MovieChat Forums > Mel Gibson Discussion > Mel seems to have a habit of making war ...

Mel seems to have a habit of making war movies that completely misportray actual events


https://www.quora.com/What-war-movies-completely-misportrayed-actual-events

Braveheart……. utterly ignores history

The Statue of William Wallace and Mel Gibson's representation of him (before the woad goes on!)

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-cfc6dd027ef58445ad91d795dc2cb572

His “affair” with Isabella - at the time of Wallaces execution, she was 9 years old, living in France and not yet married into the English Royal family

The capture of York - just never happened

The Battle of Stirling - misses two huge and important facts, its often called the “Battle of Stirling Bridge” because it was fought to control a vital water crossing in front of Stirling Castle - neither appear in the file

The Patriot

New York Post Film Critic Jonathan Foreman wrote

“The most disturbing thing about The Patriot is not just that German director Roland Emmerich (director of Independence Day) and his screenwriter Robert Rodat (who was criticized for excluding the roles played by British and other Allied troops in the Normandy landings from his script for Saving Private Ryan) depicted British troops as committing savage atrocities, but that those atrocities bear such a close resemblance to war crimes carried out by German troops—particularly the SS in World War II. It's hard not to wonder if the filmmakers have some kind of subconscious agenda... They have made a film that will have the effect of inoculating audiences against the unique historical horror of Oradour—and implicitly rehabilitating the Nazis while making the British seem as evil as history's worst monsters... So it's no wonder that the British press sees this film as a kind of blood libel against the British people.”

Gallipoli

The films climax the Attack at the Nek is apparently ordered by an officer with a British Accent and no British Troops are depicted in the attack, in real life the planning and orders were drawn up by the commander of the Australian Light Horse Brigade, an Australian named Brigadier General Fredric Hughes, in the real attack at the Nek the British Royal Welsh also suffered very heavy casualties - in more general terms in the whole campaign 8700 Australians died, 9700 French died and 34,000 British watching the flim you would not realise that the Austalians were a small component of the whole campaign.

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AS DO THE MAJORITY OF FILMS "BASED" ON ACTUAL EVENTS.THATS HOW MOTION PICTURES WORK.

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So... what's the difference with the rest of Hollywood?

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I wouldn't include Gallipoli on this list. I don't think Gibson would have had much/any creative control back in those days, and as it is an Australian film about Australian characters, I have little problem with the Brits not getting a look in.

In terms of his own movies... well Gibson is a pretty lousy filmmaker but, as already noted above, playing hard and fast with the truth is routine for films based on historic events. A film like Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, to pluck something out of the air, is no more factually accurate than Braveheart (and arguably a much worse offender in that it dealt with characters who were still alive at the time).

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you got to take Liberties films at the end of the day Is still an illusion and I liked his Film Hacksaw Ridge a Top 5 War Movie

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As others have mentioned, Hollywood is full of shit 99% of the time.

It's quite surreal, given that history has plenty of good scripts of its own without the need for added drama.

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This would make an interesting topic for a thread but I'll let someone else try it,

Name a movie(s) based on a true story(not documentary) that is actually true and not bullshit.

I'm sure that it's happened but I can't think of any.

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"Battle of Britain"

Take out the romantic relationship subplot, and what they showed of the politics, strategy, and action is pretty much how it happened. Some of the aircraft are not technically accurate in every detail, but given what was available, they did a remarkable job.

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Everyone does it.
Either movie,book,tv show,reality people will only tell what they want to tell.

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Yeah, he seemed more into entertainment and shock value than he was in portraying history as it should have been. However, after seeing the horrible portrayals in historical films after his, I have a feeling he doesn't corner the market on doing history a disservice; not by a long shot. At least he didn't have black and Chinese people working with William Wallace or that family fighting in the Revolutionary War.

These days, his character would be married to a black chick with Asian and Hispanic children that look nothing like them, and he'd have a black, gay, female cousin in armor who fights, and whose fake love story with a female soldier from the other side would steal the show and ruin the actual message behind the story.

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