Don't get your history from historical movies.

I love "Lincoln" (Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal is phenomenal), but it contains numerous historical inaccuracies, including ignoring the role of free Blacks in the passage of the 13th amendment. In "Patton", it is implied that Patton found out about his command of Third Army from Omar Bradley after D-Day, while in fact Patton knew he would be commanding Third Army several months prior to that. In "Darkest Hour", Churchill rides the underground (the British subway) to sample opinions of average English citizens, an incident of which there is no historical record. "Braveheart" bears very little resemblance to the real exploits of William Wallace. While Mozart did apparently have a rather juvenile sense of humor, he was probably not the cackling character portrayed in "Amadeus". “Cinderella Man” — which tells the story of 1930’s boxer James Braddock — turns Max Baer, Braddock’s opponent, into a villain that Baer never was. Even "Gandhi", an excellent movie which tried to stick to real history, was criticized for presenting a rather rose-colored view of its subject. "Gladiator" is only loosely based on Roman history in the latter half of the 2nd century AD. (Fun fact about "Gladiator": real gladiators endorsed products from the arena, but that was omitted from the movie because it was thought audiences would not believe it.)

All of these movies are very entertaining, but it is important to remember what Steven Spielberg said about "Lincoln". He said the movie should be considered "a dream", which I believe was his way of saying that it presents a general impression of historical characters and events without being strictly historically accurate.

The same could be said of all historical movies. After all, if they stuck strictly to the facts, they would be documentaries and not particularly entertaining. All historical movies bend the truth to appeal to audiences.