If I think of any specific books I’ll mention them — certainly novels would be something you may want to look at for popular perception (ie. Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes vs. Chrichton’s Eater’s of the Dead). Certainly Victorian ideas about Vikings have undergone a radical re-imagining in recent years, but some fo that is still with us (ie. horned helmets).

If I think of something, I’ll put it here. You can email me through my Contact page as well, if you like.

TV docs do like to take their talking points from popular movies. Reminds me of something else that irritates me, and that’s the History Channel borrowing the look of current, hot movies for their docs. One particularly galling and un-watchable (for me) show of there is Battles BC, which really thinks it’s 300, and is just full of silly, repetitious slo-mo battle scenes of whirling stuntmen fighting with two swords. The hero — Caesar, Ramses, Alexander, Hannibal — *always* wades into battle with a sword in each hand, be it a gladius or khopesh, and busts out some Hollywood moves. I likes the shows better when the montage shots were about a dozen knobby-kneed Romans in left-over cinecitta armor standing in for a legion.

The ‘do-it-yourself” scimitar conversion was pretty priceless.

Doesn’t sound like I should go out of my way to get The Last Legion, then.

Hollywood’s non-admission can really irritate. Even the historicals that change up, like your Braveheart example. So much of the movie and even tv docs that came out around it’s release talked up Wallace as a commoner. I was flat out stunned when I found out he wasn’t. Grrrr.

For me, the hardest part of The 13th Warrior to accept was making a scimitar out of a Viking sword by heating it and pounding it into a curve. Yeah, that’ll do that. (Although in the interest of full disclosure I have to say I liked the film too. What a great depiction of a dungeoncrawl!)

And on the subject of Hollywood and fantasy/historicals – can we get a moratorium on fire arrows? Please?

I like your mention of Hyboria, that’s actually a perfect example of ‘historo-fantasy’ that probably does make a good reference point for many Hollywood films. Of course, one big difference is the Hollywood historicals don’t take that final step of ‘admitting’ they are fantasy fusions.

Great point about historicals being fantasies (and 300 is a better example than even most, since it pretty clearly pushes right out there into it’s own territory), and it actually reminds me of one nuance I didn’t cover. I think one of the reasons I was so disappointed in the costuming for The 13th Warrior and King Arthur (well, I was disappointed in *everything* about King Arthur) is because those movies depend on history to sell their fantasy elements. The 13th Warrior is ostensibly a ‘real history’ retelling of Beowulf, and hence its extraordinary elements should really ‘pop’ in comparison with the rest of it — which is why they should have strove for absolute historical accuracy (even if mail and nasal helms are ‘boring’). King Arthur took the great idea of sticking Arthur back in the historical period that gave birth to him, then threw it away by making that period look every bit as fake as any of those silly Arthur movies where the knights wore cable-knit sweaters as stand-ins for mail.

So, while 300 was about hyper-reality and celebrating the legend of an event, The 13th Warrior was about the real world being rudely disturbed by a legend, which is something the book evokes beautifully– but the movie didn’t get the real world part right enough to make it believable. Outlander does the same thing, really, but still I liked both movies, just wish they’d been a bit better.