Plaid Kilts

I was reading that the movie Braveheart was once voted second "Most Historically Inaccurate Film" by The Times so I read up on it. That accusation seems to be accurate. I mean, just about everything in the film is untrue: alliances, affairs, main plot lines, major details of battles, all completely made up. I guess the movie was based on a 15th century poem that was rife with errors to begin with. To top it off, "Brave Heart" actually referred to Robert The Bruce, not William Wallace.

There were some hilarious put-downs written by history experts ripping on the film...

One historian noted that the belted plaid worn by Wallace and his men was completely wrong, Scots didn't wear plaids or even kilts in that period, and even if they had, the actors were wearing them the wrong way. She said it was like "... a film about Colonial America showing the colonial men wearing 20th century business suits, but with the jackets worn back-to-front instead of the right way around. The events aren't accurate, the dates aren't accurate, the characters aren't accurate, the names aren't accurate, the clothes aren't accurate—in short, just about nothing is accurate."

And even better, another historian quipped "Braveheart could not have been more historically inaccurate even if a Plasticine dog had been inserted in the film and the title changed to William Wallace and Gromit."


P.S. I still think it's a good movie, but I wish movies billed as historical dramas didn't deviate so much from reality. Since movies are the only history lesson most people ever remember, it would be nice if it were more accurate. As Carl Sagan used to say "It's so easy to do...why NOT get it right?"