It’s no secret that Hollywood often stretches the truth for a good story, but when it comes to historical battles, the line between fact and fiction can become incredibly blurred. Many films take significant creative liberties, resulting in inaccurate portrayals that miscolor our perception of famous military clashes. Here are 10 films that missed the mark when depicting historical battles.
The Battle Of The Bulge
Battle Of The Bulge (1965)
The Battle of the Bulge saw more American deaths than any other World War II engagement. MGM’s movie of the same name should have strived for accuracy. Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided the real thing wasn’t cinematic enough and made up a different battle entirely.
To start, the filmmakers wanted audiences to enjoy the picture in widescreen Cinerama. As a result, they ditched the rugged, claustrophobic forests of the Ardennes for sweeping vista shots of flat, treeless plains. The result was more like a cowboy movie than the actual battle. MGM also discarded the thick fog that played a key role in the opening days. The sunny shots of German tanks are nice, but in reality, exposed tank formations would have been destroyed from the air almost immediately.
The screenplay was so inaccurate that former President Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Forces, felt the need to deliver a scathing critique. Right from the beginning, Eisenhower pointed out that the narrator got names and units wrong, including moving the entire British Eighth Army from Italy to the Ardennes. Most of the plot lines were fictional, including a race for a fuel depot that never happened. The movie wrongly depicted Nazi infiltrators as a real danger to the Allies, when, in reality, they were never anything more than an annoyance.
Eisenhower also criticized the movie for using Korean War–era American tanks as German panzers. In fact, every tank, plane, and jeep used in the movie is a post-war model. Finding accurate military hardware would plague all movies prior to the age of CGI, but MGM could have painted over the Spanish Army camouflage on their jeeps.
Marathon and Salamis
300: Rise Of An Empire (2014)
In 2007, Warner Bros. had a hit with 300, a visually striking depiction of the Battle of Thermopylae. The movie received criticism for historical inaccuracy, including depicting the Spartan slave-state as a beacon of liberty. Even that flimsy excuse can’t account for 300: Rise Of An Empire, in which no empires rise and the narration ends before the story does.
The movie opens on the Battle of Marathon, fought between the Athenians and a Persian invasion force in 490 BC. The Athenian general Themistocles leads his men at a full sprint to surprise the Persians as they disembark from their ships. In reality, the Greeks and Persians faced each other at Marathon for five days before they fought. The Greeks did run straight at the Persian army, but it was to reduce their advantage in archers, not to surprise them.
In the film, the battle culminates when Themistocles shoots an arrow that kills the Persian king Darius I as his son Xerxes watches. A Greek hoplite wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old age.
Enraged, movie Xerxes transforms himself into a glowing giant and prepares to invade Greece. To lead his fleet, he recruits Eva Green’s Artemisia. In reality, Artemisia was the widowed queen of Halicarnassus and provided a handful of ships to Xerxes’ 600-boat navy. She commanded her own ships and was respected by Xerxes, but wasn’t in charge of the whole fleet.
The climax of the movie is the naval Battle of Salamis, which historians agree did not involve giant metal ships or Persian suicide bombers, both of which show up in the movie. The day is saved by Queen Gorgo of Sparta, who arrives with a huge fleet to destroy the Persians. The historical Sparta added a mere 16 boats to Themistocles’ 400 ships and played no significant role in the victory. Gorgo certainly wasn’t there, and the Greeks would never have allowed a woman to lead them anyway.
The Battle Of Inchon
Inchon! (1981)
Inchon! is probably the worst war movie ever made. Critics called it “stupefyingly incompetent” and “a turkey the size of Godzilla.” The fact that the movie was financed and produced by Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his controversial Unification Church didn’t help.
Moon hired tabloid psychic Jeane Dixon to contact the deceased General Douglas MacArthur via the astral plane. The general’s ghost endorsed the movie and picked the director. Moon included a quote from the spirit in the movie’s press release. With the spirit world on board, Moon plowed $46 million into the production. As a result, he inserted a scene featuring his favorite ballet troupe and tried to get the director to include subliminal images of Jesus. He spent $3 million reshooting a crowd scene because the original crowd was too small. Yet the film includes grainy stock footage and model fighter planes held up by strings.
It’s hard to be sure if most of the movie is inaccurate because it’s impossible to tell what’s happening. A large chunk is context-free shots of North Korean soldiers machine-gunning civilians. The Battle of Inchon itself is given 15 minutes, most of which is pure fiction. The battle scenes look cheap, extras throw themselves to the floor before explosions actually happen.
Inchon! only made $5 million at the box office and is considered one of the biggest flops in movie history.
The Siege Of Jerusalem
Kingdom Of Heaven (2005)
Very few historical events are as controversial as the crusades. Ridley Scott tackled the subject in Kingdom Of Heaven. Scott set the first half of the movie during a truce maintained by King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Saladin, referring to it as a time when “anyone could come and go as they pleased, and worship as they pleased.” Baldwin (played by Edward Norton) dies of leprosy, and the peace is undermined by Christian fundamentalists like Guy de Lusignan and the Knights Templar.
The moral is obvious and not really historically accurate. Baldwin IV wasn’t the moderate figure the movie portrays. Non-Christians were banned from Jerusalem during his reign, and he flew into a rage when Guy de Lusignan failed to attack Saladin. Saladin is portrayed as a peaceful ruler forced into war, but the real Saladin worked to capture Jerusalem. Baldwin and Saladin fought for years, and their truce had more to do with exhaustion and problems elsewhere than a genuine desire for lasting peace.
These are minor quibbles compared to the protagonist, Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom). Balian is portrayed as a French blacksmith who has a crisis of faith when his wife commits suicide. The town priest has her corpse beheaded and steals from her grave. Balian was a nobleman from Palestine, was never a blacksmith, was never a religious moderate, and his wife never committed suicide.
In the movie’s climax, Balian leads the defense of Jerusalem against Saladin’s forces, undermined by the Christian patriarch. The real Balian led the defense of Jerusalem in cooperation with the patriarch, who wasn’t his enemy. In a scene, Balian negotiates safe passage by threatening to destroy holy places. In reality, Balian threatened to destroy Muslim holy sites and murder around 500 Muslim slaves. In the movie, Saladin lets the Christians leave peacefully. In history, the Christians had to ransom themselves, and those who couldn’t pay were enslaved.
Operation Red Wings
Lone Survivor (2014)
Lone Survivor tells the story of four members of SEAL Team 10 who surveil a Taliban fighter named Ahmad Shah. The team was discovered by three goatherds, who told the Taliban. Approximately 50 Taliban fighters attacked the team, prompting a three-hour running fight. Three members of the team were killed, and Marcus Luttrell survived. A further 16 American servicemen died when their helicopter was shot down while trying to reach the group.
The filmmakers tried to take a respectful approach. The opening scene shows Marcus Luttrell’s heart stopping just as he is rescued, a flashback from that moment. In reality, Luttrell’s heart never stopped, and he wasn’t close to death when rescued.
In an interview, Luttrell cataloged his injuries: “I had to have my hand reconstructed. My back’s been reconstructed. Multiple back surgeries. My knees are blown out, my pelvis is cracked, I had maxillofacial damage, I bit my tongue in half. I got shot-fragged by RPGs and grenades, eleven through-and-throughs in my quads and calves, shrapnel stickin’ out of my legs and everywhere. All the skin off my back and the back of my legs was gone.” In addition, he suffered a broken nose, torn shoulder, and a bacterial infection.
At the end of the movie, Luttrell is taken to a Pashtun village where a man named Gulab cares for his wounds. Shah’s thugs track Luttrell to the village. One of them is about to behead the American when the villagers intervene. Shah’s men attack the village, Gulab is shot, and his hut is blown up. American forces blast the Taliban and kill Shah.
The climactic firefight didn’t happen. Luttrell was taken to a Pashtun village and cared for by Gulab. He was discovered by the Taliban, who broke his hands but didn’t try to behead him before the villagers drove them off. Shah’s men didn’t attack the village, and Gulab wasn’t shot. Luttrell was picked up by US Rangers alerted by the locals. Shah didn’t die for another three years. Luttrell’s story is amazing, but the ending wasn’t dramatic enough for Hollywood.
Stalingrad
Enemy At The Gates (2001)
Movies about the Eastern Front of World War II are rare. Enemy At The Gates makes little effort at historical accuracy. The movie can’t even get maps right, depicting Switzerland and Turkey as German conquests.
The filmmakers worried that recognizing the Soviet Union’s contribution to winning the war might paint communism in a positive light. The movie portrays individual Soviets as heroes but makes the Soviet war effort look cruel and incompetent.
The movie starts with Jude Law’s Vasily Zaytsev, based on the real sniper, locked into a train with his fellow soldiers. Soviet military train doors were left unlocked so the soldiers could jump out and take cover. When the train arrives, no officers are present to organize the troops. Instead, political commissars herd the men into boats to cross the Volga in broad daylight, allowing German planes to inflict huge casualties. In reality, Soviet units crossed the river under the cover of darkness.
In Stalingrad, Zaytsev’s unit is ordered to charge the Germans en masse. Half are given rifles, with the rest told to pick up the rifles of the dead. This is based on isolated incidents during the surprise German invasion in 1941 and was never a deliberate strategy. There is no evidence that Soviet soldiers were sent into Stalingrad without guns. They also didn’t stage mass frontal charges against machine guns.
The main plot revolves around a duel between Zaytsev and a German sniper named Major Erwin Konig. No such German sniper has been found in the records, and most historians believe that the Soviets made him up to increase Zaytsev’s propaganda value.
The Taking Of Aqaba
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)
Lawrence Of Arabia is considered one of the greatest movies of all time but takes liberties with the truth. Auda abu Tayi was altered, and one of Lawrence’s siblings didn’t recognize his own brother.
Much of the film centers on a raid on the Red Sea port of Aqaba. The port was protected from attack along the coast, but Lawrence came up with a plan to take a party through the Nefudh Desert, allowing them to attack Aqaba from inland. The movie gets that much right.
The movie depicts the Nefudh Desert as undulating golden sand dunes. In reality, most of the areas traversed by Lawrence were gravel plains. Along the way, Lawrence rescued an Arab in the desert. In the movie, the Arabs celebrate him as a hero and give him a Bedouin robe, accepting him as one of their own. By Lawrence’s own account, he had been wearing Bedouin garb for six months. The Arabs thought his rescue efforts were moronic and berated him for risking two lives instead of one.
In one of the film’s famous scenes, Lawrence leads a mounted charge. The cavalry charge happened 65 kilometers (40 mi) from Aqaba at a small outpost called Aba el Lissan. Lawrence’s force outnumbered the Ottomans by nearly three to one but still couldn’t dislodge them. Lawrence insulted the Arabs into attacking, and they led the charge. He tried to participate but shot his camel in the head and was thrown to the ground. Aqaba was taken without incident the next day.
The Battle Of Gettysburg
Gettysburg (1993)
When New Line Cinema released the adaptation of Michael Shaara’s novel, they boasted that the movie was “rigorously authenticated down to the boots.” But there were minor details for historians to pick at.
The extras in the battle scenes were mostly Civil War re-enactors, who provided their own uniforms. The uniforms were too pristine to accurately represent the forces at Gettysburg. Many re-enactors were too well-fed to portray Confederate soldiers. At one point, General Lee shakes hands with a soldier sporting a tan line from a wristwatch.
For dramatic effect, the events of the battle were shifted in time. The movie opens with Harrison reporting to Longstreet on the morning of June 30. Harrison had to have informed Longstreet of the Union’s movements no later than June 29. Lee’s confrontation with General Heth happened late on July 1, not during the battle earlier that day. The scene where Father Corby delivers absolution to the Irish Brigade did not happen in the morning of July 2, but in the afternoon just before they went into battle.
The tension of Pickett’s Charge is undercut if you notice the rubber bayonets wobbling around. Confederate cannon are seen blowing up, but the Southerners didn’t lose a single cannon in the battle. General Kemper is depicted as dying from a mortal wound, 32 years before his actual death in 1895.
The most noticeable change is how bloodlessly the film depicts Pickett’s Charge. One eyewitness described the real charge as a “hurricane of violence in which human debris literally filled the air.” The filmmakers toned it down to keep their PG rating, but the result was a whitewashed scene.
The Fall Of The Alamo
The Alamo (1960)
The makers of 1960’s The Alamo tried to sell the movie as a depiction of the real battle. John Wayne claimed that the sets were based on “original blueprints” of the Alamo. No blueprints exist, and the sets were the product of art director Al Ybarra’s imagination.
Wayne also claimed that the screenwriter, James Grant, had researched the battle. Grant’s screenplay was fictional, to the point that historians stormed off the set. Both asked that their names be removed from the credits.
Historians described the movie as containing “not a word, character, costume, or event that corresponds to historical reality.” It can’t even get geography right, claiming that the Alamo was located on the Rio Grande. The movie’s version of the battle focuses on a bombardment by Mexican cannons. Wayne’s Davy Crockett leads a party to blow up the largest Mexican artillery piece. In reality, the Mexicans deployed small field pieces at the battle. The adobe Alamo would have been leveled by heavy artillery.
In the movie’s final battle scene, Crockett sacrifices himself to blow up the powder magazine. In reality, a defender named Robert Evans attempted to ignite the gunpowder with a torch but was shot. Crockett’s fictional sacrifice might have been more meaningful if the movie had mentioned why he went to the Alamo or what the men were fighting for. Wayne wanted the movie to be a Cold War metaphor, featuring patriotic Americans fighting an evil dictatorship. The actual circumstances of the Texas Revolution were left obscure.
Cowpens And Guilford Courthouse
The Patriot (2000)
The Patriot illustrates how Hollywood struggles with the nuances of history. The Patriot was supposed to be a biopic of Francis Marion, a guerrilla fighter in the South Carolina swamps during the Revolutionary War. Marion was a compelling figure whose tactics would have provided an interesting contrast to George Washington’s battles.
That movie never materialized. Marion’s life didn’t fit the action-movie template. Among other things, he owned slaves and fought in a brutal campaign against the Cherokee. He also didn’t have children, but the screenwriter wanted to depict “the conflicting responsibilities of principle and parenthood.” So the character was renamed Benjamin Martin and made a composite of historical figures.
The fictional Benjamin Martin is more palatable than Marion. Unlike Marion, Martin frees his slaves before the movie starts. They all continue working on his estate. It seems easier to not depict Martin owning a cotton plantation, but the scenery is beautiful.
While Martin admits to carrying out a massacre during the French and Indian War, it involved killing enemy soldiers who had slaughtered women and children. In reality, Marion didn’t carry out such a massacre. He did help destroy buildings and food supplies in the hope that the Cherokee would starve to death. This wasn’t his idea, and he was horrified by it. Still, it’s less easy to cheer for than Martin’s retribution.
The filmmakers worried that Martin might be too morally ambiguous. So they made his British enemies into villains who committed war crimes. In one scene, redcoats lock a town into a church and burn it down. That didn’t happen during the Revolutionary War, but the scene resembles a World War II German atrocity.
The British were unhappy with their ancestors being depicted as Nazis. Many British newspapers claimed that Marion was a rapist who “hunted Indians for fun.” Ironically, Marion didn’t seem to have held ill will toward the British, since he campaigned against punishing Americans who had fought for them.
The movie’s final battle is unnamed and mostly fiction, though it uses elements of the battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse. At Cowpens, militia leader Daniel Morgan ordered his men to fire two shots before retreating, pulling the redcoats into a trap. In the movie, both General Nathaniel Greene and General Charles Cornwallis were at the battle. Neither were at Cowpens, but both were at Guilford Courthouse. The battlefield looked like that of Guilford Courthouse.
Conclusion
From misrepresenting key events and characters to outright fabrications for dramatic effect, these films take significant liberties with historical accuracy. While entertaining, they can distort our understanding of the actual events. Keep in mind that Hollywood’s primary goal is to entertain, and historical precision often takes a backseat to narrative appeal.
What are your thoughts on historical accuracy in films? Leave your comment below!
