Films That Get History Wrong (1 Viewer)

[Edwin Pereyra]

RE: Apocalypse Now

.
Factual blunders – some of them famous, by now – and occasional nonsense surface throughout the film. The Mekong River links Cambodia and South Vietnam’s southern tip, for example, but Sheen’s boat weighs anchor far north of Saigon, and no rivers traverse the country there. Nung tribesmen form the bulk of Brando’s renegade band – but the Nungs were mountain people (originally from China) occupying the highlands of North Vietnam. Some marched south to work with American Special Forces outfits, but they didn’t launch raids from semi-permanent Cambodian sanctuaries.
And the spectacle of Kurtz hanging corpses and severed heads from trees in and around his stronghold is absurd – the stench would be unbearable, and carrion-bred pestilence would probably infect his entire garrison. But the real rap against Apocalypse Now – often voiced by Vietnam veterans – is its trivialization of the war through continual, overdone satire and its portrayal of U.S. soldiers as ignorant pawns (Sheen’s riverine crew), cold-blooded killers (Duvall’s Lt. Colonel Kilgore), or hopeless clowns (Army brass).

~Edwin

 

[Eric Bass]

Incidentally, the reason U-571 offended us Brits so much was that I'm afraid it's one of a fairly long line of incidents where Americans have claimed glory for things British in movies. Operation Burma, endless throwaway remarks along the lines of 'without us, you'd be speaking German now', etc.

Yeah one of these days a movie is going to come out showing Americans sinking the Bismarck.
Not enough bad can be said about U-571. Whether it's the German destroyer stopping in hostile U-Boat infested waters or the fact that a couple of 5-inch shells land directly on the sub without blowing it into a zillion pieces followed immediately by it sinking like a rock. Not even to mention the fact that pretty much every covert op of this nature was carried out by British commandoes throughout the war.
Probably one of the most glaring historical fiction in about 75% of war movies would have to be the fact that according to Hollywood Germany very nearly took over Europe in spite of apparently having a soldier's manual that goes something like this:
A) If three guys have run out of a door and been instantly shot down....run out the door as well, preferably with your weapon not at the ready. Chances are the guy outside with the machine gun isn't looking this time.
B) When engaging an infantry force in Urban areas roll the tanks in first, preferably in an unbuttoned state (hatch unlocked, windows open). When mines and machine gun fire take out all of your infantry support continue rolling ahead oblivious...chances are there aren't men with sticky bombs waiting behind any of the two-dozen bits of cover you can't see from in your tank.
C) When machine-gun fire opens up, DO NOT drop or seek immediate cover. Either look around or slowly raise and aim your weapon. Chances are you'll figure out what's going on while standing in the middle of the street before getting shot.
D) When in hostile sub infested waters bring your ship to a full stop. Chances are a torpedo won't crack your ship in half and kill everyone on board. (This one is excusable I guess..after all what would Germans know about submarines ).
You get the idea....

 

[Colin-H]

Re: Amadeus

Salieri had nothing to do with writing the Requiem. In reality it was a student of Mozart's, Franz Xavier Suessmayr, who assisted the sick Mozart in writing the Requiem, and completed the Requiem after his death. (Most of Suessmayr's stuff is complete crap, IMHO, but that's for another forum.) Also, some sources conclude that Mozart's wife and good old F.X. were having a bit of extra-musical fun.

What Amadeus does do, however, is a good job of portraying the MYTHS that have surrounded Mozart since his death.

 

[Jeff Pounds]

Boy,
No love here for U-571...
On Apollo 13, while there are several small, technical inaccuracies, the film as a whole is very accurate.
I've read Lost Moon and Man on the Moon, and about the only things that weren't accurate, or weren't depicted were:
- There was an original burn of the LM engine to place Apollo 13 in a free-return trajectory. This wasn't shown in the film.
- When they do the course correction burn to correct their angle, the Apollo 13 "stack" is shown pointed at earth, and likewise, the earth is used as a reference point. Actually, the stack was perpendicular to the earth (to increase their angle of decent), and Lovell used the sun as a reference.
- The aformentioned Lovell-Haise-Swigert argument.
- While Ken Mattingly did work on the re-entry procedures, he wasn't the lone guy who figured it out. His character in the film was actually a compilation of several people.
- The tension actually wasn't over once the CM emerged from ionization blackout... they still weren't sure if the parachutes would work.
That's about it.
All-in-all, Apollo 13 was pretty accurate.

 

[Eric Bass]

No love here for U-571...

If you haven't already seen it, go and rent Das Boot. I didn't have a lot of luck finding fault with that flic.

 

[Seth Paxton]

The inaccuracies with Kane and Apoc Now mentioned above are rather meaningless since both films are not true historical depictions but rather social commentaries and interpretive art.
Or does anyone leaving Apoc Now think "yeah, that's how it was, one big acid trip".
Kane even more so. Wells certainly had Hearst in mind for his film, but not to depict his life as it actually was. If that were the case the film could have been called Citizen Hearst. Instead his very point was to attack and lampoon Hearst, therefore inaccuracy, exaggeration, etc are required and expected. It never intends to be historical and therefore cannot fail in that manner.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

RE: Citizen Kane

It never intends to be historical and therefore cannot fail in that manner.

Yes, of course, or else there would have been cries of "Slander!" by now.
~Edwin

 

[Michael*K]

I still think Apollo 13 used a little dramatic license during a few parts, but that doesn't detract overall from the actual events. If I recall, the original poster in this thread wanted examples of movies that had a blatant disregard for historical accuracy. I don't feel Apollo 13 falls into this category. In fact, I think it is one of the most historically accurate accounts of an event put on film.

 

[andrew markworthy]

If you haven't already seen it, go and rent Das Boot. I didn't have a lot of luck finding fault with that flic.

My father spent a lot of his working life either testing or designing bits of submarines, and he did work on captured U-Boats. He said that allowing for a few understandable bits of dramatic licence, Das Boot was pretty accurate.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I don't believe that Hollywood is "misinterpreting" historical facts due to ignorance. I do believe they are taking liberties due to the fact that, for the most part, historical facts are pretty boring.

Perhaps they should precede historical films with "The story you are about to see is pretty close to what really happened. We changed the ending a little bit to make way for a sequel."

 

[Greg_S_H]

Isn't Engima about the same events depicted in U-571? How is it? I believe I just saw an ad for the limited theatrical release a couple of weeks ago, but the IMDb has it as a 2001 release, and now Ron has info about the DVD:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...threadid=82998

 

[Eric Bass]

I do believe they are taking liberties due to the fact that, for the most part, historical facts are pretty boring.

My opinion on that is that if the story is boring why make it into a movie at all?

 

[Ken Chan]

Isn't Engima about the same events depicted in U-571?

Nope. It uses the codebreakers (Bletchley Park) as the background for a more conventional mystery/character film. I liked it. Not sure about its historical accuracy.

//Ken

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Fellowship Of The Ring - the Balrog doesn't have real 'wings'
Apart from that, the film was pretty accurate to what really happened 7000 years ago in Britain and western Europe

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Not sure about its historical accuracy.

My sister, who works at the UK government communications HQ (she can't say what she does - Official Secrets Act) assures me the film is rather inaccurate.
I liked it though

 

[andrew markworthy]

Enigma never claimed to be historically accurate, but rather is based on the real-life activities at Bletchley Park.

 

[Stevan Lay]

Wasn't there an issue with either the timeline of the events or the characterisations and facts in the movie A Perfect Storm which AOL Time Warner got sued for the misrepresentation?

 

[Matthew_Millheiser]

I think what's funny is that when people claim certain things to be historically inaccurate when indeed they were accurate. For example, lets take The Patriot. In my film classs Fall Semester, there were about two or three people who rolled their eyes at the mention of the movie, talking about how terrible it was and so forth. One of the gripes was in regards to the way the cannons fired. What most people didn't know is that cannonballs did indeed roll and were used to break ranks of soldiers. Evidently, most people thought that all cannon damage was due mainly to explosion.

In Revolutionary America, you never would have seen whites and slaves socializing and dancing together on a beach somewhere.

Ever.

 

[Edwin Pereyra]

I think what's funny is that when people claim certain things to be historically inaccurate when indeed they were accurate. For example, lets take The Patriot. In my film classs Fall Semester, there were about two or three people who rolled their eyes at the mention of the movie, talking about how terrible it was and so forth. One of the gripes was in regards to the way the cannons fired.

How the cannons fired were the least of the inacurracy problems of The Patriot. Those students who rolled their eyes and said how terrible the film was, at the least, were right about their assessment of the entire film.

~Edwin

 

[Andy Sheets]

In Revolutionary America, you never would have seen whites and slaves socializing and dancing together on a beach somewhere.
Ever.

Are you certain? I'm not saying you're wrong, btw. I'm just curious because it's often surprising how much stuff that "would never happen" actually did happen in history
How about Road to Perdition? I was doing a little bit of reading on that and the Looney family, which was changed to the Rooneys in the movie, was mostly active in the 1910's and 20's. The movie moved them up the Depression era. I was skimming through the introduction to the graphic novel and Max Allan Collins mentioned that he squeezed the timeline for dramatic license.