Historical Inaccuracies and Anachronisms

They made the movie is a movies way. This is not supposed to be an accurate historical documentary about real life events, its a movie and it panders to modern audiences which are going to go and watch it.

There was no colloseum, there was no major troops stationed in the city, they were all in outposts, Jesus was hardly in Jerusalem, etc....

He of the BEN-HUR film that is without historical/biblical inaccuracies, cast the first stone.

https://thereelpastor.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/ben-hur-set-2.jpg

Do these not look like jeans?

I'd like to know where the jeans were.

Other hand there was a pair of jeans in Gladiator widescreen cut that Ridley doesn't get any stick for.

You are correct there. They did not want amateurs rowing the ships and it would have been hard to keep that many slaves under control in a small space.

But the lack of attention to details regarding observant Jews and the culture of the Middle East is more bothersome.

Also before the invention of the stirrup few people rode horseback for pleasure.

The main story is a fantasy, yes. But it is purposefully set in a very particular place and time. A historical backdrop.

When you set out to make a film set in a very specific era, you should pay some attention to how those people lived.

Messala could DJ.

Thank you for mentioning that. That was the moment which ruined the movie which was already a travesty.
The orchestral scores by Maestro Rozsa made the 1959 version beautiful, emotional and truly an 'epic'.

Tis' but a scratch.

(larosat)
>Is that a still from the movie or a practice rehearsal session? I can tell you right now that everyone wore robes or other material of the period. There's no way that the filmmakers would do that. However whenever I see the movie again I will look for that and be stunned if it's true.

(HenryCW)
>They were obviously jeans (see the seams) and I suspect that picture was not from the movie but rather taken during a relax session. Also notice their shoes - especially the woman's. Their attires are so modern that they could just walk into the street without causing any raised eyebrows.
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larosat and HenryCW,
Whether or not the still was from a rehearsal session, all I can say is... I think that regarding what Judah, at least, was wearing in the movie - they sure Looked like jeans! I even asked myself, more than once (and leaned over to spouse at one point, and asked), "Is he wearing Jeans???"
(Obviously I did not have access to "freeze frame" in the theater, so hard to say for sure.)

And whether or not they Were jeans, tho, he was wearing Some kind of pants.
And yeah - as for some of the other clothes he wore, they looked like late '60's/early '70's retro.
That's 20th Century '60's and 70's, btw.

Yes, and Roman women wore bikinis in the bathhouse. But not out of doors. Women in the ancient world were heavily draped out of doors. Head coverings for sure.

I just saw another still from the movie: Ben-Hur and Ilderim before the race. Ben-Hur is clearly wearing a shirt with set-in sleeves, not only machine-sewn (again, you can tell by the line) but this was not a technique that even existed in the ancient or medieval world. Tunics (and sleeves) were basically made by doubling a length of cloth over, cutting a hole for the head and sewing up the sides by hand.

Any high school student working in costume shop would know that much. And these are professional costume designers?

Yes, you can take short-cuts. You can put in a zipper - but only if you know it will NEVER been seen on screen. It wouldn't be so bad if it were a few extras, which is where you usually find the glitches, but this was the star in an extremely important scene. You would think every detail would be correct for the period.

Ancient Greek women used to wear trousers