Good day all. Over the years i've watched alot of historical movies such as troy, gladiator, the eagle etc. I've always been fusterated how much hollywood can screw up history and make things so inaccurate and often just plain appaling from a historical sense. I've been doing alot of research on my own because i've decided as a hobby to try to write my own movie screen play (which I won't disclose until its done). I've done alot of creative writing as poetry, short storys, and such over my young life (most have long gone missing since they were written in old school books and such). I have even written a few essays (mostly on canadian military history). I have had to learn a whole new world of writing when it comes to screen plays. This is where the world of hollywood has become more clear to me as to why historical movies are as inaccurate as they are. Writing a movie can be very challenging, espcially when trying to write on a historical event. Many epic storys in history can take place over the matter of years of conflict (take the siege of troy for example) but a 2 hour long movie as a script must be shrunk down to about 90-120 pages as a maximum and as I plan out how my story will be laid out trying to include as much as I can to keep it as accurate as possible I find myself having to omit many things, shorten events down, and even play with how exactly everything played out in order to achieve this. When I go back and look at my plan and compare it to my research on the actual events, once its planned out in what would be a movie that would hopefully draw in the viewer and give them the experiance I want, I start to see how it is drastically different in many aspects. With this experiance I have found alot myself alot more accepting of these movies, and am able to even congradulate the writers for being able to take such epic storys and grinding them down to fit a movie format to bring the past back to the modern society. I find its rare to find people in our modern era who loves history as much as the people here do and many do not find it relevent to now at all. Through the movie industry we can bring history back to every day life and tell great storys that history has to tell, that many people choose to iqnore. Even though often the storys may have to be altered to do so.
I am mostly writing this because I want to hear your opinions on how writers alter historical events so they can be produced as a movie. Should they make alterations as they need to get the point of the story told or should they leave it alone as history unless it can be done without making alterations? I am very interested in hearing what the RAT community has to say.
I think movies actually can be so much much more accurate in virtually every aspect than they are and still be an exciting movies for wider audience than they are.And if movie producers thinks opposite i think they are gravely mistaken.But most of them seems not to even try to do any real research on time period their movie is set to.
What gets under my skin with a lot of Hollywood historical films more than anything else is how the studios or directors just change or rewrite history or as in the case of Troy just rewrite Homer's story to give lead more screen time.
Some examples below.
Troy: Achilles actually taking part in the sack of Troy & dying later than in Illiad.
You can't have your leading & most bankable actor dying before climax of movie so rewrite original story to suit producers & studios.
King Arthur: Cerdic & Saxons invading Britain from Scotland.
Maybe producers wanted Hadrian's Wall to be centrepiece of movie but why not make the Picts the villains in a northern setting?
Gladiator: The ending of the movie when Russ dies after dispatching Commodus & the idealistic yearning of a return to a republic by remainder of cast which by 192AD was never going to happen with a succession of emperors succeeding Commodus. In fairness to Ridley Scott maybe the premature death of Oliver Reed made it necessary for extensive rewrites & editing which soured the ending of an otherwise great movie, for me at least.
There are lots of examples of just bad research, budgetary constraints or changes & edits to original scripts to suit targeted age groups by studios so I can understand how hard it is for scriptwriters to keep up with all the demands.
Regards
Michael Kerr
I agree that historic events and people could be portrayed more accurately and still be quite entertaining, more so for those that know the history and or the mythological legends. Regardless if the film feature historical, or legendary heroes, they are all typically larger than life, which is exactly why their deeds have been passed down, when Hollywood "writers" attempt to improve the characters, they only manage to make a mess of things, flesh out the story a bit and some character development is fine, but otherwise tell it like it is.
This will probably be received with a lot of hostility by RAT members, but honestly, when it comes to making movies the point is money. If historical movies were more successful when they are highly accurate and such, then more movies would be highly accurate and such.
There's clearly an audience for those kinds of movies, as evidenced with Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, but at the same time historical movies can be a big risk, as evidenced with flops like Alexander, The Alamo, etc. and film makers aren't going to take such big risks with them and you end up with fewer and fewer historical movies until something like Gladiator shows up and suddenly everybody loves them again. Though honestly, I think Gates of Fire should be turned into a Band of Brothers-style miniseries.
I agree hollywood shouldn't be completely messing around with the historical person and the history on the scale of making it completely false, however writing a screen play for a 2 hour or so movie on say a key part of a characters life such as say Julius Caesars gallic war's/civil war, or an emperors rise to power, in reality covers many many years and to condense it into a movie format is extreamly challenging. The writer is forced to leave things out or condense things. If they don't then it feels very rushed and its nearly impossible to draw in the audiance. You would have to write it as a tv series or mini series such as HBO's Rome however even then that can only go so far. Season 1 despite covering a large gap of time (in what was it 10 episodes?) it was still able to keep you interested and connect with the characters. It was very well down. Season 2 on the other hand skipped through so much it wasn't nearly as good. Then you have to ask why make a movie over a tv show? well TV shows usually have a smaller budget over a big movie, and most historical films can be expencive. Rome was incredably expencive hence why it was cancelled after only 2 seasons. Its abit harder to get a production company to buy into a historical tv show unless your able to find a way to keep costs lower and often that can involve crappier and less accurate costume and backdrops. Modern day sit coms on reality shows are becoming very popular with production companys because they can make alot of money with them and all they need is a few camera's and either a few rooms to film in, or just follow some guys/girls around for the day. At least this is what i'm finding the more I get into screen play writing.
I'm willing to cut "Troy" some slack, because it wasn't intended to be an adaptation of the Iliad. Instead, the idea was that the events as depicted in the movie might, hundreds of years later, have inspired the Iliad and a lot of other poems, many of them now lost. The Iliad was, after all, a fantasy with participation by the gods, semidivine heroes and a ten-year siege in an era when a siege could barely be sustained for a month or two.
I thought that Troy was pretty good too. It wasn't meant to depict the Iliad, but the entire cycle of legends about the Trojan War. Even when they deviated from the texts, I thought that the changes they made worked well in the movie.
As writer - director John Sayles noted:
"If historical accuracy were the thing people went to the movies for, historians would be the vice presidents of studios. Every studio would have two or three historians."
Likewise, producer Darryl F. Zanuck opined:
"There is nothing duller on the screen than being accurate but not dramatic."
These statements are rather ironic when one considers the signature projects from these two filmmakers. Both Sayles and Zanuck went to great lengths to ensure the historical fidelity of their respective films,
Eight Men Out and
The Longest Day.
It is not just ancient films that have a tough time getting funding. Steven Spielberg was advised not to make
Schindler's List, that is would not gross dime one and that his money would be better spent making a large donation to the Shoa Foundation.
Interestingly enough, for all of it's critical accolades,
Gladiator actually lost money. When compared to
Ben Hur, both films cost about the same to make and yet Ben Hur grossed more than double what
Gladiator took in at the box office. (These are US box office numbers.)
Now, George Clooney had optioned the film rights to Gates Of Fire, but the project never made it out of Development Hell. However, now that the History Channel is considering a series about Hannibal, and with the sequel to
300 about to open (
301 Rise Of An Empire) perhaps there will be renewed interest in Gates Of Fire. The idea of doing it as a limited series on HBO (like
Band Of Brothers or
Pacific) is an excellent one. Indeed, I think a similar approach to Alexander, as a series on HBO, would work better than a feature film. Alexander is too great to fit into even a three or four hour film. However, as a 13 or 16 episode series ....
See:
Past Imperfect - History According To The Movies c1995 for quotes by Sales and Zanuck
George Lucas's Blockbusting c2010 for comparison of Ben Hur & Gladiator
http://narukamisthunderbolts.blogspot.co...ators.html
:wink:
Narukami
Quote:Darryl F. Zanuck opined: "There is nothing duller on the screen than being accurate but not dramatic."
Yes, it would depend what sort of 'accuracy' or 'realism' is required. If the intention is to make the Roman soldiers look like Roman soldiers - or what we currently assume Roman soldiers to have looked like! - then there's a chance of progress. Compare the military equipment in
Gladiator to that in
Centurion or
The Eagle. Of course, there are always big steps backward...
But as Narukami suggests, movies are inherently unrealistic - Hollywood movies in particular. They work on drama and action and big bold plots. Everything is exaggerated, nothing is subtle. So 'realism' goes out the window pretty quickly - and that's essentially what film studios, directors and audiences want and expect. A 'realistic' film about Romans would be pretty slow, after all.
Unless you believe that Roman legionaries really did march into battle in grainy blue/grey light, with sweeping crane shots, erupting firebombs and a thunderous Hans Zimmer soundtrack?... ;-)
Quote:Instead, the idea was that the events as depicted in the movie might, hundreds of years later, have inspired the Iliad and a lot of other poems, many of them now lost.
I got that... but if that's the case, then it's strange that the filmmakers clearly did research about arms from the time period, yet wound up mostly using typical ugly brown fantasy gear. Is
Troy set in the real world or not?
I'd like to waste some words on how much I dislike euhemerism to begin with, but that's just personal tastes.
TROY!!!!! I absolutely, fully, completely loathed it! I can understand why the story should be dramatized for the public... I agree that historical costumes and weapons might not be that interesting... I accept that much will be different, but making up a completely different scenario and then fill it up with names taken from Homer is something I cannot excuse...
Because Troy in Greek sounds "tria", like the number "three", we often, among circles with at least some historical awareness, call it "tessera" which is number "four". :evil:
Well my long post got swallowed, which is just as well since I doubt anyone would agree with it. Just as well.
Quote:TROY!!!!! I absolutely, fully, completely loathed it!
Heh. I have that same visceral loathing for
King Arthur. They stripped out everything that was interesting about the Arthur myths and what was left resulted in a slow and tedious movie. Even the battle scenes were boring. On top of that the boofheads claim that the period being depicted was "historically accurate" which is clearly bollocks. The wikipedia article neatly sums up the glaring historical inaccuracies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Arthur_%28film%29
Quote:Well my long post got swallowed
Sometimes that happens. You can type a long post in Notepad and cut and paste. Works when the Dark Side of the Forum coughs in your general direction. :dizzy: