Braveheart

This is neither a biopic nor a historical documentary but is, rather, a romantic fiction inspired by true events.

Many of the "real" characters and events have been deliberately reinterpreted to suit the story, as have some details of costume and custom.

Despite this, Both 'Randall Wallace (I)' (qv) (writer) and 'Mel Gibson (I)' (qv) (director and star) consistently touted this film as "history" and "historical fact" when it was released.

Juxtaposition of the young Murron and her sister at Malcolm and John's funeral.

When William Wallace rides into Mornay's bed chamber on the horse and jumps into the water, you can see how the horse floats, it being a fake horse.

Also, the horse falls into the water upside down, which a real horse would not do.

A man is playing the Highland Pipes at William's father's funeral, but they sound like Uillean Pipes.

This was a deliberate artistic decision because "they sounded better".

William's sword after he flees town to meet Murron.

Campbell's arrow wound disappears during Murron's funeral.

In the battle of Stirling a Scot is shot in the foot with an arrow.

He screams and we assume that he has been defeated.

During the next English archer attack the same Scotsman is shot again in the same place and yells the same way as before.

At Murron's funeral, her father's hood is on his head in one shot.

In the next shot, from another angle, his hood is on his shoulder, then on his head again.

At the battle of Stirling, a few seconds before the Scots raise their spears against the attacking cavalry, we see a brief cut where the spears are already raised.

In one of the fight scenes, an English soldier is hit with a club and blood splatters on the camera for a brief moment Just before the Battle of Stirling, when Wallace rides up to intimidate the negotiating English commander, we can see the entire English army lined up behind up.

In the next scene however, when we see just Wallace and the Englishman, the entire English army behind him has disappeared, except for a line of cavalrymen.

This repeats itself.

In the first battle scene, there is no army behind the charging cavalry.

Just after the Battle of Falkirk when Wallace and the Bruce charge towards one another, the eye slots of the Bruce's helmet change shape - from when he is charging Wallace and then when he dismounts.

When Wallace moves toward the structure to avenge the death of Murron a guard points and says, "there".

His lips are not moving when this happens During the battle at York, Hamish's father can be seen briefly at the battering ram.

In the next shot, he's beside Wallace on a hill.

As Wallace approaches the fortress on horseback to avenge the death of his wife the camera shows his hand behind his head underneath his hair grasping the weapon he uses to hit the guard.

As the angle changes his hand appears outside his hair and then underneath again as he pulls the weapon.

During the Battle of Stirling's mooning scene, you can clearly see blood flowing from a soldier's behind before he is hit with the arrow.

MacGregor is shown standing in the background at Murron's funeral, but he doesn't arrive in Wallace's town until the next scene.

When the camera is focused on the crowd during the disemboweling scene, a female extra in the crowd glances at the camera a few times.

During the fight to avenge his wife's death, William throws his sword at an Englishman.

As he falls down, a "Hold-Back-Wire" is seen on the ground behind him.

When the wives, mothers, children are trying to find their dead and wounded men, there is a shot of a girl who is obviously laughing and tries to cover her face with her hand.

Steven's hair when he joins the group.

When Stephen throws his short sword into Faudron's chest, Faudron drops his own sword.

In the next shot, Faudron is seen holding his sword as he drops to the ground next to Wallace.

At the parlay with Wallace, Isabelle is shown wearing two different veils, a sheer tight one with a hemmed edge that covers her chin, and one thicker, looser one with a ragged edge that doesn't cover it.

The body that falls from the rafters is wearing undergarments as it falls, but is naked when it is on the table.

The door to the jail cell where Wallace is held prisoner.

In the final scene, Hamish's battle axe blade can be seen flapping.

At the battle of Stirling it shows Wallace begin the charge using a war hammer, the same one he used to spike the English cavalryman through the helmet with.

The hammers were small and thin with a pick Axe head.

It then cuts to the English overseeing the battle, then cuts back to Wallace charging with no sword in hand, he begins the charge and draws his Claymore.

The movie cuts to another English scene again, and upon returning to Wallace charging into battle he has his sword nearly out.

After another English vantage point he is brandishing the war hammer again and running from a side view.

After one last English view, Wallace's Claymore is out and raised above his ahead as he and his men clash into the opposing army.

During the battle of Stirling, the men fighting behind Wallace's shoulders are clearly not fighting, but are looking at each other for the next move.

The ponytail holder in Murron's hair changes color in a few scenes before she is attacked by the guards.

The leather hiltpiece of Wallace's sword falls off in battle.

It later appears fixed.

In the battle scenes there are obvious wrist watches and running shoes in the background.

When Wallace rides into the courtyard for execution, he is pelted with garbage by the crowd, some of it sticking to his clothes and hair.

After he climbs to the execution platform, he is spotless.

Wallace's black, modern day underpants can be briefly glimpsed during the scene before Murron gets her throat slit.

He jumps up onto the roof of a hut when he is being chased, and they can be clearly seen.

When Murron's throat is cut, a white Ford Transit van can be seen briefly in the distance.

During the last battle, two soldiers just stop fighting and laugh at what is going on.

During the "mercy" scene, an extra briefly glances straight at the camera (bottom left of the screen).

In the battle of Stirling, when the English archers open fire, an arrow is seen to hit a Scot in the hip.

However, there is a very obvious bulge of padding on his hip where the arrow impacts.

In one of the battles, Hamish's father's hand is chopped off by a battle axe.

In later scenes we see him with both hands.

During the battle at Falkirk, a string can be seen attached to the end of the arrow that goes into Morrison.

After Stephen slays Faudron, he pulls his sword out of his chest.

The sound played is metal scraping metal.

The slash Wallace received on his forehead from a sword continually changes throughout the movie.

When the Magistrate is rolling down the hill, not only can you see his blue jeans through the chain mail, but a back brace to protect him as he falls.

During the Battle of Stirling, as Wallace meets up with Mornay (on horse), an English soldier in the background is run through by a spear.

He acts out the injury, turns around, and continues fighting, as if nothing was wrong.

During the torture/execution scene, the day changes from sunny to overcast and back, leading also to alternating casts of shadows.

When William Wallace rides into Mornay's bed chamber on the horse, William's hair goes from combed straight back to parted to one side and back to combed straight back again.

When Longshanks opens the basket and lifts the head clear, he drops it back in the basket with the leather cover off.

After he knocks Edward down he sits at the table and the leather cover is clearly on.

In the dungeon, when the Princess visits William, a camera can be seen in the background by the door to the cell.

During the rock throwing contest, Hamish says he can crush Wallace "like a worm".

When we pan back to Wallace, a man wearing a baseball hat walks into left side of screen.

When the English soldier interrupts the wedding, some sort of box on top of a tripod it visible on the left side, with blue tarp on it.

When the magistrate slit Murron's throat with the knife he wiped it off with the tartan William had given her.

Before he wipes it off though, there is no blood on the knife.

In the battle of Stirling, when the English cavalry charges and runs into the wall of spears, a wire is seen as an Englishman is thrown off his horse.

In the Battle of Stirling, shields behind Wallace can be seen with arrows already in them before the first wave of arrows are shot.

When the rope is put around Wallace's ankles as he is being tortured, we see that there are metal eyelets on the lace-up shoes his shoes he is wearing.

After Wallace makes love to Isabelle he rides off and is then part of a group riding down a long and winding road.

Far off in the distance (at the bottom of the hill) a car or van can be seen moving towards the camera.

The noble behind Robert the Bruce's facial expression, the one with the green and black tartan, is inconsistent When William is beaten and taken captive.

After the battle at Falkirk and after being beaten before he's taken captive, Wallace is obviously bloody and cut all over his face.

When he is cleaned up after each, he only has one wound; the same exact diagonal scratch from his hairline.

When Nicolette is telling Isabelle (the Princess of Wales) about Wallace taking Murron's body to a secret place, Isabelle is sitting leaning forward.

Isabelle then sighs, sits up straight and leans her head against the post that is to her right.

Immediate cut back to Nicolette, and Isabelle is leaning forward again as Nicolette reaches out to hug her.

When the battering ram hits the gate at the York castle the support wood for the gate falls and clearly moves the camera.

When Wallace is about to shoot a deer his arrow is nocked in one direction, the scene cuts away, then shows the arrow nocked 180 degrees out from the previous scene.

In the last few seconds of the film showing the charge against the English, the battle-axe carried by Hamish is clearly seen to wobble, revealing it is rubber.

When the horses are charging right before they jump over a little mound of earth, before they strike the long spikes of the Wallace's soldiers, you can see a car behind the horses after they jump.

I have only seen this on the wide screen version of the movie.

In some scenes you can notice that some characters have tooth fillings.

That is not possible since the action is set to happen around 1300 A.

English in the 13th century was drastically different from modern English.

The characters in the movie, however, speak modern English, which naturally includes a huge amount of vocabulary not used in Wallace's time.

This is clearly an artistic decision, not a mistake.

Think of it as a "translation" of what they were "really" saying.

Near the start of the film, after the funeral, the little girl gives William a flower.

Then, a few seconds later, she gives it to him again.

In the battle scene where Hamish's father has his hand cut off, you can see the folded over and obviously empty sleeve of his garment lying flat underneath the false hand as it is being severed.

The landscape in the opening credits and early scenes is the Western Highlands (specifically Glen Nevis) which look utterly unlike the Western Lowlands where Wallace grew up.

Wallace never visited the Western Highlands.

At the funeral of Wallace's father, the child Murron plucks a thistle, the national flower of Scotland, and gives it to the boy Wallace.

This is both physically impossible (every species of thistle in the British Isles is so prickly and so tough-stemmed that you could only wrench one from its stem wearing protective gloves) and symbolically absurd (the toughness and prickliness of the thistle is its whole point as a symbol of Scottishness).

Wallace and many other Scottish characters ride horses while dressed in kilts.

Even in times and places where the kilt was genuinely worn (it wasn't worn anywhere in Scotland in Wallace's time, and at no time in history was it worn in Wallace's part of Scotland), men who expected to ride anywhere wore trews, not kilts, for the very good reason that it would have been an extremely painful and impractical experience; no underwear was ever worn under the kilt.

Kilts were not invented until the 16th Century, more than 200 years after the events in this film.

The "thistle bloom" that young Murron gave to young William at the funeral was clearly a silk flower - no surprise then that when William produced it many years later to show Murron that it was still bright (and silky shiny) purple and green, rather than dull and crumbly.

In the scene where Murron has her throat slit, William's face is splattered with blood, then at her funeral his face is clean, but in the scene after her funeral his face is again splattered with blood.

During the battle of Stirling, you can clearly see that the stuntman (playing the English negotiating officer) that Wallace beheads after cutting down him from his horse changes in different shots before as he approaches on horseback.

When Princess Isabelle visits William Wallace in the dungeon, she orders the gaoler (jailer) to leave the room, and he pulls the door closed slightly.

This is viewed with an over-the-shoulder angle from Wallace.

The shot then cuts to the Princess, then back to the over-the-shoulder shot, where we see the door is open farther than where the gaoler pulled it closed.

When Steven pulls the sword out of Faudron's chest and exits camera right, if you slow down the action you can clearly see that the sword is cut off almost to the hilt with two male nipples sticking out of the sword that were inserted into obviously two holes in a chest plate on Faudron to appear as though the sword was deeply embedded in his chest.

During the rock throwing contest, Hamish throws the rock past Wallace over his left shoulder, but when the camera angle changes you can see Wallace turn to look at the rock over his right shoulder.

In the scene with the spikes, as William Wallace is shouting hold, the camera cuts to a calvary point of view, and clearly see the spikes are up before Wallace gives the order.

(This happens 2 or 3 times.

) The flowers worn by the brides as well as all other flowers and leaves used for decoration are obviously silk, and many do not look like any wild flowers found in Scotland.

In the village segment immediately following the first dialogue between Robert the Bruce and his father, Mad Stephen can be clearly seen fighting an English soldier behind Hamish.

In a later scene, Stephen is introduced to Wallace and his followers as a complete stranger.

During the execution scene, the executioner, ready to behead Wallace, raises his axe over his head with both hands.

The movie cuts from him.

When the movie cuts back to him, he has the axe raised over his right shoulder rather than over his head.

At the Battle of Stirling, all the way up the point when the calvary charges, the area at the foot of the Scottish soldiers, as well as shots deep into the Scottish army, show no evidence of the large spears.

Just as the calvary is nearly upon the Scottish army, there is suddenly lines and lines of the large spears on the ground.

When we first see Edinburgh, where Robert the Bruce welcomes the council of nobles, a stable boy in a red tunic is standing behind Bruce, Mornay, and Craig.

The scene takes place in 1296.

When Wallace is captured in 1305, we see the same boy in the same tunic, and he hasn't aged.

At the end of the first battle, when William Wallace is standing looking upon the field, the nobleman arrives on his horse to salute Wallace because of their victory.

In the background, an Englishman and a Scot are fighting.

They are obviously doing a repeated sequence where the Englishman pushes his sword across the Scot, a mortal blow, and the Scot just turns around and continues the sequence as if nothing happened.

Just after Wallace realizes Robert the Bruce was fighting with the English, he is lying on the ground with an arrow in his chest.

The piece of shaft gets caught on his hair and it moves around freely showing that it isn't really in his chest, just maybe stuck to his shirt.

In the scene with young Wallace and Hamish hiding on the mountain as the English ride by, when the two stand up and throw rocks at the skulls, young Wallace throws the rocks with his left hand.

Later when Wallace returns to the village and Hamish challenges him to the rock throwing contest, Wallace throws with his right hand.

When The Princess of Wales invites Wallace to talk for truce, her veil on her chin keeps coming off her chin and going back on again between alternative shots.

When Wallace is first pulled up during the hanging scene, the rope going to his safety harness can be seen under the back of his shirt.

As Murron tries to escape on the horse we can see the blood spatter all around her mouth prior to being struck by the staff (and knocked from the horse).

When Wallace confronts the Magistrate, Wallace is looking up the hill at the magistrate.

The next second, Wallace is shown above the Magistrate and Wallace kicks him down the hill.

William Wallace was not a mere commoner.

His family had a minor nobility and he owned his own land.

Wallace had two brothers, only one of which died with his father.

The other fought with William.

Wallace's wife, Marion Braidfute, was not killed shortly after the marriage.

In fact, she bore him two sons.

The Battle of Stirling was actually the Battle of Stirling Bridge (September 11, 1297).

The "spears" were far from a new idea and were not employed there.

However, Wallace did divide the army, trapped the English cavalry on the bridge and the Infantry in the mud on each side.

In their heavy armor, many of the English died by drowning in the mud.

In the final battle scene the axeblades flap as if made of rubber.

Just before the Battle of Falkirk, Edward is talking to Robert Bruce with a helmet on and The Bruce is on Edward's left.

The camera angle changes to Edward's right side and The Bruce is on Edward's right.

This happens two or three times.

Sir William Wallace was already a knight and a minor member of the Scottish nobility (mostly owing to his father, Sir Malcolm Wallace) even before the Battle of Stirling Bridge, which is not depicted in the film.

Wallace and Robert the Bruce never met in real life.

Also, "Braveheart" is a nickname for Robert the Bruce, NOT Wallace.

The film shows King Edward I (the Longshanks) dying just before Wallace was beheaded.

Wallace was executed on August 23, 1305.

King Edward I died on July 7, 1307, while leading another invasion of Scotland.

The film's narrator, Robert the Bruce, describes himself as the 17th person successively named Robert Bruce and the 17th Earl of Bruce.

In reality, Robert the Bruce was the 7th Robert Bruce and the 7th Lord of Annandale.

At the funeral of his wife Murron, William kisses her through the burial mesh, and at that moment we see Murron blink her eye.

In reality most of the Irish fought against Wallace.

Although the closing narration talks about the Scots winning their "freedom" at the Battle of Bannockburn, the peace treaty of 1328 only lasted for a few years before the Battle of Halidon Hill where King Edward III conquered far more of Scotland than his grandfather ever had.

At the Battle of Bannockburn none of the characters seem to have aged a day since Wallace's execution nine years earlier.

Primae noctis has never been used in the entire history of the British Isles.

After Morrison's wedding, the English noble arrives to claim the right of Prima Nocta.

When Morrison attempts to fight, his bride calms him by whispering in his ear.

While whispering, she is clearly saying, "It'll be OK".

The term "OK" was not coined until the mid-19th century.

After William is shot by an arrow at Falkirk, he breaks the arrow, leaving the shaft in his chest.

When he is shown lying back onto the grass, the shaft is gone, but then it returns again in later shots.

Wallace is asked to kiss the royal ensign, during his torture, but this is a rose.

Edward 1 was a Plantagenet king who used the Fleur de Lys as their emblem.

It was not until the Tudors, nearly 200 years later that the rose was used as a royal ensign.

When William Wallace is seen in action during the first fight (Battle of Stirling Bridge) he is seen performing cuts & slashes that is practicably impossible to perform with his very long two-handed sword (called a claymore).

The fruit thrown at Wallace as he is being led to his execution includes tomatoes.

The tomato was not introduced to Europe until the early 16th century, over 200 years after Wallace's death.