About 77,700 results
Search Results
Top stories
Outlaw King vs Braveheart on Historical Accuracy
Popular Mechanics
2 days ago
Outlaw King: Netflix movie about Robert the Bruce reviewed by a historian
inews.co.uk
8 hours ago
1 day ago
Web results
begin quote from:
2 days ago - 'Outlaw King' vs. 'Braveheart': Which Movie Gets Scotland Right? ... In Outlaw King, Wallace shows up only in name and reputation. The closest ...
Videos
5:17
OUTLAW KING - Movie Review - Scottish Trailer Reaction From ...
Renegade Scot
YouTube - Aug 25, 2018
2:19
OUTLAW KING Trailer NEW (2018) - Chris Pine "Robert The Bruce ...
FilmIsNow Movie Trailers
YouTube - Aug 20, 2018
Web results
'Outlaw King' vs. 'Braveheart': Which Movie Gets Scotland Right?
One medieval epic wins in a Scottish history smackdown over weapons, clothing, costumes, and battle accuracy.
Asking a movie for historical accuracy is an invitation to disappointment, and flicks set during medieval times have especially bad track records. So it was with some trepidation that we sat down to watch Outlaw King, Netflix's recently released prestige drama starring Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce.
You might remember Robert from 1995's Braveheart, and given that these movies cover the Wars of Scottish Independence nearly back-to-back in the early 1300s, with only some years overlapping, it's impossible not to compare them. This is not a discussion of which movie is better (though Braveheart has better pacing and dramatic payoff). Instead, this is a category by category analysis of the essential historic accuracy between the two movies.
Like a duel, whichever film scores the most points wins.
Story
No matter which biopic wins, the loser will be Andrew de Moray, the Scottish freedom fighter that both movies ignore. He was a contemporary of William Wallace and the two were named co-protectors of Scotland.
After some Scottish military gains, the English defeated de Moray and Wallace, and a grueling guerrilla campaign followed. Wallace was captured and executed, and finally Robert the Bruce stop vacillating between sides, backed independence, and rose to become the King of Scotland.
Both films show Bruce’s wavering support for the resistance and his eventual leadership as an essentially self-made monarch. But Braveheart has a larger scope—and makes bigger mistakes.
Netflix's Outlaw King trailer
by Digital Spy GB
Advertisement: 0:05
Mel Gibson's movie muffs essential parts of what is known about the real William Wallace. For example, the fact that he was a lesser noble, not a humble farmer as the film portrays. Wallace also rubs elbows with people in anachronistic ways, including romantic interest Princess Isabella, who was only three when Wallace died. The movie accepts the most romantic motivations for Wallace’s rebellion, doubling down on sketchy information about a woman who was executed for helping him escape the English.
BRAVEHEART HAS A LARGER SCOPE—AND MAKES BIGGER MISTAKES.
Bruce has a more established personal angle, since he definitely had a queen who was held captive until he could garner enough prisoners of war to exchange for her. Likewise, his streamlined story is held up by more historically established tentpoles that the screenplay follows fairly faithfully. That includes the protagonist’s prominent murder of a rival in a church and a series of setbacks before winning on the battlefield.
Bruce plays a prominent role in Braveheart, showing up on battlefields and betraying Wallace in ways the available facts don’t support. In Outlaw King, Wallace shows up only in name and reputation. The closest viewers get to him is a severed limb on a pole. The English did spread Wallace’s remains around Scotland as a warning to other would-be rebels, making the gruesome cameo true to life.
Winner: Outlaw King, despite a contrived battlefield duel between Bruce and the Prince of Wales.
Weapons
ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW
Both movies feature convincingly visceral, graphic depictions of medieval warfare, and so the weapons of the era are on gory display. The basics are there on both sides—bows, axes, spears, and two-handed swords are the tools of choice.
We know a lot about the Scottish gear, since in 1318 (shortly after the years shown in the movies) Bruce decreed what kinds of arms and armor his forces would need to carry. It was broken down by economic status: Those having goods to the value of a cow had to supply their own spear, sword, or a bow with 24 arrows.
Both films have these cornerstone weapons in abundance, but Braveheart puts one blade on center stage, William Wallace’s two-handed sword. The most iconic image from Braveheart includes his impaling the ground with it after a victory.
As can be said of the movie as a whole, the depiction of the sword is more inspired by myth than reality. The movie sword very much looks like the Wallace Sword that is on display at the National Wallace Monument in Stirling. The problem with that is the sword on display was not likely ever used by the famed rebel, or anyone else, in combat.
For starters, it’s obnoxiously huge. To wield it effectively would require someone as tall as six foot seven inches, according to one BBC-curated page on the history of Scotland. “Maybe it doesn't matter if the sword isn't the one used in battle by Wallace,” David Caldwell, National Museum of Scotland, told the BBC. “It's now the main focus of the cult that has developed around his memory. In the popular imagination it's highly appropriate—large, plain, and businesslike for a man of action.”
There is one thing conspicuously absent from the Braveheart sword. The longer a blade, the more its weight becomes a liability. These things were made for bonebreaking hacking and bloody slashing, which are both energy-intensive attacks. Stabbing is best reserved for short swords that can poke holes between a knight's plate metal.
“MAYBE IT DOESN'T MATTER IF THE SWORD ISN'T THE ONE USED IN BATTLE BY WALLACE…IN THE POPULAR IMAGINATION IT'S HIGHLY APPROPRIATE—LARGE, PLAIN, AND BUSINESSLIKE FOR A MAN OF ACTION."
Moving fast and preserving stamina were life-and-death battlefield attributes. To shave weight from swords, nearly every blacksmith designed a groove in the blade called a fuller to make them as much as 25 percent lighter. This was not an expensive option in the 1300s, but a standard feature of military blades. These grooves have nothing to do with blood, despite the feature’s popular nickname, “blood gutters," and they actually made blades structurally stronger as well.
On closer inspection, there are nearly zero fullers on the blades in Braveheart, whereas nearly all the swords of the Outlaw King have them. What’s funny is that Robert the Bruce is widely credited with using a two-handed Claymore sword during some of his famous battles, but in the movie he never touches one. The filmmakers probably wanted to avoid as many comparisons as possible.
Winner: Since the Braveheart sword is so front and center and its depiction is wrong, Outlaw King takes the category. Also, the Netflix movie gets serious props for showing the improbably massive catapult called the War Wolf, which the English did indeed build and field in Scotland.
Clothes and Armor
Braveheart indulges in some visual telegraphing of the fight between ragtag Scots and the mighty English military. The English troops are all wearing the same orange uniform, wielding almost identical gear. This is not how England fought in the 1300s.
ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW
“The majority of the English infantry forces…were made up of ‘mixed’ fighting men, armed and armored in a heterogeneous way,” reports MedievalScotland.com. “A wide range of weapons was employed, including long-hafted axes, swords and bucklers, and short infantry spears.”
Outlaw King does a better job of this, with only a few indulgences to indicate the English from the Scots when the dirt, blood, and horse sweat starts flowing. But it’s not perfect—there certainly are more soldiers wearing expensive sets of chainmail than there would have been in reality. Instead, the more common armor was called jack—thick cloth padding studded with whatever pieces of metal could be sewn into the fabric.
“THE YELLOW WAR SHIRT IS NEVER SHOWN IN ANY FILM OR POPULAR IMAGE AND YET IT IS SOMETHING THAT ALL THE ORIGINAL WRITERS COMMENT ON."
The Scots in the 1300s also looked and fought like the English. One exception was the long, cavalry-defeating spears that appear in both movies. Neither film truly captures the use of the Scots’ schiltron spears—clusters of men would huddle groups, bristling with spear tips in hedgehog fashion. This not only spooked and disabled horses, but forced the cavalry into muddy terrain or manmade obstacles.
Away from the battlefield, both films do a decent but imperfect job dressing nobility and peasants. One thing to keep an eye on are fabric’s colors. Seeing a peasant wearing red is improbable, but the abundance of woad makes blue dyes commonplace even among peasants.
Another common dye color is yellow—one researcher recently said that yellow would have been the preferred color for most Scots on the battlefield as well, using the all-to-common ingredient of horse urine to color clothes. So not only would a tunic, rather than armor, be the most common site on the medieval battlefield, in Scotland many would be bright yellow.
“The yellow war shirt is never shown in any film or popular image and yet it is something that all the original writers comment on,” writes author Fergus Cannan.
Now we must bring up one of Braveheart’s most conspicuous costuming errors—dressing Scots in kilts hundreds of years too soon. This bit of myth-building is a useful way to tie the movie’s events with later independence efforts, but it’s far from the way Scots looked on or off the battlefield.
Winner: Outlaw King really had to screw up to be beaten on this category, and it didn’t. There’s not a single tartan to be seen.
Big Battles
Marquee battles are at the narrative heart of both movies.
Braveheart features the Battle of Stirling, where the Scots used long spears to disable fearsome English cavalry. Outlaw King climaxes with the battle of Loudoun Hill, which the Scots won by using long spears to disable the fearsome English cavalry. Both movies make similar mistakes when they pose this tactic as a surprise—the Scots use of the long spears and hedgehog formations were well-known. It also came with drawbacks, especially to mobility. It’s hard for groups of men in hedgehog groups to move around a battlefield.
GREAT SCOTS!
ADVERTISEMENT - CONTINUE READING BELOW
It was the terrain, not just the spears, that made the big difference in both battles. At Sterling, the Scots positioned themselves on one side of a bridge that funneled and neutralized the overwhelming English forces. The movie shows no such bridge. At Loudoun, a much smaller battle, Bruce built trenches and positioned his troops near a bog that slowed down the English horses and funneled the English into the waiting spearpoints.
Bruce made sure both sides shared his troops’ lack of mobility. (The Scots used horses to get to and around the battlefield but fought dismounted.) Outlaw King does a decent job of showing these tactics, but doesn’t clearly show the funneling effect.
Winner: Despite better cinematography and drama, Outlaw King does a better job of showing the preparation and execution of the actual battle strategy than Braveheart. Humorously, both films ignore and change their representations to avoid the onscreen battles’ similarities to the Battle of Bannockburn, where Robert the Bruce won a bigger, more important victory over the English.
And the winner is…
Outlaw King.
Braveheart has been called one of the least accurate historical movies ever made, a harsh critique when you consider films like 10,000 BC, Pocahontas, JFK, and Pearl Harbor. Even though Braveheart won big at the Oscars, Outlaw King does a better job of picturing Scotland as it actually was in the 1300s.
No comments:
Post a Comment