Emperor Commodus really did fancy himself a gladiator, which gives Ridley Scott firmer historical footing than you might expect. Then Russell Crowe sticks a dagger in him. The emperor actually survived his arena appearances and died in his bath, strangled by a wrestler named Narcissus as part of a palace conspiracy. Imagine being the man who killed Commodus and losing the role to somebody the writers made up. | © DreamWorks Pictures
James Cameron invented Jack and Rose, but he used First Officer William Murdoch’s real name for one of the ugliest moments in Titanic. Murdoch shoots two passengers near a lifeboat, then turns the gun on himself. Accounts of his death conflict. What survivors could attest to was his work getting lifeboats away. His family eventually received an apology from the studio. | © 20th Century Fox
Queen fans who caught the band in Japan that May might have raised an eyebrow at the film’s big Wembley reunion. Freddie Mercury and company had wrapped up The Works tour just two months before Live Aid. Watch the real performance with that in mind and their timing makes perfect sense. Those four men had plenty of recent practice reading each other across a stadium stage. | © 20th Century Fox
Katsumoto’s riders charging into gunfire gives The Last Samurai its most striking image. It also sells a peculiar idea about the Satsuma Rebellion that inspired the film. Saigō Takamori’s rebels fought with rifles and artillery, and samurai had been using firearms for centuries. Ammunition was desperately scarce toward the end. That puts a rather different meaning on a soldier reaching for his sword. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Swedish soprano Jenny Lind earned enough on her American tour to give generously to charity and eventually run the tour herself. Her reward from Hollywood? A scene in which she kisses a married P. T. Barnum in front of the press. Their real business partnership ended amicably, and the man Lind fell for on tour was her pianist, Otto Goldschmidt. She married him. | © 20th Century Fox
Pocahontas was about eleven when she met John Smith, an English colonist in his late twenties. Disney aged her up, gave them a love song and sent a generation home with the wrong John. She later married John Rolfe, a tobacco planter, after English colonists took her captive. That part of her life is considerably harder to square with the farewell kiss Disney put on screen. | © Walt Disney Pictures
“Failure is not an option” sounds so much like something a NASA flight director would say that Gene Kranz eventually put it on the cover of his autobiography. Ed Harris got to say it first. The screenwriters drew on flight controller Jerry Bostick’s recollection of how Mission Control weighed its options and gave the resulting line to Kranz. Nobody delivered it during the rescue. | © Universal Pictures
Paul Bettany makes such good company as Charles, the scruffy roommate who takes a shine to John Nash, that losing him hurts even after you know the twist. Charles was an invention twice over. The real mathematician described hearing voices and finding secret meanings in ordinary events. The filmmakers gave those experiences faces, including a close friend whose entire history with Nash belongs to the screenplay. | © Universal Pictures
Spare a thought for whoever packed the von Trapps’ luggage. The family actually left Austria quite openly, taking their bags and traveling by train to Italy. On screen, Captain von Trapp shoulders a child and leads the family over the mountains toward Switzerland. Follow that route out of the Salzburg area with a map in hand and you’ll find yourself heading into Germany. | © 20th Century Fox
Kevin Costner gets a crowbar and an audience when his character knocks down a segregated bathroom sign. Katherine Johnson’s own account gives the decisive action to Katherine Johnson. She used the white women’s restroom. The film borrowed elements of fellow mathematician Mary Jackson’s experience for those long bathroom trips, then handed an invented supervisor the scene where somebody finally does something about them. | © 20th Century Fox
Of all the liberties to take with Alan Turing, making him keep quiet about espionage is a particularly nasty one. In the film, Soviet agent John Cairncross threatens to expose Turing’s sexuality if he talks. Both men worked at Bletchley Park, in different sections, and there’s no evidence they even met. The blackmail plot saddles Turing with a betrayal the screenwriters dreamed up for him. | © Black Bear Pictures
The fake science-fiction movie was real. So were the cover identities and the six Americans trying to get out of Tehran on a Swissair flight. The cars tearing after their jet belong entirely to Ben Affleck’s thriller. At the actual airport, a mechanical delay supplied the last dose of suspense. Anyone who’s sat at a gate watching the departure time change can appreciate how long that wait must have felt. | © Warner Bros. Pictures
Calling it the Battle of the Pyramids seems to have given Ridley Scott ideas. His French gunners blast chunks out of an Egyptian landmark while the enemy watches debris come tumbling down. The actual fighting took place near the village of Embabeh, miles from Giza. Napoleon could see the pyramids in the distance, which is about as much action as the monuments saw that day. | © Apple Studios
Mel Gibson found room for a cavalry charge, a field of Scottish backsides and a speech people can still recite from memory. The bridge at Stirling was apparently one prop too many. William Wallace and Andrew Moray let part of the English army cross the narrow bridge before attacking, cutting those men off from reinforcements. Take away the crossing and you’ve also taken away the Scots’ smartest move. | © The Ladd Company
American sailors really did capture a German submarine carrying Enigma equipment during World War II. That was U-505. The earlier coup that U-571 borrows from belonged to sailors from HMS Bulldog, who boarded U-110 and recovered its cipher machine months before the United States entered the war. British viewers had to sit through Matthew McConaughey’s entire adventure before the end credits acknowledged the men who did it. | © Universal Pictures
In Gladiator, Commodus dies in the arena at the hands of a wronged Roman general. In real life, a wrestler strangled him in his bath. Fair enough, Ridley Scott wanted his hero to have the last word. Hollywood’s harder to forgive when a film gives the wrong person credit or turns a real human being into a villain. These 15 movies give the history books plenty to argue with.
