16 Movies That Actually Get History (Mostly) Right

Glory has an important place in movie history as one of the first major films to portray the Black soldiers that fought for the Union during the Civil War. Although many of the characters in the movie are not based on real people, it still accurately tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry and their courageous actions at the Second Battle of Fort Wagner in 1863. Much of the film is based on the personal letters of the regiment’s commanding officer, Robert Gould Shaw. 

Related: Black Patriots and Loyalists: An Untold Story of the Revolutionary War

Since the main action of Good Night, and Good Luck centers around a story that was captured on television, director George Clooney had a distinct advantage in staying true to history. The film tells the story of when CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow openly challenged Senator Joseph McCarthy and his relentless persecution of suspected Communists in the 1950s. While Murrow and his co-workers are played by actors, McCarthy only appears in the movie in archival footage. 

There have been many movies made about the civil rights movement, but a more recent film that earned praise for its accuracy is Ava DuVernay’s Selma. Historians and film critics applauded DuVernay’s dedication to recreating the events of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches in a way that made their historical significance clear to today's viewers.

Related: Why Do We Celebrate Black History Month?

Based on the New York Times bestselling nonfiction book of the same name, The Big Short gets credit not only for its historical accuracy, but its ability to explain the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the collapse of the US housing bubble to those of us who don’t have backgrounds in economics or finance. Besides changing the names of some of the major players, the film follows the events of the book very closely and tells a story of corporate greed that is equal parts entertaining and shocking. 

Related: 10 Wall Street Books About the High-Stakes World of Finance

Daniel Day-Lewis won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the 16th president in Lincoln. The movie chronicles Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to abolish slavery by having the Thirteenth Amendment passed by Congress in the final months of the Civil War. While the film was criticized for simplifying some elements of anti-slavery advocacy, historians praised Day-Lewis’ portrayal of Lincoln in terms of his characterization and his skill as a politician. 

Years before James Cameron's blockbuster Titanic would take the box office by storm, director Roy Ward Baker (who would later to go on to direct a handful of decidedly less historically accurate horror films for Hammer Studios) had already helmed what many consider to be the definitive cinematic adaptation of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. While A Night to Remember misses a few technical details (such as the ship breaking in half, as it really did), Baker's adaptation of Walter Lord's 1955 book of the same name gives a stunningly accurate depiction of events on board perhaps the most famous doomed ship of all time. 

Related: 7 Books About Disastrous Shipwrecks in History 

Director Steven Spielberg has made so many historical films over the years that you could make a list (and someone likely has) ranking them all by historical accuracy. Few of his films have had as profound an impact as Schindler's List, however, regarded by many as one of the definitive films about the Holocaust, and filmed, in many instances, in the actual locations where the events took place. 

There have been a lot of Watergate comparisons making the news lately, so there's no better time to revisit the definitive film on one of the biggest scandals in American history. Part of what makes All the President's Men stand out on the historical front is that Ben Bradlee, then the executive editor of The Washington Post, collaborated on the film to help ensure that all the details were as accurate as possible. 

Related: The Post Reporters Who Exposed the Truth About the Vietnam War 

Make no mistake, there were plenty of submarine movies around before the release of Das Boot, from more realistic fare like the 1957 war film The Enemy Below to fancifully science-fictional tales like The Atomic Submarine. But no movie before it had ever captured the gritty and claustrophobic reality of waging war inside a pressurized metal tube hundreds of feet beneath the sea. 

Related: 22 Eye-Opening War Movies To Stream Tonight

Recreating a moment in history that was itself already heavily documented can be both a blessing and a curse. Sure, you have lots of resources to draw from, but so do any critics who may want to tear apart the accuracy of your reproduction. Maybe that's why director Ron Howard worked so hard to nail the details of his retelling of the history of the Apollo 13 spacecraft, down to hiring NASA technicians to work as consultants and obtaining permission to film scenes on board a reduced gravity aircraft in order to simulate weightlessness. 

Related: NASA, the "Challenger" Disaster, and How One Phone Call Could Have Saved the Crew 

There have been plenty of movies made about World War II (this isn't even the only one on this list), but the German-language film Downfall earns special accolades for its historically accurate treatment of the final days of Hitler and the Third Reich, adapted from the memoirs of Hitler's personal secretary. 

Related: 22 Essential World War II Books That Examine Every Angle of the Conflict 

An earlier film on this list (All the President's Men) was a major influence on David Fincher's approach to filming Zodiac, and the result is a movie that many people consider Fincher's masterpiece. As with several of the other films on this list, the thing that makes Zodiac's period setting stand out is the attention to detail, as well as a willingness to let the story sprawl, and to accept and embrace the ultimately anticlimactic resolution of our protagonist's personal obsession with the identity of the Zodiac killer.

This 2013 Oscar winner gets a substantial portion of its authenticity by being adapted from an actual slave narrative of the same name written in 1853. As such, it showcases much of the brutal and dehumanizing reality of slavery in the American South at the time. Of course, slavery is a topic that has been tackled on film many, many times, but many historians agree that the detailed and nuanced depictions in 12 Years a Slave really make it stand out.

Related: A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom 

It may not seem like a big chore to get the details right in a film that's set just 14 years before it hit screens, but when you're talking about the 14 years that elapsed between 2001 and 2015, jumping backward a few years can sometimes be harder than painstakingly reconstructing the events of decades or even centuries ago. Rather than the big sweeping stuff (9/11 is a plot point, after all), it's the little touches that make the not-so-distant past of Spotlight stand out, such as the big, clunky computers on the office desks, or an AOL billboard spotted in the background. 

While the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II was already almost 30 years in the past when Tora! Tora! Tora! was released, a joint American-Japanese co-production showcasing a nuanced view of both sides of the controversial bombing seems like a daring move to this day. Yet the result was a film so accurate to the details of the historic event that it is still frequently shown in history classes covering the Second World War.

Related: Day of Infamy: Inside the Destruction of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor 

While modern medieval dramas—and even fantasy shows like Game of Thrones—may take great pains to showcase the dirt, disease, and distress that often accompanied life in the Middle Ages, medieval films from the golden era of Hollywood weren't exactly known for their dedication to historical accuracy. Even The Lion in Winter may be guilty of glamorizing life in the era from time to time, but what it does get right is the complex political situation that it is depicting.