Historical movies that appear to be accurate but are not.

There are several movies that I would mention but I will only mention one for now for the sake of brevity and not posting a wall of text.

"Valkyrie" which was directed by Bryan Singer and starred Tom Cruise as von Stauffenberg and was released in 2008.


Perhaps the biggest lie perpetuated about the July 20 plot is that all of the conspirators were involved because they had a moral/ethical opposition to the Third Reich regime. Nothing could be further from the truth. Several of the key conspirators wanted to kill Hitler because his inept leadership was causing Germany to lose the war. In fact, one of the major objectives of the conspirators after Hitler was killed was to negotiate a separate peace with the US and UK while continuing to fight the USSR. This demonstrates that the plot really had more to do with saving Germany from total defeat than to overthrow an evil regime. The film clearly puts forth the notion that all of the conspirators were "good guys" who wanted to kill Hitler because of his cruel regime.


I'll be curious to see which other films get mentioned in this thread.

Don`t want to spoil you fun, but doesn`t this count for every single historical movie?

edit: btw. there is a user called Armidas on youtube who is an historian and regularly comments on movies, it`s in German though.

The HBO series Chernobyl was great. The fictional "composite character" of Ulana Khomyuk was put in for "dramatic purposes". Yeah, right. Also the fictional character of Maya Harris in Zero Dark Thirty was another Hollywood move. Both of these stories were interesting, and dramatic enough without all the PC stuff.

This channel highlights many historical inaccuracies in movies. I'm sure many of you already know of it.

Perhaps no movie is 100% historically accurate but certain ones like "Tora, Tora, Tora" and "Gettysburg" get darn close. The changes to the motivations of the principal players in "Valkyrie" was a major deviation though.

https://medium.com/@jack.delaney/the-15-most-historically-inaccurate-movies-ranked-7f5e96cb01c4

https://www.historyextra.com/period...-worst-best-war-braveheart-darkest-hour/

U-571

Good pick but that one I knew was total BS from the very start.

In fairness to U-571 (and I can't believe I said that) it was only 'based' on a historical event. I've never even watched it. You'd have to go all 'Clockwork Orange' on me to make me watch that viddy.

Didn't the British government have a go at Clinton about it?

Yes indeed!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/773913.stm

http://dailynewsdig.com/10-historical-movies-got-history-wrong/

you possibly try watching Atun -Shei for some 'gutting a sacred cow' on Gettysburg (this is just part one)

^Thanks bolox for suggestion on the Atun-Shei channel. There is some really cool stuff there. Just watched the one on the King Phillips War. I always found that subject interesting.

Many, including Stauffenberg, were motivated at least in part by moral reasons. Wanting to save one's country from external destruction does not have to be incompatible from wanting to save it from an evil internal government.

Moreover, I also take both factual and moral issue that with the basic premise that, depending on the motivations, it was necessarily wrong for Germany to have wanted to continue the war against the USSR. The USSR under Stalin was an existential threat to Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, like it was to the west afterwards. Just as Stalin was planning to launch on offensive war against western Europe before he died, he most probably would have launched an offensive war against Germany in the mid-1940s had not Germany attacked first. The plan to negotiate with the Allies and continue the war against the Soviet Union may have ben Quixotic, but it does not prima facia show the July 20 conspirators were not "good guys."

If you were in the place of the July 20 group, knowing the the threat posed by the USSR to the very existence of your country and to the lives of your family and countrymen, would you have planned an unconditional surrender to an equally evil and dangerous regime had you managed to overthrow your own evil leadership?

Very historical accurate film

Pearl Harbor.

So much potential but totally ruined.

Who in their right mind is going to sanction USAAF fighter pilots, who've just shot down several enemy aircraft, being chosen to fly an extremely hazardous bomber mission off an aircraft carrier? It's also a pretty bad slap in the face for the guys who did actually fly in the Doolittle raid.

All you need is Tora, Tora, Tora on bluray and you can ignore pretty much any other movie ever made about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Agreed, Tora Tora Tora has pride of place in my collection. Just goes to show that all the CGI in all the world can't beat top class cinematography.

But Pearl Harbor was a real missed opportunity, and the 'extras' disc is so much better than the film, as they talk to all the veterans. Those vets must have taken one look at that film and gone.....'wtf was that?'

I totally get why the British would be upset by U-571 and I agree. As a Canuck I have similar feelings about Argo. Mr. Afleck did a real disservice to the people who risked their lives in the Canadian Caper. Argo is a steaming pile of poo.

Wizard

+1


The big box office successes of both "Dunkirk" and "1917" proved that studios don't have to pander to US audiences by always making the principle players American instead of another nationality.

OK, this is kind of the opposite, but the recent Midway movie turned out to be far more accurate than I expected. The CG was over the top, but the actual events seemed to be pretty accurate.

Kingdom of Heaven. Reasonable details in some regards, the framework, characters and story.... mostly bunk loosely draped over 'historical figures' changed from what is known about them.

As an American, I am upset by U-571.

Any film made by Mel Gibson, eg Braveheart where only (_only_) the names are right, and the “Patriot” where he confuses the 18th century British Army with the Waffen SS in 1944.

Fully agree with your view on both films. I also fully admit that when I first saw "Braveheart" in 1995 I knew very little about the history of 13th century Britain so I didn't realize just how much the film deviated from historical facts until several years later.

Netflix pay $15 million to stream a WW2 movie with the Kingsman guy. https://deadline.com/2021/03/netfli...acfadyen-kelly-macdonald-efm-1234704769/ I am sure it will not be historically accurate.

I hate these movies "based on a true story".

I just want them to show how it really was, you know, when the gender fluid, alternate lifestyle heroes band together and win it all.

I agree but unfortunately Hollywood has too many ideological agendas to push and they have to cater to the lowest common denominator because that's how their business model works.

Many books are written based on real life experiences.

PM, for me as a Scotsman the dreadful thing about “Braveheart” is that the true, unembellished story of The Wallace would have made an incredible movie.

There was no need to depict him as a kilted highland peasant (he was a young lowlands knight), with a 20th century Glasgow street accent, with him and his mob painting their faces blue - the way the Picts did, when they fought the Romans >1000 years earlier (“pictii” means “painted ones” in Latin).

And as for the affair with the French Princess of Wales, with the implication that he fathered Edward III of England - she arrived in England (as a child) several years after his murder!

Like the old saying goes, the truth is stranger than fiction. I am often amazed when Hollywood decides to "warp" an historical event with a lame attempt to add drama. The real events (facts) have more than enough "drama" to make a good movie.

I would have thought Hollywood could have made a better movie out of the U-505 incident.

That didn't need too much embellishment I would have thought. It was a real gung-ho incident.

I think most news outlets need to have that disclaimer on their news stories. And I say that having been interviewed, and then seeing what they put on the air - almost completely different than what I had conveyed in person.

You may have seen this before but Stewart Lee does a great standup about this:


People new to him should be aware he likes to screw with his audience and portrays a persona deliberately to annoy

I did some in-depth research into one of my all-time favorite war movies today and was disappointed to find out that there was one change that I consider to be a major change. The film is "Glory" and the commanding officer of the 54th Mass regiment Robert Gould Shaw is portrayed in the film as being a passionate and progressive abolitionist. The reality is that he had some deep-seeded prejudices against the Irish and blacks according to several of the letters he wrote to his mother during the war.

Here is what I came across in my readings,

"Shaw wrote more than 200 letters to his family and friends during the Civil War.[51] These are held in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Digital facsimiles of this collection are publicly available. His mother edited an early selection of his letters, and worked to preserve a positive image of him as a martyr to the abolitionist cause.[52]
The first scholarly collection of the letters, Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw (1992), was edited by Russell Duncan. The book includes most of Shaw's letters and Duncan's brief biography of the officer, described as the best of those then current about him.[52] Reid Mitchell notes Duncan "returns the historic Shaw" to readers, complete with his bias against the Irish and African Americans, both typical of his time. He wrote more frequently about his fellow officers than either the white or black soldiers who served with him, but expressed pride in the 54th.[52]"

Ah! So clearly a decent, well-balanced chap, eh? (Did I mention that I’m Scottish*?




*actually with Italian & Irish ancestry, the latter from Cork by way of Liverpool.

Scottish & Irish cultures are very similar, eg our songs are all about the same three subjects: drinking, dead lovers, and fighting the English.

American Country music is somewhat similar: drinking, living lovers who cheated on you and fighting the #%&*$# Yankees.