Search found 3 matches: Mel Gibson

Searched query: mel gibson

by Stewball
Fri Feb 05, 2016 2:11 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Do you downgrade a rating due to historical inaccuracies?
Replies: 26
Views: 7752

Re: Do you downgrade a rating due to historical inaccuracies

thehynes wrote:
Mentaculus wrote:
thehynes wrote:However.....films that are purporting to tell us what happened but fill it with lies and mistruths really get on my nerves. In absence of a decent educational system many people watch this stuff and then as far as they're concerned 'that's what happened'. And it really grates my gears.

So maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd, but very few people I know look at a film and go, geez, I didn't know Mel Gibson from The Patriot and his guerrillas led the USA to Independence. That's amazing! Screw the Continental Congress. Murica! Those Brits were evil, right? --- I don't think people overall are as dumb as they let on. So for the OP, I guess I'm the guy who "is happy to completely separate a film from it's source material and judge it purely on it's artistic merits". To me, getting angry about the real William Wallace vs. Mel is like saying Kubrick should never have messed with The Shining - and both are kind of beside the point.


I see your point but The Patriot is bordering on outrageous. They took a Nazi atrocity in France in 1944 and pretend it happened in America perpetrated by the British and then add the line from the sadistic Englishman "This will be forgotten", which then sows the seed of "hey, maybe this really did happen". Well it didnt and if some former foes of the Americans made a big budget film with completely made up massacres of innocents by sadistic and evil G.I's I'd expect there to be quite a fuss made about it. The only atrocities I know of that come close to what happened in that film were perpetrated by Americans on Native Americans either allied with the British or just trying to go their own way. And the man the sadistic Englishman was based on commanded American Loyalists, something else you'd never see portrayed in a film - imagine the confusion of having men with New Yoik accents, waving the Union Jack and killing fellow Americans.People's brains would explode in the multiplexes.
Oh, one last thing about the Patriot - apparently slavery wasnt really much of a thing in South Carolina and those that were there were very happy with their lot and against the very idea of the British saying they could have their freedom. A truthful depiction would be that many thousands of slaves flocked to the British (most of whom were then treated utterly shamefully) rather than live under the likes of Gibson's character. Taking the whole American War of Independence and British out of the picture, if any film in the modern age tried to portray slavery in 18th century South Carolina in such a manner it would never see the light of day.
It's an aberration of a film, if I was a multi billionaire I'd have a mirror image of it made with the Americans as the bad guys just for the lolz


Yes, The Patriot is a good (or bad) example of rewriting history. In it's semi-defense, the characters are composites, and the Tarlton composite, Tavington, was largely historically vindicated after the film came out. But his shooting a child in cold blood, is cold-blooded fiction, and the burning of the church is modeled after one of several atrocities committed on a French village by NAZI SS troops during WWII. Those two facts alone put The Patriot way over the objectionable trashing of history line. Oh, and Gibson's main character forming his composite, Francis Marion of Disney Swamp Fox fame, was pretty atrocious himself.

So again, yeah, bad example. But I actually think Hollywood is getting better (if we ignore basket cases like Gore and Moore), because the viewers and critics are letting it be known they're turned off by it. Artistic license does not license rewriting major points of history. If in doubt, don't.

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/
by thehynes
Fri Feb 05, 2016 12:47 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Do you downgrade a rating due to historical inaccuracies?
Replies: 26
Views: 7752

Re: Do you downgrade a rating due to historical inaccuracies

Mentaculus wrote:
thehynes wrote:However.....films that are purporting to tell us what happened but fill it with lies and mistruths really get on my nerves. In absence of a decent educational system many people watch this stuff and then as far as they're concerned 'that's what happened'. And it really grates my gears.

So maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd, but very few people I know look at a film and go, geez, I didn't know Mel Gibson from The Patriot and his guerrillas led the USA to Independence. That's amazing! Screw the Continental Congress. Murica! Those Brits were evil, right? --- I don't think people overall are as dumb as they let on. So for the OP, I guess I'm the guy who "is happy to completely separate a film from it's source material and judge it purely on it's artistic merits". To me, getting angry about the real William Wallace vs. Mel is like saying Kubrick should never have messed with The Shining - and both are kind of beside the point.


I see your point but The Patriot is bordering on outrageous. They took a Nazi atrocity in France in 1944 and pretend it happened in America perpetrated by the British and then add the line from the sadistic Englishman "This will be forgotten", which then sows the seed of "hey, maybe this really did happen". Well it didnt and if some former foes of the Americans made a big budget film with completely made up massacres of innocents by sadistic and evil G.I's I'd expect there to be quite a fuss made about it. The only atrocities I know of that come close to what happened in that film were perpetrated by Americans on Native Americans either allied with the British or just trying to go their own way. And the man the sadistic Englishman was based on commanded American Loyalists, something else you'd never see portrayed in a film - imagine the confusion of having men with New Yoik accents, waving the Union Jack and killing fellow Americans.People's brains would explode in the multiplexes.
Oh, one last thing about the Patriot - apparently slavery wasnt really much of a thing in South Carolina and those that were there were very happy with their lot and against the very idea of the British saying they could have their freedom. A truthful depiction would be that many thousands of slaves flocked to the British (most of whom were then treated utterly shamefully) rather than live under the likes of Gibson's character. Taking the whole American War of Independence and British out of the picture, if any film in the modern age tried to portray slavery in 18th century South Carolina in such a manner it would never see the light of day.
It's an aberration of a film, if I was a multi billionaire I'd have a mirror image of it made with the Americans as the bad guys just for the lolz
by Mentaculus
Thu Feb 04, 2016 6:14 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Do you downgrade a rating due to historical inaccuracies?
Replies: 26
Views: 7752

Re: Do you downgrade a rating due to historical inaccuracies

thehynes wrote:However.....films that are purporting to tell us what happened but fill it with lies and mistruths really get on my nerves. In absence of a decent educational system many people watch this stuff and then as far as they're concerned 'that's what happened'. And it really grates my gears.


This is a subject with a lot of layers, and I've thought about it often. The more I think about it, the more I do not think historical inaccuracies make or break a film -- what matters is intent. Personally, I do not give a crap if a film grossly misinterprets or shuns history, only what story it tries to tell, and how well it tells it. To assume otherwise would presuppose film is meant, on some level, to document reality objectively, but there will always be some kind of slant of subjectivity in authorship. (I was just having a fisticuffs with a coworker re: Making a Murderer on this topic...) Film is very much a fantasy no matter how you slice it.

So what does matter is why a film changes something - what deeper message are they sending, if there is one at all. Is the change unconscious, subconscious, or deliberate. And even then, that's more of a subject for socio- or psycho-analysis than for a critic to get angry at. To me it's certainly a Red Flag when a film gets something egregiously wrong, but it's about finding out why and how, not just dismissing the whole effort outright. You can also alert the public to a change to have them make up their own minds.

So maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd, but very few people I know look at a film and go, geez, I didn't know Mel Gibson from The Patriot and his guerrillas led the USA to Independence. That's amazing! Screw the Continental Congress. Murica! Those Brits were evil, right? --- I don't think people overall are as dumb as they let on. So for the OP, I guess I'm the guy who "is happy to completely separate a film from it's source material and judge it purely on it's artistic merits". To me, getting angry about the real William Wallace vs. Mel is like saying Kubrick should never have messed with The Shining - and both are kind of beside the point.