Believe it or not, but in China it's actually illegal for writers to conjure up stories about "time travel" - in TV, film and literature - because it's perceived to be "disrespectful to history." Nevermind that there are thousands of Chinese films that take liberty with historical accuracy in order to tell their stories, the government just can't get behind somebody heading back in time and getting involved with the past. We know what you're thinking: don't China get to enjoy Back to the Future!? We mention that insane law because it's a good way to lead into the subject of historical accuracy in movies. China don't like the idea of fictional characters messing with events that have already happened (something that absolutely no other country anywhere has even considered to be an issue), but we often forget about the liberties that Hollywood takes with historical accuracy. Okay, so we don't expect everything to be totally factual, but the very basics, at least... right? This article isn't looking to delve into petty, purposeful mistakes that filmmakers have made with relation to their historical movies - minor details aren't very interesting to dissect anyway. What we're going to explore here are some particularly famous moments in a bunch of movies that literally could not have happened given what we know or because of the time frame. Movie Moments that were happy to ignore hard historical facts in order to ensure they were included...
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
