Quite a few Hollywood movies have been prehistorically inaccurate. The most glaringly obvious are those showing primitive humans coexisting with dinosaurs, but even something like 10,000 B.C. is quite a howler. Sabertooth tigers the size of horses?! Mountains full of glaciers and mammoths within walking distance of proto-Egypt?!
That’s interesting because so many people all over the Internet gush over how real it is, right down to the girdles they wear. It’s always made me eye roll because I just never got into the whole Mad Men thing.
I’ve seen a few eps–can you give some more examples of stuff that’s inaccurate?
I’ll never get past the scene in Australia where they showed Japanese soldiers on the ground in Darwin (or just offshore). It completely took me out of the movie–not that that was any great loss.
The poster is for a movie called “Custer’s Last Stand”.
George Armstrong Custer was a soldier in the U.S. Cavalry. He died at Little Big Horn. As a soldier, he would have been dressed in his blue uniform. Neither of the men in the poster appear to be soldiers. One is dressed as a frontier man, while the other is dressed as (what appears to be) a gambler.
Custer was known for his long, flowing, blond hair. Neither of the men on the poster have that hairstyle.
The men appear to be on the verge of a gunfight.
The term, “Custer’s Last Stand” is most typically used to describe the folly that is known as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Custer (and all the men under his command) were killed by Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors.
Custer was also married. The poster shows what looks like two men having a fight over a woman.
In short, the only accuracies between the poster and Custer’s actual life is that it depicts frontier America during the 19th Century, and Custer was a man who had a woman in his life.
I’ve watched the show since the beginning & love it. The pacing is subtle & character based–until it speeds up & blows your mind. But it’s not for everyone.
The art direction & costumes are beautifully done. To me, the historical background is more for atmosphere than for The Truth About The Early 60’s. Anyone who’s truly ignorant about the era ought to, perhaps, read a book. Or two.
Besides, the OP is about movies. Mad Men is a TV show.
Well, after reading a synopsis of that film it is pretty clear neither of the men pictured is Custer. This film purportedly shows events involving some (fictional) perhiperhal characters leading up to the Battle of Little Bighorn. It looks like perhaps the film culminates at the battle. Maybe Custer makes an apperance there. Kinda like titiling Gangs of New York the “New York Draft Riots” instead.
I’m pretty sure only McQueen was playing an American. I think Garner was playing a Canadian, James Coburn an Australian, and Charles Bronson a Pole.
In fact, given the presumption that they had to have an American character in a significant role, I think they made an admirable effort to keep things historical in that respect.
Given that the plot of U-571 diverges pretty significantly from history, I really think it’s less an American hijacking of British history than simply a made up story.
(wrong thread)
Well sure, if you want to take the short cut.
Sorry, didn’t see it until later.
Cripes amighty. We get this far into the thread and no one has yet mentioned the fantasy that was J.F.K.?
Apparently the “taking credit from the British” angle is what gets some people’s shorts in a bunch over U-571.
But there was no incident in the war anything like the plot of U-571. The encounter on which the movie was apparently very loosely based involved the capture of a German sub by British forces. After the Germans had evacuated the damaged vessel, a British crew went aboard and, under hazardous conditions (no one knew if scuttling charges were ready to go off) went through the sub gathering papers and equipment, including an Enigma machine. They then tried to tow the sub back to port, but it sank. This was an intelligence coup for which the British crew was decorated, but it would have made a hell of a dull movie.
The closing credits of U-571 mention both British and American actions in which Enigmas were captured from the Germans.
If memory serves, Garner was playing a member of an RAF Eagle Squadron–Americans who signed up with the RAF prior to the US entering the war. As such, his presence with the British RAF officers would make more sense than just making him an American like Steve McQueen. There was a Canadian character (Coburn fights with him to create a distraction) but I cannot remember who it was. Certainly there were Canadians involved in the actual Great Escape; one of the tunnel engineers was Wally Floody, a hard rock miner from Northern Ontario.
Thinking of war movies, I’ll offer The Devil’s Brigade–the story of the First Special Service Force (Wikipedia link). This was a joint US-Canada force created during WWII. The actual Force was involved in some fierce fighting as depicted in the movie, but the movie made it look as if a group of undisciplined clods were the American contribution to the Force, while the Canadians contributed spit-and-polish, super-polite soldiers. As far as I am aware, this is untrue (though it made for an entertaining first half of the movie). Both the Americans and Canadians who made up the Force were tough, well-trained and disciplined soldiers prior to training. As I understand things, both countries’ soldiers worked well together during training and in the field, and there was very little friction between them.
Patton, great movie but apparently the director decided Panzers were all camouflaged to look like American Korean War surplus.
The (I think only) US capture of a sub with Enigma was U-505, which is pretty much the same incident (except that the sub was recovered and is now in a museum). However, this happened quite late in the war and it’s true the American contribution was pretty minor.
After all, it was the Poles that first captured a machine and cracked the code.
That’s not nearly as inaccurate as the idea of a lower middle-class gentlemen being able to afford to send five daughters to the far east for extensive martial arts & ninja assassin training in order to effectively combat the scourge of un-living, flesh-eating zombies. In fact, I’m fairly certain that attacks by Romero-style zombies were not especially common during the late 18th century.
What?
My Mom, born in 1938, loves that show and raves about all of the little details that they get right. She said that there is rarely an episode that doesn’t remind her of something that she hadn’t thought about in decades.
About the only positive thing I can say about 300 is that they might have gotten pretty close to accurately representing the Spartan mind set. There’s a scene from Herodotus where the Spartans talk about how great it is to be free men, that people who are slaves just can’t appreciate how great it is to be free, and that they would be willing to use axes to defend their freedom. (Axes in war being something that barbarians use.) It seems rather hypocritical to us but there you go.
As you posted a while back in another thread:
If it’s true, it CAN’T BE an inaccuracy. But what other sense would you prefer? Would you have prosecuted him simply because you knew what he meant? That was a major point of the play. Should we be doing that today?
If he didn’t mention the King, that was not treason and he did NOT break the law. And I’d be interested in the books and relevant cites.
He DID refuse to swear to the Act of Succession. The script does NOT ignore this. In the movie he even explains to Norfolk that imprisoning him for this was legal. But the reality was that he did NOT deny the King’s title in the legal sense required for treason. He was innocent of this and he was convicted and executed unjustly. If, as you contend, he broke the law, it’s up to you to explain why they didn’t prosecute him sooner AND had to rely on one person’s testimony AFTER he was sent to the Tower.
It was made by Fox. I’m settling for the fact they didn’t ‘accidentally’ refer to the character as Rasputin (D).
As much as I loved Apollo 13, I’ve always been annoyed by one glaring inaccuracy - made worse by the fact that it was almost certainly intentional despite the filmmakers knowing otherwise.
Kevin Bacon played Jack Swigert, the astronaut from the backup crew who is assigned to fly the mission a few days before the launch. Swigert is portrayed as somehow not quite up to the task, and later participates in a shouting match during the flight.
In reality, the backup crews were given identical training to the prime crews. Swigert was perfectly capable of flying the mission. What’s more, he had specialized in command module emergencies and written much of the training materials on the subject. In fact, they were lucky to have him on that flight.
And according to Lovell, there was never any argument of the kind shown in the film.
I would otherwise have let something like this slide, but have always felt the film did an injustice to Swigert, who died in 1982.