"Errors in the film Braveheart" Topic

There are bad guys and there are total nut cases who shoot kids and burn churches which are packed with parisioners. That horrible film did not seem to know the difference. The guys in my Rev War reenactment group who were extras in the film are embarassed. This is better than many sutlers who provided props for the film – some of whom have yet to be paid!
Tanc

"As for the usual complaint about "anti-brit". I guess as an american, and a history buff, I have a different version of your complaint.

Lets see: Michael Caine? The various brits playing "James Bond", I could go on and on."

Rocky,

though not wanting to get into any arguments & upset anyone [it's Hollywood I loathe – certainly _not_ the vast majority of Americans :-) ] James Bond was written as an ex-Royal Navy Officer & therefore British. He has been played by English, Scottish & even Irish [from the Republic, not the North] & Australian actors. There is no real reason why he would be American, unless Hollywood wanted to re-write Ian Fleming.

My point was, however, that Hollywood uses English actors almost universally as the bad guys [except when they screw up & use a Welshman by mistake] and very rarely as the good guys. What sort of uproar would there be if Native Americans or African Americans were used instead?

I'm perfectly happy to accept that we English have on occasion been total gits, but please let other nationalities gits be played by their own people. And please, don't make up spurious incidents purely with the intention of making the English seem even worse than we were/are.

BTW, what exactly did the Roman accent sound like? AFAIK there is no-one alive who has ever heard a Roman speak, so the accent modern Latin-speakers use is wholly conjectural. Almost certainly it wouldn't sound like modern Italian – note the difference between Anglo-Saxon & modern English. In both cases the languages are completely different.

Presumably English accents were used to differentiate them from the American ones used for the Hebrews etc.

Cheers,
Norberto

I love a good rant :-)

Hi

Norb…re Bond. You missed the idea that I was being sarcastic! Of COURSE Bond is a brit! But that is my point.

Of COURSE the brits are bad guys in an american version of the revolution. Bad guys in movies are commonly "over the top" similar to the old melodramas where "snidly" has a long black mustache that he is always twiddling before he ties nell to the rails. (Has anyone ever been murdered this way?)

If you insist that hollywood ONLY has brits as bad guys, then you are in "niagra falls" mode. I mentioned Michael Caine specifically, I could include many british actors who always play "the good guy" and brits who usually play "the smarter more sophisticated" in our movies.

As for what latin sounded like…."who knows" actually there are various principles in a field of study called "linguistics" that studies exactly this. Let me do a simplified version. The longer a language is in use, the more sounds it drops until, like chinese, everything becomes a single syllable with inflections. British english of today sounds nothing like the language spoken by Shakespere. British actors have trouble sounding "american" because the commonly cannot even HEAR the extra sounds in english, let alone get them. Hugh Laurie is an example of a)an hero in an american production, b) a brit who is wonderful with his american accent.

We KNOW that the english of shakespere would have sounded like an Irishman in the Bronx! And we know that Latin under Caeser (pronounced "Kaiseur") would have more sounds than modern "church" latin, and a different set than modern italian. What it would not have had is the clipped tones of patrician Brits.

And that misses the point. The point is that the world conquering Romans, the pinnacle of technology and sophisticaion of the ancient world are ALWAYS portrayed as Patrician Brits. Now, just how is that prejudice "anti-brit". You see "anti-brit" because you are too sensitive, LOOKING for the offense.

Rocky

Rocky,

I think we're both missing each others' points here. Sorry about the Bond ref – maybe an emoticon or two would help duffers like me see the humour!

It's the "we need a really evil bad guy – let's cast an Englishman" attitude, even when he is the only Englishman in an otherwise exclusively American movie. I _know_ Americans are cast as bad guys – I have seen a few American movies in my 45 years. My point is only that Hollywood generally stigmatises the English & Wee Mell is one of the worst culprits.

I do know a little bit about the War of Independence & I do in fact realise that in American eyes the British were the bad guys [even though at the time a very large number wrere loyalists]. In the 20 or so books I've read [by both US & UK authors] no-one mentions locking folks in buildings & burning them. Wee Mel strikes again!

Suggest a suitable accent for Romans, please!

Sit down & make two lists.

Number 1: English actors playing Bad Guys.
Number 2: English actors playing Good Guys.

I'll bet you ALL my wargames related stuff that no 1 is wayyyyy longer than number 2.

Fancy the challenge?

I'm not looking for offense here, there's no need to look & after 9 years as a Sapper [four years active service in Ulster]& 15 as a firefighter I'm certainly not a shrinking violet.

And, it's English, not British Scots & Irish are almost never seen as the Bad Guys in Hollywood & the Welsh [ who dey?] only in error – as in th case of Sir Anthony Hopkins]..

As I said before, I don't want to get into any arguments as I am not into flaming & causing offense needlessly.

Maybe we should just agree to disagree & call it quits.

It _is_ a little bit OT, after all :-)

Norberto

Hi

But you went from "all" to "most".

Sorry, I think you could do a list of american movies with Caine and demolish your idea. Or Alec Guiness. Or On.

I don't think the prejudice you guys insist on is there. Anymore than I thought it was "anti-american" when the villen in a bond movie is an American Gun running wargamer!

As for "the brits never in the revolution burn down a church with people"….and? It wasn't a documentary. None of the brits or the americans or the places were anything but fiction. And, in the day, the brits were accused of worse. Remember the bit about paying the indians to do exactly that crime?

Rocky

Mostly for Steve Flanagan, Regarding WWII and the British/Americans.

If strategic carpet bombing isn't wholesale genocide and the destruction of areas then I don't know what is. We wiped out whole towns you know, quite indescriminitely.

As for the actual armies, we may not have done much raping (but I'd be surprised if none at all occured) but we certainly weren't averse to pillaging the gold and silver from German homes.

And let's not forget that one of the reasons we went to war in the first place was to prevent the subjugation and persecution of the European peoples, yet, at war's end, we allowed all of Eastern Europe to fall into the grip of an oppresive imperial power that was as bad as the Nazi's ever had been. And one of these "lost" countries was Poland itself, for whom we had declared war to protect and liberate in the first place! Yet, in the end, we abandoned it.

We weren't nearly as righteous or as innocent as we like to make beleive. We're hypocrites to look back on WWII standing on our moral high ground.

Hi

Wow, is this changing the topic!

Scutatus…Look, the abandonment to tyrnnany of easter europe was mostly in retrospect. At the time in the UK and the US and every country in Europe, the "world wide communist movement" was seen as a great good and even inevitable. I can remember all those idealists over the years who promoted this. When the evils of Stalin came out, the refused to believe it and only later decided Stalin was an aberration. That NEXT time would be better.

Both Italy and France almost voted themselves into communism.

So, when you have large portions of the west who see the russians as commies AND the good guys, it is difficult to make the case that Poland was abandoned.

Actually, there is a still a sort of disconnect. I don't mean people like Hugo. Rather It comes up when I talk to aquaintances in the community who are, say, Polish. First they start off telling the story of fleeing communism. But, inevitably, they then go into a long description of complaints about the west involving how it doesn't "look out for them the way the commies did". Never making the link that the two go together.

So, a long way of saying I think you overstate your case.

Rocky

Although Churchill could certainly see the communist threat for what it was. Unfortunately he failed to convince Roosevelt.

It wasn't "retrospective" knowledge at all. Are you forgetting that Russia had subjugated the Baltic states before war even started? That it conquered Finland, only after a very stiff resistence? That it was Germany's ally at the beginning of the war? That Russia invaded Poland at the same time as Germany and took half of it for itself as early as 1939? That it went to war against Germany only because the Germans had turned on their allies and invaded them? (and made up for lost time by being particularly enthusiastic with the ethnic cleansing in the East…something the Russians returned in kind)

The British and Americans knew darned well. It's why there was real distrust and suspicion between the allies throughout the entire war. Allies they were, but only because the Russians were forced into it. The British Government never actually considered the USSR and Stalin "friends". They were more a necessary evil. It's why, after Germany's fall, the likes of Churchill and Patton were all for taking on the Russians in '45.

We knew alright. Of Russia's expansionist aims if nothing else. We knew.

Hi

Again, that is in retrospect. There was not and Is not a unanymity of opinion there.

This is like saying we all knew the UK was expansionist. I mean Churchill ordered the invasion of Norway BEFORE the germans moved.

Whatever Winston thought Of stalin personally, you need to look at the books and papers where everyone is meeting, say at Yalta, and looking the BEST OF FRIENDS.

There really was a movement of apologists for Stalin in the day. So, it wasn't as clean as you would have it.

Back on subject. I think, and still think it is silly to attack Mel Gibson for doing movies where the brits were the bad guys. Expecially when the subject of the movie is that the british WERE the bad guys in the point of view of the "patriots".

And I think that if you look at movies shot before and during WW2 by brits, the russians are always portrayed as the good guys, and the nazi's as evil. That is the way of movie making.

Rocky