I remember watching The Hurt Locker (starring Jeremy Renner), the movie is meant to depict the Iraq War in 2004 but for some reason there’s a scene where an iPod Touch (releases in 2007), XBOX 360 (releases in 2005) and Gears of War (releases in 2006) present in the barracks even though these did not exist yet. Another anachronism from this movie is when a American soldier spots an Iraqi recording him ready on uploading the footage via YouTube (the website didn’t exist yet until 2005 when the story is set in 2004).
I know this is not an anachronism, but I’m still angry about Nolan’s Odyssey and how Greek soldiers DROWNED inside the horse during the first two TIDES.
TIDES. In the Mediterranean sea.Most westerns use that same patch of ground in Hollywood that has a vehicular track used by the film truck.
I saw a play about ancient Rome by an up and coming British playwright and one if the scenes had a clock in it.
Nothing is ever colourful in movies set pre-renaissance, everyone looks like a pauper and kings dress in fucking black leather armor…
In reality most people these days would probably be slightly upset by how garish things were back then, everyone LOVED colour! Even the poorest people would probably have access to some shittily dyed red clothing at least, and from there up the social ladder it would just get more riotously colourful until you get to the nobility who dressed like absolute dickheads.
The Witcher 3 is actually a pretty good way to get a basic idea of what the past was like: not accurate to any one period or region (and mostly draws from renaissance-y europe), but if you ignore the fantasy bits it’s generally closer to sensible than not, and certainly vastly better than most modern portrayals…Here’s some at least reasonably representative images in order of increasing social status, not necessarily from the same places but all from roughly “medieval” times:
Bonus:
Now that is macaroni
I love that historians and archeologists basically just decided to retcon ancient statuary to just bare marble because the alternative was so shit.
I would wear the hell out of outfits 2 and 3
not #1? wow you classist smh…
But yeah non-nobility premodern european clothing was fucking sweet, they knew how to dress.
I’m personally a massive fan of viking-style commoner clothing, something about all the wool and usage of single-colour layers really appeals to me, and i think it doesn’t look out of place at all nowadays (at least in the colder months).I would wear #1 but it’s too strongly associated with the stereotypical medieval look. 2 and 3 are just different enough to throw that off a bit. Also yeah 1 is pretty plain, sorry medieval peasants…
I wonder if you can get viking clothing anywhere
You can totally find premade viking clothing for purchase but it’ll generally be expensive and not necessarily any good quality.
The nice thing though about premodern commoner clothing is that it’s generally simple enough that you can make it at home, especially with a sewing machine.
Here are some patterns that seem good: https://medievalmusgrave.blog/viking-clothingI highly recommend making a ruana cloak at least, it’s absolutely trivial to make and very flexible.
All you need is a rectangle of fabric (a blanket works perfectly fine and will be very cozy and hilariously cheap), which you make a cut down the middle of the short side into the middle of the fabric, and then you sew some reinforcement at the end of the cut to prevent it tearing due to strain. If you want to be fancy you can cut out a circle in the middle so it sits a bit more nicely against the neck, and play around with the shape of the outer edges of the cloak.
I find the easiest and most normal-looking way to wear it is to just wrap a belt around the waist, like this:
Then if i need more warmth i can scrunch the fabric up more and basically turn it into a puffy jacket.Woah cool
Something that constantly grinds my gears is (main) characters being anti-slavery while the slave trade is up and running in the historical context. I assure you: most people were pro-slave or didn’t care. Being anti-slavery was an extreme political opinion and wouldn’t be considered small talk.
That reminds me of a war movie I’ve watched, when Josh Hartnett’s character said “I think WWII has just started” during the attack on Pearl Harbor. (That line is historically inaccurate).
In reality, people would just consider it the “war” (referring to the European theater) or “Jap invasion of America” marking the US entry into the conflict (the term WWII was not coined yet until after).
Reminds me of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s dying words: “I’ve been shot! Time for the First World War.”
I would pay good money to see that line uttered in a movie about the incident. Or just have characters constantly state the obvious like the audience had never heard of WW1 before.
"Gentlemen, Germany has invaded France. By God, this could become a multi year war of attrition and thousands could die!”
Make it a musical and I’m in.
Ah, the current trend of ‘second screen’ film making.
My kid’s second grade class did a short version of All Quiet on the Western Front that bizarrely included the line
World War One has begun!
Do they go to Mitchell Brook Primary School?
Is that a fictional school where obviously fictional things happen to make us laugh, like a primary school production of a harrowing WW1 book? What’s the show?
Big Fat Quiz
I need more Big Fat Quiz in my life
It’s the only thing about Christmas I look forward to these days.
Hilarious talking about WWII before the end of the conflict! At the time, WWI was called “the Great War”, surely not “part I” of anything
There’s another anachronism from that movie around 34 minutes in (during the scene where the nurses are on a transport ship heading for the hospital) as the movie is meant to be portraying 1941: you can literally see the USS Arizona memorial in the background as pictured and circled below:
It’s a nitpicky detail that made it on the final cut, since that wasn’t built until 1962 (way after the war!).
I understand that the movie is quite awful, and I haven’t seen it. Is this shot worse in motion, or did they consistently try to hide it with the handrails? If the latter, it’s not really all that bad for on-location shot.
Highly context dependent, I guess, but the South seceded just because Lincoln was elected, even though he explicitly said he wasn’t going to end slavery, so enough people must have been talking about it to spook the slavers.
?
Yeah, in that context it would make sense, I’m mostly talking about media where it’s just dropped in to show the good morals of the character, while having no consequences of meaning outside of that
Like in The Patriot when the British officer confronting Mel Gibson tells him his slaves will be seized, but then we find out he just has a bunch of free blacks who work for him because he’s such a damn nice guy.
This despite him being a wealthy farmer in South Carolina at a time when it was essentially impossible that he wouldn’t have owned slaves.
The character was most heavily inspired by Francis Marion
Yeah, but that’s kind of just how people are. I bitch about stuff all the time, but I don’t do shit about any of it.
The type of person who would go to Kansas or Spain is exceedingly rare.
The way I analogize to abolitionism in the US c. 1800 is to ask how society feels about veganism today. Not as a strict moral equivalence but for the level of ambivalence, mockery, and outright disdain toward freeing a group society broadly considers chattel and with so much overlap in the arguments. “It’s better for them; they’re better-cared-for here.” “Those abusive owners aren’t the majority [somehow].” “My uncle owns an ethical farm.” “The economy depends on it.” “This is the natural order.” “Might makes right.” “Where would they all go if we magically freed them all right now immediately?” Shit, one of the few I see nowadays without a direct analog to back then is “plants feel pain”, which I guess would’ve been about as analogously stupid as “industrial machinery feels pain too!”
This is going to piss some people off; fine, good even, that the point should be reinforced.
That’s my rough equivalence as well!
This is one of the things that makes me fucking adore the Temeraire series: the protagonist has a father who is staunchly abolitionist and yet the protagonist himself doesn’t really think about it at all, until quite a bit later in the series when he starts realizing that slavery isn’t just some theoretical thing in “the colonies”.
Meanwhile the dragon protagonist goes “um, isn’t that absolutely horrifying? am i missing something here??” when he learns about the existence of slavery, and this is absolutely pivotal to a lot of the plot in the later books!
A Knight’s Tale has a lot of very deliberate and very obvious anachronisms in it. But I don’t feel like they detract from the story. It felt a little out of place, but at the same time, it felt more immersive.
That, and Heath Ledger was brilliant and Alan Tudyk was hilarious.
Alan Tudyk is a hilarity MACHINE!
I’m pretty sure the anachronisms in a knights tale are deliberate to give modern audiences more appreciation for the feel of things for the locals of that time period. Great movie. Always forget it’s really long though.
You mean the “we will rock you” part in mideval times while the song hadn’t been written for another thousand years?
Yeah, but then again, they kinda made a point to just be funny and go with it :)
Compare that to most medieval movies with an orchestral soundtrack. Orchestras are full of instruments that only achieved their current form in the last couple hundred years.
One I’m starting to notice become more popular due to the current culture in Hollywood; actors with obvious plastic surgery in historical settings. It’s like a continuous anachronism throughout the movie constantly breaking the fourth wall.
Actors being outrageously attractive via artificial means is, meh, I suppose. What I can’t stand is when they load up with so much botox and had so many surgeries that they lose all capacity for acting. Like, you see an actor in a movie giving it all and communicating emotion effectively, and a year later turn into a statue. Completely unable to emote anything at all, face frozen, facial muscles neurologically dead.
Vanessa Kirby in Fantastic Four was driving me crazy to the point that I could not enjoy the movie. Why the fuck did she do that to her face? And they kept zeroing in on her none moving face. It was like an uncanny valley.
Mel Gibson in The Patriot. Guy wasn’t even born until almost 200 years later.
And in Australia no less!
Fun fact, ol’ Mel was born just outside New York City. His grandparents were born in the the US, Australia, and Ireland (2).
Teeth.
American period films almost always have the main characters with super-white gnashers.
lol you said teeth and I immediately thought of the movie Teeth
But that’s correct.
Tooth decay was fairly rare until sugar became widely available in the 19th century with the invention of the steam powered sugar mill.
There was a little movie about the 18th century baroque composer Vivaldi. From my memory (like 20 years ago) it showed him using a modern violin bow. And the music played was from recordings using modern instruments. My area of expertise is early music so it pissed me off.
Dropping my favorite history/movie youtuber, History Buffs. He does a great job of dissecting movies for historical accuracy in an entertaining way.
Here he is sad (Braveheart):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojBwASARAzo
and here he is happy (Master and Commander):
Braveheart is offensively bad.
Mel Gibson has a peculiar talent.
Racism? it is racism, isn’t it?
Ok, he has many peculiar talents.
He was behind Braveheart and Apocalypto both, two historical howlers. Not sure how The Patriot fares, but I’m sure History Buffs has the receipts.
Edit: Yup.“Knowingly promotes ignorance.”
I could barely withstand the latest Wuthering Heights with Margot Robbie. Usually anachronistic music, sets or wardrobe doesn’t bother me. Most of the times it is tastefully done or are details that are immaterial to the experience. But lord, this version was so over the top that I sometimes felt like I was watching a fashion show and not a movie. I’m still somewhat warm towards Emerald Fennel, but this movie was a let down for me mainly for that one reason. She is also pretty gross and can’t help but to always include disturbing imagery, even if the script is supposed to be a romantic tragedy. Some of the scenes didn’t subtract anything, but definitely added nothing as well. I think this film failed at what Marie Antoinette (2006) succeeded.
I notice wardrobe and the underwear in Dirty Dancing always bothered me, it looked too modern.
