45 Facts About "Braveheart" That Will Probably Surprise You
Mel Gibson once said: “If this movie didn’t have some funny bits, it’d be fucking unbearable.”
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1. Nearly all of the movie was filmed in Ireland, apart from a few scenes that featured William Wallace's village, which were filmed in Glen Nevis.
2. After the set was dismantled, the parking lot the filmmakers built remained. Today, it's known as the Braveheart Car Park.
3. "Braveheart" was a nickname given to Robert the Bruce, not William Wallace.
4. Legend has it that King Robert's close friend Sir James Douglas took his heart with him into battle after he died, crying: “Lead on brave heart, I'll follow."
5. Many Scots were offended by the film's portrayal of Robert the Bruce as Wallace's betrayer; he's considered just as much of a national hero as Wallace.
6. In 2009, Mel Gibson told a Daily Mail interviewer: "We kind of shifted the balance a bit because somebody's got to be the good guy and somebody the bad guy, and every story has its own point of view."
7. The Battle of Stirling Bridge sequence was filmed over six weeks on the bridge-free Curragh Plain in County Kildare.
8. When asked why he decided to leave the bridge out of the Battle of Stirling Bridge, Gibson answered that "the bridge got in the way".
9. William Wallace’s famous “Freedom” speech was heavily inspired by King Henry’s “St. Crispin’s Day Speech” from the Shakespeare play Henry V.
10. Oh, and there's no mention, in history or legend, of the Scots "mooning" the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. Sorry.
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11. Gibson defended the mooning scene, saying that the movie needed some comic relief. In 1995, he told the Dallas Observer: "If this movie didn't have some funny bits, it'd be fucking unbearable."
12. American scriptwriter Randall Wallace was inspired to write the film after learning about William Wallace during a holiday in Edinburgh.
13. Braveheart was Wallace's first produced screenplay. Before that, he did odd jobs. He'd been a martial arts instructor, and a singer/songwriter.
14. Wallace opted to do specific historical research after he completed his screenplay rather than before, because he wanted to capture the "drama of the story" first and input historical details later.
15. Most of the horses used in the battle scenes were fake, weighed 200 pounds, and were fuelled by nitrogen cylinders that propelled them at 30 miles per hour.
16. After shooting the scenes, Gibson was investigated by an animal welfare organisation who were convinced that the fake horses used were real.
17. The blue body paint (woad) worn by the Scottish warriors in the film hadn't been used in Scotland since Roman times, around 800 years before the events detailed in the movie. It's a complete anachronism.
18. Gibson wanted the St. Andrew's Cross to be painted on his face, which is a contemporary Scottish flag that hadn't been conceived of in the 1300s. The make up designer persuaded him to go for the now iconic half-face design instead.