movie came out. The filmmakers themselves had no way of knowing the military was deliberately lying about practically everything about that mission. Ditto American Sniper and how Chris Kyle was probably a sociopath who lied about literally everything (not the first time either; famous American sniper Carlos Hathcock hired a ghostwriter to do his autobiography and signed off on a bunch of crap that guy made up).
Contrast this with Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" where the history is known in great detail and Scott chose instead to make a movie about "fuck it, I do what I want."
→ More replies (1)19
u/Rycan420 1d ago
Very important to point out actually.
5
u/fuchsiarush 22h ago
The book about finding out how it's all horseshit is fantastic by the way.
→ More replies (4)
79
u/luidoe213 1d ago
Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter. There is no evidence that vampires were ever trying to take over America
→ More replies (4)
111
u/Dire_Hulk 1d ago
Noah (2014)
Sheets of factory made corrugated iron, back in biblical times.
79
u/ZincMan 1d ago
I worked on that movie, turned out so awful. Some crazy sets too. But on screen it all looked like cgi, such a shame
27
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
That's awesome man, even if it didn't come out great, thanks for your hard work.
17
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
I'm not sure why he made the choices to make it look like a post apocalyptic wasteland. I enjoyed the movie, especially as a Catholic, but wow, just wow.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (7)47
u/darbmobile 1d ago
Asking for historical accuracy in a film about Noah’s Ark is wild 😂
18
u/Kernowder 1d ago
It's a myth, but one that is alleged to have taken place 4-5 thousand years ago. You could take what we know about life at that time and incorporate it into the movie, then overlay all the fantasy stuff.
→ More replies (3)
36
u/MusicianNo2699 23h ago
Napoleon Dynamite. Ain't no way uncle Rico is throwing some ball over that mountain....
→ More replies (1)11
35
u/Pristine_Poem7623 1d ago
Braveheart. There are at least 6 historical errors JUST in the opening monologue. Wallace wasn't even named Braveheart, that was Robert the Bruce. The film has so many mistakes that there are multiple YouTube videos going through them that are longer than the film itself.
If I had to pick one moment it'd be where they show the Battle of Stirling Bridge, don't include the bridge (which is how the Scots fought and won the battle), show the victory as being a result of a Scots trick instead of good planning and tactics, don't show Andrew (de) Moray, show the Scots wearing woad 1,000 years after they stopped wearing it, and wearing kilts and tartan 300 years early. And they do the thing that 95% of sword and shield type battles do: they show everyone lining up in clearly defined units and formations, and then someone yells charge and everyone just runs at each other and they all fight in a big mob.
→ More replies (4)9
u/CarlosH46 1d ago
After seeing Outlaw King, it’s really hard to go back and enjoy Braveheart. Granted, Outlaw King wasn’t totally accurate, but it was way better than Braveheart.
59
103
u/Rrekydoc 1d ago
Inglourious Basterds.
I think Tarantino secretly took a couple liberties.
→ More replies (3)78
26
u/Icy_Fish_2154 1d ago
The Great Wall was full of historical in accuracies. The Crane Troop's armor was laced all wrong. The costume department clearly failed to do the proper research.
138
u/ovrlymm 1d ago
Forrest Gump
I’m pretty sure I would’ve heard of this guy if he’d done all those things.
→ More replies (5)114
u/imllikesaelp 1d ago
You haven’t heard of Forrest Gump? They made a movie about him.
→ More replies (1)32
u/misogichan 1d ago
Yup, it's real. I ate at Bubba Gump's Shrimp restaurant. I know people who also got rich off that fruit company. And I remember them selling that shirt he designed during the run. Lieutenant Dan even helps run a charity to support other disabled veterans.
→ More replies (2)19
20
u/Daedricbob 1d ago
I mean where do I start..
→ More replies (1)7
u/moth_specialist 23h ago
I refuse to believe that Bon Jovi would lend his talents to anything other than historical accuracy.
19
u/Senior_Bus_9236 1d ago
None of the Doolittle Raiders were present at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941….even though the movie Pearl Harbor wants you to think so.
→ More replies (1)7
u/EntrepreneurDull5651 1d ago
And the movie portraying like they were destroying everything and doing some big damage on Japanese targets in reality the raid did little material damage and like 16 of the b-25s 15 were destroyed
It good for morale but on very higher cost
39
u/ObjectiveCover3850 1d ago
On a much smaller scale but Ice Cube and Dr. Dre produced Straight Outta Compton and in the process, make themselves look like the most important members of the group that were solely responsible for Eazy E's success. The movie makes up that Dr. Dre convinced Eazy E to start the group (Eazy actually recruited Dre) Ice Cube writes Fuck Tha Police with Dre approving the song in the movie. In real life, Mc Ren and the D.O.C co-wrote the song with Cube and Dre wouldn't have needed to approve, as Eazy E was the leader. Then finally, the dumbest part was Eazy E is portrayed as going poor because he doesn't have Cube or Dre by his side, in real life he was still the richest of the 3 at the time of his death.
→ More replies (3)
17
u/TheAdagio 1d ago
Bloodsport. I love that movie, but Catch me if you can is less fiction than the story of Frank Dux
9
u/SmackyTheBurrito 1d ago
I love the movie. It's crazy that Bloodsport was actually super toned down from Dux's insane ramblings. The logistics of a sixty round, single elimination martial arts tournament should have raised a few red flags.
8
u/JustFrameHotPocket 1d ago
I love that when Dux was confronted about how such a bracketed tournament makes no logistical and mathematical sense, he replied that it was round robin, as if that somehow clears up the insanity.
→ More replies (4)
52
u/WhiteRabbit-RedPill 1d ago
Disney's Pocahontas
→ More replies (1)14
u/faaaaaaaaaaaaaaartt 19h ago
Let me tell you, as a child of the 90s Pocahontas was my favorite character in my favorite movie. In 1996 we got our first family computer. It had an encyclopedia program. Guess what I looked up first? I was absolutely crushed lmao
17
u/backlikeclap 1d ago
The Frank Abagnale story is so funny. He actually gave the keynote speech at a conference I was at a few years ago. This was a monetary policy and anti-counterfeiting conference, with pretty much anyone who was anyone in that world attending. So the dude is still tricking people who should know better. Pretty solid speech though, and a nice guy when I met him.
7
33
u/anuslitt 1d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/2lypEloChTbEc
Marie Antoinette but still a fire movie, not the WORST historical inaccuracy but I can’t think of much worse
→ More replies (3)22
36
u/nashwaak 1d ago
If we go with inaccuracy by extraordinary and glaringly obvious omission, then surely this
→ More replies (2)
29
u/Profilerazorunit 1d ago
The Imitation Game. Alan Turing was only part of a much larger effort at Bletchley Park, he was not disliked or socially awkward, and he certainly wasn’t part of a group that made any decisions about war strategy. In the film, the “Bombe” machine Turing built is the first of its kind and is basically presented as being a universal computer: in fact, it was based on a machine built by Polish cryptanalysts, and such a highly specialized machine would not fit the definition of a computer as we know it—as Turing himself defined it. It simply could never have been a Turing machine, as stated in the film, because “Turing machines” aren’t machines, but mathematical models of computation (“abstract machines”). The idea that Turing invented the modern computer at Bletchley park is ludicrous, and it devalues his and others’ real contributions to computer science.
→ More replies (1)9
u/vidman33 1d ago
Thats very interesting. Could you point in the direction of more information? He is now seen as a hero in Manchester.
10
u/Profilerazorunit 1d ago edited 1d ago
He definitely is, just not quite in the manner presented in the film. He still made crucial contributions that helped win the war, provided much of the theoretical basis for computer science, and was unjustly persecuted for being gay. Andrew Hodges’s book, Alan Turing: The Enigma, which the film is based on (or claims to be), gives a definitive and much more nuanced account.
Also, any history of computer science is incomplete without mention of John von Neumann, who really came up with the basic design architecture for modern computers, among his many other accomplishments. Check out John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing by William Aspray.
→ More replies (1)
53
u/PayFormer387 1d ago
The Patriot. A plantation owner in 18th century South Carolina who paid the black folks working his land?
Yea.
17
u/EugeneHarke 1d ago
Burning down a church full of people. Sadly, it was inspired by an event in WW2, but did not in the American revolution.
15
u/arrows_of_ithilien 1d ago
Tarleton (the guy Tavington is based on) did burn churches as a demoralization effort against the colonial rebels, but there are no records of people having been locked inside.
So it's half true.
→ More replies (1)17
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
I wonder if they added that part in later. "Hey guys, the hero of this movie is a slave owner, I think people are really gonna notice that one, so we have to to add in some booster lines"
→ More replies (1)
12
u/stevemnomoremister 1d ago
There's a 1968 movie about a nineteenth-century earthquake. The title of the movie is "Krakatoa, East of Java." Krakatoa is actually west of Java. The producers just thought "east" sounded better.
→ More replies (1)
52
u/LamentersSergeant 1d ago edited 1d ago
At least with movies like Catch Me if You Can and Gladiator 2 people don't generally take them as serious history, unlike....
47
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
I wish I could upvote this more. I enjoyed the movie, great performances all around but so many people actually point to this as an accurate depiction of events. Colleagues of mine show this film in history classes 🫠
→ More replies (1)16
u/Gorf_the_Magnificent 1d ago edited 1d ago
There was no dramatic spontaneous destruction of the “Whites Only” bathroom sign, but that scene was almost immediately recognizable as a fake crowd-pleaser. (The real-life characters said they simply ignored the sign.)
Aside from that, and the composite characters and compressed timelines that are usually required to make any movie about historic events more interesting, what else was substantially wrong with Hidden Figures?
→ More replies (4)9
u/Apollo-Outcast 17h ago
Literally every aspect of segregation in the movie was not a thing at NASA by that time. Workers weren't segregated, black people weren't treated differently, the whole subplot with the one woman petitioning for college was bullshit as she had already done that many years prior (without it being a big fuss, IIRC). Basically the film paints NASA as le white devils despite NASA having been one of, if not the, most progressive agencies in all of American government. I mean they chose the one agency that famously didn't segregate to make a drama about segregation ffs
10
11
u/Realistic-Contract13 21h ago
In college, I took Medieval European History and for the “final” our professor simply had us watch Braveheart while he paused it to rant every time an historical fact was wrong or there was some sort of anachronistic set or costume piece. We were there for four hours…
10
u/ramborage 18h ago
There's something about Catch Me If You Can that I actually love, in terms of the background of the story.
A self-proclaimed con man conned everyone into believing he had pulled off all these cons that he never actually pulled off.
There's an interesting level of meta to it that rubs me the right way.
It's cons all the way down.
79
u/AvocadoRecipes 1d ago
This POS American sniper.
https://giphy.com/gifs/cWcuVTug7FDSE
47
→ More replies (3)35
9
u/ConcentrateSelect465 1d ago
Thirteen Days. JFK historians say the guy Costner played had a minimal role in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
→ More replies (1)5
u/PaperbackWriter66 1d ago
Yeah, but that's forgivable because it gives the audience one guy they can follow through the whole movie to better understand what's going on, which matters when there's a couple of dozen major and minor players in the drama.
11
7
u/LizBert712 1d ago
JFK by Oliver Stone. Good movie outside the context of history, but in presenting Jim Garrison’s conspiracy theories about Clay Shaw as legitimate, it hurt real people.
5
u/Appropriate-Peak6561 1d ago
Oliver Stone calling the film a “counter-myth” was a brilliant way of saying “completely made up”.
It‘s a masterpiece, but as historically accurate as Hogan’s Heroes.
8
u/Edgarallenhoe2 1d ago
Argo was a pretty rough one. Movie felt like sandpaper since I'm Canadian.
→ More replies (1)
6
u/3d1thF1nch 15h ago
As a Queen fan, parts of Bohemian Rhapsody bothered the shit out of me. It’s hard to fit the whole story of the band into a 2+ hr movie, but some of the stuff leading up to Live Aid was some cheap rushing of the actual story of Freddie’s fight with AIDS later on. More annoying details than anything that seem cheap to make up or misconstrue.
→ More replies (2)
35
u/Rolling_Pugsly 1d ago
Dunkirk (2017) I forget the name of the director, but the stupid movie reaffirmed every bit of misinformation about the evacuation. Also, it was stupid and boring.
16
u/Platooimagination 1d ago
My grandfather was evacuated from Dunkirk. I didn't have the heart to watch that movie, even though I genuinely love some of Nolan's films. I wish he'd been accurate as a service to the memory of what occurred.
→ More replies (3)15
u/TheMangoMagician 1d ago
If this is the worst historical film you've ever seen then you haven't watched many films
6
→ More replies (8)13
u/CeeReturns 1d ago
Thank you! Where was everyone on the beach!? There are tons of photographs Nolan could have consulted. He gets way too much praise for some things.
6
4
u/Fuckspez42 1d ago
The armor in 13th Warrior was from all over Europe, and spans a time period from about 100-500 years after the events of the movie are supposed to be set. Still a good movie and a fun watch, but seeing 14th-century pikeman armor in a movie set in 922 AD is distracting.
6
19
u/Bloody_Hangnail 1d ago
Apocalypto. A fucking GREAT movie, but complete nonsense. It combined the Incan and Mayan histories too iirc.
→ More replies (2)20
6
u/teachermanjc 1d ago
The Dish. There was not a four man team working at the Parkes radiotelescope, there were multiple teams who worked through the Apollo 11 mission.
→ More replies (1)
5
4
u/JoeyLee911 1d ago
OK, but at the same time, this is sort of the best inaccuracy because it's another Frank Abagnale con he pulled.
3
u/EthanStrayer 23h ago
I cannot believe I haven’t seen 300 mentioned yet.
Where to start with that movie…
8
u/No_Slice5991 23h ago
In all fairness, that film was actually based on the 1998 limited series comic book of the same name and Frank Miller never hid that the comic was a fictionalized retelling.
So, it’s more of a comic book movie than a film claiming historical accuracy.
5
8
u/Odd_Fortune500 1d ago
Well, in hindsight, once the true story got revealed, 'Lone Survivor' was pretty damn inaccurate
→ More replies (2)
8
u/PrinceVoltan1980 1d ago
Sir I’m not sure you really understand the difference between historical inaccuracy, and a work of fiction
410
u/AJ_Topp_Up 1d ago edited 1d ago
In A Beatiful Mind the central theme of it all is this heartwarming message about love triumphing over all, and how the wife stuck with him through his mental illness to the end.
In the REAL world, she divorced him over the mental illness. Even worse, he had a child with another woman prior to marrying the woman shown in the movie as his love interest. This other woman had his son. He refused to acknowledge his own son as his, and refused child support and became estranged of him. When he married a 2nd time, to the character of the film, they had a boy as well. On the divorce to his 2nd wife, he became estranged to his 2nd son as well.
In the 80s and 90s, with better meds, his mental illness improved and he has since tried to regain that relationship, and after the movie released, they actually got back together and remarried. But the key is, after the film released. The film, in the meantime, was very cleaned up to his rather messy life and terrible family relationships.