The Top 10 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies

I was under the impression that the patriots character was more or less based on Daniel Morgan..He seems the more likely anyway..

Originally posted by Impediment
9) Gladiator

Emperor Commodus was not the sniveling sister-obsessed creep portrayed in the movie. A violent alcoholic, sure, but not so whiny. He ruled ably for over a decade rather than ineptly for a couple months. He also didn't kill his father, Marcus Aurelius, who actually died of chickenpox. And instead of being killed in the gladiatorial arena, he was murdered in his bathtub.

Can one really die from the Chicken Pox? I never knew this.

Originally posted by Impediment
Can one really die from the Chicken Pox? I never knew this.

Chicken pox can be fatal, though it's extremely rare. I think they meant smallpox though, as that certainly is deadly and smallpox outbreaks happened several times in Rome's history.

I just looked it up.

Sources I saw said it is not known exactly what disease offed him.

Originally posted by Dark-Jaxx
I just looked it up.

Sources I saw said it is not known exactly what disease offed him.

There was a smallpox epidemic during the time of his death if I recall, so it's a likely cause. He could have died of old age just the same though.

Originally posted by Robtard
There was a smallpox epidemic during the time of his death if I recall, so it's a likely cause. He could have died of old age just the same though.

He was only 58 when he died, though at that time death from age may not have been uncommon, don't know.

Yeah. Smallpox is a more believable substitute.

Originally posted by Impediment
8) 300

Though this paean to ancient moral codes and modern physical training is based on the real Battle of Thermopylae, the film takes many stylistic liberties. The most obvious one being Persian king Xerxes was not an 8-foot-tall Cirque du Soleil reject. The Spartan council was made up of men over the age of 60, with no one as young as Theron (played by 37-year-old Dominic West). And the warriors of Sparta went into battle wearing bronze armor, not just leather Speedos.

There are probably dozens of films that are more inaccurate than these 10, the author's just picking them because they're known commodities that he can make lame jokes about and (almost) everyone will get them.

Bump.

Any new thoughts anyone?

how about space cowboys when, at the end, they blast tommy lee jones off to the moon while riding a massive nuclear warhead platform at 30,000mph and despite him having no way to land he still manages to walk away from the crash and sit against a rock on the moon and look at the earth until he dies.

This is the Historical thread. Not the science thread. 😛

bollocks...i knew i was doing it in the wrong one too...😂

I can't believe Pocahontas and Anastasia weren't on this list. Even "The New World," which is an improvement from Disney's Pocahontas took liberties. Also, since most archeologists believe the Trojan War did take place now, would Troy apply here?

'Troy' should be on that list because the Trojan War was supposed to have lasted years...not just a week or two.

Many Muslims believe that the movie 'Gandhi' was historically incorrect...but I don't know why.

Originally posted by Impediment
[B]Here's a fun subject.

Click here for the full article.

10) 10,000 B.C.

Director Roland Emmerich is usually a stickler for realism (see: sending a computer virus via Macintosh to aliens in Independence Day). So we hate to inform him that woolly mammoths were not, in fact, used to build pyramids. Heck, woolly mammoths weren't even found in the desert. They wouldn't need to be woolly if that were the case. And there weren't any pyramids in Egypt until 2,500 B.C or so.

Excellent fun thread.

Just because Mammoths weren´t found in the desert doesn´t mean they weren´t used to build them, its been proven that the Pyramids were eroded by rain, tropical rain forest type rain. And they were built 10,000 years ago when there wasn´t a desert there. So daft as it may sound it could be possible. I doubt that the large variety of races which were present in the movie were around though.)

Originally posted by Blinky
Well anybody who went to go see 300 and expected to see even a remotely historically accurate movie is an idiot in the first place.

Agreed.

How is Pathfinder not on this list?

There's an anachronism in Saving Private Ryan that's forgivable, but Spielberg and his entourage still should have spotted it. The phone in the Ryan family farmhouse had a coiled cord instead of a straight one. Coiled phone-cords weren't invented until the 50's.

Originally posted by Quiero Mota
There's an anachronism in Saving Private Ryan that's forgivable, but Spielberg and his entourage still should have spotted it. The phone in the Ryan family farmhouse had a coiled cord instead of a straight one. Coiled phone-cords weren't invented until the 50's.

Goddamn, I knew there was something wrong in that scene.

If 2001 one is on the list, you may have well as added Total Recall as well.

I think that was suppose to take place in 2004 or something.