The release of Paul Greengrass’ The Uprising is almost certainly going to spark some capital-D discourse. Is it a Robin Hood movie? Is Andrew Garfield’s Ploughman a real person? What actually happened during the Peasants’ Revolt, and how is it relevant to our current moment? Seriously, is he Robin Hood? And, of course, the eternal question: How true to life is its story of downtrodden workers rising up against a sheltered child king? But before anyone gets into all that, it’s important to acknowledge one key fact: There’s really no such thing as a perfectly historically accurate movie.
No, your favorite World War II epic or Tudor drama doesn’t count. Films are, after all, entertainment. They’re meant to tell a story, to make us care about characters and follow arcs with clear-cut themes and endings. Real life is rarely like that. In the real world, people’s motivations are murkier and more nuanced. Consequences are less clear, when they arrive at all. There are no happy endings, because nothing ever really ends.
But while the truth of history is undoubtedly more complicated than any movie, that hasn’t stopped us from making an endless number of films about significant figures and moments from our past. And though none of them are perfect, many approach their various subject matter with thoughtfulness and respect, aiming to bring the past to life in a way that, for the most part, resembles the truth. Here are eight historical epics that manage to get more of the facts right than most.
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Fans of writer Patrick O’Brian will be quick to tell you that the 2003 film isn’t terribly accurate when it comes to the specifics of the novel it’s meant to be adapting. The Far Side Of The World pulls plot threads from a half dozen novels from the author’s sprawling Aubrey/Maturin series, and shifts the story’s time period from the War Of 1812 to an earlier period of Britain’s frequent naval clashes with France. (Yes, according to director Peter Weir, this is because they needed to make the enemy ship the HMS Surprise faces French instead of American.) There was apparently some worry that U.S. audiences wouldn’t want to see themselves as the enemy.
But while the plot of this film is fictional, its setting certainly isn’t. A remarkably true-to-life depiction of the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, its immersive devotion to historical and material detail is deeply impressive. The ship is a replica of an 18th-century frigate, the costumes are period accurate, and even the casting is spot-on. (Yes, young boys would have been part of crews like this.) And through the subtle recreation of the upstairs/downstairs divide between officers and enlisted men, it offers a fascinating look at what life in such a cramped floating world was like.
Titanic
Yes, we know, obviously there’s nothing historically accurate about Jack and Rose’s desperate upstairs/downstairs class romance. But the fictional world in which their story takes place is more true to life than you might think at first glance.
Director James Cameron, a longtime Titanic obsessive who has visited the wreckage of the ship over 30 times in the years before and since he made the film, makes a real effort to make the details of the infamous ship’s end as accurate as possible. Painstakingly recreated interiors, truthful tragic details (the band playing until the end, the elderly couple who choose to die together) add a human element to the ship’s end. But the specifics of sinking itself are most impressive, as events like the breaking of the ship, the angle of the stern’s rise, and the amount of time it took to actually go under—are all based on historical and underwater evidence.
Apollo 13
Apollo 13 isn’t necessarily a historical epic in the same vein as some of the other titles on this list. After all, its cast is relatively small, and it mostly takes place in a singular, often claustrophobic location. But, historically speaking, its depiction of the tension-filled mission is remarkably true to life. Astronaut Jim Lovell’s book, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage Of Apollo 13, helped inspire Ron Howard’s take on the story, and Lovell himself served as a consultant on the film (after having taken great offense to an earlier movie—Houston, We’ve Got A Problem—that attempted to dramatize their story).
Much attention was paid to the details of the film’s setting. Howard used real NASA blueprints to construct his Mission Control set, and the command and lunar modules were recreated in painstaking, down-to-the-rivet detail. Even Tom Hanks spent some time on NASA’s infamous “Vomit Comet” that’s used to train astronauts for rocket flight. Its most glaring error: It got the famous “Houston, we’ve had a problem” line wrong and popularized a misquote most people still refer to today.
12 Years A Slave
Based on the personal memoir of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped during a trip to Washington, D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery, 12 Years A Slave is visceral, brutal, and unfortunately very accurate. Films dealing with the horrors and suffering of slavery aren’t exactly uncommon in cinema. But what makes Steve McQueen’s film stand out is the deeply personal nature of its story and its unflinching honesty about the physical, sexual, and psychological violence that was the everyday experience of the enslaved. The film depicts cruel slave markets, back-breaking labor, violent whippings, rampant sexual assault, and physical abuse, often using language drawn directly from Northrup’s writings. Is there such a thing as too historically accurate? This film is so difficult to watch in places, you might wonder. But that’s part of what makes it great.
Tora! Tora! Tora!
Widely considered by critics and viewers to be one of the most historically accurate war movies ever made, Tora! Tora! Tora! sets itself apart through its dedication to balance and even-handedness, though you could argue this ultimately makes it less compelling as a piece of entertainment (Roger Ebert famously hated it). But this Japanese-American production, which dramatizes the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor from multiple perspectives, worked overtime to craft an unbiased and occasionally uncomfortably honest portrayal of a pivotal event in World War II.
Filmed in two different countries, helmed by three different directors and featuring a cast of relative unknowns, the film used functional aircraft replicas, recreated full-scale battleship sections, and took much of its dialogue straight from historical records and military history books (like Ladislas Farago‘s The Broken Seal).
A Man For All Seasons
Though this 1966 classic is technically an adaptation of the play of the same name by Robert Bolt and comes with all the biases of its source material, A Man For All Seasons is one of the first films to present the Tudor era in a more realistic light. Hollywood’s Golden Age liked to depict stories set in the medieval or Renaissance period as sumptuous and romantic, full of glamorous lords and ladies, beautiful gowns, and chivalrous deeds. A Man For All Seasons is notable in that it puts a much more visceral (and political) spin on its setting and story.
Drafty corridors, guttering candles, and a more deliberate sense of realism are precursors to our modern-day fascination with “grim and gritty” depictions of the past, and the complex politics around and danger in Sir Thomas More’s refusal to sign King Henry’s loyalty oath are well-presented. Even the film’s costumes serve symbolic functions, from More’s sober black robes to the king’s obnoxiously shiny gold lamé. But while Paul Scofield’s Academy Award-winning performance is excellent, the film’s take on More skews a bit too saintly, softening his own religious zealotry and glossing over his horrific treatment of Protestant reformers. (Maybe that’s to be expected from a film about a man who went on to become a literal saint.)
Gettysburg
With a runtime clocking in at over four hours, Gettysburg certainly takes the time to get its depiction of a defining moment of the Civil War right. Originally intended to be a miniseries, Ronald F. Maxwell’s epic is obsessed with details, filming on sections of the battlefield site at Gettysburg National Military Park and soliciting the help of thousands of Civil War reenactors, who all brought authentic uniforms and gear along with them. The film is based on Michael Shaara’s 1974 historical novel The Killer Angels, and, as a result, only follows a few specific threads within what is obviously a much larger story. But its approach to depicting troop movement and strategic choices was informed by historical records, and its cinematography is excellent. The Battle Of Little Round Top is particularly well done.
The Last Duel
While it’s strange to assert that a Rashomon-style film such as The Last Duel, whose narrative turns on the contradictory memories of its main characters, can technically be considered accurate, director Ridley Scott’s lavish and brutal depiction of the last government-sanctioned trial by combat in medieval France is surprisingly meticulous. Much of that is thanks to Eric Jager, whose 2004 book The Last Duel: A True Story Of Trial By Combat In Medieval France served as a major resource for the film. (Jager himself even offered feedback on its scripts.) His work is incredibly detailed, compiled from existing historical records, court documents, and testimony, all of which the film uses to present three different potential explanations for the events that caused Jean de Carrouges and his former friend, Jacques Le Gris, to meet on a battlefield with the life of Carrouges’ wife hanging in the balance.
Yes, the movie’s decision to repeatedly depict Marguerite’s rape can be hard to stomach. Its third act, which puts her front and center to recount her own version of the truth, is completely fictional. Yet, its determination to include her perspective—and to make her assault something more complicated than a plot device to animate the men around her—is admirable. (Don’t we want all women to be able to tell their stories in a way that they will be believed?) But the movie’s historical details are largely spot-on, from the characters’ dreadful hairstyles and clunky armor to the details of the duel itself.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.