Top 10 Historically Inaccurate Movies 

+Davyen Actually, the Spartan dialect of classical Greek was identical to modern colloquial English. Unfortunately, the Athenian dialect was the one that we know as Greek.

***** You're a random guy from the internet, so I'm gonna believe you.

+Davyen And you should. You can find answers to all important questions on the internet. Especially in comment sections.

***** From the random strangers.

+Davyen Well, 300 is based on fictional novel. So I would never think it's very historically accurate.

+Hidious Vanity how can you tell???

+Hidious Vanity You're wrong. Science says that there is an infinite number of universes across different dimensions, all of them containing every single possible outcome of physics and possibilities. So, according to science, Star Wars did happen in one of those universes.

schizer not all science says that. certain theories do.

of course it did. "In a galaxy far far away"

Not sure if you're a trolling or an actual idiot...

+only half bad 333 "Historically"

+Nozomi Suzuki The Iraq war was in the past. By their criteria, it's historic.

bladudemovies The word "historical" is usually used within the context of a lifetime, not a few years ago.

+Nozomi Suzuki 0:50 "There's no specific time period, anything in the past is considered historic."

bladudemovies Wow, I stand corrected... My apologies. However, by that logic, yesterday was historic... It just sort of takes away some of the meaning of the word via that definition. *shrugs*

@@CandiceGoddard no it's not it's one of a string of film depicting the Anastasia myth like the one from 1956 with Ingrid Bergman and Rasputin was designed after the newspaper caricatures of him in the tsarist era, also he was already dead as the whole Anna Anderson story began and, for the life of me, I cant recall that Anastasia in the Don Bluth film tried to drown herself in the Landwehrkanal in Berlin, so what the heck are you talking about - btw do you have Jesus trial records, because it seems they are conveniently lost, and no the bible doesn't count, it's more fiction than anything and only based on hearsay and copy and paste - especially the modern one which is only one third of the old ones

Anastasia would have been a very short, bloody violent film if it was historically accurate.

Not to mention it was made BEFORE they finally found the bodies of Anatasia and her brother. while they had found most of the family before this movie was made (in 1979), two of the family members were missing and not found until 2007.

Chris Rudolf Anastasia's body was not discovered until 10 years after the movie. so her getting away was how people hoped her story ended. then reality kicked them in the nuts

Bartok is real though, right?

***** Yep.. Good ol' Wagner.

+christhefishhunter Its why I killed everyone wearing steel horned helmets and iron helmets.

+christhefishhunter There is some evidence of horned helmets for ceremonial use, but it was never designed for combat purposes. Horned helmets were mainly used during the bronze ages, and for some odd reason, the Knights Teutonics have been known to use horned helmets (I guess because they thought it scared Pagans... I don't know). Let us also not forget about winged helmets, female armor with boob plates, cast made swords, and kilts in the late 1200s.

xxFalconArasxx I just thought of another thing - when people wear longswords on their backs.

christhefishhunter Yes you are right. It is silly when longswords are holstered that way. It's crazier when a greatswords such as a Montante, Claymore, or Zweihander is holstered as such. Knights usually held it in their hands, strapped it to their horse, had a squire hold it for them, or rested the sword on their shoulders. You actually can hold a sword on your back, but mainly for simple storage, since in a combat situation, it would be difficult to draw. People that held swords this way also usually used a rifle strap, as it made it much easier to unsheathe.

+jefferson steelflex Yeah but don't tell Mel. You don't want to get him in a tizzy again

it is not even lived in the medieval age

+jefferson steelflex gibson is inmortal.. he even helps crucify the Christ...

+Juan Carlos Barbosa true. but i liked the passion of the Christ

I'm sure Mel's character would have helped Washington capture the British airfields like our glorious leader related in his 4th of July address.

Even more inaccuracies: It's likely Wallace and Bruce never met Andrew Murray was the prime commander at Stirling bridge Bruce switched sides at least three times

+Charlie Drummond Prima Noctis wasn't a myth everywhere... here in Spain there were records of it, and so have they been found on france and southern germany.

+Charlie Drummond also bruce wasn't a huge pussy like he's depicted in the film

+Charlie Drummond -Wallace never even got close to york -The picts 1000years earlier painted their faces -they didn't fought for freedom, they fought to be oppressed by more scottish lords who told them too fight -studded leather in scottish crowd (studded leather never existed)

+Charlie Drummond and the scots never got near york

Exactly. 300 aslwell, it is entirely told through the eyes of a diegetic in-universal narrator, re-telling the events as a story. It obviously isn't intended to portrait any historical accuracy, as it's also simply based on a comic book...

Rasputin comes hunting for the Romanovs with Soviet-style soldiers, but he'd been assassinated way before the First World War, and the revolutionists wouldn't have had much truck with him if he'd have been around.

It was fiction set in the future,not history re told with inaccuracies.

+antipodeandreason yeah but still

+Hornetzilla78 its not historically inaccurate, because it never happened, and it was a futuristic movie.

+JacobI Cope but the movie wasn't made after 2012

Still technically not historical. If you're predicting what might happen it's not historical. A movie like Zodiac is a historical movie kinda. Because it took place after the killings and is pretty damn accurate. Back to the Future 2, is not. In 1985 it "predicted" what they thought would happen in 2015

what about the one with the rapping dog?

Sebastian muñoz ochoa I'm pretty sure that really happened. Don't you remember the historic K9 Hip Hop movement of the 1910's? Man, 1910 times were weird.

Oh right my bad don't you forget the Mexican Mice.

*where

+Mitch L (Mitten) Guys, no one died in the sinking of the Titanic. Sure, a gang of prison sharks had a deal with a whaler, and they tricked an octopus into throwing an iceberg in front of the oncoming ship, but the octopus and whales saved the day. Oh, and the mice. It's all okay.

Not too mention all the movies were intentionally inaccurate.

@@Dankman9 Well, with 300, it's innacuracies come from that it comes from an in-universe narrator who tells the story as he saw it, not from a historical perspective. As for Anastasia, at the time of release, no one knew if she had lived or died. Her body was not found until the early 2000's.

@@godzillavkk 300's inaccuracies come from from Frank Miller's repressed homosexual tendencies. The entire comic book industry would be improved if he would get therapy and figure that out.

@@luceret No wonder he's a racist lunatic.

@@godzillavkk Why is he racist? (I'm genuinely asking)

78 agree to that?

Well, it gives a definite date and...

10,000 BC makes my bran hurt

@@jimboonie9885 People in 10,000 BC didn't even know they were in 10,000 BC.

Of course the specific story the movie told was not intended to be historical, since there are obviously no records from that time, but IIRC the movie was advertised as a realistic depiction of stone age

+Krescentwolf how do you mean?

musicaltheatergeek79 Go and read the original Little Mermaid story. Got news for ya...it doesn't have a happy ending. Aladdin? Radically different. The video shows how Pocahontas was white-washed. Peter Pan? Much darker in its original telling. I like some Disney movies... and Aladdin is one of my childhood favorites... But Disney has a bad habit of changing things around for its audience, which then thinks the Disney version is the true one.

+Krescentwolf well the LIttle Mermaid and others are all fiction so at least, the majority of time, they are dealing with fantasy to begin with. There is a difference between fact and fiction you know.....I do not think the Little Mermaid nor Aladdin were historical characters.

MrChilli56 Never said they were. That's exactly why I used the word legend. It doesn't HAVE to be history just to get white-washed. The problem is... Disney is so famous that oftentimes it's peoples first and sometimes only interaction with the stories.

+Krescentwolf Happy F-ing Belated Back to the f-ing future day. We f-ing didn't f-ing get the f-ing hoverboard we f-ing needed.

Pearl Harbor: Ben Affleck

Since someone else quoted there's a song from there called 'Pearl Harbour sucks and I miss you' which is probably one of the funniest things in the film.

The song/video is actually from the movie "Justice League" which makes it no less true. But PH would have been my #1 choice. For a "true" movie it got two things right: The Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and the date was December 7, 1941.

tora! tora! tora! >>> pearl harbor

Perfectly said.

Still perpetuating the myth of the 300 rather than the 300 or so Spartans plus boat loads of slaves and allies should matter a little bit. Sneaking in little common lies are far more likley to be believed if sandwhiched between numerous obvious big lies...

the movie 300 is based on a comic or a graphic novel, not the actual historic event.

Ferl It is not the Argonauts with Hercules. The 300 story was based on a real event. The fact that the movie was based on a comic book that was itself based on the myth version of the event is pretending not to notice the source.

The 300 comic was INSPIRED by the Battle of Thermopylae but isn't based on it. If fact, it is based of the history told by the missionary King Leonidas sent to ask for the other Greek free cities for support against the persians. The movie was based on the comic so no, it had no intent to be anywhere close to the historical event.

yeah, 300 is actually quite accurate to Thucydides account. The problem is that he was a Greek patriot probably more than he was an objective historian, plus there weren't a lot of primary witnesses or any forensic evidence.

You're an idiot-when the movie was made, 2015 was in the future so it featured events that MIGHT have happened, not events that actually did

Duh, really?

Maybe Marty and Biff have been messing around in the time-lines again!!!

lol..he's just being sarcastic..he's not serious about it..take it easy..

M. A. Packer ddd

Temujin was not white, but not Asian looking either. All his depictions are from people who did not see him in person. The image regularly used in media is actually Kublai Khan, his grandson

+TheoneandonlyCrowMan I think I also saw Elvis in Urumqi last time I visited XD

he most likely had red hair and green eyes

+Richard Fitzgerald Yeah, right.

+TheoneandonlyCrowMan He would have looked a bit paler and with slightly squarer eyes the mongols today.

300 based on a graphic novel 94% loosely based on a real battle of 7,000 vs 200-400,000. The Persians may have a million troops, true or not, but logically speaking only took a few hundred thousand to invade Greece.

+Jacob Snyder The funny thing is,''300'',despite beeing a comic adaptation is still more accurate then movies like ''Braveheart'',''Patriot'' or ''Gladiator''.For example,the whole ''phalanx''-tactic(building a wall with their shields and spears and just pushing the enemy away) and using the terrain to their advantage(positioning in a narrow mountain pass,so that the Persians couldn't deploy their forces like on an open battlefield) were accurate.''Braveheart'' on the other side get's much more facts wrong,for example the Battle of the Sterling Bridge,which in the movie didn't had the bridge or the river but took place on a open field!

It was not actually 400k Persians vs 7k Spartans, there were three hundred and two Spartans and 6,000 some Athenians. The Athenians went back to Athens two days before the battle, so there were 300 Spartans there. The Persian force was actually more like 510,000 as well.

+avi tavalin thespians, the other troops were thespians, actors.

+avi tavalin There were others than just the Athenians and Spartans, it was pretty much a coalition of all the Greek city states who opposed Persia there.

They were indeed. They only sacrificed their own nobility when in dire situations, they didn't sacrifice prisoners on a festive and regular basis as the Aztecs did. In a cultural context in which nearly every culture around did the same, they were mild practitioners of human sacrifice. You can add the Jewish, Greek, Roman and many other kinda civilized ancient peoples to that list. And the others that get into wars and revere their dead as the ones who made "the ultimate sacrifice" and mark their houses with golden stars.

@Dwayne The Cuck Johnson Lord Fraquaad wouldn't agree

María Martínez so basically what ur saying is “cults” who sacrificed others are peaceful.. no sacrifices are peaceful...

@@vortexnutwhale different time period has different scale and definition of peace, what they said was that they portrayed Mayans and Aztec, Even though Mayans were more peaceful than them

And they only were a bit of war mongers

+Syn Stilo WatchMojo will most likely take Star Wars in his movie xD

Independence Day

+Syn Stilo Star Wars

The terminator

+PereVale what is going on in Star Wars now that it's 2015 it must be sooooooooo futuristic right?

+Travis Matthews Of all time :)

+Travis Matthews What about The Passion of Christ? I think it is a historically inaccurate movie.

+R.w T. Yep, since there is no historical proof if jesus really existed

+Travis Matthews You win

+Travis Matthews LOL!!!!

+Lori Burnip Well of course you were. Canada still swears allegiance to the queen.

Everyone knows that

+CriminalGameplay an are the more civilised because of it :-)

+Lori Burnip Sadly true. Many US citizens don't know their own place in history let alone the places of other nations. I've heard people state honestly that they didn't even think Canada had a military. Others have told me they think we're Canada's military. Yeesh x_x

+Lori Burnip It's like Pearl Harbor where it shows the two main characters in American uniforms during the Battle of Britain. Impossible. It's very, very likely that they were serving with the RCAF.

Amy Fisher - Congratulations! That sure is one smart little lady. You have much to be proud of. Best wishes to you and yours ❤❤

🙄

Fake news

Did she have a different voice for the singing as ik for a fact that it was Judy Kuhn?

I wish that movie was historically accurate.

It actually was more accurate then some of the movies in this list, believe it or not.

In all seriousness, if you took out the vampires and Abe Lincoln action stuff then it would be near perfectly accurate.

GOOD ONE

You must have missed the part where she said they are avoiding movies that were intentionally inaccurate: i.e. Inglorious Basterds. They are alternate history movies, like Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.

+imperfectlypretty And of course they made Rasputin into a sorcerous leper...

+imperfectlypretty Yeah. Cartoons shouldn't be on the list. No shit Anastasia didn't get shot and die in the cartoon. Because it's a freakin cartoon!

Anastasia is not a Disney movie. :)

***** True. Don Bluth, formerly of Disney created it.

WHY would they even include cartoons that are clearly full of artistic liberties for the sake of the kiddies. These animation clearly never had the intent of being historically accurate. Watchmojo is cracking up, or they had too much to drink in that day...

+Matt Simpson It has monsters in it m8

the comic was based off a movie based off historical events. the 300 spartans

+Andrés Oliver Joya Didn"t you listen? They called it a comic movie. And that comic movie is "based on" a historical battle.

+Andrés Oliver Joya A Comic book based on a movie based on ancient Greek propaganda that was bassed on actual events

+Nerds Eternal Remember it is also the most homosexual film since Top Gun :)

Nah my ancestors were Mayan they were chill

I'm pretty sure your also thinking of the Aztecs

+ZombiE Gaming No - you need to check your history. Since we started being able to read Mayan texts and inscriptions in the 70's and 80's (thank you David Stuart and others), we've been able to document a history that includes the same kind of warfare and violence we find in other cultures. Now be clear - I'm not trying to discount Mayan achievements. They were grand and many. However, the Maya were human beings, like anyone else, and had their share of violence and abuse, from warfare to the ball-game. See, for example, the fall of Tikal's Chak Tok Ich'aak, or the sack of Copan in 738. Let's not impose our hyperbole on ancient peoples - let's let them speak for themselves, and be as human as the rest of us.

+B Miller I agree with you B Miller. Also, I always thought that while main characters were Mayan, they were brought to the Atzecs for sacrifice. Either way, it doesn't matter to me. We do know that the Native Americans practiced human sacrifice. Knit-picking who did it and when is minor when the depiction is so vivid.

+Nepthu The Maya were an impressive civilization. I think we need to recognize how brilliant they were. But, as with most human beings, we need to recognize the brutal side of their civilization. I don't think it does us any good to to treat any civlization ahistorically. Thanks for your comment!

+Daniel von Paška men stop it. The film was based on a comic, and the comic was ''based'' on a historiacl event. And thats it, relax bro xD

+Daniel von Paška no matter what the moral of the story is, it is still historicly inaccurate. Though my history teacher did recommend it to us when we had about greece and sparta in school, but that was more for imagining how the spartans were

Twisting historical facts is one of the worst things one can do.

You dont get my point.

+blooperman1997 *You're. The irony.

Nope

+trevipp Yeah, you're insane.

+Cy Clennon Agreed

+Cy Clennon to make a guess maybe its because pearl harbor is considered to be more factual than 300? purely because uneducated people would watch pearl harbor and beleive they have a fair understanding, meaning that the inacurracies hold more weight?

+Cy Clennon I think it ranked higher simply because we have so much documentation on how Pearl Harbor actually went down. While we have evidence about what happened in the film 300, inconsistencies can be given some benefit of the doubt because of how long ago it took place. Pearl Harbor on the other hand is still pretty fresh for history, people who were around during the attack, some are still alive as of now. There is no reason other than to glorify Americans and add drama to a film was were the events altered when you have all the resources to create a accurate film.

haha

Especially when they add the phrase "must watch"!!!

Me too, with one exception. "The Girl Next Door" (2007) was loosely based on a true story and in the horror genre that typically means the crime is sensationalized. In this case the opposite was true, the crime being so horrific that to show the full extent of it would render the film unwatchable.

+McLarenMercedes When they say they do not include movies that are inaccurate on purpose and then few minutes later they include 300... WTF...

+McLarenMercedes ^_^

Its very historicaly innacurate since there were about 7,000 greeks fighting about 200,000 persians but on the final fight, when the greeks were betrayed by a greek-pesian-simpathyser King Leonidas told the other greeks to go while they held them off it was the 300 soldiers of Sparta who did the sacrificce for Grece

Actually, if I'm recall correctly, 300 does include soldiers from one other Greek city-state in the fighting at Thermopylae, specifically Arcadia. Arcadia's force was *much* larger than King Leonidas and his 300 numbers-wise. There's even a back and forth between Daxos, leader of the Arcadian troops, and King Leonidas in the movie over why Sparta's forces were so small compared to size of the force gathered by Arcadia. Maybe there were actually 7,000 Greeks fighting against the Persians when you combined the Sparta's 300 with the unknown quantity of Arcadian troops involved in the battle, but since the movie focuses so much on the Spartans it's impossible to tell for sure.

The truth is that nobody really knows exactly the number of the greeks and the persians, some historical believes that the greeks were 3,500 and the persians 150,000, others say 8,000 greeks and 1 million persians...the point is that the greeks were like 1 man fighting against 10 and beat the 7 of them until the end and that's very impresive.

ennanitsua it's actually based on myth

You mean to tell me that talking bats don't exist either?

I have to argue on the Disney cartoons since they were intended to entertain kids rather than promote historical accuracy.

Hard to decide, depending on what historians you talk to.

+Glenn Lester Then perhaps, don't talk to historians, maybe consult proper history books, like we all used to do not so very long ago. :0

+abodysite Who do you think write historical books? Historians either contemporary or modern. You do reload nothing is written in indifference. Everything written recounting events has an underlying agenda.

+Nick Bleker (SkullxGaming873) I believe those are called documentaries. I guess Apollo 13 was fairly accurate.

+Glenn Lester Are you on the same planet as the rest of us ?

Obviously hollywierd doesn't care about even it's own countries history.

I agree!

Gladiator isn't based on a true story.

Especially the gas bottle under the chariot!!!!

I don't believe it was based on a true story. Therefore, it shouldn't be on the list.

@@babajohn2303 - I mean historical mistakes in the details that were supposed to be historical. The story could be fictious.

But its a damn good movie

+Brice Leclem Didn't know that until now. Very cool.

Yes! John Oliver (who I adore) complained about it in one of his episodes (I think he was touching on the lack of diversity and white washing of characters), harping on the "Last Samurai" was made into a white man. Of course he was! He was based on a real person John Oliver!!! There are the rare occasions where I wish people would research some movies a bit more before complaining about them.

It was a terrible movie anyhow, doubt many cared enough to and I wouldn't blame them.

Brice Leclem; I read it was Prussia that provided military advisers to help modernize the Japanese army, but French or Prussian, it WAS NOT American advisers.

oldgysgt Exactly.

+Nielspiels You don’t watch many movies do you? Filmmakers of all nations twist and alter history for their own ends. Part of that is because movies need a good guy/bad buy and history isn’t that clean-cut.

+wolverineeagle Yes, it's mostly for propaganda. But America is verrrry guilty of that.

+Nielspiels What of note have the British whitewashed? I understand all countires do it but I'm curious why you said 'especially' and singled them out.

Stuart Gibbons The best example I can think of is that "Britain controlled half the world, the sun would never go down in the british empire" like it was something Britain would be proud of. As far as I'm aware, Britain caused the most wars out of any country in the world and is second place as to have commited the most genocide. But also a good example would be any british movie about the second world war, the medieval wars with Ireland or the useless war with Argentina in the 80's

+Nielspiels Do you have sources to back up your claims about the British. Caused the most wars? Source? Define caused? Plus that isn't whitewashing history. Regarding that useless war against the Argentinians, that was a retaliation to invading British territory. Any other country would have done the same. As for the British films, you'll find many of them are actually still from 'Hollywood' and the ones that aren't never go as far as these films on the list. Besides, I don't think Britain is any worse than anyone else when it comes to putting a bias on history.

All movies even though very inaccurate are still very entertaining.

@@mickmcgrath7074 they should call it fiction. The only true scene was the "liquor" raid where Ness uncovered the tropical umbrellas.

@@MrEab2010 ok then👍

Unlike popular rumour, Ness was never in the F.B.I., either.

@@Glicksman1 Ness was not even a Treasury agent, he was part of a Prohibition task force set up inside the Treasury Department. It is true that the Chicago press dubbed the local task force The Untouchables because they allegedly would not take bribes, but no one remembered Ness until he wrote ((with popular journalist Walter Winchell) his mostly exaggerated memoir The Untouchables before his death in 1957. The book was optioned by Desilu Studios for the tv series.

+On Taka And they didn't even include "The Road Warrior," the most historically inaccurate of them all.

Gibson is a renown anti Jewish, anti English bogot.

How can it be historically inaccurate when it is total science Fiction? What next I have to explain the difference between allegory and allusion?

"The maya were a very peaceful group" ?!!!! just read Maya history specialist , one sample "decapitation took place after the victim was tortured, being variously beaten, scalped, burnt or disembowelled" Considering inacuracy Mel Gibson's movie is just too smooth.

Actually 4 films Gibson was involved with. He did the voice of John Smith in Pocahontas too.

+Boyd McCollum Between the two or three packs of cigarettes a day, and filming the thing on the McGregor Range out of El Paso where nuclear bomb tests had taken place, I believe those factors whittled down The Duke's life considerably.

+Boyd McCollum -- No one remembered that movie. It is seldom broadcast. I have never seen, while all Wayne's other movies have been shown on TV numerous times.

+IronheadOfScroteus shipping radiation contaminated sand from the site the director wanted to film at for a indoor set price didn't go well

only in public bathrooms

LMAO yes. Ive been waiting for a comment like this

XD yes I used to

...See, I think this is something we women don't ever think about. Ever.

your comment is random as hell but yes lol

Exactly this!! The reason it is told by the one character to leave is because, his king told him go to tell the "story"! It portrays him embellishing the actions that happened to rally the rest of the Greek troops... it was exaggeration on purpose.

So did Anastasia and Pocahontas

So was Braveheart

The Mayans and the Aztecs were both in modern day Mexico.

True, but the Mayan civilization had collapsed by the year 900. The Spanish did not arrive for another five hundred years

+Slade Wilson Mayans were still pretty much around and kicking when Columbus met them in 1502 on his 4th voyage. It was the Spaniards who eventually destroyed Mayan culture.

+Icarian As a people, of course they survived, but they had declined severely even before Europeans appeared in America. Mayan culture was naturally dying and being replaced by cultures that had sprung from their original empire. It is similar to the Jews after their expulsion from Palestine, as a people they did indeed live on, but as a nation they ceased to exist.

+Slade Wilson but the language of the film is a dialect of Mayan, spoken in S. Mexico (I think Yucatec)

+SCP Jack I loved Mulan..but i know the disney version of her is so damn inaccurate it hurts

Agreed, these movies are the corner stone of childhood memories. I think that's why, for these movies, they should be allowed to take liberties: it makes the stories more accessible to children without traumatizing them w/ graphic info.

+SCP Jack The Hercules argument is irrelevant, since they said that movies based on myth were not going to be on the list.

Hmm... the Huns, we'll, they actually did invaded China but at that time they be called the Xoginu wich is pronouned "Hising-nu" but they invaded it around 200 B.C.E so yeah, your right in the time period

+Logan Sahdala It's assumed the Huns and Mongols were the same people simply because the Chinese called one of the sub groups Hun. That makes no sense, but the same historian that came up with that also believed the Egyptians built the great wall of China... Simply because both cultures put blocks around names of people in their writing systems. The huns were a Turkish people (in what is now Russia), spoke Turkish, didn't call themselves the Huns, and never invaded China. They only shared similar religious beliefs with their far eastern neighbors, and love of horsemanship.

Samus Aran yeah, QED, the movies gonna be about as accurate as Vikings with horned helmets because Mel Gibson doesn't care, he picks and chooses what he wants from history just so he can have a chase scene in the jungle

Eric Margolis its a shame bc I really really loved apocolypto 😞

"Based on a true story" and, "Starring Mel Gibson" are good reasons to avoid a film.

Paul Cooper loooool

@@marquittabryant4632 Mojo doesn't have their facts straight on this one. Of course plenty of inaccuracies in Apo but the Maya's did perform human sacrifice on a huge scale. They had a more peacefull image, but that image came crushing down ever since their script and language was deciphered around 1985.

The legend of Anastasia already existed. Don Bluth just made a new adaptation of it. It absolutely was never intended to be historically accurate. And as such doesn't belong on this list. With Pocahontas, though, it seems a bit of a cop out to say "it wasn't meant to be historically accurate." Especially when one of the animators actually said, "Contrary to the popular verdict that we ignored history on the film, we tried hard to be historically correct and to accurately portray the culture of the Virginia Algonquins." Hmm... The problem isn't just depicting Pocahontas as much older than she actually was, plus condensing the time frame in which everything happened. The way they depicted the James River area of what would be called Virginia was just... bizarre. I grew up in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, southeast of Jamestown on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing the trailers before its release, I remember thinking to myself, "Did anyone from Disney actually visit Jamestown?" What Disney did with Pocahontas was manufacture a story based in part on what actually happened. Not tell a side story of a larger event, lending an air of plausibility to the story - e.g. The Patriot. They took some details of her story and the settlers at Jamestown, changed some major details, sped up the timeline, and threw a romance on top of it for... reasons. This wasn't an adaptation or a retelling of what happened. They completely rejected reality and substituted it with the imagination of whomever wrote the script.

They didn't completely rejected reality. They just altered it for the story's sake. At least the movie has some symbolic meaning and I don't think it offends anyone, in contrast with the patriot. Even the title is wrong. The character didn't even want to fight, he got in the war because his son died.

"They didn't completely rejected reality. They just altered it for the story's sake." Okay, they didn't completely reject reality, just "borrowed" from it while still claiming to have been historically accurate... Getting it right while still taking some creative license for a good narrative is one of the main difficulties with making a story or movie involving an historical figure. As an example, the portrayal of the Massachusetts 54th and their commanding officer in _Glory_ won accolades for being mostly true to what was known, while obviously taking some creative license where allowable. One such aspect was that Shaw was not immediately commissioned Colonel upon assuming command, but later promoted up, although rather quickly - from Captain to Major to Colonel in a matter of weeks. Shaw was also only 25 years old when he was killed in action, and white, so it would've made no sense for... Morgan Freeman to portray him - yes, I'm being intentionally out of bounds on that. Yet with Pocahontas, they did something very similar to this. Making her 10 years older than she was, and compressing the storyline significantly. This turned it from merely a retelling, similar to _Glory_, to taking an historical figure in name only, along with some aspects of history, and creating something completely different. While still claiming to have been historically accurate.

The way they were made gives the implication that they WERE made to be historically accurate!!!

@@brandishwar I may have misunderstood what you mean about glory and I’m no historian but I am a movie nut and as far as the movie is concerned Morgan Freeman didn’t play colonel Shaw it was the Matthew Broderick who is white and at the time around the age of 25 so that part is totally accurate Morgan Freeman played one of his soldiers that he promoted to be one of his non commissioned officers because the army wouldn’t allow him to be an officer.

They did not research anything, they stole most from another youtube channel, and could not even do that right.

I did not know their writing had been decoded. That's fascinating. How was it done? Was some kind of Rosetta Stone discovered? Where can I learn more?

@@odysseusrex5908 google the name Yuri knorosov. He cracked it around 1985. No real rosetta stone, but there was a stone slab where text was placed on the arms of the depicted characters. Realizing that where names set the whole decipherment in motion

@@trottlesnot Ah, yes, thank you very much. Wikipedia has a very good article about him with an excellent list of references. Fascinating.

@@trottlesnot Actually he started much earlier (1947) and his work was based on the de Landa documents which had attempted to translate, with the help of Mayans, the Mayan language into Spanish. Although confusing as often the same symbols had more than one meaning it provided him with the basis of future advances in translation which he started working on in the 50's. Other than one trip to Copenhagen he did not even visit the land of the Mayans until 1990.

*forgot

*character

I believe Rurouni Kenshin depicted a better view of the Restoration and early Meiji than the Last Samurai.

+gjesus051 It rather suggests you don't know how a cavalry saber is used, especially by cavalry, vs. how a Katana is used.

+Oliver H I know how to use both a saber and a katana. I rather love historical weapons. I just agree with the in-sight that the Last Samurai is too American centered. I feel the series of Rurouni Kenshin captured the soul of the people of the Restoration of Meiji Era Japan. I love the movie The Last Samurai, but it just is too impractical. It's of Algren's acceptance that throws me. No matter how integrated he became, he would be first and foremost a gaijin, a foreigner. So a samurai yes, but always a second class one. Even further, check out The Shinsengumi for another view of Restoration.

Still visually it was pretty cool.

Yeah, I liked the movie...as a story, but I love pre-Columbian history of the western hemisphere, so that shit HURT to see.

Did her actually do that? If so that's awesome

Something along those lines but yes. The Spartans were pretty notorious trash talkers.

The line about tonight we dine in hell and fighting in the shade is historically true

+Tim Jordan Apart from "Hell" being a judeo-christian thing and not part of the greek pantheon. If they dined after death, it would most likely have been together with Hades ;)

+Lavrentivs it is thought that Leonidas or his lieutenant said "we will dine in Hades" before the first attack .

Are you sure? The inaccuracies ruined 300 for pretty much every Iranian, if I'm not mistaken.

+Disappointed Turtle I didn't see any Iranians in the movie, only uruks from lord of the rings fighting guys in bondage gear.

+Ardimo Harsa Historical Inaccuracy is probably the stupidest thing someone would fault a movie for.

+Disciple of Khorne Iranians are Persians. And the Persians in this movie were, like you said, Orcs. Get it?

+DrIScream A movie based on a comic based on ancient greek propaganda based on a historical event.

WM never misses a chance to virtue signal its Wokeness.

If they claim to be based on a real happening - they belong here!!!

Ndima Silwana yes, the samurai rebellion was largely about loss of status. Samurai under the Shogonate were the only armed class, and had the freedom to punish and kill lower classes. The closest American comparison was the relation of all whites to blacks both before and after the Civil War.

another fallacy-there were black slave owners and there were areas where blacks and whites were able to fraternize together before Woodrow Wilson brought forth Jim Crow as a national policy. in fact, northern US had havens for escaped slaves (despite there being people such as Patty Cannon) until Dread Scott. there were also whites who did not own slaves.

It's just like with Gangster films. These films always say they fight for 'honor, family, tradition' when really, they were pretty much heartless thugs who wanted to stay on top of the food chain.

They did have an honor code though, but it’s not honorable by today’s standards

+Casually Challenged also, Mel Gibson was involved in 4 of the movies in this list... We know he is a racist jerk, but anti Mel much?

Was she to do with Pontiacs Rebellion? When the Indian chief Pontiac fought against the British for some time before Britain gave the Indians Ohio and established the Proclamation Line?

+HatBoxBro We watched Pocahontas in class just after studying her and it made me cringe so much. Couldn't stand to watch it again.

+Kenthis15 In fact, im pretty sure most of these movies never claimed to be accurate.

+Kenthis15 I thought the same thing, it portrayed tavington as a bastard but the other british officers are portrayed sympathetically and shown to be disturbed by his actions. Its also worth noting it shows the heros side executing surrendering men and talks about horrors committed by the people in previous wars.

yeah. i do like that the patriot showed that most people were loyalists, not patriots. and i like that they showed just how much Native land was on the table for whoever won to steal in the secene with Cornawallis and Tavington talking about ohio land. I always thought Gibson's character reminded me of The Swamp Fox, Francis Marion myself. but yes, he seems like an amalgamation of several revolutionary people. as far as an american movie about a war we're extremely proud of, i think they did a decent job not completely over-glorifiying it... all things considered.

Samuel Alaster I 💘 thay 🎥. Pure Entertainment.Its just a movie.

And Amadeus Mozart actually was childish and rude though he was still a genius and hard-working.

Smart kids often get bullied and hated by adults for being good at what they do. Regardless of speculations about Salieri, which I don't agree with either, his sentiments towards Mozart may not be so off the mark.

It isn’t fully inaccurate. There are a lot of real events. Like Mozart himself, the film is a masterpiece in historical inaccuracy

By whose standard - I saw the movie and thought it was one of the most distorted movies of the time!!!

But their professions were not Ahoo Ahoo!

Where in history does it say that???

No ... even Herodotus says there were at least 5200 soldiers total ... and most modern historians place the number at slightly above 7000.

Okay yes but the Spartan army was called back only three hundred were left there while they weren't the only other nation there where we get the larger number of soldiers there but it is historically accurate that at the point of fighting there were only three hundred Spartans there.

@@Testimentsnow Who said anything about the Spartans??? I specifically commented on the TOTAL number of soldiers ... which by your count would have been circa 3000.

+Valrock Mograth But still, Mel Gibson seems to suck out all truth in his movies based on history.

it was not accurate apart from the general flow of events. -Wallace wore armor and had his own coat of arms -Robert de Brus was no friend to Wallace, who supported his rival John Baliol -Bannockburn was not some kind of parley, it was a scared English army trying to save a Scottish castle -The queen from France was actually a small kid at the time -Edward I was actually very popular with the people of England and quite charitable. -Wallace was likely excommunicated as he tended to lock dissident or English villages in a church and burn it all down

SantomPh The whole movie is like one big glass of Scottish beer to me. And what you've typed is just page one of the inaccuracies.

+Valrock Mograth Both are legit flicks anyways, even if neither one is interested in being historically accurate.

+godzillavkk everything he said is documented, its accepted fact. The Bruces were a french norman family which is why he clalled the de Brus.

Anastasia isn't a disney movie but i do agree with you on the story altering

Well.. Untill 1990-tys the true fait of anastasia was not really well known. The communist pushed down it , and that lead to some comspiracy theorys. The story is based on those, not what actually happen. The Movie was actually made quite soon after that the truth came to light

matsv201 Even if she had survived, Rasputin died in 1916, a year before the revolution and had no reason to be chasing her around.

I don´t really remember the move, i just saw it once.... and it was when it was new. i also didn´t really like it

The movie made him "undead"-In the beginning he was in either hell or Purgatory(most likely hell)

The Spartans were Greeks.

Yeah the Spartans were Greeks so were the athinains just dif city states

*6000 OTHER greeks

Yeah, but Leonidas sent most of them away once the position was outflanked.

Odysseus Rex Yes, there were only 300 for the final stand, to give the others time to get away

All Mel Gibson does now is create torture porn, like "The Passion of the Christ" - he hasn't lived in the real world for a very long time.

BURN.

He's been in Hollywood for far too long.

torture porn for history buffs I might add

Poor Mel Gibson, three of his best films are listed here. Historically inaccurate they might be, but great flicks they are.

This made me hungry.

Turtle FTW.

Geistmeister6 And that graphic novel is based off of the Battle of Thermopylae, which 300 Spartans and other Greek forces, equaling 7,000 men, defended Greece against Persia.

Dump Trump And ironically, like 300, a Zach Snyder film.

you are talking about comic books characters you idiot

's

Narrator* :)

+caitlin lavelle-roe Lol, it was like Gladiator :D

Like that means anything. In case you hadn't noticed, WM likes to virtue signal its Wokeness to the world.

Elaborate, please. 🙄

No, it's not propaganda, there is no political motive, it's all about getting people to pay to see your movies. The British do it, the Indians do it, I assume the French and Germans do it. As to Indiana Jones, I'm sure real archaeologists don't think much of the character, but I wouldn't be surprised it he got a lot more people interested in geology.

@Anon ymous Indeed. The Indiana Jones movies turn out to have sone surprisingly accurate bits. I revently found out that Tannis was a real ancient Egyptian city that really was discovered in the late 1930s, although it was not identified as such until after the war. Also, in Last Crusade, I always thought they just made up Alexandretta to sound like Alexandria. It turns out it really was a city in Asia Minor. Also, the Republic of Hatai really existed in the 1930s. Eventully it peacefully negotiated to be annexed by Turkey, and became the Turkish Province of Hatai.

If historical films made 100% historically accurate, most of them will be pretty boring.

All The President's Men is one of the most accurate.

+Malachi Owens i watched 2 danish movies i think was right but else i agree ^^

+Ardimo Harsa Parkland is an example

schinlder's liste

Actually the characters addressed each other by ''comrade'' which was an indirect hint at the communist regime, Stalin couldn't be the villain, cause it would have made a propaganda movie of the film

+KingExituS No, it would've been rather accurate.

+LordVader1094 I know right. Stalin killed millions of his own people and terrified the rest. It would of been extremely accurate.

Nah, Rasputin as a crazy wizard is more accurate than the Mayas ever using human sacrifies.

Bryce Walker And if one of the royal family had survived the Soviet government most DEFINITELY would have been hunting them down.

Which is even (loosely) based on a myth.

As long as they use the Tag line "Based on a true story." And then change it to suit there needs then yeah. Especially with the target audience being impressionable kids who will take the tagline at face value and believe the lie the movie shows until someone points it out. Is it too hard to replace the tag line with "Inspired by a true story?"

+tomurg Doesn't mean you can't make a top 10 since the degree of inaccuracy varies. But I agree with your point ;-)

+tomurg Of course, but some like Pearl Harbor really put history on the edge of fiction.

+tomurg That's true but too many people can't or don't separate fact from fiction and some movies (cable movies included) try hard to blur the lines.

hollywood and usa gov always tell lies about persian people , but we do not care because we are proud of our history.❤

The monsters where part of the story that the Spartan soldier said when he got sent back. To make other soldiers want to fight

+mohammadreza shams xerxes was a terrible leader though

+Nate Atlaw no, he killed greek people but it didn't mean that he was an animal (his clothes in 300 was a joke)or a bad leader, it was a revenge. athen and persia were two powerful kingdoms at that time, and wars were common between powers of the world.

mohammadreza shams im talking about him as an actual person, not the one from the movie (they fucked him up)

Christopher Columbus was inaccurate-starting with Columbus being Italian...evidence suggests he was most likely a Spaniard.

@@zatoth13 Columbus was from Genova, it's inaccurate to say it was italian because the notion of Italy as a nation did not exist in XV century but culturally he was italian

And besides....the 'actual' history is largely a myth as well.

@@trottlesnot Not myth, propaganda

@@trottlesnot wtf?

@@trottlesnot 😂😂😂😂 what's the myth about the real history. I think you should start reading it

And the comic book was based off the work of Herodotus. Who basically fabricated the details of the battle itself. So much for being the ‘World’s First True Historian’.

Now they just need to mention the warpaint thats about 1000 years out of place

@@lavrentivs9891 wasnt really paying attention but did they mention the battle of stirling bridge you know, not actually taking place on the bridge?

@@nobbynobbs3418 Nope, but they didn't get into that many specifics of what's wrong with the movie, like the missing bridge, that he never sacked York et cetera^^

Yeah i bet clan colours were completely wrong.

@@lavrentivs9891 also wrong culture. The blue warpaint was known to the Celts, not the Gaels for whom the Scots are descended.

No the Briseis thing happened in the illiad and Achilles did love her and there was no explicit relationship between Achilles and Patroclus in the Homeric illiad tho Patroclus was actually older than Achilles

No??? The movie is claimed to be based on a real happening - leaving the whole thing to be totally inaccurate!!

And they are very entertaining.

Randall Wallace: yep! All Mel Gibson! No help here!

5 out of 10 of these involve either Mel Gibson or Ben Affleck

Indeed

My thoughts exactly. Like how they keep saying facts were over dramatized and what not. Um...Yeah! Movies need drama! And then picking apart cartoons? C'mon mojo.

Then make movies (as they do) based on fiction. Even say "the following is a fictional retelling inspired by:" I am an historian, I have tutored many high school students who cite these films as their primary source for how they know something. Sure, maybe some will go on and learn the truth and study history more thoroughly, but many are left with misinformation. If we don't know our REAL history then we have no sense of things like TIME and how things really transformed.