Watch Ancient History Experts Breakdown Hollywood Movie Scenes In These Videos
Everyone loves a bit of Insider and Vanity Fair. Both of these incredible media outlets have some of the funnest YouTube videos, including series where they invite experts in their fields to discuss film scenes. Here we’ve compiled 4 videos you simply must watch of ancient history experts discussing the inaccuracies found in Hollywood. Each one of them certainly did our community proud!
1.Mariana Castro - Archaeologist
Castro is an archaeology graduate from New York University. In this Insider video, she discusses movies like “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “National Treasure” and “Tomb Raider” to see just how accurate their portrayals of archaeological finds truly are.
Highlights definitely include the mention of Disney’s “Atlantis” which is BY FAR one of the most underrated films to have ever been made.
2.Roel Konijnendijk - Ancient Warfare Expert
Konijnendijk has a doctorate in Ancient History and has lectured at University of Oxford and Edinburgh in the UK. In the video below, he discusses films such as “300”, “Alexander”, “Troy” and “Braveheart” to analyse how realistic their famous battle scenes are.
Gotta love that moment when Konijnendijk pulls out a mini white board to illustrate the use of ditches in war. What an absolute nerd boss.
3.Alexandra Jones - Founder and CEO of Archaeology in the Community
Now moving into Vanity Fair, in this video the publication asked Dr Alexandra Jones to rate films like “The Mummy”, “Prometheus, and “The Pyramid” out of 10 for their portrayal of archaeology. Let’s just say — she did not hold back!
Every single archaeologist has issues with Indiana Jones. Fabulous film for Hollywood, but honestly atrocious for depicting anything that would happen in the real world.
4. Kelly DeVries - Historian
Last but not least, we couldn’t leave out this epic double act of Dr Kelly DeVries and Larry Zanoff fact checking famous Hollywood action scenes. Films include “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, “A Knight’s Tale” and “Gladiator” among many more.
As much as we love “Gladiator” … points were made.
You can check out all the videos on each of the companies YouTube channels. Along with these, there are also many more episodes of experts discussing various topics: from medicine to ballet dancing — they really do have it all!