Have you heard of this movie?

[Standard]

You mean it's not a documentary!?

[sputtyduke]

Imagine if long-shanks, Wallace, and the french princess' ages were accurate? Creepy. It would be a painted pedophile running from a mummy!

[piperdbh]

I think my favorite part of that flick was the scene where a 'piper (with all 3 drones, mind you) is playing something, but it's been overdubbed with Uilleann pipes.
Me least favorite part was the scene with Mel Gibson it it.

[Cassidy]

Let's not be too quick to thrash the movie, guys. In my view, it's the primary reason we US kilties are able to convince most people that the kilt has masculine qualities.

[Jock Scot]

Right then,I can see that I have no need to read a Scots history book ever again.

[beloitpiper]

Me least favorite part was the scene with Mel Gibson it it.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA! Awesome. You win, good sir.

[###KILTEDKIWI###]

ahhh, sarcasm, just at the my level...

have banished this movie to the back of the abyss that is my cupboard

[Larry124]

Imagine if long-shanks, Wallace, and the french princess' ages were accurate? Creepy. It would be a painted pedophile running from a mummy!

I think it was in the book “A World Lit Only by Fire” by William Manchester that I first realized the difference/disconnect with which we view the ages (years on earth) of historical personages.
Apparently much history was made because of what we would today consider immature temper.

And beyond (and off-topic): For instance, what was the median age of the front line soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines in WWII?
Younger than any movie cast IMHO. Notable exception: The B-17 bomber base depicted in the movie "Memphis Belle" has a ground crew that appears to be portrayed (correctly) by teenagers and early twenty-somethings.

[An t-Ileach]

I think it's simply a motivational film. Terrible 'history', but it got a lot of people going. It certainly seems to have jolted many Scots out of their habitual colonial cringe to take some pride in things - like the kilt.

Now we need something similar to do the same for Gaelic.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

The purpose of the movies, at least from a Hollywood perspective, is to make money by entertaining people. Nowhere, in the Hollywood Producers credo, can I find a reference to the necessity of being historically or politically accurate. Hollywood is nothing more than a celluloid sausage factory-- grind 'em out, sell 'm everywhere, and if someone gets heartburn, well it's no big deal. It's not like they died or anything.

So yeah, Braveheart had about as much historical accuracy as a Michael Moore "documentary" has factual accuracy. Unlike Ken Burns (The Civil War), Mel Gibson didn't set out to document Scotland's war for independence, and neither did Braveheart's writer, Randy Wallace. Instead they successfully collaborated (or should that be conspired?) to create an entertaining (which it was) film with enough easy-to-follow action that even the mouth breathing, gum chewing, seventeen year olds in the audience wouldn't start texting one another.

Like the good doctor from Vienna said, "Sometime a cigar is just a cigar." And like Max Schlemming said to me on the back lot at Universal more than forty years ago, "A movie is just a movie kid. Just a movie."