[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I haven’t seen IDIOCRACY, but it always seemed to me as if that’s a good setup for SNL sketches, but not necessarily a good plot premise for a feature film. I’ve seen clips of the movie which are indeed quite funny, but unsure whether the movie can sustain that at feature length. I might watch it one day.

Unrelated to IDIOCRACY and as far as historical accuracy is concerned:

While he shepherded All the President’s Men, did anyone tell Robert Redford, “You know what would make this event more interesting? A high speed car chase with some gunplay,” or “What if Carl Bernstein were Carol Bernstein? Then we can have romance and get the ladies in, or even some sex and get the kids in.

Knowing Hollywood, that’s not even unlikely, though fortunately better things prevailed.

I even get the cases where it’s almost necessary to change something to get the main idea across.

I think what bothers me is avoiding even the attempt.

You make some good points and I can understand your argument. On the one hand. On the other hand, I understand that movies are movies and not documentaries, and if I want to learn about history, movies aren’t the best place.

I think it’s great when movies strive for historical accuracy and are still gripping (PATTON is a very good example), on the other hand, movies like GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL or MY DARLING CLEMENTINE portray fairly recent events in history with total disregard for how they actually happened, changing places, character motivations, historic background, etc., yet they are considered classics. (Later movies like Kasdan’s WYATT EARP were far more accurate in their portrayal of the events in Tombstone.)

So yeah, I know BRAVEHEART is not “real” history, it’s basically a medieval knight fantasy, but it’s a sweeping epic tale and I take it as that. But I also think it’s great there are folks out there ready to jump at such films and point out if there are grave historical inaccuracies, so these films are not to be taken at face value.