DIRECTED BY: Mel Gibson
WRITTEN BY: Randall Wallace
MEL GIBSON AS: William Wallace
GENRE: Action, Drama, Historical Epic
TAGLINES:
- The courage to face fear.
- What kind of man would defy a king?
- Every man dies, not every man really lives.
- His passion captivated a woman. His courage inspired a nation. His heart defied a king.
- He who fought, fought for freedom.
PLOT SUMMARY:
“One of the most spectacular entertainments in years.” Mel Gibson stars on both sides of the camera, playing the lead role plus directing and producing this brawling, richly detailed saga of fierce combat, tender love and the will to risk all that’s precious for something more precious: freedom. In an emotionally charged performance, Gibson is William Wallace, a bold Scotsman who used the steel of his blade and the fire of his intellect to rally his countrymen to liberation. Filled with sword-clanging spectacle, Braveheart is a tumultuous tapestry of history come alive, “the most sumptuous and involving historical epic since Lawrence of Arabia”. –Paramount
RELEASE DATES:
1995 May 19 (United State – Los Angeles Premiere)
1995 May 24 (United States)
1995 June 1 (Australia)
1995 June 17 (South Korea)
1995 July 19 (Philippines)
1995 August 10 (Argentina)
1995 August 11 (Denmark)
1995 August 31 (Czech Republic)
1995 September 1 (Finland, Sweden)
1995 September 7 (Netherlands)
1995 September 8 (Poland, United Kingdom)
1995 September 22 (Turkey)
1995 September 29 (Spain)
1995 October 4 (France)
1995 October 5 (Germany)
1995 October 14 (Japan)
1995 October 26 (Hungary)
1995 December 15 (Portugal)
BOX OFFICE GROSS:
United States: $75,609,945
International: $134,800,000
FILMING LOCATIONS:
Glen Nevis, Scotland and Ireland.
TRIVIA:
- Several of the major battle scenes had to be re-shot, as extras were seen wearing sunglasses and wristwatches.
- Director/producer Mel Gibson was investigated by the RSPCA, who were convinced that the fake horses used were real. Only when one of his assistants provided some videotaped footage of the location shooting were they convinced otherwise.
- The castle (King John’s castle, Trim, Co. Meath, Ireland) where a lot of the scenes were shot, was also used to film scenes for The Big Red One (1980).
- When asked by a local why the Battle of Stirling Bridge was filmed on an open plain, Gibson answered that “the bridge got in the way”. “Aye,” the local answered. “That’s what the English found.”
- The extras used for the battle scenes were mostly members of the F.C.A., the Irish version of the territorial army. As they were drawn from many different army companies, and the members of these are usually drawn from the same locality, local rivalry between such companies is common. Apparently, some of the battle scenes seen in the movie are far more realistic than you might imagine, with rival companies actually using the occasion to try the beat the lard out of each other.
- Wallace’s real wife was named Marian, but it was changed to Murron to avoid confusion with the Robin Hood character of the same name.
- James Horner’s score was also used in several of the trailers for Cast Away (2000).
- Mel Gibson was supposed to star in Terry Gilliam’s (never made) film “A Tale of Two Cities” but turned it down to star in this movie which he then offered to Gilliam to direct, but Gilliam declined.
- Real life Wallaces are extras in the movie. Mel Gibson also stayed with them during the course of the film to learn history.
- The battle of Stirling took six weeks to film; roughly half a million feet of film (90+ hours) were shot for the sequence.
- Screenwriter Randall Wallace had been visiting Edinburgh in 1983 to learn about his heritage when he came across a statue of William Wallace outside Edinburgh Castle; he had never heard of the 14th-century figure who shared his name but was intrigued enough by the stories told to him about “Scotland’s greatest hero” to research the story as much as possible.
- Randall Wallace had very little historical evidence to work with in regard to William Wallace’s life; he has noted that even Churchill’s definitive work “A History of the English Speaking Peoples” observed in only a single line that virtually no factual material survives about the Scottish leader. Because of this, Randall Wallace relied heavily on a 15th-century romantic poem by the Scottish writer Henry the Minstrel (“Blind Harry”) in constructing his story.
- Writer Randall Wallace initially planned to start the story with William Wallace as an adult and added the prologue of his childhood only as an afterthought. As the sequence was first written, Murran gave William a rose (rather than a thistle) at his father’s burial; however, someone who read the script helpfully pointed out that the rose, being a traditional symbol of England, would be (to say the least) somewhat inappropriate as a prominent feature in the story.
- Glen Nevis, the Scottish valley which served as the location for Wallace’s childhood village, also enjoys the heaviest rainfall in Europe. During the six weeks spent filming in the area, only three days of sunshine occurred, during which the wedding scene was finished. The filmmakers resigned themselves to the fact that constant rain was inevitable, and opted to film scenes regardless of weather conditions.
- Thin layers of latex were used to attach set elements to the ruins of Trim Castle in Ireland to give it an appearance more befitting its medieval origins while allowing the stone to be unharmed when the additions were removed.
- The mechanical horses designed for the battle sequences weighed 200 pounds and were fueled by nitrogen cylinders propelling them at 30 mph on 20-foot tracks.
- Single frames of film were removed at strategic points in the battles in order to produce a jarring, startling effect.
- The film correctly depicts the father of Robert the Bruce suffering from leprosy in his later years; Robert the Bruce himself would be overcome by the disease in the late 1320s.
- Prince Edward (later King Edward II) was indeed the first English prince to carry the title Prince of Wales, although he did not marry Princess Isabella until 1308, after both Wallace (1305) and Edward I (1307) had died.
- The only way Gibson could get the film made was if he agreed with Paramount studios that he would star in the film as well.
- Blue body paint for battles had stopped being used around the end of the Roman era – roughly 800 years before the events of the film.
- In the movie Wallace is jumped, beaten down, and captured at Edinburgh Castle; in real-life, Wallace was captured near Glasgow.
- Brian Cox who plays Argyle Wallace was first offered a larger role but took the role of Argyle because he felt it was a better role.
- One of the film’s weary extras reportedly mistook one of Gibson’s children on the set for an errand boy, and asked him to bring a cup of tea. Gibson was within earshot, and nodded and whispered to his son, “Go get it.”
- Kilts were not worn by the Scottish until almost a hundred years after Scotland’s independence.
- English soldiers had no uniform during the Scots Wars of Independence.
- Princess Isabella did not set foot in England until 1308, therefore she could not have been in England to warn Wallace about the upcoming Battle of Falkirk.
- There is an in-joke in the film that William Wallace’s private time with Isabella led to the conception of Edward III. This could not have been the case, since Edward III was born almost ten years after Wallace died.
- A majority of the actors and extras in this film were actually Irish, although they are supposed to be Scottish or English.
- Despite the film being set in Scotland, and based on the life of a Scottish folk hero, the primary instrument heard throughout the soundtrack (most notably at William’s father’s funeral) are the Uilleann pipes, which are a smaller traditionally Irish version of bagpipes rather than the ubiquitous Great Highland Bagpipe.
- Gibson, a notorious jokester, directed some scenes in an Elmer Fudd voice and even yelled, “CUT!” during Murron’s funeral scene by putting his arm around the actress playing her mother and hollering, “Will you put a sock in it!” This caused the actress to go from crying in character to break character and laugh. Gibson also intentionally started a false rumor that Sophie Marceau was the daughter of noted French mime Marcel Marceau.