15 Major Historical Inaccuracies That Undermine Famous Movies

15. Darkest Hour's Tube Scene Is Completely Untrue

For the most part, this solid Oscar-Bait historical drama, which focuses on Winston Churchill (a brilliant, Oscar-winning Gary Oldman) during the early months of World War II, takes a low-key and historically accurate approach to things, but there is one scene towards the end which is completely made-up. Director Joe Wright has admitted this and most viewers probably realized this as soon as the scene happened.

Near the end, Churchill gets onto the Tube, hears the views of the general public and finds that they are against peace with Germany. These conversations inspire his legendary "We will never surrender!" speech. The speech itself is a good final scene, but this tube sequence was a major misstep.

This clearly fictional inclusion takes the viewer right out of the film, while this scene also isn't particularly well-written and adds very little. Some bits of artistic license have a justified purpose; for example, in Schindler's List the Auschwitz scene is made up but takes the viewers to the most infamous Holocaust location and shows them some more of the horrors of the Holocaust, so that deviation worked. This, on the other hand, was not a good idea.

It also undermines Winston Churchill himself. He did not piece together his incredible speeches based on random people he met; rather his words came from him alone. This inaccurate representation is disappointing given that Darkest Hour is an often effective representation of Churchill and the rare cultural depiction that bothers to show his darker side.