What historical events or people would make a good film?

Please explain why do you want a film about that person or event.

I personally would love to watch a films about any of these:

• The Fall of Constantinople: because seeing the last moments of the final vestiges of the Roman Empire sounds freaking awesome.
• The Byzantine-Sassanian war of 602-628: aside from the name and the fact that it really happened, this war is almost like the basic plot of a fantasy novel. From the byzantine POV, we have the crumbling remnants of an ancient civilization, just about to be destroyed by their equally ancient enemy. And the emperor is an usurper. A man from a faraway province overthrows that tyrant and becomes the emperor himself. He starts turning the tides of war against his enemies. Getting so far as to laying siege to the Sassanian capital. Seen from the Sassanian side, we get the story of a king who was overthrown, recovered the throne with the help of a byzantine emperor, and after that emperor was deposed, declares war on the usurper. And after going mad from trying to win the war he started, eventually gets killed by his own son.
• The travels of Gan Ying: a chinese explorer that traveled through the silk road around 97 CE, and got as far as the Persian gulf.
• On a similar vein, Zheng He and Ibn Battuta's travels were also extremely cool.
• Charles Martel's life: defeated the Ummayad Caliphate at Tours, stopping it's advance into Europe. He also was the power behind the Merovingian throne, and eventually, his grandson would be known as Charlemagne.
• Abd al-Rahman: was a prince of the Ummayad Caliphate. The Abbasids overthrew his family when he was 20 years old. He, along with his brother, his 4 y/o son and a greek slave who was his sword fighting teacher escape. He manages to raise an army and establishes the Emirate of Cordoba in the Iberian Peninsula.

And there's far more stuff that I either forgot right now, or don't know enough about, that could be awesome to watch on either film or TV.

edited 28th Jun '15 4:01:02 PM by IFwanderer

I want to see a film based around the production of Pulgasari. A South Korean director & his wife are kidnapped by the North Korean government and they are forced to make a kaiju film in an attempt to showcase the country's artistic reputation. The premise is tailor-made for a film. Make it a historical comedy or play it straight, I'll go see it regardless.

The Battle of Kursk. Because the only thing better than a tank, is tens of thousands of them.

Bass Reeves. He was essentially the John Shaft of the Wild West.

I second all of those, but particularly Charles Martel. He even has the over-the-top alias of Charles the Hammer, plus you can't get any more high stakes than fighting for the fate of European civilization other than a fullblown armageddon.

But I really would like to see the Scottish Rebellion against the English. It's one of the most ridiculously epic wars of human history. It could work really well as a HBO medieval drama.

You have great, powerful clans going to war (The Bruces and the Comyns). Ambition (Robert the Bruce's desire to become King), machiavellian plots (the Bishop's machinations to make Scotland independant), great battles (Bannockburn), shocking deaths (William Wallace, Andrew de Moray, all of Bruce's brothers, Robert the Bruce assassinating Red Comyn with his bare hands), Badass one-on-one fights in the middle of the battlefield (Robert fought Henry de Bohun in single combat, Black Douglas fought several of his opposing generals in single combat).

The beauty of it is that you could have all the antagonists being members of the Comyn Clan. Black Comyn who had a rivalry with Robert's grandfather, then the Red Comyn who always hated Robert and who (supposedly) betrayed him to Edward the first but was subsequently assassinated by Robert, then the Earl of Buchan, then Robert wipes out the entirety of the Comyn Clan and burns their castles.

But wait, Red Comyn's son was not there at the time and has sworn revenge. In Bannockburn they meet and there he dies.

Also this guy's life is absurd, it should be a film.

I demand movies about Mariya Oktyabrskaya, lady Soviet tank driver, and Galvarino, Mapuche Wolverine with swords for hands.

Didn't the Stewart/Stuart clan/family also play a pivotal role in medieval Scotland? From what I recall, their family origins from Normandy ended up playing the No True Scotsman trope straight, and they ended up assuming control of Scotland around the time the Bruces were weakening against repeated English invasions by the three Edwards, with King David Bruce's capture at the hands of Edward III's forces marking the start of their ascension.

A Game Of Thrones recycled in medieval Britain and Scotland would be far more educational and enlightening that some fantasy world with dragons and ice-zombies.

edited 28th Jun '15 5:40:49 PM by FluffyMcChicken

Danny Glover's Toussaint Louverture biopic, for starters.

The life of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator.

The Battle of Hastings.

Downer Ending of course, with England conquered and enslaved by the Normans, but one hell of a story, with three kings in a year, and poor Harold having to haul ass north to crush a Viking invasion only to haul ass back south immediately to face William at Hastings. Many years ago I read a great novel called "The Last English King", and supposedly there was a movie in Development Hell for a while, but nothing came of it.

100% behind it. Worse part is, Pulgasari is actually a pretty good movie. Besides the Take That! to the North Korean regime, it's a rare as hell example of a period Kaiju movie (one that's not set in the present).

The Halifax Explosion of 1917, the largest man-made explosion in history until the creation of the atomic bomb 30 years later. It has everything Hollywood loves: a wartime setting, explosions, drama, blood, gore, death, survivors, heroism, American citizens as heroes . . . the public would eat it up.

edited 28th Jun '15 11:07:47 PM by denimjo

If I ever make it big as a filmmaker I want to do an "American Historical Horror" trilogy.

The first would be about Madame La Laurie in New Orleans who tortured her slaves in gruesome ways (American Horror Story kind of beat me to the punch here, but who cares).

The second would be about H.H. Holmes, the guy who built a labyrinthian "Murder Hotel" during a World's Fair and killed people and sold the bodies to universities medical departments.

The third would focus on the Donner Party, which is pretty self-explanatory.

edited 28th Jun '15 11:16:05 PM by HisInfernalMajesty

Astrid Lindgren. Honestly, I don't get why there is only one documentary about her life. It is so interesting. It is interesting to see the parallels to her books, but she was also a very unusual woman to begin with.

Two words: Admiral Yi.

Seriously, he is considered an even better admiral than Nelson (even British historians admit that). An admiral with a perfect victory score (23 battles, 23 wins), all while being outnumbered, and with no government support (in fact at one point he was falsely accused of treason and demoted-they replaced him when his replacement lost the next battle and near;y destroyed the whole fleet). There's only one movie about him I've ever seen (the battle right after he was reinstated; he won that despite being outnumbered ten to one).

Some battles/wars: Hunley sinking the Houstanic-first time a sub sank a ship.

Battle of Caen (and Witman's wild ride in particular). This was supposed to be a D-Day mission but ended up taking three months.

Other historical events:

The Chernobyl Disaster

The Japanese genocide on Koreans (and to a lesser extent the Chinese). Makes Those Wacky Nazis look decent.

The serial man-eating big cats of Colonial India (over 1000 people in total; one tigress killed 436). If that isn't freaky I don't know what is.

This Australian mouse plague of 1993. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3RLmErp43k

edited 1st Jul '15 1:31:05 AM by Bk-notburgerking

The man-eating cat movie even has a built in protagonist, Jim Corbett. This is a man who's entire career was spent hunting man-eating tigers and leopards.

Really, a lot of Man-eater cases would make good horror stories, but I think there's only been a handful of film adaptations.

I am curious if there would be a movie about the events that lead up to Franz Ferdinand's Assassination.

That one moment that sparked one of the bloodiest conflicts in History that changed the world.

I think a movie about Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher would be cool he was one the people responsible for Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo.

He also had an interesting military career outside of that one battle.

Exactly. Jim Corbett also cared about predator conservation and so would be a conflicted and interesting character.

Oh, and one more man-eater that has never been identified: the Malawi Terror Beast (possibly a rabid hyena)

edited 1st Jul '15 4:50:23 PM by Bk-notburgerking

Very interesting topic.

RE the OP, not a film, but I've started reading a novel called Savages by K.J. Parker (whose novels and stories have a Byzantine feel to varying degrees), and it seems to be based somewhat on the Byzantine-Sasanian War.

Two things that came to mind for me were subjects of books by Ben Macintyre- one, The Man Who Would Be King is about Josiah Harlan. Interesting character and he weirdly reads like a Good Counterpart to Flashman (Macintyre doesn't mention Fraser but IIRC Harlan appears in one of the novels and is presented unsympathetically).

Also, there's another called Double Cross about Gentleman Thief turned double agent Eddie Chapman.

I read a book about that Pulgasari dude, and I couldn't help but think he made a lot of that up. But it would be a good story.

Let's see...

• Year of the Four Emperors (69 AD), when things got nutty in Rome
• The Battle of Trenton. Actually there was a movie and it has a trope page, but The Crossing was an A&E production pretty obviously shot on a shoestring budget. I'd love to see HBO make a movie about Trenton.
• Just read Dead Wake, seems like the sinking of the Lusitania could make a pretty nifty movie.
• The Chosin Reservoir battle, in which the U.S. Marines, having found themselves surrounded after the Chinese came over the Yalu in huge numbers, turned around and cut their way out, making it to the coast without leaving any men behind.
• The Life of Émile Zola is a pretty good movie but there's probably still room for a film that tells a more accurate version of the Dreyfus Affair that deals with anti-Semitism.

The Battle of Vienna. The climax is a cavalry charge trice the size of the Rohan Charge from Return of the King.

Noam Chomsky.

I'd also love to see a Disney movie about John Lasseter in the same guise as Saving Mr Banks. After reading The Pixar Touch, I think they could make a very compelling film about the creation of Toy Story and the beginning years of the studio.

edited 1st Jul '15 8:45:40 PM by Mattonymy

John Wesley Powell and the exploration of the Grand Canyon.

Lewis and Clark.

Robert Smalls. A black slave in Charleston, South Carolina during the Civil War who stole a Confederate naval ship, sailed it north, turned it over the United States, and gave them detailed information on Charleston Harbour's defenses. He played a major role in convincing the United States government to let black men serve in the armed forces. Later in the war was promoted to captain of the ship he had taken from the Confederacy (the USS Planter) for bravery in combat.

After the war, he bought his former master's house (and allowed the man's elderly widow to continue living there), and was elected successively to South Carolina House of Representatives, the South Carolina Senate, and then the US House of Representatives during Reconstruction. He was the longest-serving African-American member of Congress until the late 20th century.

I'd love to see a movie about Clara Lemlich and the women's labor union struggles in the early 1900's. The Uprising of the 20,000, the speech were she called for thousands of women regardless of homeland or language or creed to stand up and fight, the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire...