If any art form has any sort of effect at all, it's going to have some beneficial and some harmful. There's no way art is utterly objective or that it's completely wholesome.
As for historical accuracy, that's a chimera that refuses to sit still. For some, Braveheart is so bad it's banned from discussion (e.g. on the MEDIEV-L discussion list, which is made up of medieval professionals). In other areas, the inaccuracies are trivial--I may have mentioned before someone who objects to an ahistorical font choice on a movie marquee. In yet another direction, the objection might be to whether some historical figure is presented in a favorable or unfavorable light, and the historians themselves are not of one opinion. Where's the accuracy there?
At still another extreme, if someone claimed historical accuracy and put American Indians in the Third Crusade, probably all would agree that was not correct. But if someone put Assassins in the First Crusade, I bet many in a general audience wouldn't blink and would wonder why that one fellow stood up, screamed insults at the screen and stalked out.
For myself, it wasn't the historical inaccuracies that bothered me about Braveheart. I just thought it was hamhanded story telling. That's the criterion I bring to books or movies. Tell me a good story and tell it well, and I'll forgive a fair amount of historical manhandling.
As for historical accuracy, that's a chimera that refuses to sit still. For some, Braveheart is so bad it's banned from discussion (e.g. on the MEDIEV-L discussion list, which is made up of medieval professionals). In other areas, the inaccuracies are trivial--I may have mentioned before someone who objects to an ahistorical font choice on a movie marquee. In yet another direction, the objection might be to whether some historical figure is presented in a favorable or unfavorable light, and the historians themselves are not of one opinion. Where's the accuracy there?
At still another extreme, if someone claimed historical accuracy and put American Indians in the Third Crusade, probably all would agree that was not correct. But if someone put Assassins in the First Crusade, I bet many in a general audience wouldn't blink and would wonder why that one fellow stood up, screamed insults at the screen and stalked out.
For myself, it wasn't the historical inaccuracies that bothered me about Braveheart. I just thought it was hamhanded story telling. That's the criterion I bring to books or movies. Tell me a good story and tell it well, and I'll forgive a fair amount of historical manhandling.