I love this so much. So much.

NEVER MISS A BOOK RELEASE
Join 30,000 Subscribers
New book releases, give-aways, and appearances.
Free fiction, snippets, and funny stories.
Read our Privacy Policy.
Blog, Writing POST A COMMENT by Ilona
I love this so much. So much.
New book releases, give-aways, and appearances.
Free fiction, snippets, and funny stories.
Read our Privacy Policy.
Historical accuracy has never gotten in the way of Hollywood writers and directors. I must confess I enjoyed the movie when it was released and haven’t seen it again since. Of course, I spent more time in philosophy classes than in history classes in college in the early …. nevermind when.
There is a wonderful serie of documentaries about the history of Scotland from BBC Scotland with good music and beautiful landscapes narrated by Neil Oliver. https://youtu.be/A-0e57CU-No
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fl9sw
It must be a sign. I was just contemplating putting The Ginger Unicorn (aka my dear labmate and adopted brother) on an acknowledgement slide for a talk tomorrow using a picture I happen to have from a party he went many years ago where he dressed up as one of the guys from Braveheart.
…I just wish I had pictures that perfect of everyone.
Any Hollyweird movie I take with a few grains of salt. That is why when they always say “based on a true story” you know 75% will be made up gibberish. They didn’t want to pay an intern to spend time looking up bothersome little things like facts.
Enjoyed the article though – thanks for sharing 🙂
“Based on a true story” = “we heard a factoid and instead of fact-checking it, we ran with it” or “someone remembered one thing from their required uni history class and we took that and ran with it.” In this case, that there was a dude named William Wallace who rebelled against England. Everything else is fungible.
“Based on a true story” now equals “I read it on the Internet so it must be true”.
I’ve seen commercials for the Netflix movie of Robert the Bruce, but I’m having problems with Chris Pine being Robert. Or just being Scottish. I’m not buying it for some reason, so I don’t have much incentive to watch the movie.
Since the historian mentioned the Netflix movie, I wonder what his opinion of its historical accuracy will be.
The summary paragraph is wonderful and a poignant conclusion.
Loved it. Am still laughing.
That was my favorite part too. Star trek uniforms!
Is it just me, or is this author’s tone similar to our authorlords’? Witty, snarky, well-written. Makes me want to pick up his books as we wait for new releases here. And they are a trilogy!
I think every historical movie should be shot with Star Trek uniforms. You just have to look at who’s wearing the red shirt and – bam – no need to watch the rest of the movie, you know the guy’s going to die a horrible death.
Yep, just loved it.
Love it! thanks for providing it. The author has a lively sense of humour, and skewered Gibson skillfully (all of it well deserved).
Great article. Thanks.
Wow. Knew it was inaccurate, but that is a lot of bullpuckey. Thanks!
What an entertaining way to start the morning! Thanks for posting it.
What bothers me about the Braveheart adaptation is it follows this pattern that sometimes pops up in movies of men not achieving true greatness unless/until their wife/family is murdered/abused.
OMG YES. I have a whole ‘nother soapbox just for this. Also for women who only discover their core of strength after being raped.
+1
It gives men a “noble” reason for their drive / bloodthirstiness. Otherwise they might be considered ruthless or just mean and nasty.
Doesn’t that sort of follow the Disney pattern, though, except it’s love interests instead of parents? I think I heard once that 101 Dalmatians is the only Disney movie where both parents lived.
Sleeping Beauty’s parents lived — they were in that enchanted slumber like everyone else, but alive, or so I recall.
Moana did as well. The Disney movies are very much guilty of a related aspect of this, using the parental deaths to generate conflict. But I do view the “Braveheart Phenomena” as a greater evil. Siobhan, I totally agree about the women’s side of the coin for this. It just greatly disturbs me. Obviously trauma can change people, and it should, but there is no need for these types of violence to be depicted as one of the main paths to greatness.
Didn’t the parents also live in Mulan?
She went to do her injured father would not have to….mother was a background character, but will alive.
I’m planning to watch the Outlaw King on Netflix tonight (Robert the Bruce). It will be interesting to see the accuracy compared to Braveheart – I wonder if Mr Livingston will do another comparison. But in the meantime, here’s a head to head comparison.
I love history, I despise those who deride historical accuracy*, and especially those who use “history is written by the winners.” History as “written by the winners” means that the “losers” history is *simply not taught*. It’s why in the US you have to take special classes to learn Black history and women’s history and that of other minorities. It doesn’t mean that the “winners” took the time to ferret out all other records and replace them with winners’ accounts. It means the other perspectives were just ignored.
Anyway, very funny, and thank you for this. Sorry to start climbing on my soapbox (and yes, that was barely a foot up). But a great way to start the day.
+1
Add me to the appreciators of the summary paragraph. Redshirts are doomed.
I’m planning to watch the Outlaw King on Netflix tonight (Robert the Bruce). It will be interesting to see the accuracy compared to Braveheart – Supposedly they skipped the (inch winch) spider in the cave mythology. Any way here’s a head-to-head comparison
https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a25018061/outlaw-king-braveheart/
Absolutely agree, and a brilliant article!
Being a Scot, the film is great escapist fun but TOTALLY CRINGINGLY inaccurate. Still, why let historical accuracy get in the way of a good film romp ?
FREEEEEEEDOM!!!!
I’m the history geek that does research after reading a historical fiction book or watching a movie based on true events. I love to compare the real truth to the “truth”. Did a little research on Bruce and his family a couple of years ago. Made me so glad I was born in the 1980s.
Interesting article. Now I want to find out who Michael Livingston is and what other articles he wrote.
When Braveheart released, a group of us in a medieval recreation group all banded together to go to the theater. It was… well, we had fun. I’m not sure those around us did as we groaned and muttered through the entire movie, sometimes shouting “that’s not how it happened!!”
It is interesting to watch a “historical” Hollywood movie and know that it is not accurate. Unfortunately Americans really don’t care to learn history (a lot think it’s boring…I’ve asked when I was an undergraduate (by the way, I have a BA in History with an emphasis on early American History)).
One year on PBS, Prince Edward (yes, the youngest son of Queen Elizabeth II) did a show about what led up to the American Revolution and the revolution itself from the British perspective. My mom, my brother Mike, and I had a wonderful time watching it. We laughed when Prince Edward talked about “the overly informed Bostonians” in their quest to gain freedom from Britain. It was also interesting to find out why the British forced the Stamp Act on the colonists as well as what led up to and including the Boston Tea Party. I learned it from the American perspective in my History classes. It was very interesting to learn about it from the other side. 🙂
A friend took a leave of absence several years ago to accompany her husband in a several months work assignment in the UK. She was kind and thoughtful and asked each of her coworkers what they would like her to bring back for them. I asked for and was delighted to receive a history book of the American Revolution from the British perspective. I still have and treasure that book and her thoughtfulness. It is interesting to view history from a different perspective.
All of my history classes in high school were taught by teachers who were primarily coaches of the various sports teams. They followed the books exactly. And the books were the typical rah-rah-America the-South-was-really-for-states-rights set that come out of making sure textbooks are acceptable to the Texas market.
It’s a surefire way to make sure Americans (in general) have no interest in further exploration of history.
I know this is based on history, but I just read an article that house hunters on HGTV is fake reality show. Just goes to show you have to TV shows and movies aren’t even trying to be accurate even in a reality show.
Most reality shows are fake.The shows like naked and afraid, the ones w the two guys ‘dropped off to survive’ and the like have full medical crews and the like right there,they aren’t alone, abd believe me that makes a difference compared to really trying to survive.
I’m crying, I’m laughing so hard! His summary is the BEST!!!
Great summary,I laughed.Like Gibson’s ‘the passion’ Braveheart like any movie is a vision of what lies in the director’s heart.Gibson is notoriously anti British, so of course the movie reflects that,much the way ‘the passion’ supports a very anti semitic view of that event. Doesn’t mean that the English were choir boys, the truth of the times tells stories of real brutality worse than anything Gibson depicted,and what Scotts did to each other was often worse than what the English did. I leave it to others to judge if Wallace was a hero or not, but one moral of history is hero is always a relative term, many heroes did really crappy things, many villains did more than a few good things…
Michael L is always a kick.
OMG I’m laughing so hard. The other name for this movie I’ve heard is “The Woad Warrior”
LOL perfect!
+1 million
I’m a trained historian. Any Hollywood movie based on “history” is a straight up fantasy, occasionally with touches of realism.
As for sources, I’ve attended historical events (marches, demonstrations, etc) and have read events reported to have happened while I was there and wondered ”where the hell was I?”
In truth, that’s why historians use a LOT of sources. Everything is filtered thru the expectation of the writer.
Barbara Tuchman always said that all historians have their biases and a good one acknowledges theirs. David McCullough has said he can’t write a bio of someone he doesn’t like, his book on John Adams was supposed to be about Adams and Jefferson equally,but he found he couldn’t write about Jefferson as a main subject.
Doesn’t everybody just assume that Hollywood has taken some liberties with well EVERY historical movie? I will say this movie does seem esp bad even for HW, when u see all the issues ‘splained in 1 succinct article like this, ouch! (Research, what’s that?) Love his rating systems for accuracy and enjoy-ability, hee hee 🙂
I am a historian – and though I am all for accuracy and even more for conscientously referencing one’s sources and detailing one’s thought processes – my first problem would already be with the assumption of facts as entities that are out there, independent of culture and of historiographic (in our case ) practice or scientific practice. Because there are a indefinite number of “facts” or “events” to begin with and so for each fact to be mentioned or event to be recorded (what we then consider “history”) there is already a selection process going on beyond that of the “victors writing history”. For a very long time history was about what important men did (either in the church or politically). So the access to and view of the past we have is not only incomplete, but very narrow. So any representation of the past that attempts to give us a “whole”, “accurate” view of the past – aside from all historical inaccuracies – must necessarily fail. As historians we only ever can reconstruct parts of the past and be aware that there always remains and unbridgable gap to our “understanding”, since our ontological frame is very different.
Also, historical films (like historical novels) don’t really despict the past, they despict the past as it is imagined based on the current knowledge of the day, so usually historcal films/novels tell you more about the time they were produced in/written in than the past (that doesn’t mean you can’t also learn things about the past.)
If you look at early films about the Middle Ages (like Robin Hood or Ivanhoe – the latter itself based on a historical novel by Scott and not contemporary sources) you will be amazed at the vibrant colors (Kodak had started developing their Kodachrome technology) and also by the orderliness that not only permeated the social fabric (in the Middle Ages hierarchies were (thought to be) much more rigid) but also nature (both ordered by God’s plan).
From the 70s onwards you can see “dirt” and “mud” starting to become a major signifier for the Middle Ages in films like Robin and Marian and Monthy Python and the Holy Grail (remember the two field workers arguing which one is the king: “he must be the king, because he hasn’t got shit all over him like the rest of us”). At the same time historians also started to change their focus away from the great narratives about important men and events towards what everyday life was like in the past, how the ordinary people lived and thought and new fields like “Alltagsgeschichte” and “Microhistory” emerged (not to forget Women’s History which then became Gender History). It’s also interesting to see how the “dirt and mud” signifier has infiltrated depictions of other periods, like the version of P&P with Keira Knightly, when all of a sudden the Bennetts have pigs swilling around in their yards. I hope from these examples you can see that how we represent the past has more to do with current trends in filmmaking and historiography than with “how it really was”…
Funny you mention Monty Python, in some ways their film is more historically accurate than some histories are,despite the comic outrageousness. The view in Life of Brian is certainly a lot more indicative of Biblical times, when Jews were fractured and fighting among themselves, where the Romans whatever they were did bring a kind of peace and prosperity,and Christ was one of about a thousand people claiming to be the messiah (note I am not saying he was or wasn’t). As far as Holy Grail given Arthur was around the 6th century,not long after the fall of Rome, it would have been a pretty dark time for many…hell of a lot more real than Camelot:)
Read part of the article. Don’t care about Braveheart too much, but I’m going to stop at the library on the way home from the gym this afternoon to check out Shards of Heaven. . .
So Sturm didn’t have the actual sword of William Wallace…
Wait! Sturm isn’t an actual historical figure ??
Wow, thank you! As a Brit with a good grounding in medieval history, I’ve never seen this film as anything other than a fairytale, but that is a brilliant overview. Now reading his other articles. Illuminating and funny, not sure it can get much better (your own stuff excluded of course), so thanks for sharing.
For some odd reason when Americans make historical movies about foreign countries, all the actors have British accents. Historical movie about Greek characters- British accents. For the life of me I can’t figure out why Zeus , or Helen of Troy were speaking in posh British accents. In American minds, all foreigners have British accents.
I wonder if that is because when Americans have encountered foreign born people speaking English they often have a British sounding lilt to it:) Also British english the way actors speak it is just so much more commanding, they use actors with majestic voices, not the cockney inflected voices like Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins (both actors I love btw).
I didn’t like the film when it came out but my father really got a kick out of Braveheart’s call for Freeeeeeddom! So he taught my infant son to say it as one of his first words. Friends and neighbors were somewhat disconcerted to hear my baby boy yelling for freeeeedom! from his crib or playpen. My dad just rotfl.
Hilarious
Lol….. Oh my god….. I’m cackling over here!
O K, so the reason for the authors verbosity is to illustrate the point between an accurate answer and entertaining literacy.
Cause, No, Braveheart is not accurate, works for me.
Aside from that l don’t get it?
A friend of mine was an editor for a magazine about ancient Egypt and he was travelling out to a dig on the Gizeh plateau near the pyramids when he came across a well known documentary company. (The cover of their very popular magazines are a colour rhyming with mellow) My friend was shocked to hear the producer of the show say to the crew, “Why should we care about accuracy? Our viewers are stupid.” This from a group associated for generations with exploration and scientific knowledge..
“You can take our historical inaccuracy, kilts and all, but you can’t take our freedom!” ???
Thank you for sharing this. It was both informative and a TON of fun to read!
I knew Braveheart wasn’t accurate, but I hadn’t realized HOW wrong Gibson got just about everything.