Mel Gibson
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Picking up where “Braveheart” left off, “ Outlaw King ” tells the story of Robert the Bruce, the Scottish leader who invoked the memory of fallen rebel William Wallace, “Remember the Alamo!” style, on his way to reclaiming Scotland’s independence.
Many know the tale of William Wallace, the Scottish knight who was a prominent leader in the First War of Scottish Independence, as portrayed by Mel Gibson in a wee film called Braveheart.
It's impossible to watch Outlaw King without comparison to the Oscar winning Braveheart, Mel Gibson's biography of William Wallace.
Forgoing blue face paint and 3+ hour running times, it’s certainly no Braveheart 2. You can decide for yourself if that’s a positive or a negative.
David MacKenzie wants to give you blood, battles, brooding and rousing patriotism with the waters muddied just enough to stop things from going full Braveheart.
If you’ve ever watched Braveheart and thought, “What happened after all that?”, have I got a film for you!
The Birth of a Nation (2016)
Directed by Nate Parker
influenced by Braveheart (1995), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Apocalypto (2006)
Themes Visuals
Unlike 12 Years, a movie that made no concession to the audience’s thirst for comeuppance, Birth of a Nation is very much a revenge movie — one that has been compared to Braveheart, even if Turner is never as wild-eyed or ferocious as Mel Gibson’s William Wallace.
But in its depiction of an underdog hero who fights injustice by taking up arms, The Birth Of A Nation also echoes sweeping period dramas such as Braveheart — which, incidentally, also won Best Picture.
Subtlety is dispensed with in the film’s final third, which echoes “Braveheart,” with its hero who gives his all fighting for the freedom of his people.
Vengeance is his, Nat hears from the lord, and The Birth of a Nation becomes a freedom manifesto as bloody as Braveheart, primed to inspire and disturb.
Many have already compared it to Mel Gibson's "Braveheart," which is apt.
Apparently made in tribute to bad 1990s epics, The Birth of a Nation boasts Braveheart battles and a Legends of the Fall score and doesn’t offer a single original visual idea.
If The Wind and the Lion or Robin Hood (MGM's not Costner's) or Spartacus are your kind of films, Braveheart will delight.
On the epic scale of "Gladiator", with more of a nod to "Braveheart", Scott paints a gritty picture of an England when things were rotten.
Robin Hood is the latest in a series of movies to be inspired by Braveheart (a picture I thought was good but, like Gladiator, have never understood the intense reverence for).
English land action recalls "Braveheart" while the French landing at the beach could be in "Saving Private Ryan: the 13th Century Edition."
"Robin Hood" borrows action riffs from "Braveheart," "Gladiator" and the Normandy Beach battle in "Saving Private Ryan," but it's primarily a smart, layered revisionist legend.
The visual style, meanwhile, is a pleasing mixture of ‘ Braveheart ‘ and ‘ Gladiator ‘, a combination that produces the kind of shiny historical epic which could one day become a holiday mainstay.
Sergeant York (1941)
Directed by Howard Hawks
influenced Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Plot Themes Characters
Consider the 1941 movie "Sergeant York," a very similar true story that takes place in World War I. Gary Cooper plays Alvin York, another backwoods CO soldier and sharpshooter, who finds his way into battle after reading the "Render unto Caesar" quote from the New Testament.
You’ll be forgiven during the first hour of Hacksaw Ridge if you wonder whether someone has slipped in a reel from Sergeant York, Howard Hawks’ 1941 war drama about the real-life pacifist sharpshooter Alvin C. York.
"Hacksaw Ridge" continues a tradition of wartime valor mixed with conscience as old as "Sergeant York" -- only here, presented in Technicolor, with a lot more gore.
Hacksaw Ridge has a patriotic valiance and dauntless candor that recall Sergeant York, the 1941 Gary Cooper film.
A devout Catholic with an almost erotic fixation on violence, Mel Gibson was the perfect choice to direct this update on “Sergeant York,” in which Desmond, a gangly young hillbilly beautifully played by Andrew Garfield, grows up in a landscape steeped in bloodshed.
There a problem arises, for Doss refuses to hold a rifle: a stance that not even Gary Cooper, as the devout pacifist of “Sergeant York” (1941), could match.
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Plot Themes Characters
When the film shifts to basic training, the setup isn’t that different from Full Metal Jacket—here, Vince Vaughn plays the bullying, sarcastic sergeant—and soon Doss is running afoul of those around him, arguing that he wants to serve as an Army medic on the front lines.
As in the first half of “Full Metal Jacket,” Doss undergoes harsh hazing by comrades who think he might be a coward and a liability.
His introductory berating of recruits isn't cruel like R. Lee Ermey's in Full Metal Jacket, but comical, practically a standup routine feeling out of place.
Hacksaw Ridge is very much two different movies, kind of the way Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket feels like two separate and unequal films.
The gangly Vaughn channels his best R. Lee Erney, the actor who stunning portrayed the drill instructor in Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”
Gibson, who cast the film primarily with fellow Australians, then closely follows the structure of several classic war films, including From Here to Eternity and Full Metal Jacket, with a middle section that takes Doss through basic training.
And so, this scion of art-house royalty has much to prove in a starring role that borrows heavily from “Gladiator” and pretty much every Mel Gibson movie (but mostly “Braveheart”).
The overall endeavor is sure to feel reminiscent of other contemporary historical epics that are motivated by vengeance, along the lines of Gladiator , Braveheart , or even 300 .
Though lacking a well-realized emotional register, the film achieves an elemental, opulent vibe that splits the difference between Braveheart and Gladiator, or maybe The Revenant and The Lion King .
This film will resonate with cinephiles, bookworms, and history buffs alike because it draws from some of the best cinematic and literature influences: Hamlet , Beowulf , 300, King Arthur , Braveheart , Macbeth , Game of Thrones , Gladiator , and even The Lion King .
But when brutality isn’t the focus, the film vacillates between the atmosphere and storytelling of “Braveheart,” “Spartacus,” Roger Corman’s tatty peplum pictures “Deathstalker” and “Barbarian Queen,” “Krull,” “Sleepy Hollow,” some of the mythological works of Harryhausen, and the very recent David Lowery release “The Green Knight.”
The Northman is a refreshingly R-rated historical adventure like the days of Braveheart and Gladiator.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
influenced Hacksaw Ridge (2016), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Braveheart (1995)
Visuals Themes
Ever since Steven Spielberg’s recreation of the storming of Omaha Beach, the opening of Saving Private Ryan has been held up as the high bar for all war films to follow.
Hacksaw Ridge es la mejor película de guerra desde Saving Private Ryan, y la mejor dirección de Mel Gibson desde Braveheart.
Neither as involved as Saving Private Ryan, nor as haunting as The Thin Red Line, Hacksaw Ridge nonetheless delivers a truly frenetic sense of warfare, at times seeming closer to the clashing armies of the middle ages than the modern combat of the last century.
If the opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan” plunked viewers into the middle of war, “Hacksaw Ridge” does the same, then keeps them there with no hope of being airlifted out.
The second half is set during the Battle of Okinawa, where Doss, who described himself as a "conscientious collaborator" rather than objector, rescued 75 fellow infantrymen injured by the Japanese; it feels like an attempt to one-up the D-Day sequence in " Saving Private Ryan ," and if sheer bloody explosive nastiness were the only measure, you'd have to declare "Hacksaw Ridge" the winner.
Gibson’s big-siege scene is even more grueling than Steven Spielberg’s defining D-Day invasion in Saving Private Ryan, but it’s less artful.
10,000 BC (2008)
Directed by Roland Emmerich
influenced by Apocalypto (2006), Braveheart (1995)
Visuals Dialogue Plot
Emmerich borrows from BRAVEHEART and APOCALYPTO, so such conjecture has a basis in what turns up on screen.
Strait easily is the worst actor ever tasked to give the “Braveheart” morale speech — by now so easy a caveman could do it.
It’s like Apocalypto meets Stargate (the movie, not the TV show) with bits of Jurassic Park and Braveheart thrown in, cuz those were great movies, right?
Stealing cues from “Apocalypto,” “Braveheart,” and his own “Stargate” (not to mention numerous other films), Emmerich has assembled a funky bouillabaisse of derivative material glued together by the CG sequences, which imagine a land populated with grazing mammoths, fierce saber-tooth tigers, and massive ostrich-like creatures that allow Emmerich a chance to rip-off the Velociraptor attack from “Jurassic Park.”
Unfortunately, visual effects and far-out ideas aren’t enough to overcome a film overflowing with banal dialogue spoken in an unconvincing accent (supposedly a mix of Standard English and Arabic), a bland love story that borrows from "Apocalypto" and "Last of the Mohicans," a dully self-doubting hero unwilling to “heed the call” and become a leader in the "Braveheart" mold, not one, but two plot-propelling prophecies short on logic, a thumbs-down worthy supernatural turn, and one too many unanswered questions about the pyramid builders and where they came from.
Regardless of one's critical opinions of individual films, it's hard to deny the balls-out, ultra-visceral, stylistically audacious approaches of "Apocalypto" and "300" injected some fresh excitement into a long-dormant and generally derided genre.
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
influenced The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Themes Music
Although controversy surrounded the 1977 television broadcast of Franco Zeffirelli's miniseries Jesus of Nazareth and even more clamor erupted over Martin Scorsese's 1988 movie The Last Temptation of Christ, they were tempests in a teapot compared to the pre-release raging debates over Mel Gibson's film.
In The Passion of the Christ, he relies far too much on slow motion and on background music that sounds lifted from Peter Gabriel's score for The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), full of mournful woodwinds, rhythmic thumps, moans and wails.
It wants to be the last word on the subject without offering up a theological exploration (as did Martin Scorsese with his dynamic and far superior The Last Temptation of Christ) or a solid dramatic construct.
Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings (1927) and Martin Scorese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) come immediately to mind.
(Ironically, this is the same kind of negative wave that results when Christian groups attack a movie for being anti-Christian - like Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ or the Pythons' The Life of Brian.)
Those days ended with "The Last Temptation of Christ," which infuriated many people in 1988, and "Dogma," which did the same in 1999.
Neither Rich nor director Randall Wallace, who has been best known to me for writing Braveheart 15 years ago, give any apparent shit about depicting actual, legitimate drama, and at times the film earnestly shies away from it - for the first hour, the story keeps promising to explore the toll that Penny's obsession with horse-farming takes on her family, half a country away, but it never comes close: a combination of artistic indifference, and a scattershot narrative structure that blazes through the first three years of its story without any attention paid to chronological markers.
Unfortunately, Wallace, who had previously penned Mel Gibson’s 1995 Oscar-winning, global hit “Braveheart,” believes in spelling out every dramatic conflict and every resolution.
The film, directed by Randall Wallace, screenwriter of “Braveheart” and “Pearl Harbor,” and scripted by Mike Rich (“Finding Forrester’), boasts the triple crown of Diane Lane in a great lead role, Margo Martindale in support and an inspiring thoroughbred.
Director Randall Wallace knows how to make an audience cheer (he wrote "Braveheart" and wrote and directed "We Were Soldiers").
That’s not to say that Wallace (writer of Braveheart and director of We Were Soldiers) doesn’t take some significant liberties with the story, or that he doesn’t make some lousy choices.
Maybe the earlier film about a smallish horse had a bigger heart and better writing than Randall Wallace’s third directorial outing—after “The Man in the Iron Mask” (1998) and “We Were Soldiers” (2002) —but his film does tell a decent story (heck, he did write “Braveheart” ) and provides some fascinating insight into the 1969 coin-toss circumstances that would deliver an unborn foal that would grow into a champion.
Noah (2014)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky
influenced by The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Visuals Themes
While images of damned human flesh tumbling from mountaintops recall DeMille, and a shot following a drop of rain nods towards the "tear of God" from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ , Noah has more in common with the traditions of sci-fi and fantasy than with the Ten Commandments.
If I had to compare "Noah" to any previous Biblical movies, I'd go with Mel Gibson's " The Passion of the Christ " and Martin Scorsese's " The Last Temptation of Christ ," not because the stories are similar (obviously they aren't; Old Testament vs. New) but because, even when you're confused or disgusted or bored, you still feel the director's mad passion radiating from the screen.
Regardless of your feelings about either movie, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” qualifies and so does Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.”
And speaking of odious bigots, Aronofsky’s film also begs comparison with another high-profile Lenten-season release from a decade ago, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
Others have pointed out that The Passion of the Christ and The Nativity Story and The Ten Commandments — films that these protesters have never complained about — also contain things that aren’t in the Bible.
The Passion of the Christ debate might determine whether Noah is worth one's time and money.
From Here to Eternity (1953)
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
influenced Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Plot Characters
Although Andrew Garfield is winning as Doss, oddly these scenes are among Gibson's – and the movie's – weakest, feeling like leftovers from "From Here to Eternity," as the private is bullied and abused.
In the basic-training section, where Doss is abused by his fellow soldiers — lots of echoes of “From Here to Eternity” here — Gibson sets up the mixed-platoon format familiar from countless war movies (there’s the Italian-American, the country boy, the bully, etc.).
Portrayed by Andrew Garfield with an astonishing soulfulness that recalls Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity, Doss was a devout Seventh-day Adventist who declined a religious exemption that would allow him to avoid military service.
The King (2019)
Directed by David Michôd
influenced by Braveheart (1995)
Visuals Themes Plot Dialogue
Speaking as a sucker for nicely staged, extremely medieval sequences of repulsive, scarring, horrible war, The King brought to mind everything from Braveheart to Lord of the Rings — and Game of Thrones , especially in one harrowing, suffocating scene.
Both movies trade in the same sort of muscular, woodsmoke-and-chainmail melodrama, though the more recent one roots its pedigree not in Braveheart -adjacent history but in Shakespeare: specifically Henry IV and V .
That’s where the movie is different from, say, “Braveheart.”
It’s not helped that most of his performance is incredibly one-note, never rising above a gravelly octave until the battle heavy third act (with the customary Braveheart speech – as you do).
In the most glaring instance, Chalamet gets to do a rousing pre-battle speech that will surely warm the hearts of many a Brexiteer–think Viggo in Return of The King or Gibson in Braveheart .
Pero la impronta del cineasta es casi inexistente, efectista en el mejor de los casos, como pasaba con aquella El rey proscrito que aspiraba inútilmente a la épica de Braveheart.
Reportedly, GPB was inspired by films like Braveheart (1995), Gladiator (2000), and The Last of the Mohicans (1992) which are powerful action epics with strong emotional resonance.
The story of the Agojie (also called Amazons by Europeans) and their role during King Ghezo’s reign is akin to the stuff of Braveheart and Lawrence of Arabia : a fight for justice and freedom, unlikely odds of success, and highly choreographed action.
From Spartacus to Braveheart, they employ men both in front of and behind the camera.
Bound to draw comparisons to semi-similar works such as Braveheart and Gladiator , in the end, The Woman King sits capably on a throne of its creation.
Unlike the grisly “Braveheart” showdowns of “The Birth of a Nation,” Lemmons focuses on Tubman’s ability to take action and inspire others to do the same.
Despite some fleeting moving moments from the supporting cast, including Janelle Monae and Clarke Peters, Lemmons’ film suffers from a lack of inspired segues (montages featuring Leslie Odom Jr. as William Still provide easy, arguably awkward moments of catharsis) and underwhelming technical contributions, with two-time Oscar-winning DP John Toll ( Braveheart ; The Thin Red Line ) and composer Terence Blanchard (a regular Spike Lee contributor, Oscar nominated for his BlacKkKlansman score) driving sincerity into the realm of saccharine artifice.
The film is beautifully shot by multi-Oscar winner John Toll (Legends of the Fall, Braveheart), although every gorgeous sunset or sub-dappled field of grass is balanced with a frigid forest at midnight filled with terrified frozen breath or a raging river that Harriet must hurl herself into to escape.
But Harriet would, at least, have felt more at home if it had been released in the Nineties, when Gregory Allen Howard wrote the first version of the film’s script – a time when historical biopics (such as Braveheart ) were expected to be both epic and a little overcooked.
That’s not to diminish the contributions of cinematographer John Toll (“Braveheart”) and composer Terence Blanchard (“BlacKkKlansman”), but it’s important that the lead singular vision come from a rooted place of authenticity.
After seeing the torture porn of The Passion of the Christ, the brief crucifixion sequence here feels like nothing more than a concession – it has to be included within the story, even if it’s oddly one of the least intellectually stimulating events to occur.
From Pierre Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Saint Matthew and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ , to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ , biblical stories have inspired generations of filmmakers across the decades, with each director adding his own aesthetics and sensitivity to a story known by millions across the globe.
We’ve had gory Jesus (Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ), randy Jesus (Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ), even satirical Jesus (Terry Jones’s Life of Brian).
The violence is kept to a minimum and anyone fearing the graphic nature of The Passion of the Christ should rest assured that tenderness is this Mary Magdalene's defining quality.
It's new to the King Arthur legend, but it's likely to remind viewers of "Braveheart" -- except without the emotion.
In the first few scenes of the film, we see the Romans collecting the Sarmatian knights to serve the empire for 15 years and the audience is convinced they're about to see a Braveheart clone.
There were two problems confronting Fuqua: how does one rip off Braveheart and come out the other side with a PG-13 rating, and, harder, how does one give the Arthur legend a happy ending?
Closer in spirit to "Braveheart" than to the gauzily romantic "Camelot," the movie offers an unusual, generally compelling examination of Arthur's origins, set against a harsh backdrop of Roman-controlled Britain in the fifth century.
Antoine Fuqua can be accused of derivative filmmaking with his adventure tome that gives more than a passing nod to such films a Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” and Kenneth Branagh’s “Henry V.” The blue-stained skin of the Woad warriors and Arthur’s St. Crispin’s Day-style speech are lifted from those previous epic stories, although, historically, Fuqua and company may be more accurate in their depictions of the time.
At the heart of this retelling is Arthur's evolution from an idealistic dreamer to practical hero bent on forging a new land that champions freedom above all else, but director Antoine Fuqua's unremarkably competent direction and Hans Zimmer's predictably soaring score never elevate the material above second-rate Braveheart schlock with an already established fairy-tale pedigree.
"Lawrence of Arabia" and "Dances With Wolves" won Oscars for their skilled indulgence of the theme, so it comes as no surprise that "The Last Samurai" should borrow liberally from both, adding finishing touches culled from the likes of Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" and the classic television miniseries "Shogun."
To one degree or another, he has borrowed from his own Glory, Mel Gibson's Braveheart , and the TV mini-series based on James Clavell's Shogun.
So if The Missing is Hitchcock in spurs and Master and Commander is Moby Dick with Russell Crowe pursuing a French warship instead of a whale, then The Last Samurai is Braveheart with kimonos instead of kilts.
Filmed on an epic scale, if The Last Samurai looks like Braveheart, small wonder again as cinematographer John Toll shot both films.
Nabbing Academy Awards for "Legends of the Fall" and "Braveheart," Toll's cinematic brilliance can also be seen in "The Thin Red Line," a wonderfully sweeping epic replete with beautiful landscapes ravaged by war.
"The Last Samurai" is spectacularly filmed by John Toll, who won Academy Awards for both "Legends of the Fall" and "Braveheart."
The Nativity Story (2006)
Directed by Catherine Hardwicke
influenced by The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Themes
Like any film, "Nativity" takes certain liberties, but it contains nothing that could make it as controversial as "The Passion of the Christ" or the earlier "Last Temptation of Christ."
Although one probably shouldn’t go into a film like “The Nativity Story” looking for some radical narrative approach, I kept waiting for it to demonstrate some reason as to why it was made in the first place, other than the fact that “The Passion of the Christ” demonstrated that a contemporary religious film could have a potentially strong commercial upside (especially with the absence of the relentless gore that marked “Passion”).
I thought "The Passion of The Christ" set a high bar for religious films and I wondered if this film could match it.
To the casual observer, it is without the distracting speculative filter imposed on "The Passion of the Christ," but, to be fair, "The Nativity Story" does tell the more upbeat narrative.
Unlike Mel Gibson’s 2006 indigenous drama Apocalypto, which was set during the collapse of the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica, Dead Lands avoids historical inaccuracy by unfolding in some distant, pre-colonial time.
Toa Fraser's Maori thriller The Dead Lands is a solid entry in the loose subgenre we might call the "ethnographic action film" — earlier examples of which include Mel Gibson's Apocalypto or Zacarias Kunuk's Atanarjuat; The Fast Runner or Kevin Reynolds's Rapa Nui.
Although Fraser has previously explored 19th century Māori conflict as co-writer of Vincent Ward’s River Queen (2005), The Dead Lands, in a similar vein to Mel Gibson’s Mayan adventure Apocalypto (2006), is filmed entirely in the Māori language, intending to underpin an air of pre-colonial authenticity and purity to the filmmaking process amidst the hyper-masculinity and kinetic energy of the primeval, action-adventure genre.
Set in the distant past, and performed entirely in Maori, The Dead Lands plays like an Antipodean Apocalypto – all fleeing figures lost in gorgeous landscapes.
It’s reasonable to assume that Fraser and screenwriter Glenn Standring paid attention to Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” – one of the weirdest works in movie history, made by one of the weirdest people in movie history.
Like a Kiwi cousin to Mel Gibson's historical indigenous spectacle Apocalypto, director Toa Fraser's feral action epic drops viewers into the warring rivalries of Maori tribes (subtitled for your pleasure) in some indiscriminate, pre-colonial New Zealand.