King Arthur was a terrible movie from the standpoint of historical accuracy, regardless of whether you think Arthur was an actual historical figure or not. Whoever wrote that movie clearly knew nothing about the actual period he was writing about. One of the most egregious examples is that the writer for some reason thought that the Pope and Bishops controlled the Roman Empire, when it wasn't until centuries later that the Papacy established significant political authority in Europe.
Gladiator was particularly egregious as well. Just about all of the politics and characters in that movie are completely made up. On top of that, the movie has scenes of characters reading printed, color leaflets.
In college, I had a History professor who decided to turn her Early Middle Ages history class into a movie class. So we ended up spending the entire quarter watching movies like Ben Hur, The 300 Spartans (1962 movie), Gladiator, King Arthur, Braveheart, Sparticus, the 13th Warrior and more and then writing essays on their historical accuracy. It was both fun and very painful. Hollywood is very, very bad at historical accuracy. Too bad we didn't have time to fit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail like the professor originally intended. She claimed it was the most historically accurate of the bunch (seeing as how the Monty Python guys are actually historians). I still need to watch that movie.
Gladiator was particularly egregious as well. Just about all of the politics and characters in that movie are completely made up. On top of that, the movie has scenes of characters reading printed, color leaflets.
In college, I had a History professor who decided to turn her Early Middle Ages history class into a movie class. So we ended up spending the entire quarter watching movies like Ben Hur, The 300 Spartans (1962 movie), Gladiator, King Arthur, Braveheart, Sparticus, the 13th Warrior and more and then writing essays on their historical accuracy. It was both fun and very painful. Hollywood is very, very bad at historical accuracy. Too bad we didn't have time to fit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail like the professor originally intended. She claimed it was the most historically accurate of the bunch (seeing as how the Monty Python guys are actually historians). I still need to watch that movie.