Top 10 Historically Inaccurate War Movies
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- Опубліковано 9 чер 2024
- Wait, that didn't happen?! Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down the best examples of war movies that might’ve been great entertainment, but weren’t necessarily great history lessons. Our countdown includes movies “Pearl Harbor”, “The Patriot”, “Battle of the Bulge” and more! Did we forget a notable case of a war movie getting history wrong? Let us know in the comments!
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Did we forget a notable case of a war movie getting history wrong? Let us know in the comments!
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@@danielsantiagourtado3430bot
Starship Troopers gets SO much wrong!
How could you not mention Inchon? That movie essentially boiled down to a propaganda film for Korea's Unification Church and was never granted a home video release.
Another inaccuracy in the Great Escape is there were no Americans involved in the escape. American POWs were segregated in an adjoining, yet separate camp.
I never thought that Tom Cruise's character was supposed to be "the Last Samurai" or even that the title was literal. If anything Ken Watanabe's Katsumoto is "the last Samurai" but meaning is more likely the ending of the Samurai as a military caste, not a single man.
I would also think that to qualify for the "White Savior" trope that the white character has to....actually save something? Perhaps before calling a film out you should talk to someone who has actually seen it Watchmojo, because you missed actual inaccuracies in the movie (in history the samurai were actually using guns too, what they were fighting over was loss of class privileges) in favor of calling out things that aren't actually there.
@@jasonellis7874Really, the movie should have been called “The Last Samurai’s Passive American Friend”
@@jasonellis7874There is no "white savior trope." If you're fighting an enemy with advanced weaponry and tactics and you capture one of their top officers and trainers, naturally you would try and turn them to your cause for their expertise
im glad someone commented this. History Buffs, another channel that analyzes historical movies, went over how the "white savior complex" doesn't fit, because Katsumoto and a majority of the samurai die in the final battle, so the saving part isn't there. There's other things to note that aren't accurate that have already been mentioned, but WatchMojo didn't do their homework, big surprise there
Yah, some of the movies on this list were accurate. Their reasons for saying it isn’t is weird. Like windtalkers not honoring the native tribe windtalkers? The whole movie was about them, how did it not honor them?
The part about the Last Samurai pretty much means no one on Watchmojo actually watched the film and only read critic reviews. Tom Cruise's character wasn't the Last Samurai, it was Katsumoto. He was simply a witness to the last samurai on their final moments. Plus he didn't even make any major contributions to the story. Sure, he was in a couple of battles, but the outcomes wouldn't have changed whether he was there or not.
The whole essence of the movie was that Algren was a broken man who was saved by the Samurai and was redeemed in spite of the Samurai's inevitable extinction.
I don't know if you've already stumbled into a video from history buffs about the last samurai, I highly recommended, I'm imagining it's nothing you don't know already but it's a great video just saying 👍
Very well put.
actually, thats not entirely accurate. Katsumoto himself wasn't "The Last Samurai". In the context, Samurai is plural (Samurais isnt a word) and the term "The Last Samurai" meant the entire group of Samurai during that time period because if memory serves me correctly, after the Satsuma Rebellion, where Samurai were fighting to maintain their social class and hierarchy and did not agree to the way Japan was modernizing, the Samurai class was ended. So "The Last Samurai" meant all of them, not just one singular person.
watch mojo needs to watch the plot more carefully
100% agree. No way this guy watched Enemy at the Gates either, the best portrayal of the horror of Stalingrad. Sometimes, fictional characters are used to tell real events. The fact the guy doing the narration sounds about 14 doesn't help.
Fun Fact: When the movie Braveheart was shown in movie theaters in Scotland the audience would cheer every time they saw an English soldier get killed.
Imagine being English while visiting Scotland and that happens 😂
@@17an28---I'm guessing your talking about yourself?
@@brokenbridge6316 no 😂
@@17an28---Well I felt it was worth asking
It also had Scottish historians facepalming the whole time. 😂. I knew it had to be number one.
The major thing about the Last Samurai that is wrong, is that the Samurai are the ones that wanted the modernization and the Emperor was against it. So the driving force behind it is actually opposite of what the movie showed.
Also the movie its a love letter to samurai warrior culture. It gives charm and romance to a dying culture. And the white saviour is bs. The protagonist embraces the culture and in the end everyone loses to modernity.
Historical films should always contain inaccuracies. Because if they didn't people would have nothing to nit pick. And some people wouldn't be happy or know what to do with themselves without that.
why is Midway (2019) on this this?
"While the film takes some artistic license, Emmerich and Tooke were both adamant about being historically accurate, and Midway received praise from some combat veterans and historians for being more accurate of events than Midway (1976) and Pearl Harbor (2001). Naval History and Heritage Command director and retired Navy Rear Admiral Sam Cox said: "Despite some of the 'Hollywood' aspects, this is still the most realistic movie about naval combat ever made."
I wondered the same thing as the only mistakes I know of are minor nitpicks. It was a well made movie that did a good job on the details.
I was so disappointed with U571 when I learned the history of it all I was so angry going “why the hell would they do this”. From there I went down a rabbit hole of very inaccurate movies such as patch Adams.
Historical movies don’t always have to be accurate. They just have to be respectful to the people and events. With some exceptions, like 300, which are entertaining because of their inaccuracies
I prefer movies about real historical events or about real people to stick to the facts. After all, the movie is often all many people know about those events or people. Over time, I have come to think of these movies as more click bait than anything else. They used a name people would recognize to make money from them.
If you claim to make a historical movie then stick to the facts. Do your research!
300 is able to sustain itself, because it is a story told by a soldier to prepare his troops for battle , so he heavily embellishes the facts , to make even seem more as a mythical epic rather than a historical battle
I read an interesting book called "Past Imperfect" where various historical films are criticized by historians. I was especially disappointed to learn that "Glory" was heavily fictionalized.
It has its errors but they don’t paint the Confederacy out to be inherently evil monsters like a lot of films do with that films “enemy”.
How in the hell is midway dishonorable mention? Despite it being roland emmerich movie. He made it so accurate to the real story that there is barely anything major to pick about.
The 8th Army was in Italy at the time of the Battle of the Bulge. Monty commanded the 21st Army Group.
Wait.... No Abraham Lincoln, Vampire hunter?
No, this was about INACCURATE history. 😀
I thought about making a joke about the truth being suppressed, but there is probably some wacko that would take the joke seriously.
Starship Troopers, those bugs didn't actually go down that easily.
😂😂😂
The word "Samurai" is plural in the title. It was refering to all of the samurai in the that conflict.
You want to see a real accurate story about pearl harbor? Watch Tora Tora Tora!. That movie is amazing as hell, realistic sequences, good acting and both sides of the fighters shows the complicated management. By the way, today's the anniversary of pearl harbor's attack. God the rest the souls of all those fallen soldiers who gave their lives to protect it.
Fun fact.
Czech film director Zdeněk Svěrák was traveling to the US in the year 2000 with his script for his movie "The dark blue world" to get some sponsors and the money so he can film it. Americans said they were not interested but stole his script anyway and just simply put the setting to the Pearl Harbor adn added some minor changes. The Pearl Harbor had a premiere few months before the Dark Blue world and was succesfull even though the central romance plot was plagiatorised.
I think Nicholas cage mowing down people from hip fire with infinity bullets in windtalkers was very inaccurate lol
Hahaha, yeah 😂 But that's John Woo's style in the nutshell for you 😉
If you must get key details wrong in a history or war movie, keep them minimal.
Even if they do make minimal mistakes the studio would make them reshoot to their liking by exaggerating the details further or change it entirely
Surprised at the lack of 9th Company on this list. Not only because of how heavily it was criticized for its depiction of that battle, but it stands as a reminder that it's not just Hollywood doing this shit.
Thanks for this informative list
Easily most inaccurate WW2 film:
"Inglorious Bastards" .
I thought for sure you would mention Bridge over the River Kwai and American Sniper
While River Kwai is a classic (and total fiction) it's almost racism to imply the Japanese didn't know how to build a simple bridge.
Napoleon (2023) I like to recommend on this list.
As a Navajo I was eager to watch Windtalkers. Walked out feeling let down.
The ending was bad. Charlie Whitehorse should of got the ceremony honors. Instead Enders (Nic Cage) who Yazzie (Adam Beach) hardly knew.
I feel you, but it's really decent movie after all.
The problem is John Woo (the director), who is an action movie wizard and that subject (II WW, Navajo, over the top action etc.) wasn't handled well enough.
Let's appreciate truly BEAUTIFUL late James Horner music tho ✨
I was always under the impression that the last Samurai was based loosely around Thomas Blake Glover lol.
How did Midway get a dishonorable mention? It's pretty accurate even the things that seem fantasy are real
Yes, most of the movie is accurate.
Was that scene an indictment on Aristotle's...preferences? How could it not be?
Fun facts about Braveheart:
-The Braveheart was actually Sir Robert the Bruce and the story of how he got that nickname is pretty awesome
-Wallace was not some poor commoner, he was actually Scottish nobility
-When the locals asked the filmmakers why they shot the Battle of Stirling Bridge on an open field, the filmmakers said, “The bridge got in the way.” The locals responded, “Aye, the English thought so too”
-The facepaint is a few centuries too late and the kilts are a few centuries too early
The movie is entertaining, but historically accurate it is not.
Thank you for the update, WatchMojo..!! 1:28 Also, it looks like the tanks are M-48 Pattons.
They are! (And the battle took place in heavy snow).
So wait,... Midway (2019) makes the dishonorable mentions list but Midway (1976) does not? I mean, beyond the fact that they blame the Japanese defeat on Rear Admiral Kusaka being incompetent and Nagumo listening to his poor suggestions as well as the Americans spotting the Japanese fleet by sheer dumb luck, the whole movie centers around fictional characters and a shoehorned in story about an American pilot (who did not exist) wanting to marry a Japanese girl (who also did not exist).
I'd like to see what supposedly qualifies as "fantasy" in the 2019 version, as its been proven that many instances people claimed were Hollywood fiction were actually real life events according to those who actually served (namely the bomber that nearly crashed into the Akaki's Bridge, and Bruno Gaido jumping into a gunner position to shoot down a Japanese plane before it could suicide crash into the carrier, along with his subsequent double-promotion by Admiral Halsey).
Also... where the hell is Memphis Belle (1990) on this list? Literally the only thing factual about that movie is the name of the plane itself.
At a panel discussion at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, the surviving Memphis Belle crew clarified that the events did occur to various planes during the war, but not to them.
It was a compilation movie meant to depict what the 8th Air Force went through during the war, not what the crew went through during that final mission.
@@FishKepr Exactly
Fun fact: Battle of the Bulge was so inaccurate, Eisenhower himself came out of retirement just to call it out.
506th E company called out Patton as they didn't think Patton needed to rescue them
I know Braveheart is historically inaccurate but it's still one of my favorite films of all time!
For Pearl Harbor (2001), are you suggesting that it might be historically inaccurate that those two American pilots SINGLEHANDEDLY defeated the ENTIRE Japanese Air Force??? 🤣🤣🤣
Why, why...... you meant it didn't really happen that way.???😮😮😮
Well it's wrong to include Midway on this list. According to a number of WWII historians, it's actually one of the most accurate war movies ever made
I thought that was odd. My husband has a master’s in history, and the only thing he could think of to critique was that a specific type of gun was not in use until later in that same war. Normally, I get a laundry list of inaccuracies after any movie.
Fury was dog water in terms of historical accuracy
Escape to Victory has to be close. We know there was such a football game during World War 2, but that movie took some outlandish liberties with the subject material.
The most historical inaccuracy in Braveheart is Mel Gibson's Scottish accent!!
I liked the movie (Enemy at the gates) although they were right about how they made the uniforms awful, also, the movie Napoleon should be on this
Enemy at the gates was epic. It felt like you were really there & anxiety chilling. Wish the special effects still held up so that my kids could watch it with the same experience, but on rewatch I was like, “yikes, those are some 2001 cgi effects.”
The Woman King should have been on this list, without question. It completely re-invents the actual events surrounding that history to glamorize slavers as noble female defenders. You guys usually do a pretty good job of staying away from bias, but I think you dropped the ball here.
The real Battle of the Bulge took place in DEEP winter with massive amounts of snow and the coldest temperatures in a century, and nobody was armed with M60 Patton tanks, nor were they in Spain at the time
Red Tails is inaccurate about bomber loses in that no bomber was lost due to enemy fighter action. Anti Aircraft Artillery still brought down planes
Pearl Harbor had Ben Affleck's character fighting in The Battle of Britain, Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raiders. First off, American pilots fighting for England had to give up their American military commissions, much like the Flying Tigers did in China, They fought for England until the Americans arrived in 1942, so he couldn't get to Hawaii be December 6, 1941, only tow American planes took off at Pearl Harbor, IRL at least 6 did and Doolittle didn't want anyone from Pearl in the Raiders
Can you share a link regarding where you got your info?
@@BestManager2011 Regarding what?
All of these facts are easily confirmable
Pearl Harbor. I can't find anything about Doolittle refusing pilots from Pearl.
@@BestManager2011 I heard of it on a History channel documentary about it
Doolittle didn't want anyone from Pearl harbor to participate cause he felt that their anger would cloud the reasoning for the mission (I'm paraphrasing here) He wanted the pilots to focus on the mission, not try to just get payback
@@dragonweyr44 Thank you
The Alamo; starring John Wayne as Davy Crockett
Of all these movies, I've only intentionally watched Red Tails and Monuments Men. I even saw Red Tails in theaters. My now-ex-husband is a WW2 buff, I don't remember him complaining about the Red Tails, but maybe he just enjoyed it for the subject matter rather than the realism. I liked Monuments Men for the same reason.
Im not surprised by Braveheart, but I think it's a well-made film, my grandmother was Scottish and a history teacher so yeah she wasn't pleased with the film.
No Saving Private Ryan? Visually stunning but utterly made up and operationally outrageous.
The inclusion of Midway (2019) as a dishonorable mention is largely dishonorable in itself. Midway was, surprisingly, incredibly accurate. While there were some slight changes, the movie represents a nearly perfect representation of the events that led up to, and those performed during the battle. There was very little "fantasy" in the film.
Why is Midway (2019) on here? That was actually pretty accurate, with a little bit of Hollywoodism.
lol, I love the coincidence of this list as Napoleon comes out
But the part in midway when they show John Ford running out and filming the battle, actually happened. Cause there's actual footage
@3:24 The soldiers' personal lives like their relationship has zero bearing to the overall story.
Fun fact the US did board and capture a german uboat and it is in a museum today. But thats about all the accuracies of U571 has. I think the real story is better then that movie.
You forgot the fact that Isabella of France and Wallace never actually met in real life, unlike what "BraveHeart" would have us believe!
Not only that, but the real Isabella was only NINE years old at the time of Wallaces execution. Hardly the mature woman that Wallace has a relationship with and impregnates!
@@jcorbett96202 I was told.
@user-gi8uc7q Well Sophie Marceau was just starting out so....
@@josh72456 She was 2 (There is no accurate date of her birth, but it's believed between April 1295 and January 1296) at the time of the events shown in the movie (the meeting and 'relationship'), but was 9ish when Wallace was finally executed in 1305. She married Edward III in 1308 after passing her 12th birthday.
@@jcorbett9620 Yeah……
oh who cares about historical accuracy when yer enjoying WAR MOVIES! i watched half of these and the stories made me cry! damn the accuracy!
Would it be cheating to include Elizabeth: The Golden Age? After all, for the battle in the English Channel, you know how many ships the English actually lost in that battle? Zero. Not a single one was lost in the entire battle
@#9 Veterans even the first writer of the Battle of the Bulge spoke out against that film. Even Band of Brothers does historical revisionist of the events than does justice to the battle.
Im surprised that Zulu (1964) isnt on here...
My favorite? When Elvis Presley plays a navy seal who sings underwater
The Final Countdown from 1980
A somewhat War movie about an aircraft carrier traveling back in time just before the Pearl Harbor attack.
I did like how 2 modern Tomcats took down 2 Japanese Zero's but the whole movie is just fiction.
Given the producer Midway was pretty accurate, light years ahead of that wankfest Pearl Harbour.
Midway 1976 is far more historically accurate compared to the 2019 version
“The British army wouldn’t let you join cause you were too fat. It’s a true fact, Wikipedia that!” Quentin Tarantino
@corymorimacori1059 Motherfucking money. Michael Bay.
Y'all totally missed The Last Samurai meaning. Jesus Christ 😂
My attitude is that fact tells a better story than fiction, and if people took the time and did their research they would find a lot of great details and stories to work with.
For example- if someone were to make a movie about the British Home Guard, it would not be complete without reference to Croft’s pikes.
Despite a shortage of weapons, Churchill insisted that in the Home Guard "every man must have a weapon of some kind, be it only a mace or pike."
Whoever read this took it very literally, and 250,000 pikes were made by welding old WWI bayonets to hollow tubes.
Many men were disgusted and even insulted by this, but Lord Croft defended the pikes as an effective and silent weapon.
Eventually sten submachine guns became more widespread and the pikes were put to the side… but the episode was not forgotten
*U571* is the definition of *stolen valor*, a complete disgrace. When veterans can't stop laughing or walk out of *The Devil's Brigade & Sands of Iwo Jima* you know it's a stinker.
I will study these movies more closely, it's great
The fact that hurt locker isn’t on here is a fucking travesty
Pearl harbour on the anniversary of pearl harbour….
Many of these movies would have been better, and under less criticism if they had simply dropped the "based on a true story" BS, and simply went for "a work of historical fiction", kind of like how Tarantino did with Inglorious Basterds.
But hold it! The Great Escape was based on a memoir written by one of the men who went through it, and he approved of the film adaptation. For the film, they did consolidate some of the real people into composite characters, but definitely held true to the real story.
MIDWAY is my all time favorite WW 2 movie !!
It’s not a movie but the show Vikings is all over the damn place when it comes to historical accuracy.
Troy should’ve made the list. Entertaining movie. Lots of historical inaccuracies.
Can't believe you didn't put 300 on this list. This is the most inaccurate depiction of a historical event, it's so off the rails it should be a fantasy movie like dungeons and dragons.
It’s a movie based on a graphic novel, a glorified comic book loosely inspired by the Battle of Thermopylae, so it doesn’t really count here.
These movies are good solely for entertainment but not for history lessons
More like crazy history
People in the future will get the impression that due to all war films, America won every war without any help whatsoever.
''Of the 1960s'', nah The Great Escape is a classic war movie of all time, not just the 60s. Also i bet this channel never got upset that Cleopatra or Anne Boleyn were made black in tv or film, but whinge about some things wrong in a war movie. Yeah the factual things wrong in a war movie can be called out indeed, but to totally make up that a real historical figure is now a totally different skin color, is clearly something to get angry about(i bet those changes never get mentioned in biopic lists though).
How about Dog Tags (1987)? Could that count as an inaccurate war film?
@#8 The 1980s film about the Tuskegee Airman from acting and telling the story. FYI that "they never lost a bomber on a mission" is a myth. Other historians can confirm it.
It's always disappointing when Hollyweird messes up historical movies. I've heard many times that 300 wasn't all accurate.
Heartbreak Ridge. It was not the Marines that went in to save the American students. It was the US Army. Still one of the best
Ronald Reagan’s daughter once asked her mother, why did you and dad make that cheesy movie hellcats in the navy? Nancy said, simple dear. We needed the money
Yo Forgot Troy and Fury ;-)
Of course it's historically inaccurate, Nicholas Cage was never there lol
Haha, good point!
Add Bridge Over The River Kwai to this list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
'Hurt Locker' needs to be on this list, and I would say as #1. As a veteran of Iraq, it was horribly inaccurate and I don't know of one fellow veteran who likes it or thinks its inaccurate. I knew I was in for a bad ride in the first couple seconds when they were wearing the wrong camo pattern.
I think there is a reason they use wrong camo I’m not sure why tho
@@TimmyStreams1234 Yeah, because the movie isn't realistic.
Sometimes you just need to put down thr phone and just enjoy the goddamn movie.
Red Tails was a gen z version of the original Tuskegee Airmen film from the 90s. The original was WAY better.
LOL! The whole video is made by one line. "Contrary to the film's title, Tom Cruise was not the final samurai in Japan."
My favorite inaccuracy is the Patriot. The majority of the savagery was committed by Americans to Americans. Patriot successionists against loyalist Torys. The British regular army was horrified
Somebody had to be the villain,
What about ROB ROY?
hacksaw Ridge 👍
Well at least some of them were fun
Inglorious Bastards.
Remember these Are MOVIES not documentary’s so obviously they arent historically accurate they aren’t meant to be they are supposed to entertain us
I don't think that would be cheating
That’s why is called based on a true story
trying to get over Colin's bleached hair in Alexander from the get go was tough, then you add the atrocious fake accent from Jolie and it's a shame how bad that movie was. Try again Hollywierd.
Is it sad that we watched the Patriot in my highschool U.S History class?
How about Gladiator?
I wouldn’t really class that as a war movie.
long island does not have a Mountain
Did nobody understand the point of The Last Samurai? Tom Cruise's character isn't the "last samurai". He's not Samurai at all. Also, he's not the "white savior" or even the hero of the damn story. Ken Watanabe's character is the last samurai. He's the real hero of the story. Cruise is just the catalyst for the story. He's the surrogate of the audience. He's the audience's way into that world. He's not the hero.